27. The Way God Intended #3
“Wait—” Anders pulls back a little and flickers his eyes down. He tugs the front of his shorts down, revealing the moisture that glistens in the soft, warm light.
“You came in your shorts?”
He nods. “I didn’t know if you’d—” His cheeks flush with embarrassment.
I quickly shake my head, holding him firmly by the jaw. I swipe my thumb along his chin before brushing it right along his bottom lip.
“Don’t do that again,” I whisper. “I want you to enjoy it, too.”
“I did,” he argues gently.
I kiss him chastely. “Don’t do that again,” I say again. “That’s my job.”
I swipe the warm, wet cloth against his skin, cleaning off any traces of his creamy arousal.
We exist in a comfortable stretch of silence as we brush our teeth together. Anders brought his toothbrush into my bathroom because he refused to let me put him down until we crossed the threshold into my bedroom.
He leans down and spits after I do, some of the toothpaste gathering in the corner of his mouth. I watch it happen like it’s in slow motion. He swipes his thumb over his mouth to gather the toothpaste before holding it under the running sink water to rinse it away.
Anders rubs some water over his face, washing away the thin sheen of sweat still lingering on his skin. I follow suit, still watching in amusement as he follows some sort of routine that exists entirely in the back of his mind.
It’s ridiculous how much I enjoy watching him do absolutely nothing. For years, I convinced myself I wasn’t paying attention. That I wasn’t memorizing these little habits…turns out I was paying attention to all of it.
My heart stutters a little when he finally stands up straight and looks up at me with a soft, tender look in his doe eyes. “I’m gonna go back to my bathroom and get a quick shower,” he tells me. “I can’t sleep with all this gross sweat all over me.”
“Can you just shower in here?” I ask a little hopefully. “We can take turns,” I quickly add. “I’ll wait in my room.”
“I can’t use your shampoo,” he tells me like even the thought of it sends him into dire straits. And it’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever heard because it’s such an Anders thing to say.
“Okay,” I sigh dramatically. “If you hate me…”
He rolls his eyes. “God, Petchka. You can come with me.”
“You sure?”
“Yea.”
“Together?”
His mouth pulls into a smirk. “Now who’s the clingy one?”
The smile stays on my face, but something twists unpleasantly in my chest because I still can’t believe I said that to him.
I know I still have something to prove. Now is not the time to get comfortable…I know that. But I can still enjoy it.
After we share a quick shower in his bathroom, I throw on a fresh pair of pajama pants.
Anders steps into a fresh pair of briefs before sliding one of my T-shirts over his head.
It doesn’t fully engulf him anymore, but it’s still big enough that the soft cotton drapes over his body and falls to the middle of his thighs.
That probably shouldn’t bother me as much as it does.
There was a time when one of my shirts would’ve swallowed him whole.
Now he fills it out. Now he’s a grown man standing in front of me.
I insist on carrying him back into my room anyway, refusing to let go until we’re both settled into bed.
He drags his finger across the tattoo on my chest, lightly tracing my father’s script that’s been permanently inked right over my heart. “Volkie…nogi…kor-myat…” he sounds out slowly. Because of course he can. My boy is smart.
“What about the wolf?” he asks, saying “volkie,” to himself in an adorable accent.
“It’s like—the wolf’s legs feed the wolf. Means to get off your ass and do something.”
He laughs softly. “Of course you’ve got some wolf shit on your chest. Is that your dad’s writing?”
“How’d you know?”
“Cause I’m fucking smart and use context clues.”
I snort. “You’re too smart.”
The room settles around us as I flip us over so I can hold his warm body against mine. He immediately buries his face into the crook of my neck, tangling his legs with mine beneath the blankets, almost like he’s done it a thousand times before.
Maybe that’s what gets me. It’s just so easy with him.
The room is blanketed in darkness when I reach over and turn off the lamp. Anders slides his hand up my chest and rests his palm flat over my tattoo.
“I’ve been reading Frankenstein,” he tells me softly, dusting his lips across my neck.
“Never read it before.”
“It’s my third time reading it,” he says, lightly tapping his fingertips against my chest. “And it just has me thinking a lot about, like, the fact that a woman was able to capture what isolation and being lonely can do to a man.”
“That sounds pretty heavy,” I murmur, brushing through his damp hair while cradling the back of his head.
He exhales softly, and I can feel his breath against my skin.
“Well, it’s about this freaked out scientist who made a Monster because he was lonely and shit,” Anders continues. “And it wasn’t until the Monster came to life that he freaked the fuck out and was like, ‘what the hell did I just make,’ y’know…”
“Mhm.” I chuckle. “Right.”
“And not to sound super prolific or whatever,” he adds. “But I think it’s pretty relevant to masculinity and…male relationships.”
“You’re getting all that from a book about a monster?”
“I mean, I guess…” he mutters. “ Frankenstein was obsessed with creating this perfect specimen of a man—which he had, like, all this weird sexual aggression towards—and when the Monster came to life, it was this perfect antithesis to Frankenstein’s own dark, latent desires and… ” Anders sighs. “Anyway.”
I smile to myself.
Only Anders could spend twenty minutes talking about a nineteenth-century novel immediately after sucking my dick. But after a while, the smile fades. Because I can’t stop thinking about what he said.
Not the queer analysis or the loneliness, but more so the creation and the responsibility aspect.
The horror of looking at something you’ve spent years building and suddenly realizing it’s real.
And maybe that’s unfair. Maybe I’m projecting meaning onto a conversation that was never meant to be about me.
Anders has always loved stories because they give him a way to talk about the things that are difficult to put into words, but sometimes a book is just a book.
Except I can’t stop thinking about the way his hand is resting over my heart.
I can’t stop thinking about him tracing my father’s handwriting.
I can’t stop thinking about the years, because that’s the thing that nobody ever seems to understand when it comes to Anders.
They act like one day he was a kid and the next day he wasn’t, but I watched the entire thing happen.
I watched him grow into the kind of man who could walk into any room and make it brighter simply by existing inside it. And somewhere along the way, without meaning to, I started taking pride in all of it.
The thought settles heavily in my chest. Pride is a dangerous thing.
I have spent years telling myself that whatever existed between us wasn’t my fault, that neither of us chose our feelings, that life is simply messy and complicated and unfair sometimes.
But lying here with him curled against me, talking about Frankenstein and creation and loneliness and responsibility, I find myself wondering where exactly the line is between loving someone and shaping them.
Wondering how much of the man in my arms would still exist if I’d never been there. Wondering how much of him I taught. How much of him I influenced. How much of him became what he is because, for better or worse, I was always somewhere nearby.
The question follows me long after Anders falls asleep, and no matter how many times I turn it over in my head, I can’t seem to find an answer that lets me rest.