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“Want to know a secret?” Dante asks one day and once upon a time, Ari would have immediately said no. Dante's secrets used to be terrifying to Ari, a knock on the barricade he had on the truth from reaching him. But now that it's gone and Ari finds the truth isn't as horrible as he had made himself believe, he likes the secrets. They're usually about him or things about him. About them. And even when they're not, they're tidbits about the man he loves so much that nobody else will ever know.
Secrets are beautiful.
When Ari tells him to go ahead, tearing his eyes away from his ceiling to stare at Dante half lying on him. The desert was too cold during the winter and his bed was more comfortable than the flatbed of his truck.
“I thought you got really hot when I came back from Chicago.”
Compliments still weren't Ari's favorite things. He was getting better at receiving them, but he still didn' like them very much. Especially physical compliments. Perhaps he isn't the ugliest asshole in El Paso, but Ari has never been sure there's anything to compliment. The few times Gina and Susie had tried to hook him up with girls with “she thinks you're cute!” or “her friend told my friend that she said you're hot.” he had rolled his eyes and called them liars. He didn't think he was someone you talked about. You didn't put him on a list of guys you thought were good-looking.
But he believes Dante because Dante doesn't lie and maybe the fact making-out had become their new favorite hobby played a very key role in believing him as well.
And he kind of likes getting compliments from Dante.
“Yeah?”
“I touched myself that night. Thinking about how you looked, thinking about how I wanted to go swimming with you to see all those muscles.”
Sometimes it still blows Ari away how honest Dante can be. He can just talk about masturbating so openly and he doesn't even twitch. Not even an ounce of shame. Ari can't imagine frankly talking about the times he has touched himself. Guys talk about doing it all the time and Ari always wondered if it was weird he didn't do it often at all. Something about it felt gross to him, awkward and not right. At least when he did it to himself and for a long while, he had never had anything to really think about. Though he guessed the reason why jerking himself off to girls had seemed wrong made sense now.
But right now Ari doesn't feel bothered by Dante's bluntness with this subject. He would have prior the discovery that he was in love with Dante because it would have meant his mind went to imagining it and a part of him knew he liked that image. Wanted to touch himself to that image. That part he was still kind of awkward about. Dante might have called his dick his friend, but Ari still didn't consider his dick his own friend. It had often felt like an enemy, getting hard at the worst times and it still did that. Dicks weren't friends. They were just there and liked to keep reminding you they were there when you didn't need it to. How was that a friend? Friends weren't obnoxious.
“Wow.” It's not quite eloquent and Dante laughs. picking on him and says just that. Ari jabs him playfully in the side. “Shut up, bastard.”
“What did you think about?”
“That you got taller.”
“That's romantic.”
“You said you touched yourself thinking about me. That isn't romantic either.”
“It is, though. It meant I wanted you, I craved you.”
Dante talking like this just reminds Ari of the love scenes in books, the ones Dante would read before Ari made him skip them. Those were awkward, too. And this isn't.
“You craved my muscles.”
“That were apart of you,” Dante quickly argues and then adds: “I thought about you when I masturbated in Chicago, too. And it wasn't to your muscles. I didn't even know they existed, Ari. I just really missed you and loved you and wanted you.”
Ari frowns and brings his hand up to Dante's face, fingers going over the slight shadow of where his sideburns are growing in. “I wish I had gotten a clue earlier. I wish it hadn't taken my dad telling me for me to finally get it. I was a real idiot.”
Dante laughs and leans in to give him a quick kiss. “You kind of were. I'm amazing, it's hard not to fall in love with me. Why would you have been the exception?”
Ari's parents are home and if they weren't, Ari would take this as a chance to make-out. His parents are respectful when Dante's in his room and they leave them be. Ari always thought that when he'd have a girlfriend, there would be a whole lot of hovering. But probably the fact Dante can't get pregnant plays a pretty vital part in why Ari's parents don't seem to mind letting them be alone. But it's still just weird to do anything with Dante like that when his parents are in the same space. Dante said it was dumb because parents had sex when they had kids in the house and Ari told him to shut up because he didn't want to think about that. At all.
He still kisses him, though, and it lasts. And Ari's thankful. Thankful he can be at peace like this, that he can be in love and know he's loved back. That someone touches themselves when they think of him and maybe that's a weird thing to be thankful for, but maybe Dante is right. There is something romantic about the thought.
Dante spends the night that night and nobody minds. Especially not Ari because he's come to find he really likes it when Dante sleeps with him in a bed. He's found Dante's actually kind of a gross sleeper, drool and everything. The first time Dante slept in the same bed with him, Ari had woken up to drool all over his shoulder. But drool covered pillows are worth it when he has Dante next to him and it's like everything is in it's place. Dante's world had order and now Ari feels like his does as well.
But when Dante leaves the next day and Ari goes to take a shower, he touches himself. He imagines Dante kissing him, Dante's body, and Dante touching himself. He just thinks about Dante and when his orgasm overcomes him and he's panting, he's discovered that maybe Dante did have a point. Maybe there was something strangely romantic about the whole thing.