#stealing summers

Summary : Two reckless heirs raised in wealth run away to Buenos Aires for a taste of freedom—and end up falling in love.

Pairing : Trevor × Fem!Reader

Warnings/Tags : MDNI, Smut, Nepo baby Trevor x nepo baby reader, Explicit sexual content, emotional manipulation, jealousy, misunderstandings, brief physical assault (slap), emotional breakdowns, mentions of harassment, consensual sex, happy ending (let me know if I missed anything!)

Word Count : 8.4k

I was luckier than I had any right to be, and dumber than I cared to admit. Having parents whose names were constantly in the news and all over the internet meant that not even one percent of everything I’d ever enjoyed was achieved by my own effort. The realization hit me late: I’d taken their existence—and everything they gave me—for granted, as naturally as the air I breathed. My arrogance reached its absolute peak on the day of my college graduation—the culmination of an elite education that had consumed my entire innocent, sheltered youth. Watching the perfectly aligned procession of caps and gowns, I was seized by an indescribable, bizarre sense of disillusionment. I knew it sounded like the ultimate spoiled-rich-girl grievance, but the moment I realized the next stop after this comfortable greenhouse was my formal debut into high society, even the silk shirt collar wrapped softly around my neck felt like it was suffocating me.

Out of nowhere, the urge struck me: rather than living out a pre-written script, I wanted to live, even if just for a fleeting moment, solely under my own name. Considering everything I’d gained under that name was thanks to my parents, even this whim was utterly ridiculous—but that was just the pathetic level of my life. Yet, raised as the coddled youngest under my older brothers and sisters, I was the most thoughtless of my siblings, and the most reckless. A few days after graduation, my best friend and I fled, flying out to Buenos Aires—a city we had picked entirely at random on Google Maps. It was the most impulsive, cynical rebellion of my life.

Using cash I’d strategically withdrawn in advance and fumbling through makeshift Spanish, I checked into a cheap hotel near the city center. I was just unpacking my bags, finding novelty even in the strange, damp musk that filled the room, when an international call came through the front desk. Obliviously taking the receiver, the voice of my eldest brother on the other end made me nearly shriek and drop the phone.

My brother casually asked how I was doing, then inquired when I’d be coming home as if it were nothing. Already, my entire immediate family, parents included, saw right through my pathetic little escapade. When I snapped back that I didn’t know when I’d return, he just laughed. It wasn't a laugh born of anger or contempt, but he was still treating me like a petulant child. And it was the same for the rest of my family.

They loved me too much to even scold me, and while that benevolent indulgence was a relief, it left a sour, complicated taste in my mouth.

"Stay safe and eat well. For what it's worth, Mom and Dad would prefer it if you stayed somewhere nice."

He sounded convinced I’d be back in no time. As the eldest son and heir of the family, he could have roared or thrown a tantrum at me, but he didn't. He merely asked if I had remembered to pack the credit card my parents paid off every month, continuing to speak in that soft, soothing tone meant for a toddler. "I’d appreciate it if you checked in once a day." Faced with words so gentle they made the very concept of a 'rebellion' look foolish, I had no choice but to agree.

Like a total idiot, I moved hotels the very next day. I felt a simultaneous wave of resentment and relief at the fact that no one was reprimanding my irresponsibility. In this unfamiliar city where my only tether was the friend I’d brought along, I was feeling a conceited, almost lazy sense of peace. Picking the second-best hotel in the city was my own small act of rebellion, but it was a pathetic gesture that no one would likely ever notice.

I did everything I could to capitalize on my elite education, flashing the fact that I spoke several languages besides English, but naturally, I couldn't land a prestigious job here like I could back home. As it turned out, this city was full of people just as foolish as I was, who had fled their own realities for all sorts of reasons, and reality here was just as unforgiving. My attempt to achieve independence ended in failure. Soon, I was using my card far more often than the money I’d earned myself. Clinging to wild delusions, I killed time with odd jobs by day, and spent my nights drinking in pubs and dancing in clubs. That was when I met Trevor and Sam.

Trevor and Sam weren't any different from me. The two of them were best friends who had graduated from a prestigious university, fellow exiles running from the reality of their homeland. If Sam gave off the vibe of a loud, charming rogue, Trevor was just a bit slow and clumsy—to the point where you wanted to tell him he was wasting those looks.

When I first saw him, the thing that caught my eye right after his good looks was the signet ring on his left pinky. At first, I thought he might just be wearing it for style without knowing any better, because he looked incredibly innocent. He didn't seem like the kind of idiot who would flee the duties and responsibilities of his lineage only to brag about his family name. But it didn't take long for me to realize that was just my own prejudice.

Unlike Sam, who actively made it clear he wanted to sleep with me, Trevor always acted as if he had a million things to say but couldn't bring himself to say them. Sam was attractive enough that, in my pursuit of a grander thrill, I actually considered a one-night stand with him. But damn it all, I found myself constantly drawn to Trevor—with all his clumsy, un-dependable behavior—and that was honestly pretty aggravating. Some arrogant corner of my mind kept telling me that Sam simply wasn't on my level.

