Work Text:
Akk idles in the parking lot of a compact strip mall, the kind that squished too many stores into one building, that always has a vacancy it can’t seem to fill. It was supposed to undergo a renovation a few summers ago—Akk doesn’t know what ever happened to that. But right now, it houses Ayan’s therapy group in a building that doubles as a yoga studio during the week.
They had breakfast together this morning, and then Akk dropped off Ayan, who let him borrow his car to get groceries. With the shopping bags neatly piled into the back seat, Akk sends a quick ‘i’m outside’ text to Ayan, then switches to mindlessly scrolling through Twitter.
He’s halfway through reading Wat’s thread about the latest trends in Thai romance films when movement outside catches his eye. The door of the yoga studio is open, and Akk sees Ayan walking out, accompanied by a few of his—friends? He’s not really sure. Ayan doesn’t, probably can’t, talk much about the other people in his group, but they seem to be having a friendly enough conversation now.
They stall by the door for a few moments, exchanging remarks and laughs, and Akk tries to be casual, tries not to stare at Ayan because the hour and a half they were apart is catching up to him. And even though he’s in Aye’s car, surrounded by his smell, his old fast food wrappers, his radio presets, he can’t wait to hold his hand again.
But he is staring when Ayan nods toward the car, and he sees the way his lips shape the word faen as he grins. Akk tenses for a split second, an impulse, then relaxes as he rolls his eyes. He tries not to smile, he really does, but euphoria takes hold of him every time he’s reminded that Ayan is his. And he is Ayan’s.
A minute later, Ayan is opening the passenger door to the car and sliding in. He immediately leans over the console to kiss Akk on the cheek, even before closing the door, and Akk’s annoyed huff is half-hearted.
“Hi, baby,” Ayan greets him.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Akk says, and he hopes—knows—that Ayan understands that it means ‘hi, I missed you.’ “How was group?”
“It was good.” Ayan smiles. He pauses, not letting out his breath entirely, lips parted, like he’s going to say something else. But a few moments of silence pass by, and Akk almost interrupts to ask Ayan what’s wrong. Finally, like he’s practiced the words enough in his head, Ayan says, “You should come. Sometime. It could… I think it could be good for you.”
Akk looks out the window, the now empty yoga studio in the corner of his eye. This isn’t the first time Ayan has brought this up. If Akk asks how it went, like he did today, Ayan says that this kind of thing is good for everyone. If he asks what Ayan talks about, he says that Akk should come sometime and listen for himself. And sometimes Ayan mentions the therapist he sees every few weeks, and he lets the suggestion linger in the air.
But it’s the first time he’s been so direct, and Akk doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s been trying to deal with things on his own; he doesn’t want to burden his parents with bills, or invade the space Aye has made for himself here. And honestly, he’s not interested in detailing the terrible things he’s been through—the terrible things that he’s done—so that strangers can dissect him like some sort of specimen in science class.
Besides, things have been getting better, with the changes at the school, because of his friends and his parents and Ayan. He just needs to remind himself of that, on his bad days.
Akk turns back to Ayan, and musters up a smile. He hums, “Should we get something to eat on the way home?”
☾
It’s not the last time Ayan brings it up, though.
He lets it drop for another week, after Akk’s non-reaction. But he says “wanna come?” when he’s getting ready to go the following week, and Akk startles at the sincerity of it, at the lack of teasing glimmer in his eye that he’s so accustomed to.
Breath catches in Akk’s throat, and he has to force it out to speak. “Not today, okay?”
Ayan seems a little disappointed, his shoulders deflating, and it hits Akk with a pang of guilt in his chest. But he smiles, and kisses him, and says, “Okay.”
A few days later, Akk is tossing in his bed. It’s late into the night, the moon drifting away from the middle of the sky. There are nights when he can’t sleep. When it happens, he tries to force himself to fall asleep, and when that gets too frustrating, he pulls out his laptop and watches Netflix until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore. Usually, by that point, he manages to get an hour of sleep before he has to wake up for school. When Ayan saw him, droopy eyelids and slouched shoulders, he told Akk he should call him whenever he can’t sleep.
Akk puts off calling Aye for as long as he can. It’s not right, he tells himself, to trouble Ayan when he’s the one who gets the nightmares. Akk has held him through them, knows how pervasive they are—yet probably can’t even fathom a fraction of how painful they are to experience.
