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There are two boys on a boat.
Waves lap lazily against the wooden hull, green paint tarnished by remnants of barnacles and algae, paled from years in salt water and exposed to the sun. It’s warm, barely into summer and thus not scorching hot yet and a gentle breeze keeps the humid air moving. The sea itself is a crystalline shade of blue - somewhere between the deep and dark waters of the open sea and the warm shallows of the stretching sand beaches.
Ayan keeps drifting in and out of sleep, warm and comfortable with his head on Akk’s stomach and the sun shining on his face. He’s not entirely sure how late it is, nor does he care all that much. The world has finally narrowed down from finishing school and exams and applying to universities and looking for accommodations to share - it’s just him and Akk now.
Him and Akk, and the open expanse of the sky melting into the sea somewhere beyond the horizon.
They return home to Akk’s parents almost every evening, but then sometimes they don’t, trading in his bed for a sky so full of stars it makes him dizzy. They’re not sailing to the end of the world exactly, but Akk sits him down by the bow and smiles at him, kisses him slow and soft and then navigates the boat off to some island or other.
It’s all beautiful, the sea and the marine life they come across, the islands with their pale sand beaches and palm trees, and the sunrises and sunsets that just keep on being more spectacular than the last. And yet, all the natural wonders of the coast pale in comparison to Akk.
One could probably argue that Akk counts as one of the natural wonders, but Ayan sometimes finds himself looking at him and thinking that he can’t be quite real. It’s silly and cheesy and definitely something he can’t ever say out loud because he’d get made fun of for it - by Akk most of all, and despite that it holds true.
He’s almost beyond description at times, especially like this - loose and happy, with a smile on his lips that rivals the brightness of the sun and his hair tousled by the wind, skin starting to tan into a golden brown. He looks happier than Ayan’s ever seen him, and every day he thinks Akk couldn’t possibly be more radiant, and every day he is.
He’s such a far cry from the boy he first saw climbing into the groundkeeper's truck, back ramrod straight and face desperately guarded. Now, Akk is all open shirts and relaxed shoulders where they once used to be bunched up with years worth of crushing tension. He’s open laughs and gentle hands grasping Ayan’s own, fingers dancing over his jaw and salt-stained lips pressed against his own. He’s fully, and unapologetically himself when they’re together, reaching for his hand whenever he feels like it, and dropping kisses onto his cheek in passing.
It’s a dream come true, really, something that doesn’t feel entirely real at times because Ayan wakes up to a sky painted gold and pink and orange, next to a boy who makes his stomach flutter and his heart skip a beat just by looking at him. Time drips by slowly, thick like honey and just as sweet, and the distant promise of university doesn’t loom like a threat - it’s just the future. Their future, because in Ayan’s mind there isn’t a doubt that his life is always going to have Akk in it.
He hasn’t said that to him, not yet. He probably won’t for a while, since the enormity of his feelings scare even him at times. But he will. There’s no rush to get to it, he’s got the time.
Now his head is jostled slightly when Akk shifts, and Ayan gives a small displeased hum, cracking his eyes open for the first time in who knows how long. He’s surprised to find the sun is already setting, the light a deep and rich gold that threads itself into Akk’s hair and pours over his skin.
“Hello sleepyhead,” Akk comments, smiling down at him. He cards his fingers through Ayan’s hair, fingertips light on his scalp. It’s enough to fill his chest with warmth, something deeper and heavier than the summer could ever infuse into him.
“Do you want to head home tonight or rather stay out?”
Ayan softly hums for a moment, thoughtful. “Can we stay out here?”
Akk nods, brings his left hand to rest on Ayan’s chest, drumming a slight rhythm into it. “I keep some stuff stored on here, you know. In case my boyfriend decides an old boat is more comfortable than my actual bed.”
“Everywhere is comfortable if I get to cuddle with you,” Ayan says. It earns him a scoff and an eye roll and Akk tugging at his hair, which is entirely the reaction he was aiming for.
“You’re ridiculous,” Akk says, and it’s so, so fond it makes his heart flutter, erratic and overwhelmed.
