#just a lil something...

ryan sickeningly relieved at turning around to see naim behind him, just in time to watch his form slipping past the tiny crack of the rapidly-closing bathroom door. ryan reaching for him with a tenderness so alien it feels like gold molten in his fingertips. naim meeting him there without pause.

fingers twined in hair. hands on waists. feet stumbling backward, dragging them toward a stall before anyone can see. whispered promises against skin warmed by skin. i know it's you, ryan's breathing against naim's neck, eyes closed against the tide of affection that threatens to sweep him out into depths so blue and dark they make him feel bare. i know, naim's throaty whisper against his ear, it's me. and it's everything ryan is himself too scared to say out loud. ryan dizzy with how brave naim suddenly seems, and holding him a little tighter.

pain being the last thing he feels. hearing the wet tear of cartilage. feeling the hot rush of blood down his neck. feeling his body wrench itself backward. watching his own hands shove naim back. then, like an afterthought, an agony so precise it's nearly blinding.

it's me, naim saying again, and ryan's sob is a guttural thing made by an animal trying to claw its way out of him. ryan rushing for the door, hand slipping in his own blood instead of stemming the flow of it, and bursting out into the corridor with heaven on his tail, yelling for help.

ryan tumbling to the cold linoleum. his arms and legs feeling suddenly thin and frail. his hand falls away. a girl is screaming.

it doesn’t come. days become weeks. at school, you were the shiny new toy long enough for the tiny year level of only twenty-six other kids to determine that you’re just as dull as everyone else in this town. you’re from a flyspeck nowhere just like here, but at least your nowhere had places you knew, faces you recognised, haunts you traced with bike tracks and footprints. your new pastor has a droning voice that is somehow impossible to let fade into background noise. your mum hangs desperately onto every word as if they’re spoken to her directly. you can’t remember the last time she looked at you like that.

there’s a boy at school called ryan. in class, he leans back in his chair until the front legs lift off the floor, balancing on two plastic points against ancient carpet. he throws ripped chunks of his rubber at his friends when they’re not looking. he never brings books or a pencil case to class, snickers in the back when the teachers are talking, mocks the girl with braces like all the other boys. when he smiles, you count his perfect white teeth. when he’s concentrating, he traces them with his tongue. you imagine how it might feel to replace his tongue with yours. it frightens you. at lunchtime, you sit on the edge of the oval alone watching fluffy clouds drift away, leaving you behind. ryan plays footy no matter the weather and ends most school days with dirt and grass stains on his uniform. in the change-rooms before phys ed, you watch him undress from the corner of your eye and pretend to be focused on tying up your shoes. all of him is golden, even the creamy skin of his stomach and thighs. you imagine how it would feel under your hands. it frightens you. sometimes you look up and find him already watching. and he doesn’t look away or pretend he wasn’t staring. your gazes lock and you can feel him peeling something away to look at a piece of you you’ve always worked to hide. it frightens you.

it happens almost by accident. your bike is next to his in the bike shed. you arrive at the same moment one afternoon. he sometimes has a milk crate lashed to the back for his schoolbag and the sight of it makes you smile. you can feel that searching gaze as you unlock your bike from the rack. he just looks at you, hands on the handlebars and both feet still firmly planted on the cement floor. come on, he eventually says, swinging a leg over the worn leather seat. i wanna show you something.

you ride behind him and watch sweat darken the back of his shirt under the empty blue sky. you imagine how it might taste and it frightens you. the bikes are abandoned beside a gumtree losing its bark and he leads you through yellow grass that gives his hair a golden cast. you’re watching him, entranced by the stiffness in his movement. that languid, cool confidence is replaced by a kind of mechanical swagger—a boy playing at casualness and failing terribly. you can’t imagine why he’s trying so hard to seem tough. you’re so hypnotised by his performance that you nearly step on the snake with the frog in its mouth. when you rear back, yelling in shock and fear, ryan’s delight is cruel and his high, mocking laughter makes you feel hot and bristly. he prods the snake with a stick. his jibes land, the jab about a fear of heights, the rolling eyes. they all sting and you try not to let it show.

the floor in the abandoned mill is soaked in sunlight. motes of dust spin in the air, kicked up by your feet and the bits of refuse you throw around the space together. you snap into stillness at his warning—funnel web, on your shoulder—and something ugly cracks inside you when it turns out to be another tease at your expense. you’re snarling fuck you, cunt before you can think and in another moment you’re both on that warm floor, twisting and wrestling and all you want is for him to cut to the fucking chase and tell you why you’re really here, and his body is hot on top of yours and his hands are tight around your wrists and that light-spun golden hair is falling in his eyes and he’s watching you glance at the place where he’s holding you down and your chest is tight and bursting and aching and his sudden kiss comes down so hard that you forget everything else that came before.

you wrench out of the kiss by instinct. his hands release your wrists. you’re panting now, staring up at him. he’s still. his face is open. you look at the softness of his parted lips and remember wanting to lick his perfect white teeth, wanting to taste his sweat, wanting to feel his body under your palms, and it puts a lightness in your belly that you’re convinced would have you floating away if not for his weight. you drag him down and try to kiss that lightness into his mouth.

but it really did work. it wasn’t just some silly ritual. ryan comes for me every night when i’m closing up. he won’t leave even when i beg him to go. strong hands which have only ever hurt me do more harm than i thought possible. i die looking at the twisted, snarling face of the boy i wish would love me gently. naim corners me with languid kisses in photobooths and against chickenwire fences and under fluttering sheets hung over the hills hoist. he shows me tenderness i’ve never let myself have, but it’s only ever wool over my eyes—a smokescreen quickly blown away. he finds me wherever i am and he terrifies me with his brutal strength, his implacable gaze, his softly smiling mouth. i run and run and he always follows. at night i dream about his hands on me, sighing in the night-dark of sleep, and wake up screaming.