One night, while keeping a moderate distance, mingling, and enjoying the usual debauchery, I ended up at a table with a crowd that had met Trevor and Sam before I did. Once the alcohol kicked in and everyone shed their decorum, they started gossiping about the two boys.

Trevor was the youngest son of a massively famous family in the financial industry, and Sam was the eldest son of a dirt-poor family with too many dependents. Just like my friend and me, they were living lavishly despite having run away from home. The only reason they were staying at the finest hotel in Buenos Aires was thanks to Trevor’s parents. Sam had no home to return to, trapped by student loans and family burdens, but Trevor did. He was exactly like me.

The gossip went on to say that Trevor was always losing girls to Sam, and that Sam would steal his best friend's girls only to never maintain a deep relationship with a woman once he’d slept with her. Only then did I realize the true source of the superficial charm Sam carried—the very thing my subconscious had been rejecting all along.

Seeing Sam’s highly unflattering personal details being shared so casually in this tight-knit community, I asked where the hell they’d heard all this.

"Trevor told us."

It was only then that I realized Trevor wasn't nearly as innocent as he appeared. He was a sweet guy, sure, but beneath that exterior lay a calculated, sharp edge—and that, too, was a byproduct of his upbringing. People from our world, myself included, usually turned out that way.

Sam viewed Trevor as a spoiled kid who always had a safety net to fall back on, and Trevor looked down on Sam in other ways. Yet, the bond between Sam and Trevor wasn't something as simple as I could flippantly judge. Sam was the kind of guy who wouldn't hesitate to do any dirty work for Trevor's sake, and Trevor was a man willing to give up the person he loved for Sam. It was fascinating to see these two men checking and envying each other in their own distinct ways, yet fitting together so perfectly. It was pathetic and ridiculous, but at the same time, kind of endearing. And as absurd as it sounds, it was precisely from that moment that my fixation on Trevor deepened.

Taking advantage of a moment when Sam and my friend were distracted by the others, I found an opportunity to get Trevor alone. Even under the flashing lights, Trevor stood there holding a beer bottle with that signature clueless expression on his face, but that wasn't going to stop me. I grabbed a Budweiser from the bartender and slid into the seat directly across from him.

When I laid out everything I'd learned, a flicker of panic, annoyance, anger, and embarrassment crossed his face. I found every single one of his reactions genuinely thrilling, and the final response to my brutal honesty was a smile bright enough to rival the South American sun.

"It's not fair. You know everything about me, and I barely know anything about you."

But Trevor was sweeter than I could have imagined. He had an oddly old-fashioned innocence. Suddenly, I felt like I could understand exactly why Sam found him so endearing. He wanted to know about me, and for some reason, that made me ridiculously happy. We sat in that noisy corner of the bar and talked for hours through the thumping music. As the youngest children of remarkably similar families, we had far more in common than I'd ever expected, and for the first time in my life, I felt a strange sense of gratitude for the family I'd been born into.

Just like that, we fell completely, hopelessly in love with each other. Sam tried to disrupt us a few times, but unfortunately for him, we were already consumed by each other.

We saw each other every day, talking for hours, walking the streets hand in hand. Though we never explicitly labeled ourselves as a couple, after two weeks of this, we finally shared our first kiss. Just sharing pointless daydreams that offered zero value to our futures made me ecstatic. For the first time, it felt like I had someone who was mine.

The slow pace didn't matter at all. We were drunk on the delusion that this moment would last forever. We had money, we had youth, and we feared absolutely nothing. One night, slightly tipsy after our usual drinking session at a pub, we scaled the wall of some wealthy estate. Hiding in the bushes to avoid the owner as he left, we sprawled out together on the manicured green lawn the moment he was gone, staring up at the stars.

I rambled through every random bit of trivia I knew about constellations and the universe. At some point, noticing Trevor had gone quiet, I turned my head. Even in the dark, he was staring at me with eyes infinitely brighter than the stars scattered overhead. The moment our eyes locked, I felt completely cut off from the rest of the world. The city noise muted itself into a strange silence; it felt like I was floating in zero gravity.

Trevor’s face drifted closer. My heart was pounding so violently I could do nothing but look at him, closing my eyes only when the distance between us shrank enough for me to feel his breath, which was trembling just as much as mine. Our lips met, and we tasted each other.

His hand slid over my chest, and not to be outdone, I placed mine between his thighs. We kissed each other hungrily, like people who had stumbled upon an oasis in the middle of a desert. Everything between us ignited in a split second, like fireworks tearing through the sky. Hovering over me, Trevor’s breathing turned ragged, and I smiled as I pulled down his zipper.

Watching his hand stroke my leg before rummaging through his pocket, I knew he was looking for a condom. Breathless and flushed with arousal, I watched him, but as the seconds ticked by, he began to fumble in sheer panic.

