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After they turned eighteen things got a little easier. They could go to the cops in Melbourne, say things like: yes I ran away from home, I’m okay, I don’t ever wanna go back to Bandee, I don’t want my parents or anybody from that town knowing where I am, so can you take down the missing person alert?
Overnight, they were no longer sleeping in parks and roads and bus terminals in sleeping bags, nicking supplies off wallets and unattended milk bars and woolies, hopping from one town to another. They were referred to a youth shelter where they stayed with other boys, set-up in a work study programme to complete their VCE while getting actual money from payouts and being employed.
Everything was great, except that they couldn’t share a room with each other. Naim’s on the second floor, Ryan’s on the fifth.
“Boys, I’m afraid this is house rules if you are staying here. You can make new friends beside each other.”
At first, they had decided to suck it up, agreeing that coming out was not safe yet given everything, and now that both of them were armed with lighters and constantly surrounded by people, why not?
After one too many frantic handjobs in the public bathroom in the metro because boys you are only allowed to use the toilets on your floor, Naim declared, “We are getting our own place,” just as Ryan said, “I rather be on the streets than be apart from you.”
They are nineteen now, living in a tiny rental room in an apartment with three other queer runaways, because after Ryan didn’t want to approach the adjunct lecturer with green hair and they/them pronouns they had met in one of their extra-curricular courses in school for advice, Naim who still had that unbelievable hope in people, admitted he wrote them an email using the shelter’s loaned laptop. If there was at least five of us in a town of a thousand there has gotta be at least one gay community in a city of millions, and isn’t Melbourne supposed to be woke? I swear I didn’t out you I just said my boyfriend and I needed help - look, I promised I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you Ryan Whelan you can hate me for this but don’t fucking leave please I’m sorry I’m so, so sorry-
(Ryan had kissed Naim gently outside the Woolies before their night shift, where everyone passing by could see and had the decency to leave them alone.
“I said I forgive you already, remember? I promise I will spend the rest of my life to make you believe it.”)
They even secured the master, because dual part-time income beats all the other single broke applicants. The first night they had moved in they were giddy with ecstasy - they fucked on every surface of their new room, from the ensuite bathroom to the windows to the bed, poorly stifling their noises with each other’s skin and mouth, and only got a polite “can you give a heads up to put our earplugs on” from Isabel in the group chat.
Life’s good. Other than the entity stalking them to kill them dead when they are alone, wearing the face of their love.
In the streets there were more than supernatural entities to be wary of, and they stuck to each other like glue. Not that It still wasn’t a problem - there were many slip ups where they escaped with bloody clawmarks and bruises, the worst of which was Ryan’s crushed fingers they had to then pay a night shift nurse half their pooled cash to set and not snitch them to the police.
They learned and adapted - by the time they were in the city, they rarely had incidents. They were still wary in the shelter, sneaking their lighters in even when those rules expressly barred them, but the micromanagement of the staff helped to prevent them from ever being alone. Naim would see Not-Ryan around sometimes, staring intensely at him in a distance through the windows of buses, trains, the vocational institution where he had to attend, the storage room in Woolies. The first few nights without Ryan pressed by his side Naim had woken up screaming, pissing off his bunkmate who thankfully was understanding enough to only leave Naim with a scathing word or two.
In their new place, they knew they still had to be careful. At least three lighters on hand at all times. Light it up once whenever they meet after being apart. Light the candle by their door when they enter. Leave the bathroom door open. Lock the windows.
They couldn’t explain all these to their housemates either. Quinn had made a joke about fire hazard once when she saw the lit candle by their door, and Naim got it into his head that leaving an abnormal amount of lighters, lighter fluids, and candles around the apartment would probably be unwelcome.
Yet since they moved in, It had been quiet. No stalker waiting for them at the end of the hallway. No shrieks when Naim flicks the lighter on as Ryan comes close. It’s the same for Ryan too. It’s as if the entity disappeared, leaving behind an uncomfortable foreboding sense that It is still watching despite hidden away.
He knows It would get better and better at mimicking overtime. That It is designed to be who you want the most, and there is no reality where he can truly tell Ryan and Not-Ryan apart at this point, other than by hurting it with fire. So he rather it be a creep in a distance outside than disappearing altogether.
Naim waits by the window while Ryan gets ready in the bathroom. He watches a lady with blonde hair cross the street, holding onto the palm of a boy no older than seven. When the boy attempts to break into a run, she yanks him back to her side quickly, yelling “stop that!” so sharply the boy bursts into tears.
