Chapter Text
"And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Israelites and say to them 'I am the Lord your God.'"
Pastor Rob's monotone voice droned on, fading away into a steady buzz at the back of Ryan's head. The church congregation was clinging on to every word, as if God's decree was spilling directly from the parched lips of a balding, middle-aged man. Ryan supposed that was the whole point of the pastor's sermon, being God's word and His will and all that Bullshit with a capital B, but Ryan couldn't bring it in himself to care.
Beside him, his mother was clutching her Sunday pearls to her chest as her watery eyes clung to the podium where Pastor Rob stood. His father sat beside her, stoned-faced and arms crossed as he too, gazed upon the pastor with a stoic reverence he never showed any other living being. Not even to his own son.
"Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere."
Ryan bit back a scoff. Yeah, no shit, dickhead. He couldn't imagine that God would be chill with incest among all the other things He was also supposedly not chill with.
His gaze wandered, tracing over the upturned heads of the churchgoers.
Wide, inky black eyes met his.
He blinked, realising that he had been staring at the newest members of the church - some kid called Naim Reid and his mother. The new kid had showed up at school one day and setting eyes on him was all it took for Ryan to start noticing him everywhere.
Naim clearly was on the same page as Ryan, tuning out the pastor's voice as he gazed at Ryan, a small quirk of amusement lifting the corner of his mouth.
Ryan couldn't help it. He smirked back as he pulled a face, and watched as a smile blossomed across Naim's face, lighting up his delicate, rounded features. The inky depths of his eyes twinkled as he rolled them in amusement at Ryan's antics and Ryan couldn't help but want to make more of a fool of himself if only to keep the boy's attention on him.
He swore he could see himself reflected in that dark depths of the other boys eyes. He felt that burning churn in his gut, a familiar feeling of a raging hunger that he tampered down on, like he usually did when he met Hunter's eyes from across the hallway.
"Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable".
"Ryan, focus," his mother's harsh voice cut across the distance between him and Naim. He jumped, his gaze immediately snapping forward to stare blankly at the wooden panelling behind the pastor's podium.
His father leaned forward in his seat, soulless eyes now locked onto his son and bearing into Ryan's still form. "You better listen to your mother and pay attention, boy." His voice was gravelly and flat, the 'or else' deeply implied in his venom.
"Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the Lord your God."
For the rest of the service, Ryan did not dare move a muscle.
If there was anything that Ryan knew about, it was feeling like an outsider in his own skin.
That's why, when he just happened to bump into the new kid at the bike shed after school, he let his mouth get the better of him. It was something about the hunched set of the kid's shoulders and the way he stiffly carried his brows, which seemed like they were permanently furrowed in distress.
"Oi," Ryan said, charmingly. "New kid, how's it going?"
The skinny thing jumped, clearly not expecting to be spoken to as he turned those eyes and their endless depths on Ryan.
The churning in Ryan's gut only raged wilder.
"H-Hey." Naim's voice was surprisingly steady despite his uncertainty, a rasp to its timbre with a hint of a playful lilt. It was pleasing to Ryan's ears.
Ryan smirked, feeling his gaze go heavy-lidded as he watched Naim lift his bike out of the rack. His own beaten up, second-hand bike was leaning on his hip.
"Where d'ya live?"
Naim straightened up, hooking one leg over the seat of his bike. It looked newer than Ryan's. "Down Jonathan Drive, first place mum found on the internet actually. You?"
"David Crescent. Seems like we're headed in the same direction then." Ryan pushed off, smiling to himself as Naim scrambled to match his speed and ride alongside him.
"So, new kid, thoughts about this small hick town?" Ryan yelled over the wind rushing past his ear, his curls billowing behind him in a way that was going to be hell to untangle.
"It's alright I guess," Naim yelled back. There was a healthy flush to his cheeks and nose, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
Ryan snorted. "Yeah? You didn't seem to impressed with the pastor's shitty sermon the other day. Good thing you weren't Moses."
Naim went quiet, and Ryan dared a glance over his shoulder.
The boy's eyes were trailing the ground passing beneath him, the furrow back between his brows. The wind ruffled his dark hair, the edges of his fringe brushing over his downcast lashes. All traces of a smile was gone, and Ryan somehow felt as if it was his fault for dimming the light on the other boy's face.
There was a lump in Ryan's throat that he could not swallow.
"Oi, what's with that sorry face." Making a split second decision, Ryan jerked the handles of his bike and veered off into the marsh. "C'mon, let's get outta here."
Naim picked himself up, grumbling a hasty "My name's Naim," as he followed at Ryan's heels.
