Chapter 12 #2
In the absence of language, Oscar lifted the tote bag like an offering. Aaron’s eyes darted down, his expression twisting like Oscar had just presented him with a sacrificed lamb. He looked back up at him, shaking his head.
“For you,” Oscar murmured. His spit had turned to concrete, and it burned his throat on the way down.
Aaron peeked inside the rainbow tote, then jerked back. “What is this?” he asked, frowning.
“It’s the blessing book you wanted. With the gay prince and the demon. He is a demon, right?” Oscar said.
“It’s a special edition, Oscar.” Aaron threw his hands up. “I saw the price tag. What the hell?”
“I…” Oscar’s joy popped like a bubble, the creeping vines of anxiety wrapping around his heart and squeezing. “You wanted it.”
Maybe Oscar was the lamb. His bleat was a thing of the slaughterhouse. A while before, or even now with anybody else, the sound of it would make him feel dysphoric, but never with Aaron. Not even with Aaron frowning like that.
“Oscar, no.”
“I’ve already bought it. I’m not going to return it,” Oscar replied.
Aaron huffed and turned on his heel, and Oscar stood there gaping, watching Aaron grow smaller as his short but impressively quick strides took him away from Oscar, from their date night, from togetherness.
Oscar’s lip wobbled, nostrils flaring dragon-like as he tried to blink away the tears that had started to assault him, grief and guilt and panic washing over him like a tsunami.
The tote bag was still clutched in his grip, arms stretched out to the Aaron-less gap in front of him, frozen, Medusaed by his anxiety, which revved up in his chest like the motor engine of Grandpa’s 1992 truck on its highest gear, speeding speeding speeding with nowhere else to go, nowhere more to climb.
A breath sputtered out of him, choked.
Midway down the sidewalk, Aaron turned, pausing, head tilting.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
There was no need to shout. On Saturday nights, everyone went to the bustling center away from this side of town. Laura had already turned the shop sign to Closed and pulled down the blinds, and most of the coffee shops were starting to turn off the lights.
“Oscar…”
Oscar couldn’t move. His lip trembled on, twisting his face, scrunching up his expression, squeezing every inch of organ inside his body, butchering each functional thing into useless offal. It made him want to curl up on the pavement, turn into a ball that someone would kick into a net and forget.
“Spike…” Aaron’s voice softened.
In a few brisk strides, he was standing in front of Oscar again, eyes searching his face, hands wrapping around his arms, squeezing, grounding him.
Oscar was electric, and Aaron was a swirl of yellow and green.
Oscar was a flailing body, and Aaron was a parachute.
Oscar was—
“Spikey…” Aaron inclined his head low, inching closer until his nose was brushing against his. “Baby…”
Oscar was a puddle on the ground.
His mouth found Aaron’s instantly, lips crashing like waves to rock, arms wrapping around Aaron’s back, tote bag and all. The car engine came apart in Aaron’s grip. Oscar sobbed into his mouth, shaking and trembling into his touch, overcome.
“Hey, it’s fine. It’s fine,” Aaron murmured, pulling away and bumping foreheads with him. “I’m not mad. Let’s go home.”
“I promised you coffee,” Oscar said, sniffing. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand before suddenly remembering that he was with Aaron, the only person in the world he ever wanted to impress and that perhaps snot was not the way to do it.
“You can make me coffee at home.” Aaron wiped Oscar’s tears with his thumbs, pressing a soft chaste kiss to the tip of his nose. “You were grossly overcharged for those beans, but it’s better than the coffee house. Come on.”
Oscar conceded with a series of wordless nods and turned in the direction of the bus stop.
When Aaron said home he meant Oscar’s apartment.
This was where the two of them spent their time alone.
Besides, there was no fancy overpriced coffee at Aaron’s.
Joe tried, bless him, and there were plenty of different flavors of the instant jars.
Oscar thought the gold was quite good. But Aaron could pick up a difference in the water used to make his coffee.
