Chapter Text
Naim stood in the car park, looking up at the window to the room they shared. Warm golden light shone through the barred windows. The air was still and sticky, quiet unbroken save for the slight electric thrumming of the failing lampposts.
He brushed his thumb over his phone screen, biting at the inside of his cheek to feel the sting.
Naim? I love you.
His chest ached and his face screwed up in a silent sob. I love you too. I love you. Why can't that be okay? Why can't I throw myself on my parents bed and laugh out into the shared air "A great guy loves me and I love him back"?
He was supposed to be able to do that. Should have been able to. Should have got to walk down the stairs to see Ryan looking up at him wide-eyes like in the movies and have his dad take stupid school dance pictures. Should have got to be told "keep the door open!" when Ryan was over, because his parents knew about them. Parents. Two of them.
Instead, he had to run. Chasing and fleeing at the same time. Chasing freedom, chasing Ryan. Running always. He didn't want to run anymore.
They’d been here for over a month. Surely if anyone was looking for them they would have found them by now. Something dry and angry settled in Naim’s stomach. Shouldn't someone be here by now? Should should should should should. Fuck.
He opened his phone. He called his mum, thumb slamming on the stupid picture of her in her stupid fucking cardigan.
It rang once.
"Naim?"
He didn't stop to hear her voice, to take it in, "You’re not even looking for me, are you?"
"Do you want me to be?"
"No." The words came fast, he half meant them. "Why aren't you?"
"You’ll be 18 in what, six months?"
"Five."
"Yes. Right, it’s July. Anyway you’ll be 18 soon and I didn’t see the point in pulling you back here for a few months just for you to try and run away again. The police had some questions, I told them you'd gone visiting your aunt Grace in Melbourne." She sounded tired, her voice was shaky. Hollow. She hadn't become a nun then, but she wasn't screaming for her baby to come home either.
"Really? That’s it?" Naim paced around the lot now, stepping on and off the cement bumps. His eyes flitted back between the endless dark sky and the yellow glow from the window. Dark, light, dark, light.
"I’m sorry that you feel I hurt you, Naim. Really, I am. I was doing my best—"
"No, mum," A thick laugh forced itself from Naim's lips, the still air heavy and cloying against his skin, "You fucking weren’t.” Had his phone always been this heavy? Had he always been this weak?
"Naim—" She sighed and he could picture her head in her hands, the full expression of dismayed acceptance on her face like he'd run her to the ground. "Honey, I was. I still am, really."
Her voice stalled for a second and he didn't feel like rushing to fill the gap between them this time, "The phone company keeps charging me extra from all the data your running up."
He couldn’t help but apologise, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A dumb simpering, "Sorry mum” that he regretted as soon as he heard it. Stupid boy.
"It’s fine, Naim. It lets me know you’re breathing. That’s enough for me."
How could that possibly be enough? Just to know that he was alive, and not to know that he was okay?
"There’s a boy in a motel room up the stairs, I’m staring at the door to it right now." The wind picked up a bit, a breeze enough to cool his flushed skin and ruffle his hair.
"Ryan?"
"He just told me he loves me and I came out here to call you instead of saying it back. I don’t know why I bothered. I just felt like I had to call you. I don't know." There was a rustling on the other side of the line, more silence.
"We were friends once. I guess I wanted to talk to my friend," Naim's inhale was cracked and needy and thick, "Because I love him, mum. Like you loved dad, I love him. I want to follow him to the ends of the earth. He makes me—I would—" a broken sob escaped him, his cheeks felt wet, "I would follow him anywhere."
He gave her a beat and then a second one, waited for her to speak.
"I really hope you know what you’re doing, Naim." She sounded so tired.
"I do."
"Call me again sometime, maybe once a week. Once a month if you can’t stand to hear me talk that much. I may know you're breathing when I pay your phone bill, but I'd like to hear your voice too. Okay?"
"Yeah. Fine." Naim disconnected the call. He might call again, maybe, eventually. The warm and kind caress of evening breeze brushed over his cheek, swiping the last rogue tear onto the asphalt.
Naim's feet seemed to move before he told them to. He found himself racing through the car park and up the steps, chasing after an invisible palpable lure. I love you. His key slid into the lock, I love you, twisted, I love you. The door slammed open under the force of his shoulder.