But he’s exhausted, and too warm, and achy, and he wants to hear Ayan’s voice.
“Hey,” Aye sounds tired, his tone thick with fatigue when he answers the phone, and Akk frowns.
“Did I wake you up?”
“No. It’s okay,” he says, but Akk senses the lie.
“Nevermind,” he whispers, “go back to sleep, Aye.”
“No. Don’t hang up, I’ll just call you back.”
“Aye—”
“Akk, baby, what’s wrong?” Ayan interrupts, and Akk’s resolve crumbles at the tenderness of the question. He can hear him shift in his bed, like he’s preparing for a full conversation.
Akk sighs. He shouldn’t have called. All he wants is to hold Ayan until they fall asleep.
“Can’t sleep,” he relents, because he knows Ayan won’t let him backtrack now. It’s a bit of a relief, too, a layer of the ache lifted from his body when he says it.
“Okay. Put me on speaker,” Aye says, and Akk hums an affirmation before he continues, “lay down and close your eyes. We can talk until you fall asleep.”
Akk does, placing the phone on the pillow that Ayan uses when he sleeps over. He closes his eyes, too, but it’s more difficult than it should be; where his eyelids should feel heavy, he struggles to keep them closed. And his heartbeat is awake, betraying the slow breaths he takes to try to calm it down.
“Is something wrong?” Aye asks.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs, shaking his head even though Ayan can’t see him. His hand lays by the phone, fingers fidgeting with the hem of the pillowcase. “It’s nothing specific. My mind just won’t—stop, I guess. I don’t know,” he repeats, “that doesn’t make sense.”
“It does,” Aye replies. “I get it.”
“I’m not even thinking about the… the bad things, you know?” Akk continues, opening his eyes before he can stop himself.
“Yeah.” Aye pauses, then, “Hey, close your eyes.”
It’s only then that Akk realizes he’s watching the phone. It was instinctual, because it’s the closest thing he has, right now, to watching Ayan lay next to him. And he never wants to take his eyes off of Ayan.
He forces his eyes closed again, a small smile on his lips. “How’d you know?”
“You’re a loud thinker.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I can think with my eyes closed—that’s the problem.”
“Fine. I really did install that CCTV in your room.”
“Aye!”
“Shh,” Aye hushes him, but Akk can hear the laugh he’s stifling.
There are a few moments of silence, and Akk takes in the white noise of the air conditioning combined with Ayan’s soft breathing. He tries to focus on it, but his mind begins to stray to the conversation he had with Kan at lunch about a homework assignment, how he needs to ask a follow-up question and—
“Akk,” Ayan’s voice is soft, almost hesitant.
“Mm?”
“I’ve been sleeping better since I started therapy,” he says. “It helps. Could you just… think about seeing someone? For me?”
Akk is silent. He expected Ayan to mention it again, but it still terrifies him. He’s happy that Ayan is doing better now, but just because it worked for him, doesn’t mean…
If he tries, and it goes horribly, won’t that just make it worse? Akk has been putting himself back together, piece by piece, but he’s still fragile. It would be so easy for someone to pull the tape away and let him crumble. He trusts Ayan and his friends not to, but that trust came from the culmination of time and love and kindness even when he didn’t deserve it. Letting somebody new in, granting them access to his deepest fears and doubts is too much.
But he doesn’t want to disappoint Ayan, so he says, “I’ll think about it.”
He doesn’t mean for it to be a lie. Even though he’s still skeptical of joining Aye at group or finding his own therapist, he had intended to look into it. For Ayan. The thing is, life gets in the way too easily. His assignment with Kan is consuming most of his free time at school, excluding the half-hour he’s blocked off to have lunch with Aye, which he’s not willing to give up. At home, he’s juggling spending time with his friends and his family, and alone time with Aye—and that’s aside from the never-ending laundry and cooking and cleaning.
There’s simply not enough time in the day, and keeping busy has been helping anyway. This is working for him, so he lets the time pass by and hopes that Aye sees that he’s getting better.
☾
He is getting better. He just has bad days, sometimes.
It’s Thursday. He doesn’t get out of bed. The shower doesn’t steam up the bathroom just before eight, his toothbrush and toothpaste stay tucked in the drawer. Akk wakes up only enough to text Ayan that he isn’t feeling well enough to go to school, and then he shuts his phone off and falls back asleep.
