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Ryan and Naim were exhausted.
That was a fact.
More exhausted than either of them had probably ever been in the short span of their lives— which was the biggest fuck of this all.
God, if out there He existed, was not so kind as to grant either of them the gift of sleeping easy.
If you squinted, it’d be easy to slip that into the larger narrative of this being part of His divine intervention and punishment for the alleged greatest sin one could commit in Bandi.
Ryan felt Naim shift beside him and their shoulders rubbed, emitting a small muffled sound between them.
Naim had once believed the sound of tires on pavement was the world’s best lullaby. It was better than sitting there in the thickness of pregnant silence beside his mother, and her perpetually furrowed brows, lips pursed with the constant urge to utter anything into the air. Both cursed by the inability to voice anything substantial enough to span the jagged rift carved between them since…
The glass was cold against his temple, and cold air ruffled his hair, a sharp contrast but welcome distraction from the ringing in his ears.
He’d made the mistake of stirring after his first initial nap, and tried adjusting. When he’d tried drifting back off, the instant his thoughts quieted and the music faded from his awareness, he jerked awake, the trilling sound of Ryan’s screams reverberating around his skull like a pinball.
Not-Ryan’s screams had scared him, more than anything. He could still hear him saying ‘this is what it wanted,’ over and over, and its shrieks bursting out from within the smoldering mill.
It felt so real.
Mostly, it’d felt so real because it was underscored by real-Ryan’s screams, horrified and earnest as they erupted from the bathroom. Alone.
He swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, fingers rubbing back and forth across the metal scales of Ryan’s ring.
Ryan didn’t really associate drives and good sleep. He found them intrinsically tied to his parents. One drive in particular for now, the most fresh and readily available.
Well, two, actually, but between being driven to his exorcism by his parents versus driving Naim home after getting jumped, he knew which one he’d pick.
His resentment towards Naim was practically nonexistent in the face of the resentment he had in abundance for his parents. But maybe it wasn’t really resentment in either case. Despair was a better fit. Hopelessness.
He turned his head towards the empty row across from them.
Drives with his parents were always quiet and clipped, or he wasn’t involved. He didn’t know which he preferred. On the one hand, when his father was making offhanded, pointed comments about him, at least he could say his existence was being acknowledged. Otherwise, the seconds dragged, and he’d meet his mother’s eyes every now and then in the rear view when he’d go to check the time.
He never knew what he’d find there. Disdain. Disappointment. Fear. Detachment.
A mother’s love. He wondered what that meant to her.
But no, drives never felt safe or soothing, not somewhere he could sleep without the anxiety that should he relax he’d wake to an even worse reality.
He felt safe with Naim, though.
God, he felt amazing.
Comforted so wholeheartedly his chest ached with the effort to expand enough so that he might inhale Naim’s presence and invite him into his bloodstream like oxygen.
And even then, when Naim had jumped he’d sat up abruptly, gripping Naim’s shoulder and turning to make sure he was still safe beside him.
He’d waited and watched as the focus returned to his glossed-over eyes, breaths shallow and quick.
They’d sat together like that for a while, until Naim had leaned towards the window and closed his eyes again, and only then did Ryan loosen his death grip on his jacket.
Sleep eluded him after that, looming over him like a threat rather than the break he sorely needed after the night he’d had.
Every time he shut his eyes and dared to doze off he could hear the crack of his skull against a tree trunk as not-Naim slammed him over and over again against the bark, and he was struck by the dullness in his eyes as he did it. Struck by how unlike him it really was, just close enough to love.
Not-Naim’s nails digging into his flesh, skin drawn up under the keratin, slow, yawning lines of thick warmth stretching down his back.
He’d blink awake again, entire body tight with pain that would get worse before it got better, and more stiff with the fear of disturbing real-Naim beside him.
They didn’t speak, even though they both knew they were sitting awake against one another.
That was the oddness of it that neither could grasp.
There was no terseness, no tangible hostility. They were both genuinely fucking gleeful and immeasurably relieved to be in the other’s presence. Which made everything about ten times as confusing.
Anger and hate were easy. Easy to understand, to feel, to express.
Love was harder. Monumentally so.
Ryan turned his head towards Naim studying the sliver of his profile visible from his vantage point. Mostly his nose, which was a nice part of him. Every part of him made for a great view.