He came up with the most idiotic excuse that he’d lost the condom he always carried just in case. To make matters worse, when he confessed that the condom was actually one he’d borrowed from Sam, I stared at him for a second before bursting into laughter. He looked genuinely distraught.

"Sam probably took it back since you never use it anyway."

I believed him when he said he always carried one. Ever since things had changed between us, Trevor had only had eyes for me. But before we met, he was just another reckless guy my age. Even if Sam always ended up stealing the girls he liked, Trevor had genuinely spent years trying to find someone to love. I knew he wasn't making excuses just to kill the mood.

Even though we were on someone else's lawn and it was a reckless act we could never tell a soul about, I was fully prepared to go all the way with him. But Trevor wasn't. He loved this carefree life too much to burden it with consequences. Because somewhere along the way, I'd started imagining a future with him, his hesitation admittedly stung. It left a bitter ache, but I understood him. After all, I was just as much of an idiot running from responsibility as he was.

Perhaps I wasn't as good at hiding my expressions as I thought, because Trevor started reading my face. I was terrified of breaking the spell, and I refused to let him catch on to the fact that I was hurting over our mismatched expectations. The moment I let that slip, the balance between us—which I desperately wanted to believe was even—would tip to one side, and my pride couldn't tolerate that.

Pushing Trevor back down onto the grass, I acted cool, soothing him by suggesting we could just use our hands instead. He flashed that goofy smile I loved so much, and we slid our hands beneath each other's clothes. Hygiene was the last thing on our minds. We heated up instantly, our vision blurring with arousal. The outdoor thrill, the atmosphere, and the sheer fact that we were finally crossing the line pushed us over the edge.

By some stroke of luck, we came at the exact same time. Once the wave of pleasure crashed and released us, reality slowly seeped back in. My face had been pressed into the dirt, leaving grass tangled in my hair and green stains smeared across my back. With nothing to clean ourselves with, our hands were slick with each other's traces. We just lay there, underwear in disarray, laughing like fools. Staring at him, I sucked on his finger, and he held my gaze, trailing his tongue up the length of my hand. It was an incredibly pathetic sight, but I was sublimely happy.

Our dynamic remained unchanged after that. Despite our diverging stances on the future, we lived modestly, acting as if we were lovers with an eternity ahead of us. Whenever Trevor, who dreamed of becoming a journalist in Buenos Aires, read the newspaper aloud while mimicking a local news anchor, I would play the reporter, trading banter back and forth. The longer we spent together, the more negligent we became toward the friends who had crossed the ocean with us.

I figured they were adults and could manage fine, but it didn't take long for me to realize just how dangerously naive that assumption was.

Buenos Aires was teeming with young expatriates like Trevor and me. Even within this insular community, factions formed and invisible hierarchies existed, and it was right through the cracks of that world that I caught wind of some deeply unwelcome news.

One of those petty clique feuds happened to involve an idiot I'd once had a fling with. A guy named Spencer. We ran in similar circles, but I had detested his arrogant attitude, which eventually led to us completely ignoring each other on the streets. Yet, word accidentally reached my ears that those cowardly bastards were systematically tormenting my friend Sam, taking advantage of how wrapped up Trevor and I had become in each other.

The reason for the harassment was simple: they loathed Sam’s cocky pride and his background. It wasn't surprising, considering Spencer used to brag about my background back when we were a thing, acting as if he and I shared some grand destiny. His clique had humiliated Sam while he was wandering the city alone purely for their own amusement, framing him and leaving him buried in debt.

Sam had Trevor, who had always been there to support him financially, but the issue was that Sam possessed far too much pride to beg his friend for help with something like this. He tried desperately to resolve it on his own, but the people tormenting him were far more ruthless and knew how to manipulate the situation. While Trevor and I were drowning in our own little world, Sam’s predicament had steadily decayed to the point where he was facing potential jail time in a foreign country. Only a precious few knew the dirty details, and even they were keeping quiet out of fear of Spencer’s clique, a realization that made my blood boil. Sam was fighting this battle alone.

Sam preserved his dignity even in a crisis like this, and as someone who was equally prideful, I actually found myself deeply relating to his stance. If I were in his shoes, I probably wouldn't have trusted a soul either. I wanted to help him with everything I had, but I couldn't just blithely step in. Since I had learned about his situation from an outsider, I could already picture the humiliation plastered across his face if I approached him first.

Our pride came from completely different places. Yet, when it came to how absolute a role pride played in shaping people like us, I could empathize with the core of Sam’s heart on a profound level.

Without letting anyone know, I began coming up with a way to help him on my own.

Ditching my plans with Trevor, I phoned a few connections to track down Spencer, eventually finding him partying with his friends at a club. Too drunk to notice the look on my face, the arrogant prick smiled and tried to grope me the moment he saw me. He was completely full of himself simply because I had sought him out first. I kicked the bastard right as he tried to paw at my body and force a kiss on me. Then, I fought dirty right back, leveraging my family's wealth and power. I snarled that if he didn't fix whatever he did to Sam and offer a formal apology immediately, I would ruin him. Only then did he cave, admitting to all his foul play and complying with my demands. Once again, a wave of self-loathing hit me for relying on my family's shadow rather than my own strength, but it was quickly swallowed by a sense of relief.

