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When Danny was eleven, he became suddenly camera shy.
Until then, he’d always been a good sport whenever his mom or dad or grandmother pulled out a camera and pointed it in his direction. He’d stop whatever he was doing and grin, happy and bright, and wave at the camera, running off as soon as he heard the ‘click’ to get back to the more important job of playing with his brothers and sisters and cousins.
But the summer he turned eleven, Danny changed. A camera turned his way caused him to look away, tuck his chin into his chest, and make a quick getaway. His grandmother, especially, had a hard time with this new development.
“Come on, ku`u maka, please? For Tutu?” she’d beg until Danny would look up briefly, just long enough to give her an awkward, stiff smile before running away, trying to ignore the guilty feeling her disappointed sigh gave him. He loved his grandmother.
If he’d put much thought into it, maybe he would have wondered if his sudden fear of cameras had anything to do with his realization that same summer that he was only attracted to other boys. It hadn’t been a surprise, exactly – he’d been suspecting it since third grade when all the other boys, including Jackson, started acting like fools at recess to try to get Lydia’s attention while Danny did backflips and handstands whenever Mr. Roberts (young and far too attractive to be an elementary school principal) came onto the playground.
If he’d thought about that, it might have occurred to him to wonder if his sudden fear of having his picture taken was really a fear of the camera somehow capturing the real him, secrets and all; a fear of having people see the one thing he’d been trying so hard to hide.
But Danny’s family was far too large and far too close to keep that kind of secret for long. By the time he’d turned fourteen, everyone – even Tutu – knew. The world didn’t stop spinning, the skies didn’t rain fire, and no one stopped loving him. He knew how lucky he was; knew that there were too many people who don’t get that kind of love and support when they come out.
Danny had always been a loving, affectionate kid, quick and generous with hugs and kisses, and his family’s unwavering support had only made him more so. He felt sure of himself and his place in the family. They gave him confidence, made him feel comfortable with who he was. And yet still, he’d continued to shy away from having his picture taken. Despite his self-assurance, it still made him feel vulnerable, raw in ways he didn’t know how to explain, like somehow, with one click of the shutter, a different Danny would be revealed to everyone; a Danny who didn’t belong, who didn’t fit in, who wasn’t still ‘one of the guys’.
For a while, it was his Achilles’ heel, this camera phobia, but he quickly learned to work around the problem. It was easy, really. For his fourteenth birthday, he asked for a camera of his own, and then he became the viewer rather than the subject. At parties and family gatherings, he carried his camera like a shield, a mask, holding it to his face, hiding behind it as he snapped pictures of everyone else. In the process, he developed a genuine love of photography, but he still squirmed uncomfortably at the thought of anyone photographing him.
And then one day… things changed again.
Matt had been the one who caused that change. His camera perpetually pointed at Allison, Matt had made Danny think of things he hadn’t let himself think before, like how awesome it would be if he were the focus of Matt’s attention rather than Allison. How awesome it would be if someone thought that he, Danny, was so gorgeous, so intriguing, so completely perfect that they needed to record that perfection to keep forever, to pull out and look at again and again, to smile over and sigh over and lust over.
But Matt hadn’t felt that way about Danny. After his death, when Matt’s camera was found, the memory card had been filled almost entirely with pictures of Allison. Hell, if what Stiles said was true, there’d been more pictures of McCall on there than there’d been pictures of Danny. So no, Matt hadn’t been what Danny needed, what he’d wanted. But that didn’t mean that no one ever would. Right? Tutu always said that there would be someone special one day, someone just for Danny.
Lately, Danny had been feeling pretty sure that she was right about that.
Eyes closed against the morning sun streaming in, Danny stretched and smiled, burrowing his face into the warm pillow beneath his head. At the sound of a soft gasp behind him, he smiled bigger (knowing that the sheet had slipped down over the curve of his hip) and stretched harder (knowing that would make it slip more).
“Come on, you fucking tease, turn over.” At the sound of the soft laughter that followed that less-than-polite request, Danny turned his head just enough to grin at Isaac, but made no move to roll over.
“No way!” Danny laughed. He nodded his head at the old Polaroid camera in Isaac’s hands. “You’re not taking a picture of my junk.”
Isaac crawled onto the bed, his knees making the mattress dip, and kissed his way up Danny’s side, over his ribs, pausing to tickle what he could reach of Danny’s nipple with the point of his tongue, then moving to his arm, up his shoulder, and ending with a tug of Danny’s ear lobe between gentle teeth.
“Not your junk, I swear,” Isaac said. His eyes were open and honest and startlingly blue and Danny felt himself falling, yielding. Isaac smiled, shyly now, and ran a fingertip slowly down the bridge of Danny’s nose, then back up, then down again, before leaning in and pressing his face against the side of Danny’s neck. “Just your face, I promise. You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
Danny felt his heart stutter in his chest, knew that Isaac felt it, too. Heard it. “And then you’ll let me take one of you, too?” He felt Isaac’s nod against his cheek. “Okay, then,” he whispered back, his lips brushing against the swirls of Isaac’s ear, then even more quietly, “Okay, ku`u maka.”
Isaac stood, pointing the camera as Danny twisted his body around to face him. “What does that mean?” he asked, a crooked, sweetly confused smile on his face. The morning sunlight filled the room now, making everything glow, making Isaac’s eyes clear and crystalline and his hair golden bright.
Danny sucked in a breath. “I think it means… that I love you.” Isaac’s surprise was as beautiful as his happiness. He grinned and Danny grinned back.
The camera clicked.