Archive of Our Own

Pol was nine years old when he stopped believing that he could be anything. Before his mom died, he didn’t think of the limits of possibility. His mom taught him how to dream. She used to read him stories at night and tuck him into bed, and whenever he came crying to her about how Dad was mean again, or how his brother had stolen his favorite toy, she combed through his hair and kissed him on the forehead and told him not to worry. I’m here, she’d say. I won’t let anything happen to you.

While she’d been alive, she stuck to her word. She defended him whenever she got the chance, protected him fiercely and without mercy. She cared for his brother too, of course, but she had always paid special attention to Pol, like she saw something in him that she thought needed more nurturing. This caused conflict on occasion. His father and mother were very different people, and Pol was the midpoint between them.

One night when Pol was eight, the tension between the two of them boiled over. From behind the door of his parents’ bedroom, he overheard his father complaining about him.

“You coddle the boy, Clara. You put ideas in his head. He will grow up to be weak.”

“Do you really want him to grow up to be just like you?”

There was silence. Pol pressed his ear closer to the door and listened hard.

“I want more for him,” she continued. “Is that so bad? I want him to dream.”

Pol’s father scoffed. “Dreams make people weak. Oscar already knows he wants to work when he gets older. Pol has his head in the clouds.”

“He’s eight, Alfonso,” his mother sighed. “Listen, don’t worry about him. Let Oscar work if he wants to work; Pol will follow his own path. You have to let him, or he’ll grow to resent you.”

“Then you support him when he’s thirty and has no job.”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” his mother snapped. “He’s smarter than you give him credit for. He has interests and aspirations. Just because you can’t understand it doesn’t make it any less valid.”

“What you call dreams, I call laziness.”

His mother laughed, but even at eight years old Pol knew it wasn’t a happy noise. Coming from his mother, who was usually bright and brimming with genuine laughter, the sound made his stomach hurt. Pol slid to the floor and hugged his knees, ear still pressed close enough to hear the voices on the other side of the door.

“One day Pol will grow into an honest, bright young man--brighter than you can imagine. He’ll do what he wants, and he’ll be happier than either of us have ever managed to be. I won’t let you take that away from him.”

His father’s angry footsteps had headed in his direction then, and Pol had hopped up from his position on the floor and sped back to his empty room. It took him a long time to fall asleep that night, it was to the faint warmth in his chest that came with the knowledge that his mother would never, ever give up on him.

Pol’s mother was the only person beside his grandmother who had ever had faith in him. After her death, his father had drawn away from him, become colder and distant. They didn’t talk. Alfonso only ever spoke to tell him he should be working. Even at nine, the summer right after his mother had passed, he told Pol he should go out and ask to work odd jobs for the neighbors.

Any talk of art or history or language - all of the things Pol had once been interested in - were pushed aside. He could talk to his grandmother about it, but she never had much to say in response. On her better days, she stroked his cheek and occasionally gave one or two words of encouragement when he went on about what he had learned in school that day. On her worse days, she just stared blankly at the TV as he talked, completely lost in her own world. The worse days grew more frequent as he got older. By the time Pol was thirteen, she had stopped responding to him entirely.

Abruptly, he had no one. Everything in school went sharply downhill. Pol shirked his responsibilities and made out with girls in class and reinvented himself. In the span of a few months he became the rebel, the joker, the lady’s man. The carefree persona was an easy role to slip into. It made coming home easier. He had nothing worth talking about anymore.

And when his brother asked him if he’d fucked any girls, he could say yes now, and they could quit snarling at each other for two seconds and bond over their shared love of tits.

Most importantly, he no longer yearned to talk to his mother as fiercely. He almost didn’t want to. After all, if she did suddenly come back from the dead, she wouldn’t be proud of the person he’d become. He was sure of that. It made her absence easier, somehow. There was nothing for her to see, nothing for her to be proud of.

But when Merlí came to school, everything changed. He was the first person in nine years to actively believe in Pol, and at first he didn’t know what to do with that knowledge. It felt wrong, almost, to have someone tell him he was worth something. Being the best student in philosophy class put him in a new role - a role he hadn’t been entirely prepared for.

