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They take the bus to the train station.
They don’t talk much on the first train ride. It’s nice. Ryan can smell Naim’s hair from where he’s sitting, and there are enough people getting on and off at different stations that the middle carriage feels safe, rocking them, like they’re out on the water at the end of a scary movie or something.
At first, Ryan doesn’t get where the fuck they’re supposed to be going. He reckons it’s not a bad idea to prioritise away before they settle on where, though, and so he chooses not to question it. Neither of them tapped on. They ride until the third station, at which point Naim asks hoarsely and suddenly if they can get off.
“Yeah, fuck, of course.” Ryan doesn’t stop touching his back until they’re out on the platform. Even then, he hovers close, possessed by the urge to get his hands on something solid. Ryan’s endless need for physical contact had pretty much been the first thing the entity took advantage of, but Naim’s not letting Ryan touch him at all right now. At first, Ryan’s worried he’s seen it—he’s being fidgety and strange, all of a sudden, edging closer to the crowded side of the platform—but then he looks up through his dark eyelashes and mumbles, “I took some money.” He takes a step closer, unable to make eye contact again.
Ryan can’t stop looking at him.
He took some money, too. A hundred dollars from his dad’s dresser—he refuses to feel bad about it. “How much?”
“Eighty bucks? I’m sorry, I know it’s not a lot—”
“Sick. So we have a hundred and eighty to work with. I’m thinking that’s a couple V/Line tickets to Melbourne and a night in a room that may or may not smell like piss, what do you reckon?”
“Oh.” Naim always looks so cute when he’s caught off guard. (Another one the entity loved to mirror.) “I mean… fuck, to be honest, that sounds awesome. Do motels still let you pay in cash?”
“I don’t know.” A mad, nervous little giggle slips out. “Wait, shit, we can’t stay somewhere that needs ID. I don’t even have a license.”
But Naim’s face has gotten serious again. “I think we should call Jessica. If we’re leaving town.”
“What? Why?”
“I dunno.” He shrugs. He looks so tired. “Doesn’t it feel like the right thing to do?”
“I don’t think we should be telling anyone where we’re going, Naim.”
“Nah, obviously, I just meant—you could offer to let her come with, if she wants to, or…” He trails off. Ryan’s not sure if he hears himself, how unlikely it sounds, or he simply gives up arguing because he no longer has the energy. “I just think you should mention it to her and see what she says.”
Ryan calls Jess at the hospital. He’s not really expecting her to answer, to be honest, but he’s only waiting for a minute or two before she accepts the call with a wary, “Yeah?”
Despite everything, fucking everything, that has gone down, it’s a strange rush of relief to hear her voice. “Um. Hi.”
“...Hi.”
Her voice doesn’t sound resentful; it sounds like Naim’s face looks. Ryan shuts his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
It’s nice, for this brief second, to be talking to someone who knows the specific terror of what he’s been going through. “Not really,” he answers honestly. “Are you?”
She laughs, sudden and explosive. “No. And you can’t be okay, either, you don’t—look. You don’t get it. I tried to tell you, it’s a fucking forever thing—”
“I know that.”
There’s a long pause.
“Are you still seeing your friend?”
Hearing Naim described as a friend makes something cold and ugly turn over in Ryan’s stomach. He’s unsure whether she means the real Naim or entity Naim, anyway. “Yes,” he tells her, hearing his own throat click when he swallows. “Look, I just called to tell you that we’re getting out of here. You can come if you want.”
“Fuck no,” she says, immediately, and yeah, that’s about what he expected. What he didn’t: “I might know a place you can crash if you’re heading up to Melbourne, though.” And yeah, of course she knows where they’re heading, where the fuck else could they be heading but Melbourne. “I can text you the address.”
“Thank you,” he chokes out. He tries not to think about it, the fact that someone who’s so—just a bus ride away—to his family knows where he could be staying.
“I still think you’re dickheads for sticking together,” Jess says suddenly. “But it’s your guys' funeral, so.” There is a long pause. “It’s probably what we would have ended up doing. If we’d had more time. So.” The pause is much longer this time. Ryan checks to see how long he’s been on the phone with her, and realises she’s hung up.
