Neon Rush {M/M} ❀

Ch.22.2 Missing Boyhood Excised as Inaccessible

In the movie, a goat's leg slams onto the sunroof of a jeep, and Gray startles hard enough he knocks Zef's teeth together.

"Shit."

Zef winces, rubbing his jaw. "Is the movie freaking you out?"

"No," Gray says sullenly. "Still don't know what this has to do with chickens, is all."

But as the movie continues, Gray's bravado deteriorates. Once or twice, he turns his face into Zef's neck. His hand spasms to clutch Zef's arm. By the time they get to the bit where velociraptors stalk two kids in a kitchen, Gray's half buried in Zef's shoulder.

One of the raptors jumps on a counter and Zef says, "See, just like the chicken."

Gray says, "You're more insane 'n me, thinking those're the same."

Zef cranes his neck to study Gray's face. He's got a deep crease between his brows and his body bunched tighter than a corkscrew.

"You're scared," Zef says.

"Ain't scared."

"We can turn it off."

"I said I ain't scar—"

One of the velociraptors screeches towards a girl trying to hide in a cabinet, and Gray flinches when the raptor impacts her reflection in stainless steel.

Zef bites his lip to keep from squealing. He pauses the movie and props himself up on his elbow. Pins and needles race up that arm, having lost sensation while Gray used it for a pillow, but he doesn't care. Gray gives him a sullen look, caught out.

"You're so fucking cute," Zef says.

Immediately, he could kick himself. Men like Gray don't appreciate being called 'cute.' Tattooed men with sneers for smiles. Trans men, too. Cute sometimes came with a slant of infantilization. Feminising.

Gray doesn't protest. Slowly, he flushes to his ears and a smile tries to tug its way out from lips caught between teeth.

He's not offended. He's shy. Flattered even.

It never occurred to Zef that was an option. Gray kept his softer side well-guarded. Only the hard edges on show. Maybe a youthful, ungilded Gray had been bashful and sweet. He'd said he couldn't remember what he dreamed of, but maybe it wasn't car chases and drunken bar brawls. Maybe those things were part of him now, but once upon a time he'd wanted a thing of fairy tales.

Wrong city for stuff like that, but Zef finds it painfully endearing, finds himself hoping he can fulfil that secret wish. "We can turn the movie off if you want."

Gray stops biting his lip to speak, but the words come on the crest of staggered breath. "That's not what I want."

Heat rises. It glows in Zef's chest and spreads into his throat, making words harder. "Or we can keep watching—"

Gray silences him with two fingers to his lips. Zef's heartbeat drowns out the distant noise of a car alarm and nightclub bass and a room service bot's squeaky wheel. Other than his own pulse, he can only hear Gray's shallow breath. He looks meaningfully between Zef's eyes and his lips. Halting, as if second-guessing himself before he can commit, he rises onto his elbows. Moves to replace his fingers with his mouth.

Zef only has the presence of mind to think Oh, before Gray kisses him. His lips press so gently, and then Zef is thinking oh, oh, oh with a lance of want taking him through the chest. Gray kisses like he's trying something new and frightening. Like it's their first.

His mouth parting from Zef's makes a sound so ephemerally intimate, the ghost of it lingers. He looks at Zef with hooded eyes, tongue running the perimeter of his lips, heartbeat thudding under Zef's hand. His expression is hard to place, a bit like when he held an inky needle over Zef's skin.