31: Now Have Me

mom u know the dealio. one more chapter for u to skip.

extended author's note at the bottom

mom seriously skip this. click into the dropdown menu and then click on '31:' it's not difficult just do it. shoo <3

HÅKON

"Now, have me." I say, as confident as I can as to not make him panic any more. He's clearly nervous, red up his neck to his ears. "It's okay," I coax. I might be nervous but I want to share this with him.

"O-okay," Milo pulls in a breath.

I half want to tell him to talk again, it was helping him, easing his nerves, but it was helping me too. Letting me listen to him and mull over his words while trying not to be too awkward or too stiff or too anything. I liked it when he was talking, now he's quiet.

"Milo," I manage.

"M'scared," he mumbles. I sit up, propping my body up with one of my arms and taking his face into my other hand, letting him press his cheek against my palm, looking away, embarrassed.

"It's-" I shake my head. "Stop thinking, you're freaking yourself out. It's gonna be okay, perfect."

He takes a deep breath in and I feel his hand where it needs to be. "Good, good," I whisper, watching what he's doing. "You got it, forward." I keep my voice down, we're ear to ear, staring at what's happening. "There you go."

My entire body tenses up at the first tiny contact, he's not even doing anything but touching me and I'm scared again. I force myself to relax, focusing from the top down, my shoulders, chest, stomach, upper legs, lower legs, toes. Arms, forearms, hands. I cup the back of his neck, tipping his jaw with my thumb and brushing my nose on his, our eyes open, looking at each other. "If you don't want to, you don't-" he pushes forward and my sentence is cut out by a sharp gasp, my gasp, his, I'm not sure. His mouth is open against mine, breathing hard, nose on nose, eyes smashed shut.

"Fuck," he lets out, soft and low and raspy and straight down my spine. "Fuck, HÃ¥kon,"

I slip away from him, easing back down onto my back and shoulders, letting my head tip back, my mouth open, beyond shocked, unable to squeak out any noise while he moves slowly forward. He's breathing hard, and when I manage to open my eyes I find him bending some of the way over, setting his forehead on mine, hair falling forward. He shifts a slight bit and-

"Fuck, ow, ow ow ow," I clench my jaw and wince, feeling tension run through my shoulders.

Milo freezes. "Shit, HÃ¥k, hey, hey, what happened?"

I pull in a hard breath, forcing my body to release all the tension it can. "Just... hurt a little." I mutter, gripping the sheet by my side, angling all my tension to my hand.

"No, hell no." His hands find my face, cupping my cheeks and making me look up at him. "I'm not doing this if it's gonna hurt you."

I huff out a breath, then reach up and kiss him, letting him slow down and breathe and letting myself relax. I stroke my hand slowly up through his head of hair, letting it filter between my fingers, thick and long and gorgeous.

He's being soft with me, little kisses on my cheeks and my nose and the center of my forehead and everywhere he can reach. Well, his mouth is PG-13. His hands aren't. One is in my hair and that's fine, but the other is running down the divots in my stomach and the lines of my arms and the way my collarbones stick out and up the definition of my thigh right next to his hip.

I raise my hands to frame his face, holding his forehead down to mine. "Can I ask you to do something stupid?"

"HÃ¥k..."

"Shh," I mumble, leaning up to put a soft kiss on his cheek. "I know you don't want to hurt me but this is probably going to, just a little, just the same as it would if you were here."

He swallows hard.

"Let's try again," I offer.

I watch his gaze dip between our bodies and he shifts his arms. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I can't help a little smile that slips out. "Workouts suck before they benefit you, right?"

He frowns. "What?"

"I wanna get to the fun stuff," I wiggle my eyebrows at him, getting confident so that hopefully he does too. "But we gotta do this first."

He smiles, kissing my cheek. "Yeah, yeah,"

"C'mon you gotta put on your skates to get on the ice!" I tickle my fingers up his sides, making him squirm.

"I can't believe we're in bed, completely stripped, and you're talking hockey with me." He mumbles, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the hollow of my throat. "Look at us, living up to our profession."

I just laugh, tipping his chin down to mine. He feels like he's less anxious now, his touch is a little more playful and joking like it normally is, how I like it, and his lips are quirked up as he kisses me.

It doesn't last too long, we are in a heavily sexual situation, after all. Every fractional shift of his hips as he kisses me sends shocks up my spine.

Then, it's just like ten minutes ago, I beat him to the olive oil in Greece joke and he kisses me and tells me that we're going to need better jokes that aren't the same one phrased differently if we're going to keep having sex.