Spencer wasn't an individual worth an ounce of my thoughts, but I felt a twinge of pride knowing I had handled the mess without letting any of the fallout touch Trevor. I had zero intention of ever telling Trevor what had happened as long as I lived, but I desperately wanted to share the residual high of that victory with him.

But contrary to my wishes, Trevor went radio silent after the night I cancelled our plans. Trevor had always taken life a little too lightly, so at first I figured he'd simply gotten caught up with something. Initially, I brushed it off as a temporary thing, but as one day bled into two, a creeping anxiety took hold. Something had clearly gone wrong.

Following a trail of rumors, I finally tracked Trevor and Sam down to a pub. I had marched in there entirely fueled by rage over the fact that he had ignored my texts without a word of explanation, but the sight of Trevor intimately entwined with another girl shattered my composure, turning my anger into pure, unfiltered fury. He had absolutely no right to do this.

I marched toward him, making sure he'd see me. I didn't care about the reactions of the crowd. The moment Trevor spotted me, his expression hardened into an icy mask.

He treated me with a freezing detachment I had never witnessed before, and in a flash, the sheer reality of his anger terrified me. The fury that had consumed me a second ago evaporated, replaced by a desperate fear of losing him. The one thing I couldn't endure was our history being reduced to nothing. For the first time, the girl who always preached about pride abandoned it right at his feet. Watching the last of my pride crumble felt wretched, but I could no longer deny that he had become far more important than my pride.

I wanted to clear up whatever misunderstanding existed, desiring to salvage things and steer us toward a longer, more serious future, so I tried to initiate a conversation. But Trevor refused, attempting to leave with the new girl. The moment I grabbed his arm, he snapped, telling me to get my filthy hands off him, spitting venomous insults right at me. Stunned into silence, I froze, my hand still clamped onto his forearm. He violently threw off my grip.

Listening to the venom pouring out of him—a version of him so entirely alien—the pieces of the puzzle began to click. Trevor had also found out about the harassment Sam had been enduring, but unfortunately, the day he had gone to confront Spencer to handle the issue was the exact same day, at the exact same hour, that I had.

He had witnessed me being accosted by Spencer and had leaped to the conclusion that I was in league with him, playing Sam for a fool all along. It was the disastrous culmination of all the rumors Spencer had been spreading about me—rumors I had foolishly chosen to ignore.

I tried to explain that it was all a horrific misunderstanding, but Trevor cut through my defense with nothing but cruel words. "I can never go back to the way we were." Out of all the daggers he threw, that one pierced the deepest. His declaration that my touch was disgusting left my hands trembling.

The last image etched into my mind was his retreating back as he walked away with Sam and the rest of their group. I stumbled back to my hotel like a ghost, and the moment the door clicked shut, I broke down into hysterical tears. Even as I went through the mundane motions of changing clothes and wiping away my makeup, I wept like my entire world had collapsed. The boy who used to look at me with those soft, puppy-like eyes was nowhere to be found; only the image of his face, twisted in rage and betrayal as he hurled insults, replayed on a loop. I had genuinely believed he was my destiny. The fact that it had ended like this was absurd, but the fact that he had transformed so completely over a few stupid misunderstandings without even hearing me out filled me with a bitter resentment.

When my friend returned to the room and wrapped me in her arms, I cried so hard I thought I'd fall apart. To think that abandoning my sacred pride—the one thing I swore I’d never trade for anything—had reaped this kind of agony was sickening. For three whole days, while I holed up in that hotel crying like an abandoned child, she practically nursed me back to life, gently forcing water and pastries down my throat. Exactly three days. Thanks to her fierce, devoted comfort, it took me exactly three days to break through the worst of the heartbreak.

I blocked both Sam and Trevor's numbers. And just like the day we first stepped foot in this country, my friend and I began wandering the streets of Buenos Aires aimlessly again. I felt a profound, tearful gratitude toward her as she hurled creative curses at Trevor's name on my behalf, swearing the world was swimming in men. For the sake of her tender efforts, I fought like hell to regain my stride.

The moment I returned home, I would have to shoulder the crushing weight and responsibilities of an adult. I refused to let my radiant youth and fleeting freedom be cut short over some guy. Leaving an emptiness inside me and freezing me from the inside out, fiercely blanking out that hunger was the only defense mechanism I had left.

That exhausting evasion turned out to be pointless the moment my eyes locked onto Trevor’s across a thumping, packed pub. In an instant, the noise around us fell away into dead silence. He looked a bit gaunt, a far cry from the vicious scowl he’d worn during our last encounter; instead, his eyes were cast down, staring at me with an expression that looked like he was on the verge of tears.