She picks him up. He doesn’t struggle, accepts his mother’s hug and sniffles into her shoulder as if all he wanted was to be held in the first place.
Arlene had Naim when she was sixteen. Maybe she was just never ready to love him when he became older than the age she first had him.
“You see it?” Ryan asks behind him, curling his arms around Naim’s waist.
He shakes his head, sinking into his boyfriend’s warmth and breathes. Ryan smells like clean laundry and the apple shampoo they share. He smells nice, but he misses the waft of tobacco Naim has long associated with him.
A second later Deena is banging on their door. “We are gonna be late you cunts!”
Right, the party downstairs. The whole block’s invited.
“I will get it,” Ryan says, pecking Naim’s cheek as he goes to retrieve the stash of weed hidden in their closet. Their gift to the crowd.
Naim sighs. He goes to the bathroom to get ready as well. He hears their door open, then close with a click. When it opens again, Naim blurts out, “What if we don’t go?”
“You’re in luck then.”
Ryan is smirking at their door when Naim turns around, mischief dancing in his eyes. His hands are empty.
“What did you do?”
“I may have given Deena our stash and told her that my boy is feeling sick and as a good boyfriend I have to take care of him.”
Naim laughs. “You dickhead. Now everyone thinks we’re screwing.”
Ryan steps closer, pinning Naim into the wall with nothing but a thigh pressed against Naim’s boner, and a teasing finger under Naim’s chin.
Fuck him. Ryan’s hot. Ryan knows he’s hot. It’s the most infuriating thing about him. Naim has seen him at his worst and grossest and still he’s the sexiest man in the entire world.
He swallows when Ryan whispers into his ear. “Then we should just make those thoughts a reality, yea?”
Naim gives in and kisses him first, moans when Ryan’s tongue sweeps hungrily into his mouth. His quick fingers unbutton Naim’s flannel shirt, then yanks it off his body. Next is his pants. Ryan’s so good with his hands - unbuckling his belt and tugging the jeans down his hips in one swift motion.
“Take it off,” Ryan groans impatiently, sucking bruises into Naim’s neck.
“You too,” Naim rasps, tugging the henleys from Ryan’s hip, feeling for the skin underneath.
“Later,” Ryan says, then drops to his knees.
Naim slams his head back against the wall when Ryan takes him whole into his throat.
“Slow down!”
He grabs Ryan’s hair and tries to hold him in place, stuck between pulling him further in because he’s sucking him so hard Naim’s knees are buckling or back out so that he can breathe or he’s gonna come in seconds.
Ryan takes that decision away from him anyway, making him fuck his throat while looking up at him with those wide gleeful eyes and Naim shoots down his throat as fast as he feared.
“I fucking hate you,” Naim grumbles when his brain turns back online. Still kneeling, Ryan looks pleased. His hand is on Naim’s hips, and Naim realises that Ryan’s supporting his weight with how his legs have turned to jelly.
“Let me-“ Naim weakly reaches out to Ryan’s still clothed pants to return the favour.
Ryan shakes his head. He stands up, holds Naim’s stare as he spits a nasty mix of saliva and come into his hand.
“Let’s go,” Ryan tugs him by his wrist towards the bed.
“What are you doing?” He follows him anyway, guided to be on his hands and knees. It isn’t fair. Naim’s naked and trembling with an orgasm. Ryan is still dressed.
“You’ll see, darling. Don’t move, don’t touch yourself, don’t cover your mouth. I want to hear you.”
A kiss to the base of his spine, then oh.
Wet fingers dip into his hole, pushing that gross mix from his palm into him, then a tongue.
“Wait- Ryan, Ryan!”
Ryan eats him out like he’s starving, sucking at his rim and teasing inside at where he’s sensitive, then alternates stretching him with his fingers, fucking him wetly while biting and sucking marks into everywhere he can reach, the swell of his ass cheek, the crease where inner thigh meets his groin, his perineum, his balls, back to his rim stretched taut by curled fingers. Naim tries to crawl away, and Ryan pulls him back with a steel grip on his hip.
“Let me have this,” Ryan begs, “let me have you.”
Naim, writhing and clawing into the sheets, screams I’m yours, and yes, yes, yes-
And comes hard into the sheets.
“What. The fuck.”
