by Roan Parrish
“You don’t need to make your major contribution to the discipline in the last three weeks of your first year at NYU, Leo,” he’d said. “Just pick something—it doesn’t matter what—and do a good job with it. If you have grand ambitions to create the…” He searched for an incisive example and came up adorably short. His physics knowledge was basically nil. “…to create whatever, then write your ideas down in that damn raggedy-ass notebook you’re always hauling around and get back to them when you write your dissertation or whatever. You’re wasting time you could just be doing it. And honestly, you’re driving me fucking nuts trying to turn my can openers and shit into your physics project.”
I knew he was right. That this was just one project for one class, and as far as that went, it didn’t technically matter what I did.
“Ooh, okay, I know,” Will said when it was clear I was still sulking about it. “You could measure how fast Superman would have had to fly around the world backward to actually reverse time. Cartoon physics, get it?” He winked at me.
I smiled at him. “I think there’s a book about that, actually. That explains all the physics of comic books and superheroes and stuff. Pretty cool.”
“Soooo geeky.” But I could tell he thought it was cool too. Then he was off, listing what seemed to be an experiment I could do from every sci-fi show or movie we’d watched together.
“Oh! You could do like an Orphan Black thing, and—”
“Cloning is biology, not physics,” I said, and I kissed him to shut him up.
He narrowed his eyes at me like I was spoiling all his fun, then brightened and shoved down his pants.
“I’ve got it,” he said with a wicked grin. “You can measure my dick with your mouth.” He waggled his eyebrows and tilted his hips toward me as I cracked up.
Now, standing with my hallmates in the middle of the night, the stars splashed high above us through the clouds, I imagined Will asleep five miles away, the same moonlight sneaking through the window to alight on his hair, pillow-mussed, or the soft curve of his shoulder, or the groove of his spine. And I liked that, at the level of starlight and moonlight, something connected us even when we weren’t together. Will would give me immense shit if I said something like that out loud, but it was maybe why my project did matter to me. Because the laws that governed Will’s can opener were the laws that governed the moon, that governed both of us, even miles apart.
Gretchen came to stand beside me. “I know what we have to do.” Her voice was low and calm as always, but she grabbed my arm with uncharacteristic excitement.
“Uh… go back to bed?” I asked hopefully.
“Sunrise. Yoga.”
Sunrise yoga was more myth than reality. I knew it existed since Tonya always announced it. I knew there were true devotees who showed up every morning, ready to welcome the sunrise with yoga. But though I had sometimes randomly woken up early in Holiday because I couldn’t sleep, I was not a morning person. And now that I routinely didn’t get enough sleep, I was certainly never up before I had to be.
“Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on, Leo, when will we have another chance?”
“Like… every morning that isn’t today.”
“Yes, but we won’t. We’re already up! And the class starts at five. That means we have an hour to change, get breakfast, and get to the gym. Besides, the year’s almost over and we’ve been saying we were going to go since September.”
This wasn’t strictly true. Gretchen had been saying she wanted to go since September and I had routinely smiled and nodded, assuming she was aware that this meant I had no interest whatsoever.
I opened my mouth to tell her absolutely not. That I had too much work the next day. That I was tired. That the idea of doing yoga in the dark before dawn sounded like a total suckfest. But she was holding my arm, her white-blonde hair escaping its nighttime braid in frizzy puffs and curls, like the plants on the High Line, and her strangely colorless eyes looked like twin moons, yellow-gray and luminous, and I started to smile.
“Okay, sure. Why not.”
“Yes!” Gretchen’s excitement was reward enough. She squeezed my arm in triumph and tipped her chin up to the night sky.
As we walked down 14th Street in our yoga clothes, sipping coffee and eating cinnamon bagels, Gretchen said, “It’s strange to see the city this early in the morning. It’s so empty, it’s like everything’s still asleep.” And I nodded at her, but was struck by the intensely dislocating feeling that hit me whenever I was reminded how staggeringly different people’s impressions of the same thing could be.