Something like the word gold on a label wasn’t going to buy his affection.
As they got on the bus, Aaron reached for the tote bag and slung it over his shoulder, ushering Oscar to a seat near the back, over the wheel, because Oscar liked the way his knees were raised when he sat there, the way he could tuck them into his stomach and curl up invisible.
“I can carry it,” Oscar mumbled.
“But it’s my present.” Aaron shot him a sheepish smile, cheeks glowing raspberry pink. “Can I look at it?”
“All I want is for you to look at it,” Oscar confessed. Naked truth was as hard for him as admitting he needed help. He glanced at the tote clasped in Aaron’s hands, jutting his chin in its direction.
Aaron sparked, excitement buzzing on his skin. His entire body jiggled on the seat and then he was peeking in, reaching for the book, picking it up with reverence. He turned it over in his hands, eyes aglow, lips curved into a small, wistful smile.
Aaron handled that book the way a connoisseur might a glass of immaculately aged wine.
He sniffed it, turned it over, inspected every line of artwork, every inch of sprayed edge, peeked beneath the dust jacket and let out an excited squeal as he glimpsed the design of the hardcover underneath.
In the end, he put it back in the bag and turned to share his reaction, but by now they were at Oscar’s stop, and they had to run to the front of the bus to avoid missing it.
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 wanted everything.
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 around Oscar’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.
To have him.
To love him.
To serve him.
Oscar wanted to serve Aaron forever.
“Oh. Oh. Oh. Fuck.” Aaron’s breath caught in his throat, strangling him as he clawed for air, as he mounted a summit and his legs gave way.
Oscar felt it coming before Aaron shattered, tasted his delicious trickle and held it in his mouth, his free hand sliding into the gaps between Aaron’s fingers and pressing.
Oscar kissed the inside of Aaron’s thigh, running his wet sticky hand up the smooth soft ginger hairs among the freckles. He raised himself, kissing the soft mound above the magic.
“You good?” Oscar murmured, resting his chin there and looking up.
“Mhm,” Aaron replied. He ran a clammy hand through Oscar’s hair. “Are you good?”
“Perfect,” Oscar said. He found Aaron’s eyes across from him.
“Just give me a minute to breathe, okay?” Aaron whispered.
“I love you.” The confession spilled from him, a bucket tipped over, spreading the culmination of his own raging high come now to a soft, smooth close, even as his want persisted, even as his heat burned on.
“You’re not supposed to say it during sex,” Aaron replied.
“I loved you before the sex,” Oscar said. Because he’d never known when to stop. “I love you after.”
Aaron tugged gently on Oscar’s hair, smiling. “Come here,” he said, sliding up to sit against the pillow.
Oscar clambered towards him, straddling him, their nakedness so close and comfortable, even in its newness. Oscar wanted to press into him, to feel their wetness touch, to grind against him.
Aaron pulled him in, pressing a kiss to his mouth.
“I love you too,” he said as he pulled away.
Oscar fixed his gaze on Aaron’s eyes, so large without his glasses, sitting now on his bedside table. He brushed Aaron’s bangs from his brow.
I love you too. Could a heart ever be this full?
Oscar wasn’t sure he could take it. His chest felt like a paper cage about to burst. If he looked down, he thought he might watch the evidence of his stitches come apart to let the butterflies escape, to let his heart fly across the short distance to Aaron.
But Oscar didn’t look down. His destiny sat at eye level, and he would never look away.
I love you.
“Aaron?” Oscar murmured, his heart pounding against his ribcage, a hammer on a nail.
“Yes, baby?” Aaron mumbled, tucking Oscar’s hair behind his ear.
He swallowed, a rivet gun pressing the lump in his throat into a soft hard thing he swallowed, cementing his courage. And Oscar had it.
Oscar was happy.
Oscar was loved.
Oscar was feeling brave.
So Oscar said the words he’d never said out loud before.
“I want to tell you about Spike.”