Standing beside him were Sam and my friend—the very one who had been coddling and soothing me all this time. They, too, were holding their breath, carefully reading my reaction. My only instinct was to cut through the sea of dancing bodies and sprint out the back door. Through the deafening bass, I heard Trevor scream my name with a raw desperation, but I refused to turn back. I bit my lower lip until the color drained. Meeting his eyes had ripped away the denial I’d been clinging to, exposing the ugly truth I had fought so hard to ignore.

Perhaps I stayed put to guard the remnants of my pride, but that was a lie. The moment I met his shattered gaze, the brutal truth surfaced. I was still in love with him. Foolishly, fiercely, I still loved him. I had been lingering around this place like an idiot simply because I was terrified that breaking this fragile, final thread would mean losing him forever. The realization washed over me, bringing with it a wave of humiliation every bit as poisonous as the one I'd felt when Trevor had humiliated me.

Before I could slip away, Trevor caught up, his hand clamping onto my arm. Before a syllable of an apology could leave his mouth, I swung my free hand and slapped him across the face with everything I had.

Suddenly, all eyes were on us. His lip had split open, and it was the grandest act of defiance and disrespect I could offer as a girl who was still hopelessly in love with him. Trevor didn't even raise a hand to soothe his burning cheek; he fumbled for my hand, gently intertwining his fingers with mine, only for me to violently rip my arm away again.

"I'm sorry… It's all my fault. I don't even have the right to speak. You can hit me until you're not angry anymore. I'll do whatever you want. Just please, give me a second to talk… I am so, so sorry…"

Trevor made a move to drop to his knees right there, and the sight of it made me want to scream. Even if he had finally unearthed the truth, it didn't bring me joy—only a raging bitterness. Watching a man who had shattered me, a man who had prioritized his own pride over my dignity, now cast aside his own pride was infuriating. One thought kept repeating in my head: You should've done better from the start. Refusing to witness him humiliate himself, I choked back a wave of tears, turned on my heel, and marched toward the exit, but Trevor was hot on my heels. He pursued me through the crowd, repeating a desperate litany of apologies, swearing he hadn't known, begging forgiveness for hurting me without knowing the facts.

As I kept fighting to break away, Trevor pulled me into a fierce embrace, and I shoved him back with all my might. Bouncers began to circle our perimeter, but my friend and Sam quickly intercepted them. Looking like a man on the absolute brink of tears, Trevor choked out that the cruel things he’d said were just born of a venomous urge to hurt me back, that he’d never actually believed a single word of it. He begged me, "Please don't throw away what we had."

Watching him pour out his bitter regret, admitting that no matter the reason, those words should never have left his mouth, I felt my resolve begin to waver. But the wounds he'd left me with were still too vivid, too unbearable. I never wanted to go through that kind of pain again. I had to run. So while he begged me to hear him out, I chose to be cruel.

"You didn't give me the courtesy of a single listen either. So why the hell should I listen to you now? They were your words first, Trevor, but I'm making them mine: we are never going back to the way we were."

"I didn't mean it… I'm so sorry, I messed up everything—"

"You're talking over me instead of listening to me. You don't care how I feel. You're only thinking about yourself."

Whether his words were genuine was anyone's guess, but I hurled those sharp, venomous lies right back at him, mirroring exactly what he had done to me. I snarled that his carelessness had left me so broken that I never wanted to see his face again, begging him to just stop torturing me. When I finally turned and walked out of the pub, this time, no one reached out to stop me.

With my mood thoroughly poisoned, I abandoned any thought of going elsewhere and walked straight back to the hotel. I washed up and crawled into bed, but those haunted, shattered eyes of his—looking like a beaten dog under my razor-sharp words—kept flashing behind my eyelids. I had unleashed hell on him out of a sense of raw grievance and fury, but seeing him fall apart like that only forced me to see the mirror image of myself from weeks ago, when I had desperately begged him for a hearing. It felt wrong. Despite having unloaded every ounce of my wrath, it didn't make me feel any lighter. It felt like a massive, invisible boulder had been dropped squarely onto my chest.

The next morning brought zero relief; my head was still a chaotic mess. My friend gently suggested that I should meet either Sam or Trevor just once to talk it out, but for the first time, I dug my heels in and refused her advice, and she eventually dropped it. Despite having screamed at him to vanish from my life with total venom, I found myself conjuring up his tearful face every chance I got. Occasionally, the memory of him laughing and being affectionate with that girl would flare up, sparking a sudden wave of rage, but over time, that anger ceased to spark, replaced by a bottomless, heavy sorrow.

When the gloom refused to lift after several days, I stopped dancing on the floor altogether, choosing instead to hole up in dark corners, drowning myself in cheap liquor like a tragic, starving artist. But before long, Sam started tracking me down without fail. I began hunting for obscure, untouched pubs where I wouldn't spot a single familiar face, running like hell to evade him. I didn't actually harbor any ill will toward Sam. But he and Trevor were a package deal, fused at the hip, which meant shutting Trevor out required ghosting Sam too. Yet, despite my icy reception, Sam remained relentlessly persistent in his attempts to talk to me.