If Tonya was surprised to see us, she didn’t show it, just nodded warmly and smiled. There were only three other people there, clearly regulars by the way they greeted each other silently and settled onto their mats with none of the chatter of our usual classes.
The yoga studio had windows on one side, and Tonya had us positioned so that we were facing them. Her voice was serene, almost lulling, where usually she had more energy.
“In the Yoga Sutras, we find the principles of Abhyasa and Vairagya. Practice and nonattachment. Practice means always showing up to do the work. Putting forth effort. Nonattachment means letting go of the outcome of that work. Letting go of the things that prevent us from seeing ourselves clearly—fear or pain, expectation or pleasure. We observe those things, and then we let them pass us by.
“Together, we can express Abhyasa and Vairagya as ‘Never give up and always surrender.’ Always keep striving in the direction of what you want to bring into being. But recognize when you’ve done all you can and have reached the moment to surrender to the outcomes of that work. The moment when doing more becomes detrimental to your efforts.
“In practical terms this might look like riding your bike up a hill: you have to pedal hard, hard, hard enough to get the bike to the top of the hill. But then, when you start to crest the hill, you can stop pedaling. Stop exerting effort and surrender to the way gravity will carry you down the other side. Recognize that in fact the attempt to keep pedaling when your wheels are moving so fast is dangerous and won’t serve you.
“This is the balance. Never giving up in working to achieve what you desire. Always remembering that sometimes the outcome of your work can look different than you expected. And sometimes it might give you things you couldn’t have anticipated. Let’s practice with that in mind today.”
I’d been thinking about my physics project so single-mindedly that physics was where my brain went naturally. Though I’d heard Tonya use the phrase “never give up and always surrender” before, the bike metaphor somehow made it stunningly clear. Because that was just physics. But as I moved through sun salutations—which definitely felt a bit more salutatory in advance of the actual sun—I kept thinking of her words in terms of Will.
How I’d done the work. So much damn work, if I was being honest. And it hadn’t gotten me what I’d wanted. It hadn’t gotten me Will. Not an acknowledged monogamous relationship with Will, anyway.
But the part about surrendering to the unexpected things that the work can bring about stuck with me. Will telling me that I was his best friend. Telling me that I was the first one he called when shit went down with Claire. That I was the one he wanted to tell when good things happened. Showing me that he trusted me more than he trusted other people, let me in farther than he let in others. That he cared about me.
I wondered how many more things like that I’d dismissed or undervalued, too distracted by the fact that I wasn’t getting the results I’d set my sights on. How often important, meaningful, real things had slipped away from me, unacknowledged, as I measured only their distance from what I’d wanted.
They were unrecoverable losses. But maybe things could be different going forward.
I could be different.
We moved from Standing Split to Warrior III and finally settled in Warrior II, sinking deeper and deeper into the pose as the sun began to peek up over the buildings, spilling its rays dow
n on the waking city below.
At the end of the class, the sun had fully risen, appearing to rest in my hands like a child’s ball, as if we’d dragged it from the very depths of the cosmos with our outstretched arms, all laws of physics shattered in the wake of sheer perception and will.
18
Chapter 18
April
It was finals week again, but this time everything was different.
This time, I knew to load up empty containers with D-Hall food at breakfast so I’d have snacks all day. This time, I knew to make a schedule so I spaced out everything that was due to make it more manageable. This time, I knew to take the week off from Mug Shots so I didn’t lose my mind with stress and explode my heart with caffeine.
And this time I was studying at Will’s in the evenings because I spent most evenings there anyway.
“Okay,” I said, dropping my backpack on the couch and throwing myself over Will’s lap exhaustedly, needing just a little bit of a cuddle before starting in on the last push of writing and studying before this year was over.
Will ran his hand through my hair, and I nuzzled his hip.
“Hmm?”