Akk spends the day dozing in and out of consciousness. Neither is preferable. Awake, he fights away tears as he thinks about letting that truck nearly drive into the protesters on Ayan’s first day, what would've happened if he hadn’t pulled them away in time. Chadok had said it would scare them enough to stop them, but what he hadn’t said was that it could kill them. That day was one of the first times Akk had questioned himself, and yet he kept going. He was then aware of the lengths that Chadok and Suppalo would go to in order to keep them in line, but he kept his head down and said nothing.
If not for Ayan, Akk thinks he would still be doing those terrible things.
Asleep, he’s plagued by nightmares. They’re discombobulated—a patchwork of Chadok’s cold stares following him through dark corridors, of getting kicked out of his house for being gay, of being separated from Ayan in a cold, dark ocean as he struggles to keep his head above the surface. Every time he falls asleep, he wakes in a cold sweat, his heart racing.
He only gets up once, when the light coming in from his window shines too bright, perforating the cave he’s constructed for himself on his bed. While he’s up, he goes to the bathroom and then forces down a granola bar to satiate his stomach, and then he tumbles back onto his mattress and pulls his blanket over his head. It takes at least an hour and several tears to let sleep take him again.
Akk wakes up to the sound of his phone ringing. He blinks himself awake and reaches blindly for his phone, muscle memory allowing him to press the green answer button as he brings it to his ear.
“Hello?” He mumbles into the phone.
“Akk,” comes Aye’s voice, and there’s something different about it, Akk can tell even in his sleep-addled mind. It’s shaky, just slightly, and tinged with relief.
Akk furrows his brow, “Is something wrong? What happened?”
“No, nothing,” Aye tries, but Akk isn’t assured. He takes a breath before continuing, “I just—you hadn’t answered my texts, or my first call…”
“Oh,” Akk frowns, checking his phone to see the unchecked notifications. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep.”
“It’s… yeah, it’s okay, baby. I’m glad you slept,” Ayan’s voice is breathy, and Akk can tell he’s holding something back. Did something happen, when he wasn’t in school today? He should’ve gone, should’ve been there to make sure—
He hears a quiet sniff from Aye’s end.
“Aye?”
A pause, then, “Can I come over? Have you eaten?”
“No, I haven’t,” he says. “Dumplings?”
“I’ll be over soon. Have you showered? You should take a shower.”
“Mm,” Akk hums in response, peeling his blanket off but making no move to stand up. Ayan’s right, a shower would help, it always does, but it sounds exhausting.
He’s still contemplating getting out of bed when Ayan knocks on his door. It’s a formality, more than anything, so that Akk has the opportunity to call for Ayan to wait before he comes in. But most of the time, like today, he knocks and then opens the door himself, striding in like it’s his own dorm room. It’s the first thing that makes Akk smile all day.
Akk listens to the soft noises of Ayan padding around the kitchenette, the quiet thump of a cupboard closing, the rustle of the takeout bag. The steam from the food drifts toward him, and his stomach growls violently in response. He hadn’t meant to go this long without eating. It’s just easy to forget, when he’s not at school, when there’s not an allotted time to eat. But now, his stomach cramps with uncomfortable hunger.
Relief hits him when Ayan walks over, balancing two bowls in his hands. Aye takes his spot on the bed, and they eat too quickly, but the ache is satisfying. And they talk—about what Akk missed in school, about the new restaurant that opened down the street, about their plans for the weekend.
It’s nice, and Akk doesn’t think about the exhaustion or the bad dreams or the tears for a while. Ayan always seems to know what he needs, another reason he’s so damn perfect. His voice is a meditation, soothing him and coaxing his worries away. And then he makes Akk smile, forces a laugh out of him at one point. Their rhythm is so natural, so easy to navigate that Akk wants to live in it forever.
The time passes by quickly, seeing empty bowls abandoned on the bedside table and soft kisses pressed to foreheads. Ayan won’t kiss him properly until Akk brushes his teeth, which is completely fair, but he does pout for good measure.
When their conversation lulls into comfortable silence, Akk slips his hand into Ayan’s and whispers, “Thank you.”
Ayan looks at him, and gently arranges Akk’s hair away from his eyes. He smiles, but worries at his lip. “Did something happen? That made you not come to school?”