"Ready?" his eyes flicker up to mine and I nod, nervous, but, more relaxed than before. "Out loud, please."

"Yeah, ready." I sit slightly, wrapping an arm around his lower back.

I focus on the way his lips part against the cartilage of my ear, a rush of breath fanning across my hair. I focus on the way his hands feel against my sides and the way his waist feels being cradled by my thigh.

"Ow god, fuck ow," I mutter, knocking my head back. He stops moving.

"Breathe."

"Yeah, I got it, I know." I pull in a long breath, forcing it out again, making myself relax, easing up, paying attention to how soft the sheets are against my body and not the pressure. "Okay, good, you're good."

"I love you."

I smile, gritting my teeth, looking up at him. I try to open my mouth to say it back but a sharp groan slips out instead.

"Alright?" He struggles to get it out.

"Yeah, good," I mumble, smashing my eyes shut. "Great, oh fuck."

"You're-" he mumbles something unintelligible in czech into my shoulder. "You're doing so well."

Ugh, god, he knows that gets right to me.

"You," he breathes in, "didn't do this justice, god, HÃ¥kon,"

My body is handling this like I would expect it to handle something like heroin. Badly, but fucking euphoric. So yes, okay, it's not comfortable but it's not about that. It's about what's happening in general, his sweet little mumbles and kisses scattering over my body. It's about actually finally getting here, it's about him and I and everything we have.

"Fuck, ow, fuck, pause." I grab his wrist and he freezes up, looking at me, clear fear across his eyes. "Give me, agh-" I take a deep breath. "A moment."

"Anything," he mumbles, kissing my cheek, then my temple. I force myself to breathe, feeling the heat over his back with my palm, everything I can touch on him.

"Alright, good." I manage.

He nods, thighs coming flush with mine. "You alright?"

I swallow hard. "Yeah, perfect." I slip away from him, leaning back on my elbows, trying to relax just a little more. He bends over with me, thin silver chain dangling over my eyes. He looks like he's found fucking nirvana or something and in this moment, I realize there's nothing I wouldn't do for him. Nothing in this big angry stupid world. Nothing from here in this tiny house in the middle of fucking nowhere in Sweden all the way back to our apartments in Nowhere, Saskatchewan. Nothing from the top of the Earth to the bottom, from the front of the universe to the back. Nothing I wouldn't do to keep him safe and protected and so so so him. Because keeping him safe keeps me safe. I am no longer just Håkon, I'm Håkon as in Håkon and Miloš and that will forever be. Even if there's nothing left for us, nothing left of us, there will always be some memory of how I feel for him, even if it's just the memory of the water and the carbon in our bodies that will go on and on without us.

It's been almost a decade since I've had sex that's meant anything and even then it was awful because it was a girl and now I'm here and he's being so gentle and diligent and touching me like I was meant to be loved like this. Like I deserve it.

I'm going to cry over this.

I peel open my eyes, looking up at him, catching his green in my gaze and surging forward, locking lips and trying to push across any fucking ounce of emotion I can muster, every last bit.

And I'm just looking at him, lips touching, taking in the tone of his skin and his eyelashes and his high cheekbones and his hairline and his soft soft soft loving eyes. Looking at him with nothing going on in my head, just sensations and touches and my hand around the back of his neck, thumb stroking his cheek as he focuses on me, just me. I knock my forehead down against his, nudging his nose with the end of mine and loving that he musters the focus to nudge back. My head is so full but so empty and I'm touching the tip of my nose to his, the feel of it exploding through my limbs, nose on nose. He likes doing that, coming over to me to brush noses and nothing else, but this feels different, less like that, less everyday, more like... this. More like a hundred things at once even though it's still just brushing my nose against his.

I scrap up a fraction of strength, planting my foot and lifting my hips into him. I lift at an angle, leaving my other leg folded, and what happens shocks a shout out of me. It feels foreign, like it wasn't my body that made that noise, like my body couldn't possibly be the same one that just felt that.

He freezes. "Okay? Are you okay?"

"Good, great," I cough out. "God, move." I manage because he's there and he- I choke out another half-yell, unable to stop myself. I use my planted foot and lift my hips up into him, because hell I might be doing this for the first time but so is he and I wanna help.

"Holy shit," I manage, my back arching up, hips half wanting to shy back and half wanting to surge forward and my body is aching and flying free at the same moment and I lift my eyes up to his green ones in the sunrise in the window and he's just beautiful all half-tense and looking like that and I just- "I love you." I grind out. I want to say so much more but there's nothing I can do.