The dirt road that Ryan led them on to did not allow for a yelled conversation, unless the boys wanted dust and stones in their mouths. Instead, Ryan settled for squinting ahead and pushing his burning thighs to their limit, pedalling as if the devil were on their heels.
After a few minutes where the air was silent except for the whirring of the spokes of their bikes and their laboured breaths, Naim finally braved the dust cloud and spluttered out, "Where are we going?"
"Fuck knows," Ryan yelled back. "Anywhere is better than this fucking place."
Eventually, as the curve of the sun curved edge kissed the edge of the horizon, the boys finally stopped beside a creek. Their faces were flushed and Naim flopped bonelessly into the damp grass. Ryan watched as the other boy's chest heaved with the heavy pants and gasp of air, his eyes lingering on pink parted lips with a hint of teeth peeking through.
He forced tore his eyes away, lifting the hem of his shirt to wipe at the sweat beading on his brows.
When he snuck a glance out the corner of his eye, Naim's eyes guiltily flickered away with haste, as if he been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to. Ryan had an idea of what that thing was.
Grinning, he yanked at his collar, popping the first few buttons open so that his white dress shirt hung loosely over his collarbones and chest. He knew he looked attractive like this, if his past interactions with Hunter were anything to go by.
"Why the fuck are we here," Naim grumbled, turning his face away as Ryan mourned the loss of his visuals over the boy's flushed cheeks.
Ryan shrugged, feet kicking at the tufts of dirt and grass. "Fuck knows. I chose a road and fucked off. You just happened to follow me."
Naim only stared at him silently, brows furrowed again as if he were trying to decipher Ryan's very core. Ryan didn't like that one bit. Being seen meant being vulnerable, and vulnerability only burned more than it healed.
So Ryan did the only thing he knew, instinctively reaching out and giving one of Naim's shoulders a hard shove followed by a solid kick of his battered sneakers. "Relax, dickhead. I didn't bring you here to murder you or anything. You just looked like you needed a friend."
That seemed to loosen something in Naim, and Ryan watched the tension in his shoulder ease as the dark pools of his eyes softened in something more open, something that was dangerous as it enveloped Ryan in it's inky embrace. This was something Ryan knew could very well kill him if he submitted to it.
He didn't know how to handle these feelings. If this were Hunter, they would simply start hurling rocks at each other like neanderthals before one of them finally broke and started macking out with the other.
Distantly, Ryan thought he actually wouldn't mind kissing Naim.
Naim looked away, finally releasing Ryan from his grip as if Ryan weren't a willing prisoner.
"I saw you at church last Sunday you know," Naim mused. "Didn't get to say hi and introduce myself."
"Would you have? Said hi, I mean."
"Hm. Maybe not."
"Pussy," Ryan grinned. "You're a pussy and a liar."
"Fucking sue me then," Naim rolled his eyes, crossed his arms behind his head and leaning back further into the grass, seemingly uncaring that the dampness was soaking into his shirt. Ryan could see the moisture seep into the shirt, turning the fabric translucent and teasing Ryan with the barest hint of pale skin underneath.
"I know your name's Ryan. Heard your mum calling for you after the service. You disappeared pretty quickly."
"Yeah fuck, I couldn't leave that place fast enough. Last name's Whelan, by the way."
"Yeah, I lied again. I knew that already. You're in my Bio class."
"Fucking cunt," Ryan grinned as he tossed a handful of shredded grass at Naim's laughing form and, just because he could, reached over and gave Naim's tousled head a shove just so could he feel those those silky locks between his fingers. Not that Naim needed to know that.
He glanced up as the rapidly fading sky before jerking his head at Naim. "C'mon, our escape has come to an end. We gotta go back."
Ryan tried to quell the burst of satisfaction as he saw disappointment flickered across Naim's face. He was glad he wasn't the only one who wanted to stop this moment in time.
"So," Ryan began, watching as Naim stood up and brushed himself off, trying not to let his gaze linger on the spindly lengths of the other boy's fingers. "What actually brought you and your mum here, in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Victoria."
Naim glanced at him, his eyes unreadable as he assessed Ryan still form. Ryan waited with bated breath until eventually, Naim seemed to reach a decision as his head bobbed in a quick nod. With a determined resolution, he began walking back the way they came, wheeling his bike along his hip.
"My dad, he… He suffered from bouts of depression for a very long time. Our old church, back in the city, they weren't helping. They told mum that the devil and his horde were coming for dad. Dad would disappear for a long time, either with the Church people or out by himself. Mum would be at home, spiralling away and working herself into a fit. Then one day, he just. Didn't come back."
