Deck grinned with a question on his face.
Naim smiled back. “It was just sort of a normal part of life. Like the weather or jobs or something.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Someone would have a date one night, and the next morning there’d be a stranger at the breakfast table being treated like family, and no one stared or leered or giggled. It was just another morning.”
“That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard about English people.” Deck’s smile grew.
“No, I guess not. But in most cases that’s a pretty superficial stereotype. Although”—he huffed a laugh—“they were very different.”
“Didn’t that make you uncomfortable?”
“Oh God, yes. At first I was miserable. On edge all the time waiting for someone to say something to me or just something.” He shuddered and traced Deck’s chestnut brows with a finger. “But after a while I realized that wasn’t going to happen. I guess it was pretty clear that I wasn’t like them in that way, so they respected that.
“Vivienne, one of my host mothers…” He sighed. “I think she…she got me. She always made sure that the more exuberant of the clan took it easy on me, and she tried to be a mother to me, I think. But she didn’t baby me or anything. That was always more Evelyn and Daisy.” He smiled again.
“Who?”
“Evelyn is Vivie’s sister and the other host mother. Daisy is Evie’s youngest. She’s not much older than me, but it seemed so at the time. She already had kids of her own.”
“It sounds really nice.” Deck petted him gently.
“It was. It really was. They were the first people to treat me like…like…” Naim blinked rapidly as he thought about when he’d first arrived in Southampton and how he’d been greeted. With warmth and eye contact and respect.
“Like a man, and not a thing,” Deck finished for him, his voice low and quiet.
“Yeah. Yes.” Naim focused on the wall behind Deck’s ear. “I kept to myself in Paris. I didn’t make friends or get involved in anything at school. People scared the shit out of me, so I stayed away from them. But then I got to England and they just wouldn’t leave me alone.” He grinned then, shaking off the sense of inhumanity that always came with his past.
“They were easy on me but encouraging, and after a while I started to spend a little more time with the kids in the house around my age. Jem—Vivienne’s grandson—he finally convinced me to go out with him and some friends of his. Jem and I were in school together, so I was familiar with them, and I”—he squirmed a little—“I just gave it a shot. Actually going out and being with, like, people.” His eyes widened still at the memory. “I guess I had learned to feel a little safe with them. A little.”
If Deck had thought him skittish when they first met, he’d have declared him a walking nervous breakdown a dozen years ago.
“So that night this one guy sort of stuck to me most of the time. Just talking and hanging out, and I figured he was a little like me—antisocial and anxious. He seemed really nervous, but he was nice, and I remember laughing and scaring myself when I realized that I thought he was cute.”
He shifted as Deck opened his legs and bent his knees when his foot started to fall asleep. Naim leaned back onto Deck’s thighs and bent his own knees against Deck’s sides, thinking how comfortable and easily intimate they were, cradled between one another’s legs.
“It was totally a date, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Naim laughed. “I had no idea. Halfway through the night, Jem finds me after this guy went to the loo or something and he’s asking me, ‘So how’s it going? You two are hitting it off, yeah?’ and I was just ‘wha?’”
Deck chuckled, but there was sadness in his eyes. Naim knew that it was a cute story, but only taken out of the context of the rest of his life. The reasons why he’d been so fucking clueless about normal human interactions. It grieved him to see that Deck understood this. That the sadness in Deck’s eyes spoke of how unwilling Deck was to forget or put aside that context. Naim didn’t think it was fair to Deck to carry that burden, but he was learning better than to argue with Deck about it.
“Probably best that you didn’t know.” Deck grinned.
“Yeah.” Naim raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, probably.” He blinked for a few seconds, then smiled softly. “I think Jem was pretty deliberate when he set it up. Maybe Vivie had something to do with it, or…I don’t know. He was just a nice guy, and he wasn’t trying to do anything more than get to know me. Even after I figured out it was a date, I didn’t see or even imagine him looking at me like…that. He was just…”
“Harmless?”
