Chapter Text
“Akk,” whines Aye, sprawled across the bed in what used to be his guest room. “Aren’t you done yet?”
“No,” says Akk matter-of-factly, placing something Aye can’t see from this vantage point carefully atop his dresser.
“You’re already changed. We could be having shaved ice right now,” Aye points out, rolling onto his back. Even with their air on high, he’s still thoroughly coated in sweat after their group had carried Akk’s desk and bookshelf and boxes on boxes on boxes up the stairs. The fresh tank top he’d changed into in anticipation of the pool is already starting to cling unpleasantly to his body, and he briefly regrets putting one on at all. “Like, right now.”
“You can go downstairs, you know,” Akk replies. “I just want to fix this. I’m not going to be more than a few minutes.”
“Not alone,” mumbles Aye, staring up at the ceiling. “Missed you.”
It's a slight misdirection. He did miss Akk, he always does, but it hasn’t actually been that long since they’ve seen each other, barely a week and a half since Aye’s been back in school. No, it’s mostly just that he’s tired and sweaty and wants Akk to peel him off the bed. And it’ll probably get a reaction, which is the more important part.
Right on cue, Akk scoffs, which is an Akk Sound he never makes seriously and thus always just sounds fond to Aye. “Then be patient, Shortstop.”
“Why? Mom and Beam are here, you can, like, fold all of your socks later.”
“I don’t fold my socks,” Akk answers, which is technically true but not really the point, because he does sort them into pairs and tuck them into each other in little bundles before putting them away. If it weren’t for uniform requirements, Aye’s would never match, and he’s fine with that. “And I’m not doing that. Just— a minute, please.”
The window is open a little tiny bit, which is probably bad for their electricity bill; outside a car drives by, and there are voices from out in the back by the pool. Aye closes his eyes and lets himself sink even further into the bed, because even if he’s exhausted and too-hot, it’s the weekend and Akk is in his house because he’s going to live here, where Aye can see him all the time. Most of the time, at least. It’s nice. He can wait a little.
It is so hot, though.
The minutes pass sticky-slow until Aye feels the bed dip at his side. Soft lips press very gently to his forehead, and Aye opens his eyes just in time to see Akk make a tiny little grimace as he pulls away. “You’re sweaty.”
“There’s no way you aren’t,” Aye retorts, struggling to get his elbows under him.
“I am,” Akk agrees easily enough. “Your stairs are a nightmare.”
“Your stairs.”
Akk opens his mouth like he’s about to retort, then closes it on a smile, breaking eye contact. “I— guess so,” he says, something wondering in his voice.
“You’re so cute,” says Aye wholeheartedly, staring at the soft little curve of Akk’s lips. “The cutest.”
Akk goes pink, which does not improve the cuteness situation, and swats him across the shoulder, which admittedly sort of does. “Be quiet.”
“One day you’ll admit it,” singsongs Aye.
“Never.”
“Never?”
Akk shakes his head, his mouth obviously twitching.
“I can’t convince you?” Aye asks, widening his eyes and letting his lower lip jut out a little. “You won’t ever acknowledge the truth?”
“Don’t pout at me. That’s your weakness, not mine.”
Instantly, Aye is torn between pointing out that Akk has just admitted out loud he uses his giant shining doe eyes on purpose to be a dirty manipulator and what he actually does, which is use a sudden wave of spiteful energy to grab Akk by the shirt collar and pull.
It works for a second, Akk letting out a startled yelp and falling forward, but he catches himself with both arms to either side of Aye’s head barely a moment later and flat refuses to be pulled down any further despite Aye’s considerable efforts. Maybe, just maybe, Aye has maybe gotten a little too used to Akk letting him do this sort of thing; on top of that, his arms are still feeling a bit noodly after carrying so much furniture today.
Aye is creative, though. He has other methods.
“Ayan,” scolds Akk, starting to sit back upright, “We’re both gross. Stop— Hey!”
Aye unashamedly shoves his free hand under Akk’s shirt (Akk is, unfortunately, right; this is a very sweaty experience) and digs his fingers in between Akk’s ribs.
Akk’s arms wobble dangerously as he tries to squirm away, face scrunching up in an adorable expression that makes him a liar multiple times over. “Aye, stop, you—”
Somebody knocks on the door, loud and sharp. Akk freezes over him; Aye does not do the same, taking the opportunity to run his nails down Akk’s side and watch him shiver.
“Ai’Aye, you two have been up here together in Akk’s room for a suspicious amount of time given you were supposed to be changing into swimming outfits,” says Beam dryly from the hall. “I had to stop your mother from being the one to come up.”
“I was organizing my dresser,” Akk says, indignant.
“Is that what they call it these days?”