Suddenly he was someone whose opinion was valued, someone who had things to say that weren’t just for laughter or shock value. For the first time in years, he began to ask serious questions. He still didn’t take notes (that really wasn’t how he learned), but he started paying attention. He absorbed the material and let it change the way he saw things and felt good like he hadn’t since his mother told him bedtime stories and held his hand when he cried in the dark.

Being in Merlí’s class didn’t just change the way he was in school, though. Over the course of his first year in that class, he found himself less and less able to act the part at home. Being with his grandmother was still easy, but seeing his dad made Pol’s skin itch, and being around Oscar made him burn with pent-up rage. He wanted to grab his brother and shake him, scream How could you end up like this? Don’t you know mom wanted more for us? Don’t you want more?

He kept his head down for as long as he could, but eventually it was too much. When his grandmother died, it was the final straw. Without her sitting peacefully on the couch when he got home, Pol broke under the weight of his father’s black stare and his brother’s vicious sneers. He got a job that summer and worked all of the hours he could possibly take in a day, and when he got home finally he was too exhausted to think about anything but his bed.

The only bright spots in that entire summer were the few times he’d talked to Bruno. They texted back and forth every so often. Pol didn’t have much to say - after all, every day was the same for him - but Bruno would occasionally send him a picture of some historical landmark or beautiful artwork or sometimes some funny image he’d found online. They didn’t talk about anything personal, but it didn’t matter. Pol could fool himself as much as he wanted and tell himself that he didn’t care about any of the shit Bruno sent, but in truth the scarce contact was enough to keep him from going completely stir crazy.

It got harder to be content with working day and night when school started. Just the knowledge that somewhere only a few minutes away, Merlí was lecturing to a classroom full of his peers grated at his nerves like nothing else. He could picture it perfectly: they were all laughing and learning new things and generally living a great, carefree life, and Marc was probably using his empty desk as a footrest. He was Merlí’s “favorite student,” sure, but that role could be filled by anyone with a few brain cells and a smart mouth. Pol thought his mother was about as close to sainthood as you could get, but she had been wrong about one thing: he wasn’t special.

Then Bruno came to visit him and told him to come back, and for a second Pol had let himself believe he was wrong. But Bruno had smiled and opened his mouth and the words “I got over you this summer,” were like a bucket of cold water over his head.

“You’re not in love with me anymore?” He tried to sound as light-hearted as his throat would allow, but the words had come out sounding clumsy even to his own ears. Bruno bit his lip and looked away, and Pol had hurried to cover his tracks. “Am I not handsome enough for you now?”

He wanted to hit himself the moment the words left his mouth. He knew he sounded desperate, but he needed the validation. He needed to know he was special in some way, to someone.

But Bruno met his eyes and Pol could tell he was going to try and change the subject before he even opened his mouth. That settled it, then. He was replaceable in every sense of the word.

“Say hi to everyone, yeah?”

Bruno swallowed and gave a tiny nod, and Pol watched him walk away.

A few weeks later, when Bruno showed interest in him again, he hadn’t been able to resist. Bruno was his closest friend. That intimacy, that familiarity, didn’t exist between him and anyone else - not even Berta, whose body he knew so thoroughly he could probably draw it from memory. Knowing he was wanted by someone who knew him was addicting, even if Bruno didn’t have feelings for him anymore.

It was just for fun. They were both horny. It all sounded very logical when Bruno laid it out like that, but Pol found himself still unable to make the first move. Last year, that would have been the end of it. But this year, Bruno was sure of himself in a way Pol had never seen in him before.

But he didn’t want a repeat of last time. Pol swallowed down everything in him that wanted to take take take from Bruno and forced out a rebuff. “Better not, Bruno.” Bruno opened his mouth to respond, but Pol hastily added, “I don’t want to play with you.”