“No. I don’t know,” Akk sighs. “I just… couldn’t.”
“Okay,” Aye nods, and squeezes Akk’s hand once. He shifts to sit cross-legged, facing him and taking Akk’s other hand, so he’s holding both. Akk watches, fighting against the instinct to flinch away, because he knows Aye, and he knows that he looks like this when he wants to talk about something serious.
“We should talk about…” he starts slowly, easing into it like he knows Akk is afraid. He probably does know. “Have you looked into a therapist?”
Akk sighs, turning his head away. “Ayan.”
“Akk, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but we—” he pauses, reaching up to take Akk’s face delicately in his hands and guiding him to look at Ayan. “You’re not happy like this, are you? Don’t you want to try—”
“I’ve been feeling better, Ayan,” Akk insists. “You know that. I told you. And even today, now that we’ve… I’m feeling better. I’ll go to school tomorrow.”
Ayan lets him speak, but his brows are furrowed, and he presses his lips together in a thin line. “Akk, baby, that’s not how this works.”
“You’re not me,” he snaps before he can stop himself. Akk groans, squeezing his eyes shut pressing the heels of his palms into his eyelids. “I’m… that wasn’t… I should go shower. I haven’t showered.”
He gets up from the bed without looking at Aye, but he can feel Aye watching him. It hurts, because he’s never wanted Ayan to look away before. In his haste to hide, he closes the bathroom door too hard. It’s loud. He wants to turn around, to open it and apologize, but it means being seen again. And he can’t.
He cries in the shower. Just for a few minutes—there aren’t many tears left in him. Afterwards, he lets the water wash away the tear streaks on his face.
When he returns to his room, Ayan isn’t on his bed anymore. He finds him at the kitchen sink, washing their dinner bowls. Akk watches, for a moment, taking in the peace. Then, he says, “You didn’t have to.”
“Yeah,” Ayan says, punctuated with a hoarse sigh.
Akk nods silently, even though Ayan isn’t looking at him. He chews at the inside of his lip, working the words out in his head. “Aye, can we just… let this one go? I had a bad day, and I’m working—”
“No,” Aye’s interruption is staccato, a surprise to Akk. He’s the most patient person Akk has ever met, always lets someone finish, even when they’re spouting bullshit. Akk steps back as Ayan dries his hands and turns to face him. There’s a wrinkle between his eyes that Akk wants to smooth out for him.
“This isn’t,” Ayan finally says, “something I’m willing to let go anymore, Akk. I need you to see someone. You need you to see someone.”
Well.
Akk huffs, running his hand through his damp hair. “It’s not that serious.”
“You barely ate today!” Ayan gestures to the takeout bag.
“That’s not because—I just forgot,” Akk defends, glaring at the bag. He crosses his arms, storming out of the kitchen so he doesn’t have to look at the reminder of his failure. Ayan doesn’t get it, he’s doing fine. It’s not like he thinks about what he did at Suppalo all day. He doesn’t stay in bed, doesn’t forget to eat or shower because of what happened. It just… slips his mind. He’s always been like this.
“Akk,” Ayan follows after him, and Akk desperately wishes he wouldn’t. But he feels Aye a few steps away from him. “Forgetting to eat is a symptom.”
“One I am strong enough to handle,” Akk shoots back, turning to face Ayan. If Ayan can just see, see that he did handle it. He ate, and showered, and he’s feeling better. “I’m strong enough to handle all of this!”
“Do you think I’m weak, then?” Ayan asks, and Akk can tell it isn’t meant to be an attack, but the insinuation still stings.
Akk sighs helplessly, “Of course not, Aye—that’s not what I meant.”
Ayan steps forward, reaching out for Akk’s hand. His eyes soften, “If you don’t think I’m weak, then how can you think that you are?”
“It’s different! We’re different.” Akk flinches away. “You—you lost your uncle, you were treated like shit at Suppalo for months. You told me yourself that you wanted to… that you were thinking about… I am so thankful that you are getting help, Ayan, but that doesn’t mean that I need it, too.”
“You’re so,” Ayan shakes his head, laughing bitterly.
“So what?”
“So stubborn.”
“Me? You keep—keep pestering me with this whenever you decide I’m not acting like you want me to.”
Ayan whips his head to look at Akk, calm rage flickering on his face. His gaze hurts. “We both know that’s not true. You call me at least once a week because you can’t sleep! Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?”