Akk rolls his eyes hard enough that it looks painful before finally pushing himself back up and dragging Aye’s hand out of his shirt.
“We’re coming,” Aye calls, grinning when Beam laughs out in the hall and Akk glares at him. Pouting again, he holds both arms up. “Help me up?”
“Do you really think you deserve it?” asks Akk in a pointedly neutral tone, getting off the bed entirely. In Aye’s well-studied opinion, Akk isn’t actually mad but could get there, so this is a dangerous game, but he thinks he can manage it.
“I love you?” Aye tries.
Akk considers him for a moment, raising a hand to push some hair out of his eyes, then says, “I love you too,” and leaves the room with a self-satisfied little grin.
Beam passes through the door Akk left open and raises one frankly judgmental eyebrow at Aye. Considering that Beam also helped drag all of Akk’s worldly belongings up the stairs, he looks positively fresh in comparison, his curly hair untouched and his stupidly muscled arms probably not even a bit wobbly where his tank top prominently displays them.
Aye shoots him a dirty look and says, “I shouldn’t have to take this kind of treatment for something I didn’t even get to do.”
“Whatever you say,” Beam answers blandly, before coming over to the bed and pulling Aye up like it’s nothing, one hand around one of his wrists. “Come on, big guy, think of dessert,” he adds, when Aye groans in protest.
Once he’s upright, Aye is starting to follow Beam out when his eyes catch on the dresser Akk had been standing at. Arranged atop it his little photo collection, the one that had been in his dorm — pictures of both of them with their graduation flowers, their parents with their arms looped over their shoulders, a close shot of Akk laughing so hard his entire face crinkles up while Aye hangs like a limpet off of his shoulders.
He speeds up, passing Beam in the doorway to move into the hallway, and finds Akk waiting at the top of the stairs for them with that grin still in place. Aye wants, wildly, to kiss it, wants very badly to drag him back into the bedroom, never mind company and everything else. But he settles for going up to Akk and hooking their arms together; he lives here now. There’ll be time.
There’ll be time. Aye grins all the way down the stairs.
Out in the backyard, Aye’s mother is sitting under an umbrella pitched on the grass past the pool, an open cooler next to her on the grass and a giant sunhat on her head. “Hi, boys,” she says, raising both eyebrows. “It sure took you a while to come down.”
Aye has less than zero desire to address anything she thinks might have happened up there. Thankfully, Akk seems to share that sentiment, wandering over to the cooler and inspecting the contents before glancing up at her and saying, “These look good. How are you doing, Auntie?”
“I’m on break from work, my son is home, and I barely even had to help move your furniture because there were several nice young men to do it for me. I am doing wonderful.”
Aye rolls his eyes playfully at her, and doesn’t bother to jump in the pool far enough away from her to avoid the splash zone.
She shrieks at him, raising a threatening finger. “Clearly by ‘my son is home’ I meant Akk.”
“Of course,” Akk says primly, putting on his best Good Boy, Big Eyes expression. Aye thinks he sees him go a little pink, though. “I’d never do such a thing.”
“I don’t believe you,” Beam tells him, coming out onto the grass behind them. “You have a trouble streak under there somewhere, I know it.”
“You only think that because Aye tells you things, and he is a biased narrator,” Akk answers, but his nose is scrunched up like he’s trying not to laugh. Shortly after he comes over to the edge of the pool as Aye is getting himself situated atop an inflatable lounger to hand him a little green cup of shaved ice and a spoon, so Aye magnanimously forgives him.
They settle for a bit, Akk sitting at the edge of the pool with his own shaved ice and his feet in the water and chatting with the others about his parents and his drive to move in and his various in-progress job applications. They’re keeping the topics light, but Aye knows it’s been frustrating for his boyfriend to keep trying like this and get nothing. He’s still in the camp of encouraging Akk to talk to all their friends in the city; he certainly already has, even though Akk had gotten all prickly about taking even more of what he sees as financial help from Aye. Jai had gotten back to them, but he’s still waiting on Nat.
He doesn’t see the point in reminding Akk about that in front of others, so he doesn’t, but he resolves to bring it up again later and just listens lazily from his spot reclined on a pool float. This is it, he thinks idly, staring up into the blue sky. This is the life, actually.
“And I still finished, but I really thought the questions in the middle were exc—” Akk breaks off in the middle of a sentence, his tone curling up in surprise.
Aye tries, a little unsuccessfully, to sit up, glancing around the yard. He catches an indistinct flash of motion near the fence just as Akk stands from his position at the side of the pool, steps into his sandals, and crosses the grass with Beam following just behind him. “Baby?” Aye calls, flailing around a little ungracefully as he tries to sit up in his pool floatie.
“I thought I saw—” Akk starts, the sentence going unfinished as he crouches just past a hedge.