Ryan snickers into the meat of his thigh. Naim pushes him into the bed so that he’s now sprawled on top of him, then holds Ryan’s face under the light. Studies his blue eyes, swollen lips. The affection screaming from every pore of his skin. Yes, this is who he desires most in this world. Who else can it be? Naim licks into Ryan’s mouth, tasting the both of them, what they did. Ryan returns with fervour, swallowing his kisses the way he was eating him out.
Naim pulls away to ask, “That was so good. What’s gotten into you?”
“You like it?”
“I love it. I love everything you do.” He litters kisses all over Ryan’s preening face, his jaw, his neck.
“You wanna fuck me?” he whispers lowly, licking the curve of his ear that makes Ryan shudder.
“We don’t have lube.”
Ryan groans as Naim grinds against his stiff dick still trapped in his pants, dirtying the cotton with cumstains.
“Don’t need it. You made me so wet and loose baby.”
“Please, oh my god.”
It hurts a little when Naim forces the head of Ryan’s cock in. Maybe relying on spit and his own cum was a dumb idea, but Ryan’s staring at him like he’s the fucking sun while Naim’s perched on top of his lap, hands gripping onto Ryan’s shoulders, and guiding himself down to take him inside. Naim’s so lost in it, the pressure of something stretching him, pushing inside him deep, the oversensitivity of already orgasming twice, Ryan’s tightening hold on his hips, that he does not hear the door knob twist open.
“Naim?”
The first mistake was letting the door close behind him when he left their room to pass Deena the weed.
“They left without us?” Naim said, locking the door behind him as they left the empty apartment with Ryan.
“You’re quick with washing up.”
“I don’t take as long as you ya fucking peacock.”
As they walked down the stairs, Ryan dragged Naim into a one-armed headlock, giving him a quick noogie before pecking him on the cheek. Naim punched him lightly in the stomach just as he let him go, grinning ear to ear.
“Hey,” Ryan blurted, “What if we don’t leave?”
“You wanna stay in our room, and what? Fuck all night?”
“Yea,” Ryan stared at him heatedly. “Whatever you want. Just you and me.”
Naim blinked his wide doe eyes, pretending to object, “We ran out of lube.”
“I’ll literally run to the corner right now.”
Naim pulled him down by the neck and kissed him hard. They were just a few steps from the party, the music pulsing despite them standing a few meters away from the closed door.
“Go. I’ll deal with the neighbours.” Naim said, taking the weed from Ryan’s hand. “What should I tell them though?”
“That you wanna fuck your boyfriend.”
“Fuck off.”
Ryan slapped his ass when they parted ways.
The second mistake, was forgetting that the corner store was closed for the week.
The last mistake, the most egregious one, was not going home straight.
Instead, Ryan took a fifteen minute detour into the next street, to the 7-Eleven. Grabbed lube, condoms, a lighter and a pack.
When he returned to their block, Deena, Isabel, and Quinn were leaning against the wall, sharing a joint.
“Snuck out?” Quinn asked.
“Got some meds,” Ryan lied. “Naim’s not well.”
“Oh, no wonder I didn’t see him.”
“He didn’t pass you the pot?”
“Nah.”
Ryan stilled. “Gotta go,” he said, and sprinted up to their apartment, ignoring the byes behind him.
When he dumps the grocery bag on the floor to shove the door to their room open, only to see his boyfriend sprawled naked on the bed, damp and glowing with sex and covered in marks that are not his, his mind turns blank. Muscle memory kicks in - he takes out his lighter, and lights it.
A sharp shriek, and something shoves Naim away, who flops like a limp doll to the side of the bed.
Then, silence.
The flame flickers hot, burning the tip of his fingers. Naim gingerly takes the lighter from their bedside table and lights it too. Immediately, Ryan exhales. He lights the extinguished candle by their door, and returns to Naim’s pale face.
“Are you okay?” Ryan sits by the bed, reaching out to cup Naim’s cheek.
Naim closes his eyes and curls into a ball.
“I didn’t notice the candle.”
“It’s okay - you aren’t hurt?”
Naim shakes his head, asking instead, “When did you leave our room?”
Ryan pauses to remember. “Fuck. You went to the bathroom?”
“Yea.”
“I thought you left the room with me. Me and, not-you, went down to the party together. I asked if we should skip, It told me to go get lube. I went to- Jesus, you were together with it for so long. What happened?”
Naim drags his hands down his face, looking resigned.
“We were fucking.”
“What do you mean?”
“You- I thought you blew me against the wall. Then we made out and you ate me out in the bed and fingered me till I came, again. Then I got on top to ride you. What the fuck do you want me to say?”
