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Akk still wishes he could stop time. Sometimes. Not always. These days he’s usually more than ready for whatever is coming next, charging forward right into all the changes ahead, the independent life he’s been building towards, away from Suppalo, away from the fear.
Well, mostly away from the fear. It’s like he had blinders on before, focused directly on his path, his goals, his future, but they’ve been removed now. Aye has helped remove them. And the world around them now is brighter and wilder than he ever allowed himself to see before, but it’s new and daunting too, even with Aye by his side.
Maybe especially with Aye, Aye who sees him more thoroughly than anyone has before, more than anyone wanted to before, certainly more than Akk was willing to see himself.
Akk is starting to realize Aye saw through him right from the start.
::
Akk would like to stop time tonight. Stop time, and maybe reverse it, throw himself into a time loop until he gets it right. He’s always been good at rules, and he could be good at this, at a second chance or a third to fix everything he’s done wrong, or at least everything he’s failed to understand.
It’s still his birthday, and Aye is still by his side, but it’s like they’ve lost two weeks with their fight that both was and wasn’t real, two weeks of vacation, two weeks of planning and dreaming, two weeks of learning how to be together. He doesn’t know how to get them back, isn’t sure how to step forward.
“Hey,” Aye says, tugs at his hand, looks up at him with almost unbearable tenderness, and then smiles wickedly. “I’m not sleeping with Thua tonight. I thought you’d like to know.”
::
Akk’s dreams have been changing.
He remembers them, for one, the details that make him blush but also yearn, not the grasping panic and shame that lingered after waking before. He rewrites stories in his sleep, films they’ve seen, books he’s read, the life he’s lived into the life he’s living, small dreams he had before into large dreams he can reach for now.
He reaches for Aye, a dream.
They walk back to the room, hands brushing, fingers tangling, dropping, brushing again. Small sparks, and a swoop in Akk’s belly like a bell or the ocean. He hasn’t freed himself from rules, and what was safe in the bar, what was safe on the street, what was safe those last days at Suppalo, these things are always shifting, but Aye is solid, a fixed star.
::
The room is soft, warm, a cocoon. They hold each other, kiss lazily, tease and declare, laugh and kiss again. No one had told Akk there could be so much laughter. He wouldn't have believed them anyway. He had to learn it for himself.
Aye sits back on his heels, looks down at Akk in that way that always makes Akk feel terrified and bold all at once. “‘Anything about me can wait’,” he says.
“What?”
Aye leans down, whispers in Akk’s ear, “Tonight you said, ‘Anything about me can wait’.” He sits back up, bites his lip, then: “Unacceptable. You’ve waited long enough.”
Akk wonders if it counts if he didn’t know he was waiting, didn’t know what he was waiting for, didn’t know that he could have it, didn’t know how to begin to ask.
“Yes,” Aye says. “To whatever you’re thinking.”
“I think I’d like you to take your shirt off,” Akk says, and he doesn’t know where that came from; he’s surprised himself as thoroughly as he’s surprised Aye, whose laughter bubbles up as he tugs his shirt up, only to swear lightly, face still covered, one arm out and one still in.
“It’s caught,” he says, fussing. “My earring.”
Akk feels soft and giddy at the same time. “Let me,” he says, scoots up, slightly unsettling Aye, frees the shirt from the earring, frees Aye from his shirt. “Hey there,” he says, voice lower than intended as Aye’s face reappears in front of him, his hair tousled and his cheeks flushed. “Can I kiss you?”
Aye looks at him carefully at first, then delighted. “You can have anything you want. I thought you’d never ask.”
“I’ve been working on a list,” Akk says with mock seriousness, and flips them so he’s straddling Aye, an uncontrollable smile blooming across his face as he sees surprise and heat and more in Aye’s eyes. He places his hand over Aye’s heart. “Where should we begin?”
::
Later, Aye is holding him, and he feels small and warm and safe in the dark, and before he can talk himself out of it, Akk says, “I’ve been thinking, and I need to try for myself.”
“Try what?” Aye’s voice is low, drowsy and his hand is warm over Akk’s heart, thumb brushing at his chest.
“I can’t depend on you for everything. I can’t be a burden.” He can feel Aye’s protest forming. “No. That’s not what I mean.” He turns over in the circle of Aye’s arms, wanting to be face to face for this, even in the dark. He can feel Aye’s eyes, even if he can’t see them. “I mean I need to do things myself. Learn what I’m capable of.”
“Okay,” Akk says in a way that means go on, and not like he did before, when okay meant you’re deflecting, when okay meant, I see right into the heart of you whether you like it or not.
Akk wants to sit up, wants to stand and pace, wants to leave this conversation altogether, but he’s started, they’re in it now, he cannot stop time, he can only move forward. “I need you to have faith in me.”
“Ohh,” Aye says like a sigh, like everything has snapped into place, and he pulls Akk in tight, skin to skin. “I always have.”
::
There are so many more conversations ahead of them, true and hard conversations about what they want from the future, what they want from each other, what they want for themselves, but when the morning light spills through the crack in the curtains, and as Aye snores softly next to him, Akk thinks for now he has more than he could have asked for, as the moment unfurls around them, perfectly golden stopped time.