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“I can’t do this.”
Steve slammed his laptop shut, shoved it as far as he could on his cramped desk and spun (a little over-dramatically, if you were to ask Billy) on his wheely chair to face his boyfriend, a small pout gracing his pretty pink lips. He folded his arms over his chest for added effect.
It wasn’t the first time Steve had done this, and Billy knew it wouldn’t be the last. Steve had a tendency to give up on things like this; essays, readings, anything that meant he had to decode the mess of letters that other people had no trouble seeing as real words. But Steve didn’t see the real words, he saw a jumble of letters on a page like a puzzle with nothing to refer to, nothing to tell him what it was supposed to look like.
Dyslexia. That’s what the doctors had called it. (Steve called it ‘stupidity’ and Billy had been quick to shut that down, to kiss the taste of it off his lips, to pry the word from his mouth with his tongue.)
So Billy (who had been sprawled comfortably on Steve’s bed, who had finished his homework during the first week of summer, who had been expecting this) just closed his book, set it on the bedside table with a kind of care usually reserved for Steve, and leaned back with open arms.
“C’mere, baby.”
Billy’s voice was low and thick and Steve knew he should really keep working on his essay, but when Billy was lying on his bed with his arms out, ready and wanting to hold him, how could Steve say no?
“I’m an idiot,” he said with a sigh as he crawled into Billy’s embrace.
Billy held on tight, arms wrapped firm around Steve’s shoulders, and he buried his face in Steve’s hair when he said: “Hey, Stevie, no. We talked about this. You’re not stupid, not an idiot, your brain just works differently. This shit’s a bit harder for you.”
Steve shook his head, nestled further into Billy. “I’m gonna flunk out, Bill, and you’re gonna go to college! I won’t be able to keep up.”
Warm lips met Steve’s neck and then Billy was murmuring sweet nothings, pressing the words there as though they’d seep through the skin and flow through his veins, hoping that this time they stick.
“Lucky you got such a pretty face then, huh princess?”
Steve almost smiled, lips twitching, and then-
Wait.
“I don’t...I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended.”
Because: was Billy calling him dumb?
A calloused hand brushed the hair from Steve’s face, smoothed the crease in his furrowed brow with the pad of his thumb.
And then all playfulness was gone from his voice, replaced with a sincerity that was so rare for Billy, he said: “You know you can always ask me for help, pretty boy.”
Steve turned to face Billy, big, brown doe eyes shining with hope as he looked up at his boyfriend.
“Really? You’d write them for me?”
Billy barked out a laugh, the kind that was rich and loud and right from his chest, the kind he hadn’t ever let out before Steve. That made Steve smile.
“No,” he said, pressed a kiss to Steve’s cheek, one more to his temple. “But I can help you find the words, figure them out for yourself so you don’t need me next time.”
And fuck, Steve felt like he could cry as he turned in Billy’s arms, wrapped his legs around Billy’s hips and swooped down to capture his lips in a kiss.
He resisted the urge to say I’ll always need you.
And sure, maybe Steve wasn’t the smartest person and maybe Billy could do better, and maybe he didn’t quite know how to say the same soft, kind things that Billy said about him, but when he was here, tangled up in Billy, drowning in the smell of cheap beer and even cheaper cigarettes, Steve thinks he could learn.