From where Ryan is he can see the creature has left its imprints everywhere, marks scattered across Naim’s pretty skin like a sex constellation.
“You let It fuck you raw?”
Naim’s face is flushed with anger and embarrassment as he jerks away from Ryan’s touch, “Yes, fuck! I didn’t know it wasn’t you. I didn’t fucking cheat.”
“I’m pissed, not because I think you cheated, and for the record I don’t believe you did,” Ryan says carefully, as carefully as he can when crazy unidentified emotions bubbles in his heart, threatening to spill. “I’m pissed, because you wanted me to fuck you like that and It got the chance to have you.”
This is clearly not what Naim expected to come out of Ryan’s mouth. “You’re jealous? Seriously? It wants to kill me! Kill us!”
“It also tricked me into leaving you alone and instead of killing either of us in the thirty minutes we were apart It chose to make you come at least twice! And was in the process of making you come again! What the fuck did you expect me to think?”
“Jesus.” Naim drops his head into Ryan’s shoulder, then grabs his hand, interlacing their fingers together.
“It never used to… Huh.”
“Make you come?”
Naim huffs, then shrugs. “Yea.”
“It wants you.”
Naim scoffs. “Stop being crazy. It watched the both of us for way too long. It knew what I wanted, and knew how you would give it to me. It could only get this far, because It learnt from you.”
“And what did you want?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Naim sits up to stare at Ryan. “I wanted you to blow me. I wanted you to eat me out. I wanted you to fuck me.”
“What else?”
“I wanted you to come inside me. I wanted you to hold me down and make me take it.”
“Did It?”
Naim gazes at him with irritation. “Yes. Because the real thing keeps running his mouth. Should’ve just stayed behind the door to listen and learn.”
Ryan pins Naim to the bed, forcing his legs apart. He tugs his own shirt off, kicks off his pants and boxers, and meets Naim’s heady lust-filled eyes. Without warning, he shoves two fingers into Naim’s hole.
It’s wet. “You let It come inside you?
Naim’s grits his teeth to keep his moans in when Ryan leisurely fingers him. “Nah - It was just watching me.”
“But you would have,” Ryan says, and pushes his cock in. Naim groans loudly, tensing hard at the sudden intrusion. Ryan rolls one of Naim’s nipples with his thumb.
“Did It touch you here?”
“No.”
Ryan leans down to take a nub in his mouth. Naim has a hand resting on the back of Ryan’s head, a loose grip on Ryan’s curls. He hisses when Ryan bites or makes a particularly hard suck. He works at torturing the nub until it is red and stinging then repeats the same process to the other one. By the time he’s satisfied, Naim who has been warming Ryan’s length the whole time is trembling and leaking pre come on his stomach.
“It’s gonna hurt when I wear a shirt,” Naim complains.
“Good.” He pushes Naim’s legs up higher so he can kiss his lips, thrusting slowly into Naim’s heat at the same time.
“Faster,” Naim moans.
It knew what I wanted, and knew how you would give it to me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. His mind is still reeling - he doesn’t know how to differentiate himself from this thing that knows and learns. The fact that this entity wants to hurt Naim had been the clearest difference. But now, Ryan’s not even sure.
“You know,” Naim says, “that night it broke into my house back in Bandee, it stuffed its fist into my mouth. Kept tryna choke me.”
Naim’s a loose feral thing when he forgets to be terrified. He forgets all the layers he hides himself in. A little tongue in his mouth and his eyes gets glazed, the noises slip out of his red mouth, his thighs part in anticipation, the front of underwear soaked. God he gets so wet. He gets so loud. Ryan have come in his pants just watching Naim squirm and whine in his arms like he would die if Ryan doesn’t touch his cock.
“If you aren’t going to do anything you should have just let it fuck me.”
They are both cooked in the head. Ryan loves him desperately.
He pulls out, flips Naim over, and digs into his knees and starts fucking Naim. The room fills with sharp slapping of skin, and Naim who has always been loud, moans like he’s paid and shouts curses when Ryan drills into his prostate.
“Would you like that?” Ryan grits his teeth, trying not to come so quickly, “Two of me, one in your mouth, one in your ass. Or both of us, sharing this hole.”
“Jesus fuck.”
It had gripped Naim’s hips hard enough to leave bruises in the shape of finger imprints. Ryan squeezes over those marks. Of course they match his own hand. He wants Naim to only remember Ryan’s - that this pain, this pleasure, are all only his to give.
