He set his plate down on the coffee table and stood. Oscar’s heart stuttered, and even though his apartment was a small, quaint thing, the distance felt entirely too long while Aaron crossed to him. Whether he was going to fall into araging fit or kiss him, Oscar wasn’t sure, but his assessment would have been inaccurate in either case.
Aaron met his eyes again briefly as he passed him, shaking his head, and then he walked straight to the kitchen counter and picked up Oscar’s plate and fork.
“Get your diet soda,” he said, turning back to the couch.
Oscar followed with his head bowed and his stomach lumped so far up in his throat that he wasn’t even sure he could have any of the rice. Still, he sat beside Aaron, blessing the chance to feel the brush of his fingers as he passed him the plate.
The rice went down like gravel, scratching Oscar’s throat on its way, settling in his stomach like concrete. The TV droned on, but Oscar couldn’t imagine laughing at Moira’s blunders and Alexis Rose’s expressions when sitting next to him was Aaron. The sounds of his tongue as he chewed and slurped and smacked his lips around the fork were the song of a lifetime, the slipping soundtrack of a film that felt close to its end. It was the receding tide, shrinking away from shore, and Oscar wanted more than anything to chase it. Barefoot and naked, he would slip into the water and let it claim him. His ankles would be anchors, dragging him down to the seabed of Aaron, and Oscar would become a merman, grow gills and a tail so he could live in him forever.
“Please stay.”
Oscar’s whisper rolled over the forkful of rice hovering in front of his mouth, cooling it with the frost of the implication. Quiet as it came, Aaron caught it. He lowered his plate in Oscar’s peripheral vision, head turning, and after giving himself three seconds of pretend normalcy, Oscar turned as well.
Aaron wasn’t the seabed; he was the sky. As Oscar’s gaze dug into his, his lungs filled with air and allowed him tobreathe. If Oscar had been drowning before, then Aaron’s face pulled him from the deep and gave him life again.
“Why would you say something like that?” Aaron frowned. Brown stains filled the flaky gaps in his chapped lips from the soy sauce and Oscar had never wanted to kiss anything more. Anyone. “Do you see me going anywhere?”
“I’m not like this. Not normally.” Oscar set his plate down on the coffee table, reaching out with both hands and grasping air as he tried to explain himself with every single one of his body parts. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please tell me what to do so you can stop being angry with me.”
“Spike…”
Oscar’s heart lifted like a cloud, soft as Aaron’s voice when he spoke the sweeter of Oscar’s two names. And Aaron, too, was soft, entirely soft as he abandoned his own plate and reached for Oscar’s hands, thumbs rubbing his skin.
“I’m upset. We were arguing. But it doesn’t mean I’m angry with you or that I’m going toleave. I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Aaron shook his head, dipping his chin so he could look directly into Oscar’s eyes. “I’m not angry anymore.”
Oscar wished he was the kind of person who could take something like that and run with it, someone who could take the reassurance and hold it in his chest without crumbling. He wished he could become the teenager who stood steady as a rock when he faced off with his mother, never flinching or faltering in the face of her stubbornness. But Oscar wasn’t that person, not anymore, and not with Aaron.
Not with his Aaron.
Oscar’s face crumpled, and Aaron was a blur, sky melting into rain in front of Oscar’s face, a puddle of sweetness that wrapped itself around him and brought him to its chest. Oscar buried his head in the dip of Aaron’s throat and didn’t cringe as his back shook, didn’t feel shame as he sobbed out an entireday’s worth of anxiety while Aaron stroked his hair and cupped the back of his head.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, baby,” Aaron murmured, bending down to kiss his soft washed hair. “What you did sucked, but I shouldn’t have frozen you out all day long.”
“I promise I’m not going to become your father,” Oscar said.
The sound of snot dragging itself up his nose was disgusting. On any other occasion, Oscar would have poked fun at it, called himself a man of Bedrock, but he wasn’t in the mood for it. This wasn’t a bagful of trauma he could laugh away. This was hislife, his future sitting in front of him, and for the duration of a day, Oscar had believed he might lose it.
“I promise you, I will never touch another drop. Never.”
“Hey, we all lose control sometimes. It’s not the end of the world.” Aaron cupped Oscar’s chin, rubbing away his tears with his other hand. “The problem is when it becomes a habit. We’ve been together how long now, and you’ve never done this. I’m sorry. I lashed out because I was worried about work, and I just…I don’t like to think about my dad. I don’t feel safe when I remember what he could be like. I don’t want to wake up one morning to shouting and banging and breaking plates. I was scared.”
“I would never do that.” Oscar shook his head. “I understand. I understand why you reacted that way. I…”
Oscar sniffled, leaning back to face Aaron completely. He curled his leg beneath his body, the fried rice sitting forgotten on the coffee table. By now, the ice in his soda had melted, and there would be a ring beneath the glass, but Oscar’s furniture was no family heirloom. Nothing in his apartment had belonged to him before he’d moved here. Oscar’s childhood treasures sat in his mother’s home, in the shrine to a daughter that had never been.
“Look at howIreacted.”
“Reacted? To what?” Aaron frowned, leaning deeper into the cushions. He pulled his knee into his chest. Oscar could spend a lifetime sitting on his couch talking about difficult things across from Aaron in sweatpants. “Did something happen?”
“Yeah,” Oscar replied. “Something did.”
Oscar had racked up many awards on his home screen, a shelf of virtual trophies in platinum, gold, silver, and bronze that bore witness to his dedication as a game tester—a monument to his laziness, his disinclination to move anything except his fingers and his thumbs. But maybe none of these were as deserved as the one he was owed for repeating his mother’s words to Aaron while he looked into his eyes, voice trembling, heart unflinching. Aaron’s foot climbed over Oscar’s, and it was this, in the end, that sent another wave of emotion through him, his sobs crashing against the rocks that made up a body accustomed to hate.
Aaron rolled onto his knees, sliding in between Oscar’s legs, leaning into him. He wrapped his arms around Oscar’s neck, pressing their brows together. His skin was cooler, maybe because Oscar was still hungover or because he was emotional or because he was Papa’s boy, so he would always have the inheritance of a furnace burning away inside him.
“You’re beautiful,” Aaron whispered, his soft dry kisses feathering Oscar’s skin. “Every soft, round thing about you makes me want to snuggle into you. Every scar reminds me that in all the suffering to get to who we are, there was the final reward of finding each other, and if that’s not the gift of my life, I don’t know what is.”
Aaron’s hands smelled like fried rice when he cupped his face, thumbs rubbing Oscar’s cheeks.