Naim smiled, but there was no mockery or derision. The boy had indeed been harmless. Safe. “Yeah, he was. When we ended the night—there were probably about six or seven of us—I remember he got me off to the side very discreetly so no one noticed—not even me—and he put his hand on my shoulder and kissed me.” He looked up at Deck and smiled sweetly, shaking his head. “On the cheek.”
Deck smiled and breathed a laugh. “That’s awesome.”
“I know. It really was.”
“Did you see him again?”
“I did, yeah. Not a lot and usually in groups like that, but I think people started to think of us as sort of a couple.” He frowned and looked at their laps again. “Well no, not a couple but…”
“Dating.” Deck supplied gently.
“Dating, right. That’s what everyone thought.”
“That’s because you were dating him, love.” Deck ran his thumbs across Naim’s hands.
Naim thought for a minute, then sighed. “Yeah. I guess I was. I mean we barely even had a proper snog. Maybe twice.” He winced and gave Deck a wary eye, but Deck leaned forward and kissed him gently.
“I’m not insane jealous, love,” Deck muttered against his mouth and smiled. “Okay that’s a complete lie, but I try. This is what we’re talking about. I want to know how—how you got…”
“From there to here,” Naim said quietly.
Deck nodded.
He took a deep breath, realizing that while he was a bit lost in memories and feeling slightly melancholy about his days in Paris and Southampton, he was still okay. Safe and loved with Deck. “Not much more to tell, I guess.” He started to fiddle with Deck’s hands, gently running his fingers across the flesh of his palms and fingers. “When I got back to Paris, I felt calmer. Like there was somewhere sort of safe in my world. I didn’t—they didn’t know anything about me. I never told them anything, but Vivienne, well, she had her own stories from her experiences in World War II, and other things too I think. I think she understood that I was—” He frowned again and thought. “Hm.”
“She saw the…the trauma?”
Naim nodded, knowing that it grieved Deck and bothered him that people like Naim, Jen, and the people he knew that had survived 9/11 had this diagnosis. He’d said on more than one occasion that it made them sound like they were sick, and they weren’t. They weren’t sick at all.
But he also needed Deck to know that it didn’t bother him. It had actually been a relief to hear it the first time a professional said it, like what he felt was real and existed in the minds of others, and that he wasn’t the only one who lived this way.
“They didn’t have that sort of diagnosis when Vivienne was young, but I know she lived with it for a long time after the war. She must have seen it in me. She knew what it looked like.”
“So it was different when you went back to Paris?”
Naim nodded. “I just felt safer. Less crazy, I guess,” he struggled and stammered a little. “So I—” He cleared his throat, and Deck looked at him curiously. “I went to see the counseling center at school.”
“You did? Really?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I um, I think maybe living with them for that year made me realize just how not okay and how abnormal my life had been up until that point.” His gaze started to dart around the room as he grew nervous in his memories. “I have…” He sig
hed again, frustrated. “You know I have very specific ideas about myself, but Southampton made me start to think about families and how people were supposed to grow up versus the way I had.” His throat started to close, and he grew uncomfortably hot, still unaccustomed to letting himself remember.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, and Deck waited silently for Naim to say it, because Deck believed that Naim was brave. So Naim would be brave and say it. For Deck.
“Living with them—kids and parents and meeting other people who lived…” He took another huge breath. “Once I actually started to live in the world a little bit, I had to admit to myself that I had been sexually abused. I’d never done that before. I never let myself think about it enough to think anything about it at all.”
He breathed, and Deck just stared in wonder.
“But I did it finally. Said it out loud and everything. Said that what Claude did to us was wrong.” He shook a little.
“The other part.” He looked down and spoke quietly, and Deck unclasped their hands to pet his arms, grounding him. “I never talked about that. But I finally got that Claude hurt us. And that it wasn’t supposed to have been that way. I think I learned in England that I didn’t want to…” He stared at Deck’s bare chest and thought about a time when something so beautiful would make him cold and his stomach slither like reptiles were inside of him.