“Says the guy who packed supplies just in case I want to stargaze.”
“You’d just complain about how you can’t see as many stars on the beach as you can out here if I didn’t.”
“Not true.” Ayan makes a show of taking his head off Akk’s lap and glaring at him in mock offence, but gets caught off-guard when he starts laughing instead of retaliating in some way.
It’s kind of funny how Akk being this - happy, teasing, full of life and love - can still take him by surprise. It’s been over half a year now since they started dating, and yet Ayan finds more things to fall in love with still. Right now it’s the way Akk’s shoulders shake when he laughs, this specific somewhat incredulous laugh that seems to be reserved just for Ayan and very occasionally Kan when he does something stupid.
He looks, because he can and because Akk doesn’t shy away from it anymore, and smiles when their eyes meet. Akk shakes his head, still grinning, and raises his brows. “What are you looking at?”
“You’re so pretty,” Ayan says. “I can’t keep my eyes off of you, Akk. You’re just so fucking pretty like this.”
And just because Akk doesn’t shy away from affection anymore doesn’t mean he doesn’t get flustered still. A blush blooms across his face, along with a smaller, more private smile. It’s also something that Ayan has selfishly decided is just for him - a truly small thing, the barest hint of dimples and really not much more than a twitch of his lips that is easy to miss, but he’s always watching for it. Always happy to cause and catch it.
Akk drops his eyes to his lap, inhales sharply then looks back up.
The sun is sinking lower, now starting to bleed into tones of orange and red, promising a spectacle later on, but really, why should he look at it when Akk is right in front of him?
The setting sun just accentuates his beauty, spills fire over his hair and throws the shadows of his lashes over his cheekbones, reflects in his eyes and makes their already warm brown seem even warmer. Like coffee. It’s the artist that makes Akk it’s most beautiful painting, and Ayan isn’t sure if he’ll ever get enough of that, if drinking in the way he looks under a blazing sky every day for the rest of his life will ever be enough, or if he’ll go chasing after it in all of his coming lives.
“You can’t just keep saying stuff like that,” Akk says quietly. Ayan crowds into his space until they’re sitting knee to knee, noses almost touching. “Why not?”
“Because!” Akk struggles for words for a moment, eyes flitting across Ayan’s face and then the horizon. “You just can’t.”
“So eloquent.”
“Shut up.”
Ayan grins, raises his brows in challenge. “Make me.”
And Akk looks like he considers it, for a moment. Leans forward just the tiniest bit, drops his gaze down to his lips, before blinking rapidly and pulling away. “You just want me to kiss you.”
“I always want you to kiss me.”
“I know. It’s annoying,” Akk says. “I can’t kiss you all the time, you’ll get too full of yourself.”
Ayan pouts, and Akk rolls his eyes at him again and pulls him onto his lap. It’s sort of uncomfortable until they sort their limbs out, and the boat rocks from side to side when they nearly topple off the bench, but it doesn’t matter.
Not really.
Because he ends up practically straddling Akk, laughing into his shoulder as he holds on until the boat steadies itself underneath them, and the sun starts dipping below the waterline in the distance, a flickering disk of a deep tangerine-like orange that reflects in Akk’s eyes when Ayan really pays attention.
Which he does, of course he does.
He pulls back enough to be able to see his face, to take it into his hands and tilt it this way and that, marvelling at the shadows created by the waning light, the streaks of colour splattered so carelessly across the sky, tinting clouds in a brilliant mix of red and pink and everything in between.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, voice almost cracking over the unbridled adoration seeping onto his tongue.
Akk blushes again. “Stop saying that.”
“I won’t.” Ayan shakes his head vehemently. “You are beautiful, why shouldn’t I say what’s true? Who are you to tell me what to say?”
“It’s cheesy,” Akk concedes, in annoyed amusement. As if he doesn’t say things of the same calibre all the time. As if he doesn’t paint little hearts all over Ayan’s back at night when they’re worn out from the day and drifting close to sleep, all nimble fingers and gentle lips against the crown of his head.