Ryan watched him, watched as a shadow if resignation fell over Naim's delicate features. "They said they killed himself. A couple walking their dog saw him walking into the river and just never came back up for air. Mum was never herself after that. She tries to be normal, but she clung to the Church. But there's only so much they could handle and they couldn't give her what she wanted. So she got obsessed. Saw one video of your Church congregations singing that one fucking song of yours and she got hooked. Couple days later she had bought the house here and put everything else we owned up for sale. And now I'm here, in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Victoria."
"You keep saying 'your' as if I have any say in this shithole,' Ryan mused with no heat in his voice. "I hate this miserable place just as much as you, you know. And I've lived here longer."
"Yeah, sorry, that was a bit much."
"Nah." Ryan shook his head, bumping his shoulder gently against the other boy. "S'good to let it all out. Not ideal that you did all that on the first date, but I'm not complaining."
"Date?!" Naim spluttered, almost dropping his bike onto his foot.
Ryan smirked, winking as he hopped on his bike in answer, tearing back down the road as he raced against the dwindling shadows on the road. Naim was hot on his heels.
Neither boy said a word until the line of houses came into view, the shadowed outlines of their rooftops barely visible in the dark.
A couple right turns and a left eventually led to Ryan's place, and they both skidded to a stop. Ryan could hear his dad's fuckass cockatoo going apeshit in the backyard, it's demonic screeching probably pissing off the neighbours. Not that any of them would say anything lest they unleash his dad's wrath upon them all.
"This is me," Ryan mumbled, feet suddenly rooted to the spot. He didn't want to leave, and he didn't want the boy before him to leave either.
Naim's eyes flitted around, taking in the front yard and the overgrown weeds that lined the driveway into the open garage. His parents car wasn't parked where it usually was, so Ryan would have a few blissful hours of peace until they returned from wherever they had gone.
"Great," Naim smiled, his lip lifting upwards in a tempting curve. There was a pink flush high on his cheeks, which did nothing but deepen the starry pools of those doe-like eyes that looked like they held a galaxy within.
Ryan wanted.
"Now I know where you live. Next time you try to kidnap me, I'll run away then come throw rocks at your windows all night so you can't sleep."
"Piss off, fuckface. I've had enough of you, go away." Ryan flapped his arm at Naim, feeling the burning evidence of his longing on his face and praying that Naim could not see through him.
Thankfully, Naim only laughed, a burst of bright sound that seemed to drive a bit of the darkness away. It didn't last long though, and it felt as if he was taking that brightness with him as he walked back out, back to his own home and away from Ryan.
That night, Ryan dreamed of a starry night sky and the sound of laughter that tasted like a promise.
Ryan was rapidly becoming obsessed.
Another week had flown by, where he fought against every fibre of his being to ignore the doe-eyed boy at school. He was afraid that if he took one look at Naim, then everyone could see the truth in his eyes.
Despite his desperate attempts as avoiding the other boy at school, Ryan was still a weak, weak man and without fail, he sought out his dark-haired addiction at the bike shed at the end of every day.
He learned new things about Naim.
Naim liked to draw, and he liked birds of all types. He especially loved drawing birds. He was pretty good at it too, from the not-so-stealthy snooping Ryan had done into his sketchbook as they lay on the ground of the various plots of land they had discovered in the boonies.
Naim had an obsession with Ryan's snake ring, a cheap hunk of metal that Ryan has found at the local dodgy jewellery store a while back. He liked to trace the double loops of the snakes body around Ryan's finger, holding the palm of Ryan's hand gently in his. Ryan wasn't familiar with such gentleness and care, and it made him ache.
When he was nervous or uncomfortable, Naim had a habit of rubbing the fingers of one hand over the other. It was a self-soothing habit, a mimicry of how a mother would rub her child's hands between her own to provide comfort. Ryan wondered if Naim had ever felt that comfort from his own mother, or if he was simply replicating the motions in a hollow attempt to feel a false sense of security.
Ryan knew Naim really hated this place. It shouldn't hurt as much as it did when Naim went on yet another rant about how he wanted to leave, to run away from his mother and this place. To run away from Ryan when Ryan had just found him and his gentle salvation.
None of these were things that Ryan knew how to handle.
That was why, on the days when Naim wasn't around, he would let Hunter in again either in his own backyard or seeking out the curly haired boy in the bushes behind his fence. With his face crushed between Hunter's palms and his body sore from the beating it had taken from the other, he let Hunter sink his teeth into him. Blood and violence, he could handle. This was something he was familiar with.
Naim Reid on the other hand, was simply something he could gaze upon and want, but never to touch and hold and to have.
No, he could never have Naim.
After all, a broken and poisoned boy like Ryan Whelan would only be the death of Naim Reid.