Huddled in a secluded booth of yet another newly discovered pub at the end of a labyrinth of alleyways, I sat alone, taking out my frustration on the complimentary peanuts, crushing them into dust with my fingernails. Someone slid into the bench beside me, and by now, I didn't even need to look up; the sheer weight of the silence told me exactly who it was.

When I sharply demanded to know how he kept managing to find me every single time, Sam merely shrugged, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. With all the flair of a detective, he launched into a long-winded account of how he'd combed through bars all over Buenos Aires until he finally found me that night. His absurd persistence was so ridiculous that I couldn't help but laugh.

I flagged down a waiter and ordered a Budweiser for each of us—the very same beer the three of us used to drink together.

The moment Sam realized I'd finally let my guard down, the man who had always claimed to value his pride above all else absently wiped the condensation from the outside of his bottle with his fingertip. After a long silence, the stubborn, arrogant boy abandoned that precious pride without hesitation, begging me to see Trevor just one more time and swearing that everything that had happened was entirely his fault.

His sudden, uncharacteristic gravity caught me off guard, and the news that Trevor was in a terrible state sent a violent tremor straight through my heart.

Sam started from the night Trevor had unraveled the truth. They had apparently witnessed only the opening seconds of my confrontation with Spencer before storming off in a blind rage. Trevor had leaped to the conclusion that I had engineered an approach to him to mock and torment Sam, completely losing himself over the assumption that I belonged to another man. Sam defended him, explaining that the only reason Trevor hadn't staged a full-blown riot right then and there was because he was too broken, too deeply in love with me to function.

But the moment those suspicions were exposed as a distortion born of his own rage, the tables turned with a cruel irony. Trevor was consumed by a sickening self-loathing, paralyzed by the fact that instead of shielding his girl when she was being harassed by a prick, he had fled like a coward, judged her blindly, and treated her like she was filthy. Sam relayed this with a hollow, bitter sigh.

Even after I had icily discarded Trevor at the pub, Sam admitted that, to his frustration, Trevor had initially appeared fine on the surface. He’d acted a bit vacant for a few days, but Sam had chalked it up to a standard breakup hangover. It didn't take long for him to realize how dangerously wrong that assumption was.

While out for brunch together, Trevor had suddenly frozen over his plate, staring blankly at the food. A moment later, tears began streaming down his face, splashing into his dish. A panicked Sam had demanded if he was alright, but Trevor seemed oblivious to the fact that he was even crying.

Muttering that it was nothing, he forced a bite of food, only to instantly dissolve into a violent, sobbing wreck, his entire frame shaking with a primal grief. Sam later discovered from the waitstaff that Trevor had frequented that exact diner with a specific girl, and worse, the dish he had ordered was the very meal the two of us always shared. It didn't take a genius to figure out who that girl was.

Sam glanced at my grim expression as he wrapped up the story, attempting to cut the suffocating tension with a cheap joke about how that diner had officially become a local landmark where white boys weep over breakfast.

Since that day, Trevor had spent three days buried under a blanket in his bedroom, refusing to eat or drink a single thing. Sam confessed that in all the years he’d known Trevor, he had never seen him like this, warning me that if left alone, the idiot might actually waste away.

"I just narrowly avoided prison; I'm not looking to go back for accomplice to my best friend's suicide."

Though he delivered the line with his trademark flippancy, the dead, serious look in his eyes told me his humor was a thin veil for actual terror.

Sam surmised that Trevor refused to leave Buenos Aires because it was saturated with our memories, yet he remained paralyzed inside that room, chained by my declaration that I never wanted to see his face again. Every syllable he spoke landed on my chest like a heavy brick of guilt. Sliding a hotel keycard across the table, Sam begged me to help him do something meaningful as a friend, just this once.

I no longer possessed a single reason or excuse to cling to my stubborn defiance. Thanking Sam quietly, I scooped up the keycard and stood up.

After stopping nearby to pick up some hot soup, I made my way to the hotel's penthouse. The suite was deathly quiet when I stepped inside. Walking past the scattered remnants of two bachelors cohabitating, I steered myself toward the master bedroom. There, buried under a mountain of white linens on a king-sized bed, lay Trevor. I switched on the dim lamp atop the nightstand and leaned in to inspect his profile.

His once-soft lips were dry and severely split, bearing the angry mark I had left on him, and his usually flawless skin looked completely drained and hollow. His eyes were severely swollen, offering a silent testament to just how many hours he’d spent crying, leaving him looking devastatingly fragile.

Without a word, I reached out, brushing my fingers against his cheek and tracing his hair. Knowing firsthand the agony of having the person you love refuse to hear you out, a wave of profound remorse washed over me for intentionally subjecting him to that exact torment. As I stroked the back of his hand, Trevor’s eyes fluttered open, and the moment he registered my face, silent tears began to spill over his nose.