“It’s not true,” he adds after a moment, in a much smaller voice. “You always say such sweet things to me and I don’t know if I can accept them.”
“Akk,” Ayan says, quiet and earnest and in a tone that makes him look up. “I wish you could see yourself through my eyes, you don’t do yourself justice at all.”
And it’s true. Akk still struggles with himself, even on the good days. It’s gotten a lot better, with the changes at the school and the help of a regular therapist, and an environment he’s certain supports him. Ayan doesn’t expect him to magically get better, even after months.
He’s well aware of how long it takes to start really healing, that it’s a process that might as well go on for the rest of their lives, and more often than not he watches Akk break against the walls he’s built himself and the obstacles that were put in his way by others, wishing he could do anything to help.
It’s not his job, he knows that. But watching Akk cry, and listening to him being self-deprecating is more heartbreaking than Ayan wants to admit outside of his own therapy sessions. It’s something that tugs at his heart in all the worst ways, sinks sharp teeth into him and doesn’t let go until Akk can smile again, really smile. Not that fake thing that he still thinks can fool anybody who cares.
Because Akk is beautiful, truly beautiful. Not only in the long lines of his body, the soft curve of his mouth and his blinding smiles. He’s beautiful in his kindness that he tried so hard to suppress. He’s beautiful in the truly stupid jokes he has with Wat and Kan, the sheer antagonistic joy with which he teases Ayan, the heart that sometimes seems to be too big for him to bear.
Akk is a masterpiece of a boy, even when he sees himself as broken at times.
He focuses on the splinters and shards still littering his surroundings, ignoring the gold dripping from the glued seams. Ayan often thinks that Akk simply can’t see the way everyone around him adores him - lends helping hands to keep him together when the world and his own mind tries to tear him apart again.
He’s all shattered prisms carefully pieced back together, with some sharp edges still remaining but getting filed down by time and love, and the knowledge that any cuts resulting from them can be healed and forgiven.
Akk can’t see it for himself yet, but Ayan is there. Ayan is there and he sees it all, and he reaches out when Akk can’t seem to hold onto himself anymore.
He reaches out now, too, to cradle Akk’s face in his palms, stroking his thumbs over his cheekbones. Akk leans into it, twists his neck just slightly to press his lips against the palm of Ayan’s hand.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no. No apologising,” Ayan chides gently. “You’re okay, baby. I don’t need you to believe it yet, but just accept that I think of you this way, okay?”
Akk hums and for a moment he still seems unconvinced, then he exhales slowly and nods. “Okay.”
He pecks Ayan on the lips, lingering for a moment of warm breaths against each other’s faces, before pulling back again. The sun is nearly gone now - barely a burning crescent glittering at what seems like the edge of the world, and above them, the zenith fills with stars.
Akk tugs them down into a lying position again, guides Ayan to rest his head on his stomach and threads their fingers together above Ayan’s heart with one hand before pushing the other back into his hair.
A few minutes drip by at a pace that feels both like seconds and hours, time tumbling like a pebble on a riverbed and occasionally getting stuck. Ayan watches the night sky come to life, glittering velvet blue, and for a moment the world narrows down to them in their little boat, just riding on a current to nowhere and everywhere, with the promise of each others’ company as the only fuel.
“I never thought I’d get something like this,” Akk says into the relative quiet of the early night, barely audible over the splashing of waves against wood.
“What do you mean?” Ayan turns his head slightly to peer up at him, but Akk’s face is turned towards the sky.
“I never really believed that I’d get to have this ,” he says. “When I was younger I never really thought about it, and when I realised I like men, but not really in any way past romantic I just thought I’d end up alone. You’re kind of like a dream come true, you know?”
Ayan smiles to himself, lifts their intertwined hands to his face and kisses the back of Akk’s hand. His admitting to being somewhere on the spectrum of asexual is still new to Akk, still something he thinks about a bit too hard at times. Ayan would give him all of eternity to figure it out, if the figuring it out was the issue, but it’s really Akk’s worry that his changing level of comfort with anything past making out might annoy him at some point. Truly though, Ayan is certain that Akk not always being comfortable with being sexual won’t be an issue.