He threw himself on Ryan's lap, the boy in his motel room still glued to his spot on the floor. I love you. Ryan didn't even flinch, his arms coming to wrap around Naim's waist. How could there be so much trust alongside all this ruin? I love you. His hair smelled like cigarette smoke and bargain bin two in one; no good for his curls. I love you.
"Good call?" Ryan’s voice was muffled from his spot jammed against Naim’s neck.
"Fucking awful call," Naim laughed, blond hair filling his mouth as he grinned, "God-awful bullshit fucking call." Fuck, Ryan, I love you.
He pulled back, covering Ryan’s face in kisses, hands locked in curly blond hair, rings getting tangled in it. Whatever.
"I love you. God, Ry—I love you so much it hurts." Naim picked up the boy's big freshly-calloused hand in his own and pushed Ryan's index finger to his chest, over his rapid racing heart. "Right here. It hurts so bad. It fucking aches. I’m so scared that I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone. It’s like you’re part of me, physically. Stuck right there under my ribs. And when you're not around its like you've been ripped out. And you'll leave me with this gross fucking hole where you're supposed to fit and I'm, like, bleeding and shit."
"That’s so gross and dramatic. I prefer all your insides to be inside neat and tidy, ya'know.” Ryan tapped his finger on Naim's chest, in time with his heartbeat. His voice soft and teary.
”Shut up, you're such a cunt." He didn't mean it. Only a little.
"I'm the cunt?" Ryan poked him harder, hand still gripped in Naim's. "You ran off to call your mummy and left me here like some dickhead." He gave a little wet laugh.
"I'm sorry."
Ryan's hand rubbed over Naim's chest over his shirt, calloused fingers scratching over the embroidered star. He shook his head in soft dismissal.
"You know," Naim said, "I ran in here all dramatic and told you I loved you and you haven't said it back yet."
Ryan tensed under him, voice dripping with sarcasm, "Oh, sorry. Let me go call my dad and—"
"Fuck you!"
Then Ryan's lips were on his, swallowing his smile, "I love you too, Naim."
"Really?"
"Shut up, you're fishing." Ryan rocked his head back against the wall, smiling up at him, palming at his waist. Naim would pay good money for Ryan to keep doing that forever. If they didn't have to, like, buy for food or anything.
They kissed there for a while, until Ryan's bones ached and he dragged Naim to the bathroom for showers.
Naim hogged the hot water while Ryan sat on the counter. They chatted aimlessly back and forth. It was crazy to think that a few weeks ago he’d been nervous about the other boy even being on the other side of the shower curtain. Now he wouldn’t bat an eye if he climbed in with him, started washing his hair and wiping soap from his eye while talking about what he snack stole from Laurie’s desk at work. It sounded nice, actually.
He poked his head out, letting the sudsy water drip from his overgrown hair onto the linoleum, and took a moment just to look. There he was, right where he'd left him. Perched up on the little countertop, dewy with steam. Way too far away.
Naim jerked his head back toward the stream of water, "Well, are you coming, or?"
Ryan's eyebrows raised for a millisecond, "Oh, am I welcome? I must have lost the invitation."
Ryan's clothes piled up on the floor on top of Naim's and Naim grabbed his hand, a soft tug to pull him under the warm spray. The mechanics of it had definitely been more functional in Naim's head, which had mostly been full of warm slick skin and wet kisses and his back pressed against the cool tile. But the shower was cramped and creaky, all their limbs tangled together in the tiny space. At least he had an excuse to be pressed up against Ryan. Not that he needed one anymore. They were in love apparently. The two of them, in love, in a teeny little shower with cracked tiles, in a little town just south of nowhere and just north of somewhere.
Naim shivered and Ryan turned them around so warm water hit Naim's spine.
"Lean your head back," Ryan's lips pressed the top of Naim's head, and he did, letting the taller boy work the shampoo out of his dark hair. He tried not to feel vulnerable, but it was hard when his neck was craned and his was stood naked and flushed chest to chest against Ryan. He could be vulnerable right now. It was safe. They were okay.
A question thrashed at the backs of Naim's teeth, a whiny "what are we" that he swallowed down like a shot with no chaser. It didn't matter if they had a word for it. There didn't need to be one. What good were more words when Ryan's hands rubbed soap on his shoulders and his lips pressed kisses on his neck?
Naim only needed three.
"I love you." He whispered through the clean warm downpour.
And Ryan only needed four, "I love you too."