When I softly murmured that Sam had sent me, Trevor scrambled out of bed in a frantic blur, dropping straight to his knees on the floor. Fighting for breath, he began to force out a desperate plea. He acknowledged that we had never started our story as friends, but he begged me—if I could find it in myself—to let him stay in my life as a mere friend. He swore he knew how much I must despise him, but promised that if I granted him just this one mercy, he would do whatever I asked, just to be allowed to linger in my periphery as a friend. Seeing him cling to the hollow shield of 'friendship' exposed just how brutally my parting words had lacerated him, and a sharp ache bloomed in my chest.

It was devastating to realize that after days of starvation and weeping in the dark, the grand conclusion he had arrived at was to settle for being my friend. The sheer desperation fueling such a pathetic compromise was heartbreakingly transparent. Looking down at his trembling form, I kept my voice flat, entirely devoid of emotion as I asked a question.

"Does that mean you're agreeing that we can never go back to the way we were?"

Trevor nodded weakly.

"Then it's fine if I start dating someone else?"

Another silent nod.

"You're saying you're completely fine with me kissing another man? Touching him?"

As those visceral images left my lips, Trevor flinched as if struck, his body contorting as a fresh wave of chaotic tears broke through. Yet, he forced his head to nod anyway. He looked ready to walk through the fires of hell if it meant maintaining a thread to my world. But my final question broke him completely.

"Can you truly remain by my side forever as a mere friend, watching me love someone else without it killing you?"

Trevor froze instantly, as if he’d forgotten how to draw breath, before breaking into a gut-wrenching, childlike sob. He collapsed completely, burying his face against the floor, utterly unable to give me an answer as he wailed.

Unable to endure the sight of him hyperventilating, I dropped to the floor, pulling his trembling frame tightly against my chest. I began to rhythmically stroke his broad, shaking back. Trevor buried his face into the crook of my neck, his cries turning into a muffled, desperate chant of "no" and "please." His entire body shook as he shook his head, brokenly confessing that he couldn't do it. He thought he could survive on the scraps of watching me from a distance under the guise of friendship, but the reality of my words had shattered that illusion. He was weeping so violently that his breath began to hitch dangerously.

He choked out that the mere thought of another man inheriting all the days we’d spent together, all those sweet memories, made him feel like his head was going to explode. Yet, the agonizing paradox that he was the very architect who had ruined us pinned him beneath a crushing weight. He could do nothing but cling to my clothes, his tears soaking through the fabric.

It took several long minutes of me rubbing his back before his breathing finally leveled out. I lost count of how many times he muttered "I'm sorry." Brushing a damp lock of hair from his forehead, a small smile tugged at my lips. Technically, this was a script where he owed a debt of apologies and I held the power of absolution, but looking at his pathetic, starved state after days of agonizing, a soft admission slipped from my lips.

"I'm sorry for being so cruel."

My sudden apology threatened to trigger another flood of tears. He looked utterly exhausted. We had never played games with one another, but by simultaneously surrendering our pride, the wall that had loomed between us finally collapsed, erasing the distance in an instant.

"You really are an idiot."

"I know. You're entirely right. I'm an idiot."

He looked ready to jump through hoops at my slightest command. I was hopelessly in love with that clueless, goofy expression of his. He burrowed deeper into my embrace, and I held him tight, feeling like I was cradling a massive, overgrown puppy.

We bypassed a formal reconciliation and crawled onto the mattress together. I pulled him into my arms, holding him close to soothe away the ghosts of the nights he’d spent curled up alone. Once his heart rate fell back into a peaceful, steady rhythm, I slowly fed him the water and soup I’d brought. I nudged him toward the bathroom to wash up, and when he emerged, I handed him clean clothes and gently dried his hair.

For reasons known only to him, Trevor kept flashing a goofy, content smile despite his horribly swollen eyes, nuzzling his face softly against the crook of my neck. I had never held a child before, but I cradled him just like one, rocking him gently in the dark.

The longer we lay intertwined under the covers, the more I became aware of a specific part of his anatomy growing increasingly rigid against my stomach. As I shifted in embarrassment, Trevor, who had been trying to ignore it, suddenly panicked. He hurriedly stammered that it was just an involuntary, biological reaction to being next to the person he loved, begging me not to think anything of it. The moment I tried to create some space between us, his arms tightened around me in a vice grip, frantically apologizing for ruining the mood and making me uncomfortable.

"I'm not going anywhere. And who said anything about you ruining the mood?"

As I shifted to hover completely over him, Trevor’s eyes widened in surprise. "Where did you put the condoms?" At my prompt, Trevor scrambled to yank open the nightstand drawer, pulling out a pristine, unopened ten-pack. When he admitted it was the very first thing he’d bought upon landing in Buenos Aires, I couldn't help but laugh. While his best friend was out sleeping with half the city, this idiot had carried around an untouched box for months without a single success.

I claimed the honor of tearing open the plastic seal he’d left intact. Pulling down his briefs, his erection was revealed, already slick with pre-cum. "Well, there goes the point of putting on clean clothes," I teased, drawing a chuckle from him.