“Fine,” Akk throws his arms up in frustration, “I’ll stop calling you! I didn’t even want to in the first place. You were the one who insisted, remember?”
“That’s not what I’m saying! I still want to be here for you. I will be here for you,” Ayan raises his voice, louder, rasher than Akk has ever heard him, even when his notebook was taken. “But this isn’t negotiable. I can’t be afraid that I’ve lost you every time you don’t answer the damn phone!”
“Don’t be so melodramatic!” Akk shouts, flinching at the sound of his own voice, his own movement as he slams his hands down on his dresser harder than he meant to.
He’s met with silence.
He waits for Ayan to yell, to hit back with something harder. It would be so much better than this, than sitting in the aftermath of what he just said. The words echo in his mind, pounding at his skull like a drum that he wants to smash into pieces. He never should’ve said it, even on impulse, not when Aye witnessed…
Akk wants to throw up.
“I think,” Aye starts slowly, and Akk snaps his head up. Ayan is looking away, toward the door.
“Ayan, I’m—”
“I think,” Aye says again, his voice watery. Akk stares, vulnerable, willing Ayan to look at him. He doesn’t. “I should go. It’s, um, getting—”
His voice breaks before he can finish. He blinks away his tears, wipes the stray ones away with the back of his thumb. Akk thinks, he should be wiping away Ayan’s tears.
“Aye…” Akk says, a quiet plea.
“Late,” Is all Ayan says, finally finishing his sentence. Akk watches, frozen, helpless, as Ayan walks away. He stops in the kitchen, pocketing his car keys from the counter and slipping his shoes on, and then he’s gone. Akk lets out the sob he didn’t know he was holding in when he hears the soft click of the door.
He wants to run after him, but he takes one step forward and shakily collapses to his knees, another sob building in his chest. Akk hadn’t meant it, any of it. He was just scared, terrified, but the fear of seeing Ayan leave like that was so much worse.
Akk manages to get himself to bed a half hour later. He goes from the floor, dazed and head pounding, to the same on his mattress. He should call someone—his parents, or Wat, or Ayan. But he can’t remember where he put his phone, and how is he supposed to explain what he said? It’s what Ayan doesn’t understand—Akk doesn’t deserve to have someone fix all of his problems. Not after all he’s done, and all the hurt he’s caused.
He drifts off to sleep as he tries to craft his apology to Ayan in his head.
☾
He doesn’t go to school the next day. But he showers, and he eats three meals. For Ayan. Akk knows it should be for himself, but it’s not.
The day after that, he forces himself to go. He isn’t so pressured for perfect attendance anymore, after stepping down as a prefect, but he’s still on scholarship, and can’t afford to miss too many classes.
His hoodie, the one Ayan gave to him, is draped over his backpack on its hook. He carefully takes it in his hands, bundling it up and pressing it against his nose. He breathes it in, eyes fluttering shut, and for a moment, everything is okay. It’s too warm to wear, but he tucks it into his bag before leaving.
There was never a question of whether he would see Ayan—they sit next to each other in most of their classes—but Akk is still apprehensive when he enters the classroom and Ayan is at their table. He’s looking out the window, and Akk stops himself from going forward, taking in the sight. He loves Ayan’s soft lines, and the morning light makes him glow, gentle and inviting.
He almost forgets that they… are they fighting? Akk doesn’t want them to be. He knew, hypothetically, that their first real argument would come, but the reality of it is nauseating.
Akk comes back to himself when he realizes Ayan is looking at him, so he swallows down his discomfort and takes his seat next to him.
“Hi,” Aye greets, offering a half-smile. It’s forced, Akk can tell, but it’s so much better than nothing.
Akk is caught off guard, but he quickly returns the smile. “Um, hi.”
The day goes on like that for their first three classes together. They sit together, exchanging a few words here and there. Akk lends Ayan an extra pencil when his breaks. Aye joins in on conversations with Wat and Kan and Thua. But he smiles where he would normally laugh at their jokes. None of their friends seem to notice the tension—or if they do, they don’t say anything, which Akk is thankful for.
But at lunch, he finds himself unsure of what to do. Normally, he finds Ayan and they decide between eating with the rest of their friends and eating at the bleachers, but he isn’t sure they’re back to that yet. So he buys a meal in the canteen and finds Wat sitting by himself at their usual table.