It was the truth, but Pol was surprised by how much he meant it. He had played with plenty of the girls at school before. Hell, he’d played Berta so many times that he’d lost track. That was what he did. He wasn’t a good lover or a good friend. He’d played with Bruno too, once, but he’d come too close to losing him. He didn’t want to risk that again. Couldn’t risk it.

Then Bruno had suddenly gotten a playful twinkle in his eye and a coy quirk to his mouth and he’d said, “Pity, because I do want to play,” and Pol was paralyzed, unable to do anything but look at Bruno with what must have been unbearable fondness.

The next few moments were a blur of warmth and light and confusion.

How did Bruno know that kisses on the neck were Pol’s weakness? And how did he know exactly how Pol liked to be touched? Had he learned something from all of those times watching him make out with Berta in class?

Pol didn’t wonder for long. Soon, their hands were on each other and Pol discovered that they worked together like the moving parts of an intricate machine, a perfect fit. Bruno effortlessly matched him kiss for kiss, breath for breath, touch for touch.

For the first time since he’d ever been with someone, Pol let himself be completely pliable. He let himself be rolled onto his back and taken apart with the mouth and hands of someone who seemed to intrinsically understand every part of him.

He reciprocated like he hadn’t the first time at the party, and they came together, Bruno gasping into his mouth, chest hitching against his own, fingers curled around his jaw like a promise.

When it was over, Pol got dressed and left. Partly because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do, and partly because it had been so, so good - better than he’d ever let himself think about in the long months of summer when he’d been alone in bed at night with nothing but his right hand and the desires he kept buried somewhere behind his ribs.

In school afterwards, Bruno had been almost insufferably casual about it all. When Bruno asked him if their night together had been great, Pol hadn’t been able to respond. More than the fact that he was worried about being overheard, Pol felt irrationally bothered by the fact that Bruno was treating the matter so lightly. It was like they were talking about another one-time conquest of Pol’s or a meaningless summer fling. He didn’t like that Bruno compared what had happened between them with the lust that he’d expressed for Ivan’s mom. He didn’t know how to express it, exactly, but the two feelings were distinctly separate in his mind, and it felt wrong to conflate them.

Then those words, tossed so carelessly in Pol’s direction as he could feel himself growing more and more defensive: “Calm down; I know how to keep a secret.”

That isn’t it, Pol wanted to say. Or at least that isn’t all of it. But the words wouldn’t come.

But of course Bruno would say that, and of course he knew how to keep a secret. He’d been keeping one all of his life. Pol tried very hard not to wonder what other secrets he was still keeping.

When they hooked up the next few times, Pol couldn’t say whose fault it was. Was it his own for being lonely and in need of validation? Was it Bruno’s for being so fucking confident and pretty and--and...

Pol couldn’t say, but it was screwing his head enough that he did stupid things like kiss Bruno goodbye before he went to work. He hadn’t meant to do that at all, but Bruno had been mussed from sleep and looking vaguely sad, and he’d always had nice hands - delicate hands, even, like a girl’s - and when they were combing through his hair Pol felt like he belonged right there, in that spot, for as long as he could stay.

It was intoxicating. He’d moved without thinking, needing to be closer, seeking out that feeling of closeness like it was a drug he needed a fix of. Only when they finally pulled apart was he able to gain his bearings enough to realize how stupid he’d been.

I don’t want to play with you, he’d said, not even a full week ago, and here he was doing exactly that. He spent that entire night at work kicking himself and couldn’t even manage to work up the lust he usually felt around Miriam. She asked him what was wrong and he brushed her off.

Miriam was nice, and she’d probably listen to him too, but a part of Pol knew that that wasn’t what he wanted from her. She was attractive, and he could tell she thought the same about him, but that was about where his interest ended. In a way, what he felt for Miriam was a lot easier to rationalize than what he felt for Bruno.

He could fuck Miriam and screw up their work relationship, sure, maybe even get himself fired, but in the end it wouldn’t be a great loss. They would both get what they wanted in the short term, and they would both leave satisfied. It would be almost like a transaction.