I took my time pleasuring him with my hands and mouth before successfully rolling the condom on, after which he rolled us over, pinning me beneath him. We plunged into a kiss far more possessive and carnal than any we had shared before. Overwhelmed by a sudden, aching impatience, I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck, begging him to just slide inside me. He slid effortlessly into my thoroughly slicked body. As he buried himself to the absolute hilt, we exhaled a synchronized, ragged breath, locking eyes before dissolving back into a kiss.

Before we knew it, our clothes were discarded in a heap on the floor. Trevor maintained a slow, punishingly deliberate rhythm, and each time he drove in deep, the sheer pressure sent a wave of pleasure that made my toes curl. We clung to each other like drowning souls, kissing frantically while our hips continued their relentless, grinding dance.

When he finally hooked one of my legs over his shoulder, driving into me with a sudden, vicious speed, I could no longer contain the moans ripping from my throat. Foreign, deeply uncharacteristic sounds filled the room. I was incapable of thought; the entire space seemed to fracture into blinding flashes of white light, and the very laws of gravity seemed to warp around us. I could do nothing but white-knuckle the bedsheets, surrendering entirely to the sensation.

When the final wave of the climax washed over us, my muscles spasmed violently before melting into a dead release, bringing Trevor’s frantic movements to a halt. He gave a few final, twitching pulses inside me before collapsing heavily over my chest. The moment our bodies collided, our lips found each other again.

I didn't possess an extensive catalog of encounters, but I knew enough to understand how rare a synchronized climax actually was. Having achieved that elusive feat, I figured we earned the right to lazily savor the afterglow. But as I stroked his sweat-slicked back, I felt a familiar shift as his length rapidly hardened inside me once more, bringing a sudden wave of fatigue. Refusing to break our kiss, Trevor reached out, tossing the spent condom aside and groping for a fresh wrapper.

The marathon that followed was unhinged. He consumed me with a wild, starved desperation that felt intensely intoxicating. When I instinctively tried to crawl away toward the headboard, he simply reeled me back in by my hips, driving himself even deeper. Flashbacks of his previous rage flickered through my mind, but this time, the intensity carried zero malice; it didn't frighten me. Watching him assert total ownership over my body only fueled my own arousal, and my involuntary resistance seemed to conversely ignite his possessive streak. He gasped that he would stop the instant I told him to, but I kept my mouth shut until the very end. We confirmed with every inch of our skin that I belonged to him, and he to me.

Hours later, completely drained by what was easily the greatest sex of our lives, neither of us could move a muscle. I lay flat, using his arm as a pillow while staring at the ceiling, while he remained propped on his side, his gaze anchored to my face.

As the sweat cooled on our skin, we slipped back into our usual rhythm, trading the kind of mindless banter that suited our intellect perfectly. When I laughed, he smiled; when he chuckled, I followed. The sensation of our legs tangled beneath the sheets felt divine, and his toes tracing random patterns against mine was incredibly endearing. Right as I snorted into a goofy laugh, Trevor softly called my name. Turning my head to face him, the playfulness had completely vanished, replaced by a gravity I had never seen on him before. My throat went dry, a sudden tension gripping my chest. I had no idea what he was about to say, yet a strange intuition whispered that I already knew. We were both trembling, as if operating on a shared, secret frequency.

"Will you go back with me?"

To an outsider clueless to our history, the question would have sounded entirely ambiguous, but I understood the weight of it instantly.

We, who had fled from the shackles of duty and lineage. We, who had chosen to hold onto each other simply because the terror of losing our grip was greater than the fear of the safety net. We, who ultimately belonged to an established, guaranteed future.

Unless we were prepared to completely sever ties with the families we loved, we both knew we’d have to pack our bags eventually. And waiting for us on the other side of that return was the reality of being an adult. The rebellion would end, and the bills of responsibility would come due. We would have to step back into the orbit of our parents, transforming into responsible heirs and proper adults. I knew he didn't possess some grand, meticulous blueprint.

But in this moment, Trevor was asking to share that rigid, mapped-out future with me. He was saying that the suffocating weight of reality would be bearable if I were standing beside him. He was choosing to anchor himself to the reality of us, rather than chasing a fleeting mirage.

The moment Trevor began to slowly interlace his fingers with mine, I was seized by the uncanny sensation that a ring had just been slid onto my pinky. Our hearts beat in a wild, frantic unison against each other. Letting my mischievous streak take the wheel, I bypassed a straightforward yes or no, merely dryly remarking that he’d better help me carry my luggage. He looked ready to throw open the balcony doors and jump for joy right then and there. We stayed up until the sun rose, planning the life we'd build together.

A few days later, we cleared out of Buenos Aires without a hint of regret, boarding a flight bound for New York together. That fleeting summer escape—where we had broken free from the golden cages our parents had built just to burn hot and bright under a foreign sun—felt unique. Looking back, that season we fought so desperately to claim as our own before the reality of adulthood claimed us was, perhaps, the only 'stealing summers' we would ever get.

Wilson Bethel : Stealing Summers (2011)

American Koko, Season 1 Episode 1 & Season 2 Episode 2 [2017], (Salinger Focus)