fear is the same thing that keeps ryan from saying anything when he sees how boys, how hunter treats naim at school. he hears the word they always say and suppresses flinching anger, then its accompanying despair at the watery look in naim's eyes.

ryan's been scared his whole life, but he's gotten good at fear. he's accepted the truth of who he is, what that means for him. he's learned he doesn't need to be scared of leaving bandee because he knows he never will. the fear of wanting hunter, wanting to touch him and wanting something real from him, was far outweighed by that detached surrender the first time he saw bruises from the impact of rocks on his own body. he takes it, takes what he can get, takes hunters fear and anger as well as his lust because he doesn't think he deserves anything else, because that's the only way someone touches and wants him back.

he's been burned so many times, the fear is distant compared to the exhaustion, the hurt, the guilt. his desire is a curse, a gnarled secret he holds in his ribcage. (and later, when hunter dies and naim almost does too, "it's all my fault" whispered guiltily in the rising heat, that secret burns worse than it ever has.)

he asks naim to go to the mill because the waves of want are rising over the immovable, solidified structure of pain and guilt. fuck, but he's just so curious. and at first it's hard to shed that defensive masculine posturing, but at least shoving at naim means he gets to touch him. and then naim surprises him, really, not just by kissing him back but by giving ryan the delightful revelation that naim is gentle. naim doesn't hurt him, doesn't push him off or call him a fag or throw stones. naim is under him-- and then he pulls away, retreating back into fear, and ryan feels confusion and hurt in equal measure.

ryan, possessive as he is giving, wants to share this secret thing with naim. he wants to be affirmed in his feelings in a way he never is with hunter. tell me you feel it too. tell me i'm not making it up. tell me i haven't corrupted you with this.

and he hears the unsubtle yearning in his own voice, a thin veil of casualty over a begging to be affirmed in his feelings. that twist of anxious yearning in his mouth, "there's nothing you like about this place?" naim, crinkly-eyed smile blinding, looks holy.

thinking about how confused/guilty/hurt ryan must have been up until he realizes what the entity is and that naims entity is him has me sooooo fucked up

ryan feeling naim pull away at the mill and panicking a little. feeling like he had this fragile, beautiful thing in his hands and he crushed it into dust. but then - naim isn't mad, has that playful lilt he only ever has with ryan, teases him with an underlying insecurity between the two: "you ignore me at school and then you just ask me to hang out, that doesn't make any sense." and naims smiling, tone light, but ryan feels something bubble up defiantly. "i don't ignore you." i never can.

when ryan says it was his first time at the mill, he's saying nobody has ever made me feel like this. i want you so bad it's making me brave. and when naim says it was his as well, there's relief there for ryan amidst the suffocating uncertainty of naims feelings: hunter wouldn't have acknowledged the mill in private, would've been too detached, too scared to even bring it up like naim did in the first place. even as ryan is burning, even as every molecule of his being wants for naim, he is terrified not of his feelings but of that rejection. from naim, from his parents, from the town, the dickheads at school. he's lived here all his life, has an intimate understanding of bandee. he knows the names of all the neighbors dogs, could walk to the nearest servos with his eyes closed, knows all the spots in his house he could stash his weed and know his parents would never find it. who is he without this town, intrinsically tangled within him?

as much as he feels distant from the church that looms over the town, he can't bring himself to hate bandee. it's all he's ever known. maybe it's what he deserves, to be in a place as lonely and desolate as this. loneliness so plaguing that even alone with naim it damns ryan to wallow in his desperation, pathetic with the need to know how naim feels.

even with the terror of really internalizing the ritual, to know that naim feels just like he does is shamefully relieving, exhilarating. he feels nauseous with guilt that tells him naim will die by his hands, looking into his eyes, because of ryans desire. but fuck, finally he can say they're on the same page. (making it all the more devastating when naim tells him he's leaving... and when he finds out what naim did...)

in that bus, when naim brings up leaving bandee, ryan feels the panic again. you're the only other person that gets it. everythings fucked but at least you're in it with me. that ring is yours forever. i'll give you anything you want. sighed "please" across naims lips, eagerness apparent in his hands as he gives naim love he's never been allowed to give. that boyish giddiness, again, but this time naim doesn't pull away. nothing matters except for you, im yours, never leave me. please.