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Austin is pretty sure that if he lies here really, really quietly he isn’t going to be told to go into one of the guest rooms or, God forbid, be sent out in the cold (warm, practically balmy) LA night to find a hotel. It’s like when you’re little and sitting in the living room late with your parents watching the TV, sitting so still your muscles start hurting, the logic being that if you aren’t noticed they might let you stay up past your bedtime.
Hasan is sat at his desk, his back to Austin lying on top of the duvet, so Austin can just see the big span of his shoulders and the almost invisible freckles down the line of his tanned neck and under the white t-shirt that honestly looks a bit too small. He pokes at the idea of messaging hascord about the fact he’s angling for cuddles from Hasan but then remembers they’re going to bait him out tomorrow and plus he needs to stop treating hascord like a diary or a friend, even if it would be funny to see Hasan’s face tomorrow when he gets a link to the message. Anyway, he isn’t angling for cuddles, or whatever, he just hates being alone and Hasan is a comfortable presence and he smells nice and Austin kind of likes how he sinks the mattress when he lies down next to Austin, like the sink-well of a blackhole.
He stops staring at the wide line of Hasan’s shoulders and turns back to Twitter, scrolling through news he wishes he gave more of a shit about and nonsense posts from people he used to know, somehow, from parties or whatever, but doesn’t really care about any more. It all feels a little pointless so he drops his phone on the bed and almost sighs loudly to indicate to Hasan that he wants entertaining and then remembers he’s being quiet and just stares at the dark shadow of him that the desk light is throwing up on the wall.
Hasan stands up, groaning and cracking his back. Austin shuts his eyes and wonders if he pretends to be asleep, now, Hasan will let him pretend. “Dude, are you ready for bed?” he says, Austin feels his knee bump into the end of the bed. “Austin.”
“Hmm,” he says, feigning more sleepiness than he actually feels.
There’s a snort and Austin cracks his eye open to see Hasan still looking at him, his big arms stretched up towards the ceiling. “Stop pretending to sleep.”
“I’m not pretending,” he says, trying not to sound too embarrassed, “I’m tired.”
“Go to bed then.”
“I am in bed.”
Hasan looks at him for a long moment like he’s weighing up the pros and cons of sleeping in the same bed as Austin before shrugging and saying, “Don’t sleep in your jeans, man, come on. I bought you these, they’re designer .”
He swallows, undoes the buttons on the jeans and lifts his hips to wriggle his way out of them. Hasan watches him, a weird look on his face that Austin would love to say he could read just fine, but he can’t.
“That’s better,” says Hasan which is a shade too close to ‘good boy’ for both of them; Hasan turns away, pulling down his own jeans and Austin busies himself with shimmying up to slip under the covers and keep his eyes averted from Hasan tugging the shirt over his head. Austin leaves his on, submitting to the inevitable morning Winnie the Pooh jokes because he’s genuinely not sure he can survive too much skin-on-skin contact with Hasan right now. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” says Hasan.
“What am I doing?” says Austin, blinking up at the ceiling while Hasan switches off the desk light and comes towards the bed, a big moonlit shadow.
“Trying to get more cuddles to brag to hascord about,” says Hasan. When he sits down, the whole bed dips and Austin feels him like a gravity pulling him towards the heavy warmth of him. He thinks desperately about things he should find more interesting than Hasan: what to do when the cabin of an aeroplane depressurises and twinks on economy flights and how to maintain a feeling of Stage Presence even when you’re just in a Starbucks — no, that’s being boycotted, says the Hasan in his head, and he gets dragged back into the magnetic pull.
He rolls onto his side and watches as Hasan lies down, punching his pillow and putting his glasses on the bedside table. Moonlight shafts through the blinds, lighting his side profile and the hair on his chest and Austin tries to find more imperfections like that, things he’s decided are not his type but don’t seem to apply when Hasan is involved.
Hasan’s face turns towards him, his cheekbone lit with the moon and the wet-shine of his eyes. “This what you wanted?” he says, unreadably neutral.
Austin says, “I wasn’t trying —” But he finds it harder to lie, even just for the bit, when he’s alone with Hasan in his bed.
“Sure,” says Hasan.
“I just didn’t want to go and find a hotel.”
“I wouldn’t make you go and get a hotel in the middle of the night.”