If he gets to have Akk, happy and soft and laughing at a joke he made, or lazily blinking up at him with their hands clasped and conversation trickling gently along, then there isn’t really much else he needs.
And it’s something they talk about a lot when Akk gets too into his own head about it. He doesn’t seem like it now, and so Ayan just gives an affirmative hum and waits for him to continue, squeezing his hand a little.
“And after everything- I just never really thought I’d be allowed to be happy. Or that I’d be allowed to have someone like you, with all the bad things I did.”
“Your past doesn’t define you, it just lets you shape yourself into something new,” Ayan says gently. Akk pauses for a moment, fingers stilling in his hair. He sighs. “I know.”
“It’s just overwhelming at times?” Ayan asks after the silence has lingered long enough for him to know that Akk isn’t really sure of how to continue the conversation. He gets a soft hum in response before they lapse into quiet again.
It’s not uncomfortable, even though there are still open threads to be taken care of, and there’s a sort of anticipation in the air as Akk plays with his hair and figures out what to say next. Ayan waits, and looks at the sky and the myriad of stars that are their only witnesses.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you seem too good to be true sometimes,” Akk finally admits.
Ayan snorts, is about to say something but gets cut off just as he opens his mouth. “If you let that get to your head I’m leaving you stranded on an island.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I absolutely would.”
“I can’t believe you. That’s just cruel.”
“Well,” Akk sounds somewhere between smug and exasperated. “If you decide to ruin my moment of honesty then you deserve to be stranded on an island. And to think that I was going to kiss you.”
Ayan shoots up, and Akk starts laughing at him, falling onto his back.
“Please still kiss me,” he pleads, crawling up to hover over Akk on all fours. Akk shakes his head, still laughing.
Ayan starts whining.
“Please, you just said I was too good to be true.”
Akk groans. “I knew I shouldn’t have said it. I’m definitely leaving you out here.”
“Akk,” he draws the name out, long and high pitched and purposefully fussy. “Come on.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You ruined my moment!”
“You’re the one who said you were going to leave me out here!” Ayan flops down on Akk’s chest in protest, who gives a surprised cough at the sudden weight.
“Maybe I still will,” it’s not a threat, not with the way he’s smirking at Ayan, hands already trailing up his spine.
And maybe it’s weird how their conversations go nowadays. Swinging between earnest emotion - honesty and care and vulnerability - and then circling back around to teasing remarks and childish nagging. Ayan likes it that way. It’s refreshing, and it keeps things from getting too heavy a lot of the time. It feels balanced in a way he can’t fully explain and doesn’t really care to, either, because it’s something between him and Akk and nobody else.
He likes it, and it’s good , because Akk finally lets himself say the things he wants. It’s easy, nowadays. Or easier, at least.
He leans down to kiss Akk, and despite all his pretence, Akk kisses back, in that gentle way that he always kisses. There’s salt on his lips and both of them should probably use more chapstick than they do, but it’s sweet comfort anyways. They know how to kiss each other by now, slotting together like puzzle pieces - Akk’s hands on Ayan’s neck, Ayans fingers trailing along his jaw while he holds himself up with one hand.
“I love you,” Akk whispers against his lips, warm and smiling and heat pools in Ayan’s stomach. It never gets old to hear those words, and he marvels at the boy underneath him, now cast in the silver glow of the moon and her stars. He looks almost unreal, somewhere close to ethereal, and combined with the pride that swells in Ayan’s chest it takes his breath away.
“I love you,” Akk repeats, clearer this time. He says it with all the confidence in the world nowadays, and never fails to draw a smile from Ayan. “And you love me.”
“I do,” Ayan confirms, and a smile blooms across Akk’s face, pretty enough to put the diamond-scattered fabric of the night above them to shame. Ayan kisses him again.
There are two boys on a boat, and they forget the world exists in favour of each other.