Oscar’s tears had melted into giggles, an exhilaration unparalleled spreading over his body like channeled water from a lake as he ran with Aaron’s hand clasped in his, the cool evening air ruffling their hair, chests heaving as Oscar reached for his building key.
He remembered running up the stairs to his apartment the first time he and Aaron had kissed, remembered the press of Aaron’s lips like a language unheard but known, the small slim fingers in his hair, the soft breathed sighs of contentment.
Luigi had more than enough food in his bowl this time around because Oscar had planned to stay out a little longer, but he still came to curl around their ankles, tail hooking up, to say his hellos. Aaron set the tote bag down on an armchair along with the one he’d brought from work, where his vest lay folded, waiting to be washed and returned the following week.
“I’ll make you some cof?—”
Aaron cut him off before he could finish. His hands fisted around Oscar’s faded purple denim shirt, one they’d bought together from a pop-up stall by the farmers’ market just a week before.
Their mouths crashed, Aaron’s hands sliding around his back, pulling him close, wrapping him up in comfort shaped like home, and Oscar wanted this. He wanted Aaron. He wanted home. He wanted home with Aaron. And Aaron still tasted like Laura’s cookie, like sweetness, like joy. Like everything Oscar had ever wanted.
The press of cool wood against the back of his shirt informed him they’d walked right to his bedroom door, and now Aaron was pushing him against it, knee pressed between his legs, soft sighs blowing out of him as they kissed and kissed and kissed.
Their breakaway was soft, a close-mouthed peck to end the rolling tide of before, but Aaron didn’t move back. His brow pressed into Oscar’s mouth, begging for more, soft hair smelling like his blueberry shampoo, narrow shoulders rising and falling with each breath.
“Do you want to?” His offering was a liquid thing, pooling in Oscar’s center, hot as coffee, crimson as blood. Aaron’s lips found Oscar’s neck, lighting a switch inside that made him shiver, green and yellow turning brown and blue.
“Yes.” Oscar needed no clarifications. He wanted to. Oscar wantedeverything.
And when Aaron looked up, Oscar smiled, a soft thing straight out of spring, a Papa thing, a thing that Oscar liked about himself. Pushing slightly off the wood, he wrapped his hand around the handle and opened the door.
His bedroom welcomed them like a shrine, a temple to this sacred thing Oscar wanted to share with Aaron now and every day. He fumbled with the buttons on Aaron’s shirt, his own much easier work, being open.
Aaron slid it down his arms, his fingers brushing the soft brown hairs that had grown longer and more plentiful since Oscar had started taking testosterone. Suddenly he was a balloon, a wave of static shivering down his skin as Aaron feathered it with his touch.
“Can I?” Oscar asked, holding Aaron’s unbuttoned shirt together in the middle. Aaron’s nod was enough. It came off like air, smooth and unhindered, revealing to Oscar the pale freckled skin underneath, the pink scars underlining Aaron’s journey, dotting out two separate paths meeting in the middle,like two men meeting at a gender clinic—a beautiful, inevitable thing.
For the first time in his life, Oscar couldn’t wait to show himself. To share.
Aaron was divinity from head to toe, his skin freckled all over, and Oscar wanted to kiss each dot, to worship at the altar of his growth.
“You’re…” Oscar shook his head, searching for vocabulary.
His mother would say he’d have fared a little better if he’d spent ninth grade English working on his reading comprehension instead of reading articles from the queer teen magazines he’d sneak from the school library and into class. But what the fuck did his mother know about the glory of Aaron? She couldn’t. Nobody could. Because nobody else was on Oscar’s bed right now, knee to knee with him, looking at his disheveled hair and his sweet nakedness.
“Perfect,” Oscar said at last.
He leaned in before Aaron could respond, kissing him again, counting teeth with his tongue, brushing the apples of his cheeks with his thumbs. He trailed dry kisses down Aaron’s jaw, along his neck, laying him down to rest on the pillow, tracing his collarbone, outlining his narrow frame.
“What can I do?” Oscar murmured as he approached the epicenter of their story, quaking with the anticipation of a boundless everything as his lip hovered above Aaron’s nipple.
It slipped from Aaron’s mouth like a breath. “All of it,” he whispered.
And Oscar worshipped. He pressed reverence all the way down Aaron’s breastbone, feathering sweetness along the line of Aaron’s pretty scars, carving a path down to his navel, gnawing on bone until he was there.
Until his tongue began to traverse the edges of Aaron’s hood, until he softly began to tease Aaron’s clit.
And Aaron clenched, gasping, hands fisting aroundOscar’s sheets. Oscar paused, making to look up, but a hand found its way to his head, pushing him closer.
Oscar obliged.
He’d never been with somebody else like him before, had never had the pleasure of experiencing a body like Aaron’s, beautified by the sweat of his brow, paid for in years of suffering and hours of saving up, a nursing career abandoned so he could have this.
I love you,Oscar thought. He spelled it with two fingers, sliding against the walls of a warm place that wanted him, spreading Aaron’s wetness, moistening their tips as they pushed deeper inside him, drawing his sighs and gasps. Oscar moaned it into Aaron’s clit, sucked and licked and tasted.
I love you,Oscar thought, and in his mental resumé for a permanent position as Aaron’s boyfriend, he thought it might be useful to include the many hours a day he spent pressing buttons and moving analog sticks.
Because Oscar was tireless, touching and tasting Aaron’s goodness, lapping up his sweetness, sucking on his soft, smooth skin, relentless, persistent, adamant on pushing him to the peak, on making him shiver and shake and shudder from the pleasure, his own heat drizzling in his center, wanting.
