“I shouldn’t have gone drinking. That text I started typing…I was going to ask you to come get me. I can show you. It’s still sitting there, half drafted.” Oscar looked for words, then his phone, scrambling around on the couch.
“Spike, I believe you.” Aaron’s eyes were the swirl of slush his father would buy him at the beach. “And next time, press send.”
“I didn’t want to be selfish. I had just fucked up the one thing I talked you into letting me do for you.” Oscar sniffled. “Maybe it was more selfish to hide than it would have been to admit my failure and sit with your disappointment. I’m sorry I fucked everything up. I’m sorry I went to the bar and had so much to drink. I know it’s no excuse, but I thought it would be better than…”
Aaron squeezed his eyes shut. His kiss was a balm. If Oscar had been able to have one at the stall, it would have erased his mother and every ugly thing she’d said. It would have washed her fingerprints from the buttons she’d pressed. It cleaned Oscar of her influence now, and he melted into it, wrapped his arms around Aaron’s back, pulling him in.
“Thank you for telling me. About yesterday and about what used to happen when you were young. I’m glad you had Papa back then, to clean you up and kiss your cuts. I’m sorry he only got to do that once, but I’m glad he taught you every day of your life that you deserve not to hurt.” Aaron’s eyes blinked open, finding Oscar’s. “You havemenow. And I will show you what you deserve every day, like your father would have wanted. I will kiss your skin until you never want to touch it again.”
“I don’t. I promise I don’t. It was one moment. I’m better now, and you don’t have to worry about me.” Oscar leaned in, kissing Aaron on the neck. It was a soft, deft thing that turned Aaron liquid in his arms, as though in the months they’d known each other, Oscar had memorized every special place. “I have never been more desperate to live than I am now. Iwould steal every second left on the clock of the universe if it meant I could spend them all with you.”
“Oscar, are you a poet? Because you’re driving meWilde.” Aaron pulled back, grinning. And it drew a different kind of sob from Oscar, one colored sweet, lined with a chuckle, wet and lovely.
“Good. I want to. I want to drive you wild with desire, not mad with every stupid thing I do.” Oscar loved how his hands spanned the width of Aaron’s waist, how much bigger they felt to be able to hold him entirely. He loved how beautiful Aaron made him feel when his hands traveled up his shirt and touched his soft plumpness.
“Then drive me wild. Nobody else can.” Aaron shook his head.
“I’m that good, huh?” Oscar’s smirk felt new on his face, like he’d forgotten joy in the hours that had passed, but here he was now in the thick of it.
“Youare,” Aaron replied, rolling his eyes. “But that’s not what I meant. It’s because I wouldn’t let anybody else.” Aaron’s nose bent as he pressed it against Oscar’s. “I’m yours, Oscar Peters. And get it out of your pretty head that I’m ever going anywhere.”
It scraped the bitter taste of an ugly yesterday off Oscar’s tongue, dripping strawberry sweetness in its stead. And Oscar dove into it, sweeping Aaron into a kiss for the ages, a tidal wave that washed away the staleness of their afternoon.
Aaron squealed as Oscar flipped him on his back, dropping soft as a feather to lie on top of him. So what if he wasn’t stick thin like his mother and Lina? It meant he could hold Aaron’s weight, that he could lift him, that when his body got even stronger from being surgically taken apart and put together again, he would be able to carry him without fear. Oscar couldn’t run up the stairs to save his own life, but hecould carry the man he loved, and in the end, this was the meaning of his life. Oscar would make it so.
He looked down at him, brushing his feathery bangs from his brow.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he murmured.
“Hello, baby,” Aaron murmured back, mouth crescenting into a smile.
Oscar shifted, resting his knee by Aaron’s hip. The light shifted with him, glinting off the flimsy foil Paulie had wrapped the baby sunflowers in. Oscar reached for one, pulling it out of the bunch, and broke off as much of the stem as he could, tucking it behind Aaron’s ear.
“I feel very beautiful right now,” Aaron said, grinning.
“Because you are.” Oscar brushed his cheek. “I’m sorry I upset you.” It was easier to say it now, easier to look into his eyes and apologize without crumbling. Aaron made it easy.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask about the reason,” Aaron replied. “It’s in the past.”
“What will you do about work?” Oscar asked.
“That’s tomorrow’s question. Tonight, I want to know what you’re going to do to me,” Aaron said. His voice was a warm soft thing, a breath that blew onto Oscar’s cheeks. Loving him was like sitting in front of the fireplace with hot chocolate and marshmallows, like sitting in the sun after a swim.
Oscar leaned in, pressing a kiss to the corner of Aaron’s jaw, nipping at his earlobe, and whispered, “Everything.”
18
CLUEOPOLY
Morning, afternoon, and night, Oscar and Aaron fell into bed with each other for the rest of the week. While Oscar sat in on his classes and took down notes, Aaron looked for jobs and sent out resumés and applications. In between, they undressed and crawled beneath the covers, laughing and murmuring sweetnesses every time they broke contact. For the most part, lips found lips, crawled down chests, trailed love over hip bones, licked and tasted.
One night, when all the lectures were done and all the jobs applied to, after they’d had their dinner and Aaron had watched Oscar get through two hours of beta testing with Luigi supervising his progress, their hands slid into each other as they had on every night before, and they slipped into the darkness of Oscar’s room, shutting out the warm light of the living room, trading yellow for cool blue and swathes of green where the moonlight hit Oscar’s sheets.
“I want to try something else,” Aaron murmured, nibbling on Oscar’s earlobe. His voice, to any other person, would have sounded smooth and steady as ever. But Oscar knew its music now, knew it better than the pattern of his ownheart, and he could taste the nervousness when he leaned in and kissed him.
“Anything,” he whispered, brushing reassurance over Aaron’s cheek.
So Aaron blushed a little less when he wore the strap-on and eased when Oscar wrapped his legs around his waist and pulled him in closer, when Oscar’s peak had him crying out. Flushed and breathless, Oscar wanted more, wantedhim, wanted Aaron everywhere.