“We could go to New Zealand.”
Ryan snorts.
“What? That’s probably, like, a relatively cheap flight. That’s not a bad idea.”
“We could go to Sydney.”
Naim’s nose wrinkles. “Sydney?”
Ryan likes this. He likes the playfulness of it, the fact that it’s even a discussion—like Melbourne isn’t clearly their only option. He likes the way that Naim looks, perched fussily on the edge of the motel bed untying his shoes.
They’d been able to afford the V/Line tickets and this, just, by factoring fare evading into their bus ride tomorrow. Which suits Ryan just fine, he’s more than happy to spend a couple of hours watching out for Myki cops with Naim sleeping on his shoulder, wondering how unsubtle he’s being about huffing Naim’s hair. That sounds like a pretty good time, if he’s being honest.
“We could go to Paris,” says Ryan.
Naim laughs. It takes him a minute to figure out Ryan’s being serious. “Seriously? Why Paris?”
Ryan shrugs, offering, “‘s’just somewhere I’ve always wanted to go.”
“And do what?”
“I dunno, hospo? Same shit I’d be doing here probably, just in a prettier place. Don’t look at me like that. What, did you think we were gonna go to uni after all this? Can’t do shit without an ATAR.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, they don’t know what the fuck an ATAR is in Paris. I could learn French.”
“Is gay marriage even legal there?”
Beneath the strangeness of realising it might be the first time either of them have said out loud what they are is the strangeness of hearing the other word in Naim’s mouth, the more devastating one. Ryan feels his eyebrows raise. “Marriage, hey?”
Naim flushes bright red in an instant. “I didn’t mean—can you drop it?”
“Why? I wanna talk about the gay marriage laws in France.” Naim’s ears look so biteable. “Plus you always get hard when I tease you.”
“Ryan.”
Later, with the lights out—
Ryan likes the way he says it, when he says it again. Naim breathes Ryan like Ryan’s name is special, like it means something more than whatever the hell it means. He wishes it wasn’t so dark in here. He wants to see Naim, wants a clearer view than the one afforded by the light of the $2 shop candle that’s bleeding a puddle of wax onto the cheap paper coaster on the nightstand. Which is probably a terrible idea, but every time Ryan thinks about detaching from Naim’s mouth long enough to talk about it he feels a dread like preparing to throw his body off a cliff.
He can’t stop kissing him. They’re both exhausted. Ryan can’t imagine a reality where they’re supposed to be sleeping. He can’t imagine either of them being willing to stop this, to stop touching, panting into each other’s mouths with how badly they want it—he can’t imagine them wasting the opportunity. Ryan can’t stop thinking about how this is the first time they’ve been in a real bed together.
Well, technically, the entity had briefly been in bed with Ryan—but he refuses to think about that now. He can’t, not when the Naim he’s got under him is real and here and so much better in every conceivable way, panting and squirming like there’s no way for him to hold himself still without Ryan’s hands on him, like he’s out of control from just this, from just kissing.
“Fuck—” Naim tilts his head back. Ryan can just make him out in the candlelight. They’re both still dressed, as well as fully hard and straining in their boxers, unwilling to stop kissing or touching for long enough to bother. Naim’s dick jumps every time Ryan fucks up against it, pulses when he grinds down. It starts outright leaking when Ryan ruts up against his ass by accident, but it is plainly the hottest thing Ryan has ever seen so he does it again, immediately—a third time when Naim whines for it, almost completely inaudible beneath the heavy push of his breathing.
God. He’s still squirming, still moving around. Ryan wants to fuck him. He wonders, sick for a moment, if the other him got there first—but then Naim’s tugging him down by the back of his neck, almost as eager as the first time, a lurch of deja vu so sudden that Ryan’s stomach goes with it. Naim mumbles, “I want to—” Choked, cut-off, rushing to clarify, “We don’t have to do anything,” before turning bright red like what he’s come up with is too revealing after all. “Do—fuck, do you want—”
Ryan wants, badly, as a general rule. “Not here,” he mutters. He shuts Naim up by kissing him deep, not wanting to explain—which is how he ends up explaining anyway, mouth ahead of his own brain and rambling into Naim’s ear because Naim likes it—he likes it, being talked to, look at him, look at how badly he wants it, Ryan can’t fuck him in a shitty motel room because he needs to take hours with him. Fuck a condom, he wants to crawl inside of Naim’s skin. Apparently he doesn’t need to—Naim is clawing at his shoulders, and it’s almost too much, almost reminds him of that time the entity had put on Naim’s sweet shy voice and asked to hold on, but he pushes past the feeling now, determined not to let it in, not here, it isn’t welcome in bed with them.