He nods, focused. "I fucking love you too." is what passes out of his lips. I reach and cup his neck and pull him down, barely managing to motor control to kiss him and do anything else and he just lets his lips be loose on mine and-

"Shit you feel so damn good," he manages. "HÃ¥kon" He groans into my neck. "HÃ¥kon."

"Yeah?"

"Shit," he manages. "Oh my god."

I nod, pulling his lips back to mine, our mouths ghosting eachother's.

"I'm not gonna-" he drops his head to my shoulder. "Last. Do- do what you need." The rock of his hips is all I need right now, just that, just that and him and all of everything and I don't really even care if I get off I just-

I wrap my arms around his back and bury my face in his neck and kiss and kiss and kiss as he starts to get staggered and his breath starts to come in strained burts and his hands start to shake and his body starts to tense.

"HÃ¥kon please-" he fumbles out his words and I get what he wants. I might not care if I don't finish but he does, he wants me to. I know I barely need fucking anything, I'm too sensitive, too pulled tight, too close, but the way he's breathing is telling me he's been there for too long. My hand drops away from his shoulders and I was right, it took nothing for my back to pitch up and for me to bury my face into his shoulder and yell his name into his throat.

My knee gives out, my muscles twitching and jerking whenever he hits any nerve anywhere but he doesn't last, biting down on my shoulder, teeth bared, digging his nails into my sides, body shaking, sobbing out a final exhausted shout into my skin before collapsing into my arms.

I receive him and pull him tight to me, breaths coming quickly in unison, hands shaking. His forehead is wet with sweat on my shoulder, his lips warm as he tries his best to soothe the bite. He lies still and breathes and calms down and kisses my collarbone.

His shoulders, just thin enough to allow me to cradle him, his hips, just skinny enough to slot between my thighs, all of it. I hold him close, kissing his temple, kissing sweat off his skin. I hold him and god, nothing, truly, fully, entirely nothing, could take him from me.

They say everything is made from stars, that we're all just recycled stars. Milo, he must've only been made human very recently. He's still mostly celestial, in my view. He's still mostly stars.

I blink, hard. It doesn't do what I want it to do, dry up my eyes, instead letting tears slip out of the corners.

And then I realize that there's absolutely no point in holding that back. I'm allowed to cry over stuff. Especially this type of stuff.

His back shakes on his inhale and I press the center of my palm down on his warm skin, holding him still, holding his body to mine.

"You okay?" I ask after another few moments.

He nods into my shoulder. "Mhmm," it cracks in his voice.

"Well," I bring my hand up to tuck a lock of his hair behind his ear. "I'm crying a little, so there's that."

"You too?" he picks up his head, untucking that hair. "Are you okay? Did I h-"

I press my fingers to his lips. "I'm alright, I'm okay."

He purses his lips, then leans in and kisses me before burying his face back in my neck. "That was scary."

"How so?" I ask, running my fingers through his hair, fingernails brushing against the sweat in his hair.

"Thought I had hurt you. More than once." He mumbles into my shoulder, fingers twitching against my side.

"I'm okay," I respond softly, knowing damn well that at the same time I'm going to be sore for a little while. "Really. Just remember who you're working with here. I'm not an easy guy to hurt."

He nods. "I know."

"As much as I love laying here like this," I whisper, kissing his temple, salt landing on my lips. "We're gross and I want to rinse off a little before sleeping."

He picks his head up, looking down at me and then at our bodies. "Yeah, probably a good idea."

"Mhmm," I prop myself up on my elbows, kissing his cheek.

"I hate to be awkward, but," he pulls in a deep breath. "Do I just throw this out? What do I do with it?"

I smile. "You're not being awkward."

"But-"

"Milo." I scoop his face into my hands, pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose. "Not awkward." I bend and tap my head against his. "Just stuff you should've learned but didn't by some failure of the systems."

He smiles softly. "Sure."

I nod. "Alright?"

"Yeah."

"Mmkay." I swing my legs over the side of the bed and yawn, covering a wince. My legs hurt. He's disappeared into the bathroom and is running the water by the time I'm standing. I lean over and pick up the towel, beyond proud of myself for even thinking of that and that there is, in fact, no mess on the sheets.

Mentally, I pat myself on the back. Then I grab a pair of fresh boxers for both of us and work my way toward the bathroom.