“I didn’t want to hate my body anymore.”
Deck’s breath shuddered, and he couldn’t stop his lip from quivering slightly. “Fuck, Naim you’re just so fucking brave and strong, and you did it all on your fucking own.”
Naim started, distressed at Deck’s expression and dampening eyes. “Deck, no. Don’t—”
“I love you.” Deck shook his head and smiled slightly, a small half tear pressed out of the corner of his eye. “I just fucking love you. That’s all.” He smiled wider and warmer.
Naim shook his head and loved Deck back, still doubting that he was worthy.
“So they helped you.” Deck coughed a little to open his throat.
Naim breathed and smiled softly. “Yeah. A little.”
He nodded. “Yeah, but I mean, they did help you. Like you started dating a little and, ya know… stopped—I mean you were able to…”
“It got easier, yes.” Naim reached out and touched Deck’s beautiful pink mouth.
“But then you stopped.” Deck frowned. “You said you never dated anyone after you came to America.”
Naim blinked, and his expression turned to resignation. “Well, I started to understand even more as time went on, and I dealt with what Claude did to me, that everything after that was my own choice.”
Deck huffed out his frustration and sniffed at Naim but kept his mouth shut.
Naim looked heavenward, annoyed that Deck still couldn’t see it. That there was a difference between what Claude had forced on him and what he later chose to do to earn money. At least they were in agreement that choice or not, he still lived inside the disgust and humiliation. “I was too ashamed to tell anyone, but I also knew that it would be disrespectful to get involved with someone and not tell him.” He looked Deck in the eyes, thinking about the fear and misery and despair that had eaten him alive from the inside out throughout Deck’s time in the hospital and then overwhelmed and nearly destroyed him the day Deck went home. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“All you saw was a lose-lose situation.”
Naim breathed out a small but genuine laugh. “Exactly. In fact, I said those exact words to Frannie the day you got out of the hospital.”
“You know that’s fucking stupid, right?”
Naim sighed heavily and raised his eyebrow pointedly. It was one more thing that he would never agree with Deck or Frannie about. “No. It’s not. Deck, it wouldn’t have been fair to you to move forward without telling you. I could not do that. To you.”
“But, Naim—”
“No, Deck. Just think about how messed up you’ve been. How fucking delicate I became in your eyes, and what you’ve been struggling with before tonight.”
“But—”
“Deck. You’ve been afraid to touch me.” The eyebrow went up again. “Now just imagine if things had gone the way you intended that day you came over. Imagine how you would have felt. Not about me, because I get that. I get it’s not how you see it. But how would you have felt about yourself?”
Deck frowned, than after a minute, he grunted.
“I was wrong about you. I know that, but either way, it would have been wrong not to tell you.” Naim shook his head and took Deck’s face in his hands. “Weeks down the line? Even just a few days later—after all that time, likely spent in bed,” he said pointedly, “how would you have felt about yourself once I finally said, ‘Hey, by the way, I have a funny story’?”
It only took a few seconds before Deck closed his eyes and slumped. “I would have totally fucking hated the shit out of myself.”
“Right.”
Deck frowned for a minute, then stretched his neck up for another soft, comforting kiss. He still frowned against Naim’s mouth. “You should have given me more credit, though,” he mumbled.
Naim smiled, sad but understanding what Deck needed. “Had I known how, you know I would have.”
“You know better now.”
Naim pulled his mouth back, their foreheads still touching, and smiled. “I’m learning, cupcake. I am learning.”
“Okay.” Deck’s tremendous grin lit the room.
Naim blinked, the breath knocked out of him, and Deck waited, knowing Naim wanted to say something more. “Deck…” Naim blinked again and tried to articulate what was in his head. Then he stopped himself from thinking it through and tried just speaking.
