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Sana sits down next to him on the grass, and Isak looks over at her to smile. It falters when he sees the serious expression on her face.
“Are you okay?” he asks. As far as he knows all the bus drama has resolved itself, but that doesn't mean something else didn't come up.
She smiles at him a little and nudges him with her elbow.
“Yeah, I'm good,” she says, and he returns her smile. “Are you?”
“Me? I'm great,” he says and turns to survey all his friends for a moment. “This is the best birthday I've had in years.”
She hums and looks out at their friends as well. “Well, you just seem. A bit jittery.”
Isak rolls the fingers of one hand into a fist and gives a breathless laugh. He does still feel a bit jittery. A current fizzing under his skin like ants are traipsing all along his nerves.
“Even and I had an… unfortunate encounter with an asshole earlier,” he says.
When he looks over at her she frowns at him with concern, so he shrugs.
“It's okay. Nothing happened. Just. Not fun, you know,” he says, and then snorts another laugh. “I mean, you definitely do know.”
She nods a little, acknowledging the truth in the statement, and shuffles a little closer. Not close enough to really be touching, but close enough for him to feel the warmth of her body next to his.
“Does it happen a lot? To you?” he asks quietly after a moment.
“I don't know what happened to you, so. I don't know. But probably,” she hedges.
He nods slowly, sucking his bottom lip between his lips and gnawing at it for a moment, trying to shake the shaking he felt when that guy had yelled at them from the other side of the street.
“Just some guy calling us names and telling us to get a room, basically,” he says, voice quiet and strained. Saying it out loud makes his eyes sting suddenly and he rubs his palms on his thighs to get rid of the clammy feeling there.
“Asshole,” she spits, venomously, looking absolutely murderous when he looks over at her. It startles a laugh out of Isak. He's glad he's on Sana's good side these days and that the worst she ever did to him was hold Mahdi's weed hostage. Well, did to him intentionally.
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“That doesn't happen all that often to me either. Usually it's more… quiet. People who sneer at me or think I can't hear them when they whisper to their friends about how ugly my hijab is or how oppressed I must be,” she says.
Isak feels his frown deepen again.
“I don't get why people think it's any of their business,” he says.
“You're not exactly a fan of my religion either,” she points out.
Isak moves his head from side to side, acknowledging it.
“I'm not a fan of religion in general. I just… don't get it. But so long as you don't let it turn you into an asshole, then I don't mind. You do you,” he says with a shrug.
Sana nods slowly. “That's fair.”
They lapse into quiet, and Isak catches Even's eye, sharing a smile with him, when Even raises a questioning eyebrow. There's really nothing Isak knows to compare to the experience of being with Even, and it'll take a lot more than the occasional bigot to ruin it.
“I'm sorry that happened to you,” Sana says eventually. “And I'm sorry for saying people wouldn't be able to tell you're different from looking at you, that time. I wasn't considering that you're glued to Even's side 24/7.”
She's teasing a little and Isak grins at her.
“I get what you meant. It's not exactly the same thing as your hijab. I don't have to be with Even all the time,” he says. “But. Theoretically. You choose to wear it, right? So. Yeah.”
Isak can practically see her clench her jaw against any of the dozen retorts he's sure are on the tip of her tongue.
“Obviously you should get to make that choice unharassed,” he adds. “But that doesn't change that it's a choice.”
She frowns at him for a good few seconds more, before giving the smallest shrug.
“Yeah,” she concedes. “I get what you're saying. You don't choose your sexuality and pretending like you could go through life unharrassed if you just never acted on it...”
He hums his agreement.
“But-- I'm sorry too. For what I said about how most people are probably not racists,” he says. “I talked to Mahdi about it and he told me about institutionalised racism and implicit bias and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but. You meant there's more to it than just spitting at Elias in the street, right?”
She nods.
“What you said about people sneering at you and their assumptions and such?”
“Yeah,” she says, quietly, and looks away.
He releases a heavy breath.
“I didn't consider that. I don't know why. Maybe I reacted emotionally in that moment, worried I was doing it too or something instead of just listening to you,” he says. “So I'm sorry for that.”
She nods when he looks over at her and then returns her gaze to him to smile.
“You're forgiven,” she says, and he grins. “Now go give your boyfriend a kiss, he looks like he's about to keel over.”
Isak catches Even's eye automatically to find he is, indeed, looking over at them with those particular moon eyes that mean he wants to be kissed. He climbs up to his feet without thinking about it.
“I like having you around, Sanasol,” he says, smiling down at her.
She squints against the sun and schools her expression into neutrality for a good ten seconds, but he waits her out until she can't quite fight down her smile anymore.
“Yeah, me too, Isabel,” she admits.
He nods at her and then makes his way over to his boyfriend, letting him pull him in for a kiss that has their friends shouting at them to get a room already. Isak grins against Even's mouth and kisses him some more.
The End