“Okay.”
“Just go to sleep, Austin.”
They don’t talk about the guest bedrooms or the big sofa or Austin going out to find a hotel or a hook-up, Austin just says, “Night.”
Hasan looks at him for a long moment — the wet blink of his eyes and the curved darkness of his eyelashes — and then rolls over, facing the window, leaving Austin’s side of the bed shadowed by the curve of his shoulder. Austin waits a moment before rolling forwards into the dip left by Hasan’s body and pressing his face between the warm, bare shoulder blades, and breathing, breathing, breathing until he falls asleep.
*
Austin wakes up with his hand over Hasan’s waist and his nose against a warm, freckled neck and the shell of Hasan’s ear glowing red with the sunlight through the blinds. He can tell Hasan is already awake, can hear him tapping away at his phone over the inscrutable wall of his shoulder, but he hasn’t moved away or shoved Austin off him so Austin leaves his hand where it is, curved over Hasan’s stomach, and breathes in the morning-sweat-man smell of him.
“Morning,” says Hasan, “I need to have a shower soon. You’ve been out for ages.”
He stares at the line of Hasan’s beard and a very dark freckle on the top bump of his spine. “You could’ve woken me up,” he croaks, stretching his shoulders back and snaking his hand deeper around Hasan’s waist so it’s tucked under the other side against the bed.
“You said you were tired.”
Austin grins and he’s sure Hasan can tell by the side-eye glare back over his shoulder. He’s wearing his glasses and impressive bed hair and people probably fantasise about this. “Thanks.”
“Whatever,” he grumbles, the rough skin of his heel nudging Austin’s foot. “Seriously, I need to get up soon, I need a shower.”
“You smell nice.” He lets his lips brush against the back of Hasan’s neck, just to see how far he’s allowed to go this morning before Hasan starts trying to reinvent the wheel restoring his heterosexuality. “You always do in the morning.” He always does in general, but he knows the intent of in the morning is going to make Hasan spiral a little bit, which might be mean if it wasn’t for the fact Hasan keeps trying to teach him to be gay and this is just a little role reversal on that. Austin thinks it’s justified anyway, no man is that intent on the ‘intricate rituals’ of dressing up their friends without being a little bit on the gay side.
“Austin,” Hasan says, almost warningly.
“I didn’t do anything.” He lets the hand which isn’t wrapped around Hasan’s waist brush against the small of his back.
Hasan doesn’t stiffen, only relaxes further into the bed.
“You like compliments.”
“You like them more,” says Hasan, “you vain, egotistical —”
He asks, “Is insulting me making you feel better about having me in your bed?”
“Just see if I ever let you back in it.”
He grins, pressing it into the back of Hasan’s neck. “What if I get tired again?”
Hasan sits up, Austin’s arm pooling in his lap. “Stop it,” he says, leaning on one elbow so he can look down at Austin with his eyes dark behind his glasses. “You’re so fucking annoying.”
He shrugs, feeling dizzy looking up at him with fluffy hair and glasses and freckles and no shirt and a weird little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “I know.”
“I know you know, you weaponise it,” says Hasan. “You’re evil.” He pushes Austin’s cheek away from the pillow until he’s lying on his back, his arms to himself, looking at the other wall with the sunlit pattern of the blinds and Hasan and Hasan’s hand on his cheek. His thumb runs along Austin’s jawline and then his weight is leaving the bed and Austin watches his shadow stretch. “Don’t tell anyone about us… cuddling.”
Austin snorts and turns his head back so he can meet Hasan’s serious gaze with his own. “I wasn’t going to. I don’t need all of hascord jerking off to it.”
“Gross, shut up,” says Hasan. “But, really —”
“I’m not going to air your sexuality crisis to the internet, Hasan,” says Austin, truthfully but with the lilt of a joke so Hasan can take it any which way he wants. “I’m not that much of a dick.”
Hasan stares at him, almost entirely naked and beautiful. “Alright. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Have fun.”
He rolls his eyes. “Want to come on the stream later or have you got a twink roster lined up for the day?”
“I’ll come on stream,” says Austin and watches as Hasan leaves the room, scoring up the entire night as a point to him on the eternal back-and-forth score tally sheet of their relationship. He runs one palm over the hot spot Hasan has left in the sunspot of the bed, yeah, point to him.