“Fuck…” He breathed heavily. “God, you’re fucking gorgeous.”
Deck threw his head back and laughed as Naim sat up on his knees, pressed himself hard against his fucking gorgeous cupcake and kissed him mindless.
They talked and touched more, content with the thought of never sleeping again. Deck wasn’t sure how it happened. All he knew was that he sat on his feet, Naim straddling his lap, his back pressed to Deck’s chest. Naim was on him, over him and all around him, completely and thoroughly penetrated. Naim moved himself on his knees, pulling up, then grinding back down, hard and deep and rocking his hips. Deck buried his face in the crook of Naim’s shoulder, and his arms were wrapped around Naim, as he tried to move his hands over every part of Naim’s body at once: in his hair, on his face, across his chest, down his belly, his legs. Finally settling his weak left hand—made weaker by carelessness and activity—to fist lazily around Naim’s cock as he continued to touch every part of Naim that he could with his other hand.
Deck followed Naim’s pace and rhythm with his hips, trying to anticipate what Naim’s body wanted and needed. He lifted his head, and into his ear he whispered love and need and beautiful things and aching things, and Naim moaned and whimpered, reaching up and back, gripping and scratching at Deck’s neck. He found Deck’s wandering hand with one of his, and together they slid and touched, moving over hot sweating skin.
“Love…love you…love you…fuck…you’re so beautiful…too beautiful…” Deck sobbed against Naim’s ear and licked drops of sweat from his temple and down his neck, Naim’s hair tickling his face and neck and chest, making him hotter, sweatier. He wanted Naim to be in control; he wanted to follow and let Naim take whatever he needed and let him wring him empty and dry. He closed his hand lightly over Naim’s cock, barely moving, more holding it as a precious thing, fingers and palm brushing and grazing gently.
Biting at his neck and ear and mumbling desperately while Naim moved harder on him, Deck snapped his hips up meeting hot clenched flesh, striking harder and harder against and in him. They made wretched sounds, crying and whimpering and desperately pleading as their bodies moved in needy, frantic unison.
“Deck, God…need you…need this, “ Naim murmured, his head lolling over Deck’s sh
oulder, his back arching and his strong chest stretching out under their clutched, roaming hands. Deck almost came at the chant of his name and Naim’s voice, thick and pitiful.
They hammered against each other, Naim bringing his entire body weight down with all his strength and force, Deck’s mouth against his temple, slack and weak, and whining, sipping the sweat that dripped from his face, his beard scraping roughly against Naim’s skin.
Untangling their hands, Naim closed his over the fist around his cock and moved Deck’s hand on him. “Please…please…” he sobbed, and Deck gripped him hard, almost violently, their fists matching the movements of Naim’s body on Deck, squeezing and snapping. Deck would leave bruises on his hip, his shoulders, his thighs, and they yanked at Naim’s cock together, Naim’s other hand gripping hard at the back of Deck’s head.
He came like a freight train.
Hammering down onto Deck, shouting his name and obscenities that he was deaf to, Naim’s back arched in a blinding orgasm, covering their hands, his thighs, and the bed with cum, their fists pulling and wringing while he sobbed and quivered and clawed at Deck. Every muscle contracted and released with the pulsing of his cock, and every pulse felt like a small absolution.
The sight of their hands moving over Naim’s swollen, bursting cock, the pleading sound of his name, and the scorching throbbing around his cock finished Deck. He felt like his skin was breaking open and pouring out fire and ice, and a tempest came up out of him. He crushed Naim in his arms, burying his face in his shoulder, biting down too hard, hips plunging up, inhuman cries tearing his throat.
Nothing had ever felt like this.
They were in the middle of an argument, and Naim refused to chase Deck around the couch, choosing instead to glare at him hatefully. “Fine, be an idiot. I’ll just put one of your shirts on.”
Smoke and Mirrors Page 22