His hair was faintly mussed from rubbing up against the back of the seat. Ryan reached up and ran his fingers through it, ignoring the dirt he’d failed to reach after scrubbing his hands raw, lingering mockingly underneath his nails.
He didn’t think he’d ever feel clean again, but if he could stay here? This was as close as he ever needed to be. And he’d take it forever.
It clicked for him then, as Naim turned a little to better settle his head in Ryan’s palm, that he’d been ready to do it.
Leave Bandi. Leave Naim. Leave this.
Leave Naim.
He thought of how small he looked at church beside his mother, swallowed up by clothes and feelings too big for his body. He thought of how he sat alone at school, how he never spoke much or lingered anywhere for too long, constantly yearning to be anywhere but where he was. A feeling so jarringly familiar it made him forget the put-together persona he’d been so thorough in presenting.
Guilt curled like peeling paint in the pit of his empty stomach, and his eyebrows pinched a millimeter together, fingers sliding to rest against the back of Naim’s neck.
Naim turned to find Ryan already staring back at him. The same way he so often did. Beautiful, traitorous, adoring eyes.
Naim’s lips downturned into a near imperceptible frown as his eyes traced the gentle slopes of Ryan’s face.
Not-Ryan and Ryan overlapped in the split second he spent blinking and he felt a twist somewhere in his insides.
He was pretty sure he hadn’t stopped feeling like shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe at all in the past 48 hours.
Part of him— the part that wanted desperately to believe he’d never see Ryan again and smother his last dying embers of hope— had apologized to not-Ryan because he wanted to know that he could. That he could see his face and mean it and want nothing more than to hear him say it was okay. And that he wasn’t angry. And that he didn’t mean it when he said it’d never be him.
That part of him had accepted the reality of never seeing Ryan again and that there was nothing in that stupid town worth staying for if the one person he believed would always love him had knowingly thrust him forward like a lamb for slaughter.
And so their reunion had been as cathartic as it was damning.
In essence, it was now up to them to regurgitate the tangled knot of emotions and words unsaid they’d rather inelegantly choked down in the name of their collective greater good.
So much for that plan.
“I’m sorry.” Naim’s voice was soft enough to pass as a whisper, loud enough for Ryan to hear over Daniel Caesar. Ryan who promptly and quite dumbly blinked and sat up in his seat, figuring he probably shouldn’t be slouched for this. Whatever this was about to be.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Why’d you say that?”
Naim felt even sicker than before. Record-breaking levels of stomachaching were being reached. Ryan didn’t even need to hear what he was apologizing for before forgiving him. Selfishly, he hoped he’d always feel so gracious.
He had a kind heart. Naim believed that.
“For..”
His voice wavered, throat closing up around the rest of his sentence. He swallowed, skin warming and prickling beneath Ryan’s hand. His gaze flitted down to his lap, thumb and index finger already spinning his ring in circles.
He looked up at Ryan’s face again, more pinched than before, concern bleeding more freely into the lines there.
He deserved the truth, and every good thing that’d ever come to him. Naim believed that, too.
“I’m sorry I told Hunter’s parents about you.”
His throat contracted again, reluctant, eyes hot and wet. “I went to your house, after school, and I saw you. And him.” His fingers curled harshly into each other, and he absently registered Ryan’s hand dropping to pull them apart. “I thought.. when you told me at the mill.. I was..”
Your first. Your only.
“..And I was scared.. of how you made me feel. How you make me feel.” Snot coated his nostrils and he rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry.. I didn’t think that.. I didn’t know..”
A tear escaped the corner of his eye and Ryan’s hand was there to wipe it, to hold the side of his face and stay there while he pressed his probably-definitely gross nose into it.
Truth be told, Ryan hadn’t been angry. Anger was just the more readily available and familiar emotion, and it gave him away to detach and not risk any further vulnerability when it already felt like he’d been skinned and hung on a clothesline.
He hadn’t been angry because he’d been expecting it. Always the other shoe, always the catch— because Naim was impossibly good and lovely and earnest that it was only a matter of time before something fucked it up, right?
He’d wanted so badly to believe that Naim wouldn’t have done that to him, but then, wouldn’t he have done that to himself? He didn’t blame him for what happened to them, not rationally. Emotions were hardly rational, though, and it stung longer than he cared to admit.
