Work Text:
We lay on the bed of my pickup in the desert, my head on Dante’s chest. My lungs burned, still recovering. We had found Gina’s make-up bag lying forgotten in the back seat and had spent the past hour doing each other’s make up in between fits of uncontrollable laughter. Dante was much better at applying the make-up than I was, which didn’t surprise me. Dante was better at everything than I was. It didn’t bother me anymore, though, not like it used to. Now I was just proud of him. Look at my boyfriend, the make-up artist. Look at my boyfriend, the painter. The swimmer. The reader. The intellectual. He could do anything. And he was mine .
Since he was the better make-up artist, my face looked decent while his own looked awful. Not that he ever looked awful. Maybe silly. But he had done a good job on mine, and staring at myself in the side view mirror, I hadn’t felt silly at all. I had felt beautiful.
“Dante?” I said without lifting my head from his chest. I could feel the steady tha-thump of his heart beneath me.
“Yeah?”
“Hypothetically… would you love me if I wasn’t a boy?” The words came out loud and rushed.
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate.
“You would love me if I was a girl?”
“Yes.”
“But you like boys ,” I said, my voice strained.
“I like you . I love you . ” His voice was so warm, like desert sand under the sun . “I don’t love you because you’re a boy, Ari. I love you because you’re you .”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, his arms wrapped tightly around me. After some time, our breaths matched up, inhale to inhale, exhale to exhale. Like two people sharing the same body. The same heart.
“Dante?” I said again.
“Yes?” His voice was so soft, so warm, so full of love.
“That wasn’t really a hypothetical question.”
“I thought maybe it wasn’t,” he said. I could hear his smile.“Are you a girl?”
“No.” The word came out confident, decisive. I didn’t feel like a girl. But… “I don’t think I’m a boy either.”
“Okay,” he said, his arms never loosening their grip around me.
“Is there another option for who I could be?”
“Well, since that’s who you are, there must be.” I loved the way he said that. So matter-of-factly. “I don’t know the word for it, though.”
“Me neither.” I had never heard of any one who wasn’t a boy or a girl, much less a word to describe them. A word that wasn’t hateful, that is.
“If we can’t find the right words, we’ll make them.”
For this entire conversation, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at him. I had just kept my face buried in his chest where it was safe. But right then, I lifted my face to look into his. And he looked back at me with so much love I almost couldn’t stand it. He kissed me slowly, deliberately. See? He seemed to say. I love you. No matter what. He pulled back just far enough to look at me. We were so close, I could see my reflection in his beautiful, love-filled eyes. Me. Not a girl, not a boy, just me. Just Ari.