Eleven Ramin
eleven
Ramin
Twenty Years Ago
Ramin was crying.
He never cried at school. Never. He’d learned that lesson back in first grade, when he’d cried because the other kids kept getting his name wrong, and they’d switched to calling him a crybaby.
But he couldn’t help it. Who wouldn’t be crying if their mom had cancer?
Fuck cancer.
He hunched his shoulders as high as they would go, slouched as low into his desk as he could, hoped no one would notice.
“Hey,” Noah said.
“Hey,” Ramin muttered, not looking up as Noah flopped into the seat next to him. Ramin wasn’t sure how, exactly, Noah had decided they were… what? Friends? Noah had just started talking to him one day and never really stopped. And then he’d started sitting with Ramin at lunch, too.
It made no sense: Noah was a popular guy. He was a wrestler. All the girls talked about him.
(All the girls talked a lot about him. Ramin didn’t think about that , though.)
Noah was the kind of guy who should’ve been bullying Ramin like all the other jocks, shoving him into lockers and calling him names.
Instead, he told off folks for being mean to him.
He shared jokes and borrowed pencil lead and treated Ramin like a friend.
Ramin didn’t have friends. Just Farzan and Arya, and they were more like brothers than anything.
Even they hadn’t heard the news about Ramin’s mom. He hadn’t found a way to tell them.
“You okay?”
He didn’t want to talk about it. If he did, the crying would only get worse. “I’m fine.”
“Are you crying?” came the soft reply.
“No.” But sure enough, he started crying harder.
Noah scooted closer. “What’s wrong?”
Ramin shook his head. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t—
“My mom has cancer.”
He didn’t know why he’d said it. It had slipped out of him. He wished he could snatch the words back from the air.
“Oh.” Noah’s voice was so gentle, it felt like he’d draped a blanket over Ramin’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
Ramin just cried harder. Because he could tell Noah really meant it.
He shouldn’t have. Noah Bartlett wasn’t supposed to be that kind of guy. He wasn’t supposed to be nice and compassionate. He should’ve been making fun of Ramin, like all his teammates did, like every single asshole in their class did.
A hand slipped through the crook of Ramin’s elbows, clutching a handful of Kleenex.
“Thanks,” Ramin managed through sniffles.
“Anytime.”
Ramin blew his nose and wiped at his tears and cried, while Noah Bartlett, of all people, shielded him from the rest of the class.
He didn’t know what to make of it.
But he was grateful.
Now
Ramin woke covered in sweat. He twisted and flung off his blankets. The small air conditioner over the door kicked on, and he eyed it suspiciously; sure enough, it was on some sort of motion sensor. What was the point of an air conditioner that wouldn’t keep you cool while you slept?
His morning wood felt like a steel bar trapped in his trunks. He’d noticed over the last few years how he didn’t wake up as hard as he used to, but that wasn’t the case today.
He’d been dreaming about Noah.
Not a sex dream. Well, they hadn’t gotten to that.
In his dream, rather than go their separate ways last night, they’d gone back to Noah’s hotel, taken a weird glass elevator that went sideways to his room, where Noah had pressed him up against the door.
He’d used his strong arms to pin Ramin’s wrists above his head, leaned in close, and whispered, I know you want to know if it’s true .
His lips had brushed Ramin’s jaw, which made Ramin sweat, which made him realize he was actually sweltering, which made him wake up.
He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.
He rolled out of bed, figured out how to turn off the air conditioner’s motion sensor, took a shower, checked on his bags—still on a European adventure of their own—and got dressed.
He didn’t let himself think about Noah. He’d never see Noah again.
Last night was fun—borderline magical—but it was an anomaly.
He was here to have lots of sex with hot Italian men he’d never see again. Or at least average-looking Italian men, since that was what he could reasonably expect to attract. Hot men didn’t go for guys who looked like Ramin. He was soft, with stretch marks and loose skin and gray nose hairs…
Ramin shook himself. He’d gotten better at snapping himself out of dysmorphia-induced spirals, but they still crept up on him sometimes.
He’d been fat as a teenager, skinny after his mom died, fat again when his dad died, and then there was the whole disordered eating thing he went through in his mid-twenties, until Farzan and Arya had more or less bullied him into therapy.
The therapy had changed his life—saved it, really—introducing him to yoga and meditation, and helping him unlearn all sorts of harmful shit he’d internalized over the years. His body was strong and capable and beautiful, even if he wasn’t (never had been, never would be) a picture-perfect twink.
He was healthy. That’s what mattered.
He rubbed at his tattoo and took a few breaths. Then he laced up his shoes, fought with the billion locks on his door, and went in search of breakfast.
Ramin found the tattoo parlor by accident.
He’d eaten breakfast—a croissant (though the cafe called it a brioche for some reason) and a double espresso—and was heading home when he spotted it.
The entry was narrow, nestled between a pharmacy (advertised with a green cross, which had befuddled Ramin at first, because back home that meant a dispensary) and a little general store.
The door and windows were covered in art in all different styles: graffiti script, black and white portraits, geometric designs, tribal motifs.
Ramin only had two tattoos, his parents’ names in Persian script, one over each wrist, but every so often he thought about getting another.
Or maybe several others. He’d always told himself he wanted to get in better shape first, especially before doing his chest, which had been at times bony, at times soft, at times a little flabby, but never muscled.
Nothing like Noah’s, which had been much firmer-looking than Todd’s, but from what Noah had said last night, he actually used his muscles instead of growing them for vanity. Ramin wondered what Noah’s pecs felt like…
He shook the thought away. He wasn’t here to wallow in an old crush. He was here to reinvent himself.
Maybe it was the drive to be Interesting New Ramin. Or maybe it was lingering exhaustion and jet lag. But fuck it.
He stepped inside and hoped the tattoo artist spoke a bit of English.