Sitting in the car with Naim that night, engine idling, eyes fixed on a point of pavement several feet away, he knew if he didn't go then, he’d never find the strength to leave. If he turned and saw even a split second glimpse of Naim’s face, the desperate expression he was sure would perfectly match every break in his voice, he’d never part from him again.
Evidently, Ryan Whelan was very, very weak-willed.
“It’s okay, Naim, I’m not mad at you. It’s not your fault. I know you didn’t know. None of us did, alright? And.. I’m sorry, too. About Hunter.. that I didn’t tell you.“
Ryan resisted the burning temptation to pull Naim closer, harder, like his enthusiastic efforts would somehow raise the likelihood they’d permanently merge together.
Oh, the things he’d do to live inside Naim Reid’s skin.
He stared at his face a little longer, words more difficult to muster than he expected. Naim was distracting, so beautiful when he cried.
“And I’m sorry I.. I told you you’d never see me again. I was just.. fucking angry, after.. what happened with Izzie.” There was still a residual sour taste in his mouth when he brought it up. He wondered when that’d stop.
“I thought I’d hurt you if I didn’t leave. I never wanted to hurt you.”
He’d never really learned that staying was an option. He hated that. That he’d become used to watching people’s silhouettes shrink away from him.
“I’m sorry I left.”
His voice quieted and he rolled his lips together, mouth pressed into an even line as he tore his eyes away from Naim’s face, vision blurring. He’d seen about as much as Naim’s unfocused face as he had his regular one. He’d make sure to change that.
“I never wanted to hurt you.” He repeated softly, shaking his head and letting it dip down to where Naim’s fingers had curled around his own.
“I’m much happier with this. Thought you were fucking dead.” Naim huffed out, realizing that he hadn’t even given himself the opportunity to let it set in that Ryan had been at the bus stop. About to leave.
He couldn’t think about it for longer than a minute, or consider more deeply the fact that for all the torment inflicted by not-Ryan, he wouldn’t fully ever be able to stop himself from seeking him out. To remember what he looked like, sounded like, smelled like. Felt like.
Thinking about it now made him fear he might actually projectile vomit everywhere, the nausea at the back of his throat more threat than suggestion. Anger was nowhere near the forefront of his mind, all he could muster was throat-clogging despair.
In his mind, anyway, he wasn’t allowed to feel any semblance of betrayal from Ryan. Not after what he’d done, and the massive, steaming pile of shit he’d landed them in. He didn’t think even now he deserved to be sitting here next to Ryan and be touching him, listening to him, enjoying him. It was a luxury he’d long since sacrificed the rights to.
“Fuck, I’m sorry..” Ryan’s eyebrows very nearly touched each other this time and Naim was hopelessly endeared by how deeply concerned he always managed to be when he was involved. It’d be flattering if it didn’t give Naim pause to think about how many instances he’d been in to warrant concern.
“It sounds so real.” Naim breathed. “And it feels so real.”
Ryan looked at Naim wordlessly, eyes drifting back and forth across his expression, soaking him in, internalizing every feature he could. In retrospect, it wasn’t a great idea. They’d always be feeding the entity, every second they spent in each other’s company.
And it’d still be worth it.
“I know it does.” Ryan exhaled, knuckles brushing a light line across Naim’s cheek from nose to ear before curling around the side of his neck. The distance between them disappeared, and then Ryan was everywhere. Nose pressed into Naim’s cheek, rings cold against the skin of Naim’s neck, foreheads bumping, the scent of him overwhelming the weird bus A/C and the perfume wafting from a few rows ahead.
Naim wished he could absorb him, and keep him that way forever, intrinsically bound.
He closed his eyes and rubbed the tip of his nose along Ryan’s opposite cheek, eyelashes catching in blond curls. He sniffed and smiled, sweet and full and sincere. “I forgive you.”
“I forgive you.”
It’d never been a question of what if. They’d both known— the same way they’d come to deeply know and love each other— that they’d forgave one another without prompting or pressure. Because it was still worth it.
Love was still worth it.
The heartache.
Neither of them knew really who’d leant forward, but both of them were eager in their reception, sealing their unspoken promise with a kiss, unhurried. Grossly mushy.
And if nothing else, they were together, hopelessly in love, alive… and they’d be okay.