“We’ve figured it out. Milton and Charles are getting a place, and probably Thomas, if he can convince his brother to stay in the city, which he thinks he can. And if I go in on it with them, then my rent’ll be affordable. Ish. I can get a bunch of hours at Mug Shots after my physics lab hours, and it’ll be totally fine. I won’t have to go back to Holiday.”
I said this last mostly to myself, since I didn’t think I’d even mentioned the possibility of it to Will.
Will’s hand had stilled in my hair, resting along the curve of my scalp, and I pressed into his palm, hoping he’d start rubbing my head again.
“Isn’t Thomas the one who’s in love with you?” Will asked.
I started to explain that, no, it had just been a crush and I was sure he was past it now. But instead I pitched my voice softly near his ear. “Jealous?” Then I kissed him on the cheek before he could answer, and eased away to do my work.
The next evening, I was working on my Cultural Foundations II paper, but I was hopelessly distracted. Everything in the apartment seemed more interesting than Dante, especially Will, working at the drafting table next to me. I could smell him every now and then when he’d reach his arms up to stretch his shoulders or recross his legs. The sinews of his forearm tensed as he drew, and his hair seemed perfectly arranged to torment me with the shadow it cast beneath his cheekbone.
“Eyes on your own paper, young Leo,” he said without looking up, and I realized I was staring at the curve of his biceps that his white T-shirt revealed. I looked down at my work with a little shiver; Will’s half-amused, half-scolding voice just did things to me.
A few minutes later, Will pressed his hand to my thigh, just above my knee, and I became aware that I’d been bouncing it.
“You’re shaking the whole floor, babe.” He rapped my thigh with the pencil he still held and turned back to his work.
“Sorry,” I muttered. I leaned back in my chair, the front two legs coming off the ground, and closed my eyes for just a minute, letting the sounds from outside—traffic and birds and a song in Spanish—filter in.
Hands on my shoulders pushed the chair back onto all four legs, and Will said, “Would you do your damn work? I can feel how distracted you are from two feet away.” I made a pathetic groaning complaint and tried to rest my head back on his chest for some sympathy, but he just tapped the desk in front of me with that damn pencil, his breath ghosting the back of my neck. I shifted in my chair.
“Ummm, this should probably not turn me on, but I love it when you’re so fucking bossy,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“Is that right?” Will drawled, his voice taking on an edge. “What do you love about it?”
“Uh….” Was he serious?
I craned my neck to look behind me. He let go of my shoulders and sat down, looking at me.
“Tell me why it turns you on when I’m bossy, Leo.”
My face and neck got hot. I wasn’t sure why exactly, only that it somehow felt like when Will made decisions for me that he was exerting some kind of ownership over me. Like by deciding that I was his to order around, he was decided that I was just… his.
Then there was the way his eyes burned when I told him no. How he liked to push my buttons, liked to see how far he could go before I’d stop him. How much I would give him. But my mouth didn’t currently seem to be connected to my brain, so when I opened it all that came out was an inarticulate noise from the back of my throat.
“Do you like when people tell you what to do, Leo?” His voice was filthy. “You got a little hot-for-teacher action going on?”
“I… I like it when you tell me what you want,” I finally stammered out. “I like giving it to you.” Will’s expression softened for a moment, then his mouth curled into a smirk.
“Well, then.” He leaned in close to me, expression stern. “I want you to write for ten minutes.” He tapped the desk. “With no distractions.” He tapped my cheek.
“Can I—?”
“Work time is not talking time, Leo.” He turned back to his own paper.
“Whoa.”
I looked back at my computer, not even sure what was going on. All the blood had left my head and rushed… elsewhere, and when I looked at the words on the screen, they all blended together. I was too aware of Will next to me. The heat of his body, his smell. The drag of his pencil along paper hit me like a caress up my spine and raised goose bumps on my arms. I reached down to adjust my erection and felt Will’s eyes on me.