Once Aye is upright enough, he sees that Akk is near the section of their fence that’s not completely solid, the black bars that make up the back gate. On the other side sits a dog, a medium-sized, light brown thing with pointy ears that Aye would be hard-pressed to identify even if he really knew anything about dogs. It isn’t moving around; it’s just staring directly at Akk with big, round eyes.
“Even at a fancy place like this, huh?” asks Akk, tilting his head at the dog. He’s facing away from Aye, but Aye will bet he’s smiling.
There are a fair amount of dogs, stray and otherwise, around Akk’s hometown; he treats them with just as much indulgence as he did Singto on campus, frequently giving them treats they probably shouldn’t have and making cute little baby faces at them. Aye has seen him visiting them whenever he has time away from his parents’ schedule.
Sitting up a little better to see, Aye’s mom says, “It’s still Bangkok. I’ve never seen that one before, though.”
Cutely, Akk waves through the fence at the dog. “Hi there,” he says, tone sweet. “Did you see something you’re interested in?”
Aye kicks himself and his floatie over to the edge of the pool, getting out with a near-catastrophic wobble. The dog wiggles a little in response to being addressed, but doesn’t bark.
“I don’t think you can give dogs shaved ice, Ai’Akk,” Beam tells him with a little laugh. “And I’m for sure not sharing.”
“Probably not,” Akk says, in a way that implies he was at least thinking about it. “Sorry, friend.”
Aye comes over to them, dripping from the shins down, and regards the dog curiously. Closer, it’s a little bigger than he thought, and has a curled sort of tail that nearly touches its back. It looks a little dirty, but nothing worse than usual for a dog like this.
“You’re barely even older than a puppy, huh,” says Akk, sounding a little sad but still with that fond note in his voice. “Did you get bigger than someone expected? It’s okay. I did that too.”
Beam snorts, glancing sidelong at Aye. “Relatable. To some of us.”
Rolling his eyes, Aye drops to a crouch next to Akk. “I’m a perfectly respectable height. You’re just both giants. Besides, I don’t think anyone in Akk’s family expected him to turn out like that.”
Akk stiffens a little next to him, and Aye winces faintly. He could probably have phrased that differently, and he opens his mouth to correct, but Akk interrupts.
“They were certainly kinder about it than this little one’s family was.”
The dog is oddly still, mostly just fidgeting around where it sits and watching them with big, round black begging eyes. Puppy eyes. His boyfriend makes a good set with it.
Akk is looking back, but his expression has gone contemplative. “Sorry, friend,” he says. “Come back another time, okay?”
“Are you going to set something up?” Aye asks.
“Yeah,” says Akk, getting to his feet.
The movement must startle the dog, because it skitters away a little, going even further as Aye follows suit. Its little claws click on the little bit of pavement by the fence before going silent as it escapes into the grass.
Akk stares after it, still looking serious, then turns to Aye and says abruptly, “Did you hear back from anyone other than Jai about the jobs yet?”
Blinking, Aye says, “Not really. Beam, you thought he should ask at the market, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if it’ll work for sure,” Beam says apologetically. “I’ve never had to apply somewhere; I always just worked with my parents.”
“Me too,” says Akk, starting to wander back towards the water. He sits near the edge of the pool again, dipping his toes in and staring into the distance, and this time Aye sits beside him, unashamedly curling in close to put his head on his shoulder.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Planning,” Akk says, very lightly knocking their heads together.
Putting one arm around Akk’s waist, Aye asks, “Should we be thinking about pet-proofing the house?”
Akk stutters a little, evidently caught. “I don’t— obviously your mom would have the final say on anything like that.”
That’s as good as a yes, but they’ve been working on this. Aye cuddles a little closer. “So you’re telling me that dog looked into your soul with its begging eyes and you didn’t immediately start making plans about that specifically, sir ‘I consistently spent more on food for Singto than for myself’?”
Akk puts an arm around him in turn and squeezes, just that little bit too hard, until Aye makes a noise of protest. Only then does he say, “No. But… I do want one. Eventually.”
Uncomplicated pride swoops through Aye’s stomach. “I’m sure you can do it.”
“I’m not opposed to you keeping a dog in the house, so long as you actually take care of it,” Aye’s mom calls from her umbrella less than ten feet away. Akk jerks in Aye’s hold, face scrunching up in faint mortification to have been heard. “We can look things up together.”
Beam comes over and drops down at Aye’s other side, a respectable distance away. “You really just forget we’re here, don’t you,” he says, laughing, and kicks a little water at them. “Honeymooners.”
Akk splutters, but Aye shrugs. “I was perfectly aware.”
Even with his noodle arms, Akk must not have been prepared for Aye to take the initiative, because when he’s inevitably pushed into the pool for this he manages to take his boyfriend with him.