Naim’s got this insane look on his face that’s like a heightened version of the look he’d gotten on the bus. Ryan has seen it maybe a handful of other times on him. Sometimes, at the mill, if Ryan had gotten him stoned first, just doing nothing but kissing him for close to an hour had been enough to induce an almost trance-like state of easy joy in him, turning lazy and agreeable and docile as a fucking kitten. He’s so—Ryan remembers feeling shocked, because it made him look so vulnerable, because it was so different. Different to how he was at school, different to anything Ryan had ever seen before. All he feels now is the telltale low curl of heat in his stomach that tells him they’re both wearing too many layers.
Ryan lets Naim take them both out of their underwear while he’s busy rucking Naim’s shirt up to his armpits. He means to touch him, to make him come right away, but he gets distracted by the sight of his own cock sitting bare against Naim’s belly, pale and yielding in the candlelight, black shadows on his ribcage white where Ryan’s fingernails have been.
He presses his palm down flat against Naim’s belly button and ruts forward, getting him wet. Naim’s dick jumps so sharply that it knocks into Ryan’s pinky finger.
“Oh fuck.” Ryan can’t think. “This is how deep it’ll be when I fuck you for real, yeah?” And he’s not even paying attention, dumbly grinding his cock down, chasing friction, why the fuck isn’t he paying attention, when just the barest amount of pressure from wrapping his fingers around Naim’s cock causes Naim to come all over himself.
Ryan looks at his face too late, sees the tail end of what would have been a fucking shattering expression, no doubt, as Naim is tucking his chin to his chest and fighting the way his body won’t let him stop shivering.
It is easily the prettiest thing Ryan has ever seen, regardless, the blush that goes down to Naim’s chest, his nipples hard, come spattered almost as high as his throat. It sets Ryan off a second later, mouth mashed to Naim’s throat and pinning him practically flat under Ryan’s body weight as he adds to the mess.
It’s a while before either of them speak again. Ryan likes this part, too, almost as much as he likes the easier parts: the parts where they don’t have to talk, where they get to just feel, to be wrapped up in each other.
“Maybe we could go to Paris,” says Naim.
Ryan sits up. “Actually? Say you’re not lying, cunt.” But Naim’s grinning. Both of them are grinning. That feral urge rises in his throat again, the urge to tackle Naim and pin him flat down on the bed. He always thought that urge was violence—that’s how it had come out with Hunter, and how it tried to come out with Naim—but now that he recognises it for exactly what it is, it’s far more satisfying to attack Naim’s stomach with open-mouthed kisses that make him duck and squirm and laugh breathlessly instead, to drag his teeth up over Naim’s ribs and picture what it would be like to swallow him whole.
When he gets to Naim’s throat, he just buries his face there and breathes him in, pinning Naim under his weight, not caring if Naim thinks he’s a weirdo. It’s the happiest he’s felt in… he doesn’t even know. Since before the deliverance healer, at least.
“Nah, fuck Paris,” he says, nipping at the underside of Naim’s chin to make him laugh again, the kind of startled laugh that doesn’t know how to be self-conscious, like the kind he lets out when he’s high. Oh, Ryan thinks, he loves him.
He can’t say it out loud, not yet, notyetnotyetnotyet, so he chooses to be honest about the rest of it instead, says, “We’ll figure out Melbourne first. Yeah? Then—I dunno, then, maybe we unfuck Paris or something. We’ll go wherever you wanna go.”
“I wanna go where you wanna go,” Naim whispers, unbearably honest-sounding. Scratch that, thinks Ryan.
This is the happiest he’s ever been.