“Thought I might see you today,” Wat says.
Akk looks at the other empty seats. “He isn’t…?”
Wat offers him a sympathetic smile. “No, sorry.”
“It’s… okay.” He says slowly, as he sits across from Wat. He opens his lunch, but doesn’t eat.
Wat opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but he hesitates, and Akk watches him figure out the words before he finally says, “Are you two…? You guys seem different, and you’ve been gone. And now he’s not here. Did something happen?”
Akk looks at his best friend. He hasn’t talked to anyone about what happened, but he trusts Wat with everything. He’s proven that he always has Akk’s back, even when he’s in the wrong, even when it’s dangerous.
He surveys the area. The tables closest to them are empty, and the occupants of the further ones seem engrossed in their own conversations.
So, Akk sighs, and says, “We fought. Well, more like, I fucked up. Really bad.”
“Okay,” Wat says, carefully. “I know it’s, like, probably personal, but. If you want to talk about it…?”
“It’s just,” Akk breathes out, looking around again to make sure their conversation is still private (and maybe in hopes of spotting Ayan walking toward them, like none of this ever happened), “Ayan has been talking to me about going to therapy. He wants… thinks I need it, I guess. And it sort of, you know, blew up, and I said something I shouldn’t have because it scares me more than… than anything, telling someone, or a group, what I did, but—”
“What this school did to you,” Wat interrupts.
Akk stops, eyes wide and confused. “What?”
“Akk, this school did terrible things to us. You’re barely eighteen, and you definitely weren’t when the curse stuff happened. You couldn’t have stopped any of that by yourself.”
“I—” Akk tries, but he has to cough out the lump that’s stuck itself in his throat.
Wat seems to sense his struggle to speak, so he leans forward on his elbows and says, “I know it’s daunting, but if you need a therapist suggestion, mine still takes newbies. Plus, he knows all about Suppalo from me. I don’t know if it would be, like, a conflict of interest, but…”
“Wait,” Akk says, dumbly.
Wat raises his eyebrows.
“You…?”
“Yeah,” Wat says, and laughs like it’s obvious. “Pretty sure Kan does, too, man. We’ve all been through a lot.”
“Oh,” Akk says, but it’s not much more than an exhale. He looks down, rubbing the back of his neck.
“And Akk?” He says, and Akk looks back up at him. “Aye isn’t clueless. Whatever you said to him… he knows that you’re just scared. But, like, he probably is, too.”
“Yeah,” he whispers, “fuck.”
☾
After assuring Wat that he won’t need a ride back home, he hikes up the pathway to Ayan’s house. He’d been rehearsing it in his head the entire car ride here, but it’s difficult when he has no idea what Ayan is going to say. He’s always the voice of reason, but that’s something that Akk doesn’t have much of right now, so it’s hard to predict.
He knocks on the door. His first surprise is when Ayan’s mother opens the door.
“Akk, it’s wonderful to see you.” She smiles as she opens the door wider, stepping back to let him in. He wais as he enters, trying to fight off the tension in his shoulders. He knows Ayan and his mother have a good relationship, but he has no idea how much she knows about their fight. He didn’t even know she was going to be in town, or in the country.
“You too, ma’am.” He nods politely.
“Mae,” she corrects.
“Mae, right.” He smiles awkwardly. “How long are you home for?”
“A couple weeks. I flew in last night to surprise Aye.”
Right. That explains why he hadn’t heard about her arrival. They exchange a few more words—mostly just her asking if Akk wants anything to eat or drink, and then asking if he’s sure when he declines.
And then Akk asks, “Is he upstairs?”
She hums an affirmation, gesturing toward the staircase. Just as he’s begun to climb up, she stops him.
“Akk. Forgive me, if I’m intruding, but he’s my son, and…” she says, and Akk swallows nervously. “Are you two okay?”
He feels, in spite of everything, calmness wash over him as he looks at her. “We will be, Mae.”
She smiles, soft and genuine, and Akk smiles, too. Then, he looks ahead and climbs up the staircase, taking the familiar path to Ayan’s room.
He finds Ayan in his ensuite bathroom, combing through wet hair. He can feel the remnants of shower steam in the air. Akk approaches him carefully, leaning against the door frame to maintain a distance. Not that he wants one, at all, but. They catch each other’s eye in the mirror. He doesn’t know who looks first, but when they look, neither of them can look away. Aye keeps brushing through his hair, and Akk rests his head against the wall, but neither of them look away.