“It’s alright you can’t tell us apart. I will make you remember.”
Ryan slides his hand upwards to the base of Naim’s throat, and feels Naim shiver and clench around his cock.
“You want?” Ryan asks quietly. He slows his movements to give Naim a reprieve to think.
Naim sighs shakily. When he replies his voice is sure, “Yea.”
Ryan speeds up his thrusts, slowly tightens the hand at the base of Naim’s neck when he sees he’s getting closer, watches Naim’s face closely as his face turns red, his eyes wide and glassy, mouth gasping as oxygen thins.
When Naim finally comes over himself it’s with a pained whimper. Ryan releases his throat immediately, soothes him by rubbing circles around his hip and whispering, “Did so good, baby. I’m so proud of you. Are you okay?”
Naim pushes his hips back, clenching around Ryan. “Come now,” he demands, voice fucked.
Ryan pulls Naim’s face towards him, breathing into Naim as he chases his own orgasm. It doesn’t take him much, already worked up with Naim’s tight hole sucking him in and pulsing around him. He slides his fingers towards Naim’s mouth anyway, who sucks them into his mouth greedily.
When Ryan finally comes, he bites hard into Naim’s nape, right over the bruise It left.
Naim releases Ryan’s fingers from his mouth, leaving behind his own deep indents. He huffs with a little mirth, “Feel better?”
Ryan does. But he’s also petty, so he shimmies down, leaving little kisses as he goes, and puts his mouth on Naim’s sore rim.
Naim winces. “Ry? I-I- I don’t think I can-“
“You can do anything baby,” he reassures, and goes back to cleaning Naim’s hole with his tongue and sucking his come out. Naim’s spent dick lays limp in the sheets, and Ryan starts to pump the soft length, pleased when it twitches weakly.
“It-it hurts!”
“Tell me to stop.”
Naim whines, buries his face into the sheets and bucks into Ryan’s hand. Ryan takes pity on him, loosening his grip but not pausing the strokes. When he’s sure that there’s no more come leaking out of Naim’s reddened hole he goes to lap up the rest of the dripping mess on his body. When Naim finally jerks with a cry, Ryan is sucking the crown of his cock like a lollipop. It’s barely come, thin and salty. He pries Naim’s mouth open and spits it in. Makes him swallow, kisses his dazed eyes and swollen lips, praising him while he slowly comes back to the real world.
“Was it too much?” Ryan asks.
“I’m good.” Then, “Are you still mad?”
“I was never mad at you.”
Naim’s eyes are closed when he says, “I hate that this could still happen. I’m sorry.”
They both know what he’s apologising for.
“Naim Reid, you know I will never leave you, right?”
“Obviously,” Naim cracks an eye open, flashing Ryan a weak smile. “We are in it together. Forever.”
They have survived so much in that three years they have known each other, that the person they were before they met became unrecognisable.
But that’s not just what Ryan meant. He wants Naim to be happy and free, but if his guilt keeps him by his side forever, he’s selfish enough to accept it. For the longest time, the fact that Naim’s entity had looked like him soothed the ebbing anxiety in his heart that Naim stayed not because he likes him. Then It stops showing up. And now it’s back, doing the most to fuck his boyfriend, and the first thing Ryan feels is relief, that Naim still wants him.
Yea, it’s Ryan’s fault that Naim is still hurting.
“Naim, I love you.”
Naim’s eyes widen immediately, shiny with unshed tears. He opens his mouth to speak, panics when the words refuse to come out. Ryan reaches out for him immediately, and Naim crawls into his arms, presses his face into Ryan’s neck, folds his body small for Ryan to wrap his own limbs around him. Ryan wraps the blanket over the both of them, and holds Naim tight, the way he knows helps when Naim goes non-verbal. The lights are still on, but he can’t be bothered to get up to switch them off. They will fall asleep in this lit room, and get a earful about electricity bills tomorrow. Who cares, Ryan is holding onto the most precious thing in the world. He should have told him the three words sooner.
When he hears muffled mumbling he pats Naim’s back gently. “Shhh, it’s okay, you don’t have to say anything,” Ryan nuzzles into Naim’s soft hair. “Baby, mine. My baby. I love you. I love you. Shhh.”
***
When Ryan wakes up, Naim says, “I wanted to tell you to lock the door, dickhead. Isabel walked in and saw your bare ass.
Also, I love you too.”