Did I pick a pair of underwear for him just specifically designed to get back at him for making fun of my duck underwear? Yes. Do they have little hockey sticks on them? Also yes.

I manage to convince my sore legs that standing for another bit here isn't the worst possible thing. I need to clean off my stomach and wash the sweat off my body.

He's got the shower running, hands all knotted up in his hair in a stretch.

"Tired?" I ask, keeping my voice gentle, letting him into the shower first. I get in and immediately lean back against the wood. It's not really a shower and not really a sauna. They wanted both and decided on neither.

"Yeah," he yawns, dousing his head. "Today was long as hell."

I smile, leaning forward, setting my head under the water, then urging myself off the wall to clean off my chest and stomach. Gross, yes, I know.

He watches, then slips his arms around me, hands knitting up with mine, chin settling at the top of my neck, a little kiss at the base of my skull.

"You're standing funny."

I look over my shoulder at him. "You wanna take a guess, Einstein?"

He flushes, nuzzling his nose against mine. "Want to wash hair or just rinse?"

"I dunno," I mumble. "I don't trust my standing ability."

"From just that?"

"Milo," I drop my head back, fighting off a laugh. "It was my first time, I'm gonna be wobbly."

"I guess I'll know sooner or later," he kisses my cheek and I feel a blush roar through me. God, this man. He lifts his hands up and douses my head again, then runs his fingers through my hair, scrubbing a little to get the sweat out and then letting me go.

I do the same to him. Scrubbing and in absolute awe at how long his hair is when it's stick straight not wavy. He's got soap next, getting all the little spots across my back and then letting me do the same to him, purposefully avoiding the nail marks down his sides. I even trimmed my nails close for this and he's still scratched up.

"We all good to go?" He turns to me, water running down off the tip of his nose.

"Yeah, I think so," I yawn. "So. not that bad? Not that horrible? Something you'd do again?"

"God, yeah, absolutely," he lets out a loose laugh, shutting off the water. "God, HÃ¥kon," he looks over at me. "You didn't talk that up enough."

"To be fair," I start. "I never really liked sex."

"How? That was insane." He spots the boxers. "This is payback isn't it."

"A little." I smile, pressing a kiss to his temple. He sighs, pulling them on.

"But, seriously, that... if... how could you not be a fan? No offense."

"Never felt anything for any of the people, so it was just like... dull. That wasn't. That was something else."

"That much of a difference?"

"Yeah," I nod. "Part of the reason I came to the realization I needed to bottom for this. I didn't wanna group you in with that slurry of ick." I wave it off.

"How was that?" He seems concerned, taking my hands and pulling me onto the bed with him.

"A little uncomfortable at first, but," I shrug, kicking my feet under the covers, grabbing the lip and pulling it before realizing I need to shut the curtains. "Milo?"

"Mhmm," he's looking at me. I watch his head tic. Twice. Time to go to bed. Definitely time to go to bed.

"Curtains." I yawn.

"Oh, yeah," he takes a deep breath and gets up, closing off the sunlight. "So, you're alright?"

I laugh softly, laid out on my back, too exhausted to do much else than keep my eyes open. "I'm alright, just the same as last time you asked." I give him a goofy smile and he settles back down, getting the covers up over our shoulders.

"Alright, you're big spoon." He yawns.

"Hell no," I stop him. "You topped."

"And now I want to be little spoon." His eyes glint at me in the darkness.

"Ugh," I open up my arms. "Modified little spoon."

He smiles and wiggles right between my arms, his hands brought up, elbows tucked in, shoulders pulled in a little bit. I kiss the top of his head.

"You get all tiny when we sleep like this," I mumble against his damp hair.

"You do too," he yawns, wiggling closer, throwing a leg over my hips and pulling me tighter.

"I love you," I murmur. "Too much for my own good."

"There's never too much love," he responds, kissing my collar.

"Mhmm," I squeeze my arms around his back. "The second you're done with that, I'm little spoon."

"Fine." He grumps. "Party pooper."

"Shush," I mumble. "Relationships are about compromise."

"Give me a few hours of this," he mutters. "When you get up to go to the bathroom at 4 because you always do, then you can switch with me."

"Works for me," I settle my head down. "Night."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

There's a beat of silence before he opens his mouth again. "So that lake-"

"Milo," I mumble. "Sleep."

***

so, right, like, wow, that wasn't smut. right?

haha, gotcha.

it wasn't.

it was never supposed to be.

I didn't write this with the intention of it being anywhere near smut and it wasn't. I think I did a good decent job of that.