Will slid a hand to the inside of my thigh. Just that touch sent warmth rushing through my legs, made me want to press into his hand to feel his strength against mine. “I’m going to need to see a bit more dedication to your work.”
I swallowed hard and found myself nodding.
I wrote a few sentences, but I couldn’t have said what they were about to save my life. My heart was beating faster and faster and every hair on my body was raised. Will kept drafting like he didn’t notice the state I was in at all.
“How close are you?” he asked without looking up, and I practically swallowed my own tongue as my dick pulsed. Will rolled his eyes. “To finishing your paper.”
“Uh, like one more page.”
“Write it.”
“I’m trying,” I grumbled.
Will stood up and looked down at my work, resting his hand casually on my shoulder. He leaned just close enough that my skin buzzed with proximity, my hands itching to grab fistfuls of that perfect white T-shirt and pull him down into my lap. Kiss him until he forgot about what I was supposed to be doing and just begged me to fuck him. I groaned at the picture.
“Are you having trouble concentrating?” Will said in my ear. I let out a nervous laugh. “Maybe you need an incentive. Beyond, of course, the reward of a job well done.” I groaned as his voice dropped lower on the last three words and nodded so quickly I almost gave myself whiplash.
Will moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, pressing me closer to the desk. “Start writing,” he murmured and then proceeded to do something to my neck that “kiss” was far too tame a word for. He feasted on me—licking and sucking at the place where my neck met my shoulder, biting gently at the muscle there, scraping his teeth over tendons and breathing on my damp skin.
He kissed the back of my neck softly, nose in my hair, on his way to the other side, and did the whole thing all over again. I was writhing in the desk chair, hard as rock and gasping at the sudden attack that had amped up my arousal so quickly I was almost light-headed with it.
By the time I coordinated my brain and my limbs to reach back and touch Will, he had pulled away with one final, hair-raising kiss to the back of my neck. Then he sat down at the drafting table, and the scritch of his pencil tip tore through me.
“Fuuuuck.”
“Do your work,” he sa
id softly, his voice rough. I groaned and dropped my forehead to the desk. His hand settled warm and heavy on the back of my neck and squeezed.
“Fuck!” I said again, and he chuckled, leaning close.
“Leo. Your first job is to finish your paper, and your second job is to fuck me over this desk.” He rested his palm on the desk near my face. “Each are worth fifty percent of your grade,” he said, voice teasing, and then sat back in his chair.
“Oh my god, seriously, why is this turning me on so much?” I shook my head at myself.
“Who cares why? Do your first job so you can do your second job, would you?”
“Mmhmm.” It came out as kind of a whine.
I wrote the end of my paper, the words coming from somewhere and who the hell knew what they were, but I told myself I would fix it in the morning before I turned it in. I hit Command+S and slammed my laptop shut, looking to Will immediately.
He raised an eyebrow. “Finished.”
“Yeah.”
“How did it turn out?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, taking in the angle of his jaw, the line of his neck, and then moving down to the strong planes of his chest. “Wait, what?”
He was up in a flash, straddling my thighs and attacking my mouth. I groaned as his tongue slid against mine and clutched him tight, grabbing his ass in both hands and dragging him onto my erection. He grabbed the back of the chair with one hand and wrapped the other around my neck.
We kissed with all the pent-up heat of the last hour. I was desperate for him. For the taste of his hot mouth and the feel of his weight on my lap, the sensation of his arms around me and the muscular thrusts of his hips flexing to stay on my lap, struggling to get us at the right angle.
When we found it, we ground together, groaning. I leaned back a little so he could balance and he folded against me, his weight pressing our dicks together. He made a tiny gasping sound in my ear, and I was wild with need for him. I started pulling at his clothes, just needing skin on skin contact. His chest was flushed and I pinched his nipple, loving his hiss in response, the feel of his nails digging into my shoulders. Then he found my mouth again, latching on and kissing me until we were both breathless and sweating.