“What if,” Akk starts, when he can’t bear not speaking to Ayan anymore. They spoke in school today, yes, but they didn’t really speak, “it doesn’t work, for me? What happens when I’m too… too far gone?”
And he’s prepared for a lot of things. He’s prepared for Ayan to cry, because he always does, or to yell at him, because he so desperately deserves it. But he’s not prepared for Ayan to turn to him and violently pull their bodies together in a hug. Ayan nearly crushes him as he wraps his arms around his torso, and Akk shudders because he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ayan buries his face in Akk’s neck, and Akk feels the wetness of his eyelashes, his tears, and he can’t help but smile a little. Then, he feels, more than hears, Ayan mumble, “I’m sorry,” into his skin.
Akk furrows his brow, gently taking Aye’s face in his hands and guiding his head back so they’re looking at each other. Ayan keeps his hands wrapped around Akk, which he’s quietly thankful for.
“Why are you apologizing? You shouldn’t—” Akk huffs, shaking his head. “Stop stealing my apology, asshole.”
He’s content to earn a laugh from Ayan, who sniffs and shrugs. Akk’s smile fades into something more serious as he wipes Ayan’s tears with the pads of his thumbs. “I’m so sorry, Aye. For everything—for not listening to you, and being stubborn, and saying—”
His voice breaks, and Akk realizes he’s crying. Aye says, “It’s okay,”
Akk shakes his head, wiping away his own tears before holding Ayan again. “No, no. I never should’ve said that to you. It was horrible. And you were—you were right, too. It’s not… I don’t think about it tangibly, like with a plan, but I do think, sometimes, that it’s all too hard. That being is too hard. I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
Ayan envelops him in another hug, catching Akk’s sobs into his shoulder, as he cradles his head and strokes his hair. “You’re okay, baby. Shh, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. Hey, come here, it’s okay.”
They part slightly, giving enough room for Ayan to lead Akk to sit on his bed. He reaches for the tissues sitting on his nightstand, then climbs half on Akk’s lap to wipe his tears away.
“I was,” Akk hiccups, “practicing, the whole way here. I wasn’t going to cry. There was supposed to be no crying.”
Ayan laughs. “Have you met either of us?”
“I know. I had too much faith,” Akk smiles, letting Aye finish dabbing his cheekbones with the tissue.
Ayan snorts.
“I’m scared, Aye,” Akk whispers, his voice gravelly from crying. “If I’m too broken, if this is just how it is, for me, will that be enough for you?”
“Oh, Akk. Baby,” Aye says, and then they’re hugging again, and Akk is doing his best not to cry again because Ayan just cleaned him up. “I don’t think you’re broken, okay? That’s not why I’ve been encouraging you to go. You’ve been hurt far too much, and you deserve to heal from it. If you were broken, you wouldn’t be fighting so hard to live. But it’s too exhausting to do it on your own, trust me, Akk. You deserve to rest. Let the people around you help.”
He doesn’t know how much longer they cry in each other’s arms, exchanging apologies and kisses and then jokes that have them laughing so hard that they’re crying again. His head is pounding, again, by the time he has no tears left, but this time it feels painfully beautiful.
Eventually, when they’re both lying on their backs on the bed, Akk asks, “Can I come to group with you next weekend?”
Ayan shifts to his side to look at Akk and take his hand. “We would love to have you. But you should find someone else, too. Like, someone you can talk to alone. So you can complain about me to your heart’s content.”
Akk laughs. “Why, do you complain about me at therapy?”
Aye just grins at him, shrugging cheekily.
“Aye!”
“What?” He raises his eyebrows, playing clueless.
“Ayan,” Akk says again, rolling over completely to hover over Aye, his arms on either side of him.
“Sorry, baby, I think there are, like, privacy laws that keep me from saying,” Aye says, which has Akk laughing so hard, he drops his head to Aye’s chest, and he can feel him laughing, too.
“Those don’t apply to you telling me what you say about me,” Akk points out, grinning down at Ayan.
Ayan just takes Akk’s face in his hands, and guides him closer until their lips are pressed softly together. When they part, he says, “You’ll just have to ask my friends at group next weekend.”