See because the problem is with a lot of MLM stuff in the media is that it's designed for women. Entirely for straight women. I know 98% of my reader base is women and I understand that the 2% might not even really care or might have wanted this to be smuttier than it was.

But it wasn't. Why?

because I'm genuinely kinda tired of gay men being written for straight women. Before I even put pen on paper for these two books about these boys I spent a long long time researching the sudden growing culture of fetishizing.

while, yes, representation is representation, but representation in the wrong ways can almost be more harmful than no representation at all. It's important to focus on the actual group you're representing before going off and catering to the main group of people consuming the media. It can be so so so harmful for young gay people to read relationships in which they're diminished down to sex just because that written sex turns people on. It's harmful for gay people to be seen in media as something that people they're not even interested in watch and keep track of just because they think it's 'hot' or whatever and the next.

So it wasn't smut. I never wanted it to be smut. I wanted to show the people that needed to see something like this that they're more than something that exists for others to gain something from. And I wanted to help, in any fractional fractional way, do any education that I could for those people because lord knows sex ed is a shitty fucking topic in school and it's so skimmed across for the sake of people's own comfort that it puts others in danger and that's just for straight people. I've been through 3 separate sex ed courses and not once did I hear a single damn sentence about safety with gay people. So I wanted to do anything I could in reference to that. Anything at all.

So, you might be disappointed that I didn't explain the sexual details, and you know what? Fine. Be disappointed in me for that. Leave bad reviews for all I care. People have tried to talk me in and out of an actual sex scene in this story but hell to it all, I don't want to.

Gay people are so often reduced to other people's personal sexual pleasures that we don't see what it's supposed to look like at all. And what it's supposed to look like is gross, a little uncomfortable, awkward, a little painful here and there. And not even required. Just because two men are dating doesn't mean that they have to be having penetrative sex. It's, frankly, not something everyone is into and although it's something I wanted to include in this, it would've been a perfectly viable love story without it. Sex isn't the peak of everything related to love and it never fucking will be.

So I didn't write you smut. I never planned on writing you smut. I hope you didn't open this book with hopes of getting to one groundbreaking steaming hot sexual scene because you're not getting it and I hope you reevaluate yourself if you're repeatedly going and hunting for MLM stories because you find them just that much hotter.

I was there once, I get it. Sure, that was AO3 and a lot of the stuff on there is absolutely riddled with that type of fetishization (though that does have an explanation heavily rooted in mysogony and the lack of depthy female characters in leu of depthy male characters that makes it easier to have a feasible deep relationship between two men who people can relate to rather than involving women who can often be replaced with objects with no harm to plot resulting in MLM ships being more prevalent due to broader and more intense interactions with characters that more people relate to), but when you pull back and look at yourself and analyze yourself about it, you need to realize that throwing your support into repeated over sexualization of gay people is fucking hurtful, in so many ways.

I wanted to go through the gross shit with them, I wanted to try to emphasize how important and complicated sex is to those who want it and how they didn't need sex to say I love you or fall in love in the first place, they had sex because they wanted to, not because sex is love.

I wanted to do everything I could to have these types of scenes and I tried, I've written this scene so many times, most of them sexual, but it's just not something that fits with this and I refuse to have the wrong type of attention toward this story.

Sorry that was such a long note at the bottom, I just know I was going to get some interesting comments and thoughts about how this is written and wanted to step in front of it.

'til friday

-rabid

(also, to my queer crowd, hey guys, sex ed for you (us, don't tell my mom, i'm hoping she actually did skip this chapter) is so shitty that we get into dangerous situations but google is the best tool out there, you need to know all you can because they don't teach it. girls, you too. I know you think it's going to be easy and simple and less dangerous than guys but I swear it's not. Again, like I've been trying to get to in this book, sex isn't something you need to have to be valid, never was and never will be. But the bottom line here, with you, all of you, is that you need to be comfortable (all the way comfortable, no skipping this step, I know you wanna) asking the gross questions with your partner. if you can't talk to them about sex you can't have sex. gross shit is going to happen, a lot of it, straight people too, and you're going to probably get embarrassed. sex isn't like it is in wattpad (i wouldn't know tho, ngl) it's genuinely messy and all that, so having someone that you know and are so so so comfortable with is the single most important thing.)

okay i'm done now.

if you don't have people to ask weird questions too or if you need someone to ask scary questions to, my dms on here are always open and i'm literally always on here so I'll get back pretty quick.

now i'm done

'night

-rabid