Pol knew all of that, but he still hadn’t gone for it. It would be so easy - he probably wouldn’t even have to say anything. At this point an accidental brush of the hands was probably enough to get Miriam amenable to a quick fuck in the back room, but Pol hadn’t even tried.

Any day now he would, he told himself. He just hadn’t found the right time.

Pol was wiping down the countertop when the door to the bar opened. He didn’t look up, expecting it to be Miriam coming to tell him something she had forgotten. He’d last seen her fifteen minutes ago when she left to let him close up for the night. There was no one around. Maybe this was finally the right moment to get over himself and initiate something.

“Pol.”

Pol’s head snapped up at the sound of his name. He knew that voice - and he especially knew how that voice sounded saying his name. It wasn’t Miriam.

“What are you doing here, Bruno?”

“I can’t come and say hi to my friend?”

“It’s late; you have class in the morning, no?’

“So do you,” Bruno countered.

He hopped up onto the counter that Pol was still hunched over with an easy grace. The move put close enough that Pol could count his eyelashes.

Pol looked down and made a passable attempt and continuing to clean the counter. “Seriously, what do you want?”

For a second he almost felt bad that he sounded annoyed, but Bruno took his tone in stride like he tended to take everything in stride these days. He kicked his feet against the counter like a child and shrugged.

“I was bored at home. Merlí was getting on my case about moping around all the time, so I left. You’re lucky you only know him in class; he’s a real pain in the ass at home”

Pol rolled his eyes. “Have you met my father?”

Bruno tipped his head back. “Fair enough. At least your dad doesn’t want to talk to you about your love life, though.”

“Really?” Pol dropped the rag and crossed his arms. “Merlí doesn’t seem like the type to care.”

“He isn’t, usually.” Bruno huffed out an exasperated breath. “Like I said, he thinks I’m moping. He told me that I’m depressing him, and that I should get out and live a little before I become like Eugeni.”

Pol laughed. “That’s a serious concern.”

Bruno snorted, and they both fell silent. Pol tucked the rag away and turned his back to Bruno to straighten the bottles on the shelves just to occupy his hands. For a minute the only sound in the room was glass clinking against class. Then Pol cleared his throat and said, “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Moping.”

“That’s not how I’d put it.” Bruno tapped his fingers idly against the countertop. “I guess I’m just restless. I miss Nicola. But I’d never admit that to my dad.”

“Right.” Pol began to shift around a few more bottles, but one of them rolled out of his grasp and wobbled on the edge of the shelf. Before he could push it back, the bottle rolled another centimeter and dropped.

Bruno bent backwards like an acrobat and, in an instant, reached out and caught the bottle in mid-air. He straightened and held out his prize to Pol with a shit-eating grin.

“No fucking way!” Pol said gleefully, grabbing the bottle and holding it up to inspect it. “Those dance classes haven’t turned you into Spider Man, have they?”

“Not really.” Bruno’s grin faded into an unbearable smirk. “But I am bendy, aren’t I?”

The words inspired a sudden spike of heat in Pol’s gut. He fumbled the bottle and almost dropped it again before setting it back on the shelf. “Come on, Bruno.”

“Come on, what? You can handle fucking around with me, but you can’t handle insinuations?”

“Bruno,” Pol warned.

This was getting dangerously close to territory that Pol had purposely been avoiding for weeks. Hooking up with Bruno felt good, and that was as far as he was willing to analyze the situation.

“No,” Bruno said, suddenly serious. “What is it? Am I too gay for you now? You want me to shave off my hair and wear sports jackets and baseball caps again? Will that make you more comfortable while I suck your dick?”

“Bruno, stop.”

Bruno slid off the counter and landed behind it, right in front of Pol. He stepped close enough that Pol was forced to take a step back into the shelves. Still, they were almost nose to nose.

“Stop what? Stop kissing you? Stop sucking your dick? You have to be specific.”

“Stop it.” Pol shoved him half-heartedly. “All of it. Just stop. If you’re going to be like this, I don’t want to--”

Bruno returned his shove with more force, cutting him off, boxing him against the shelves again. Before Pol could get his breath back, Bruno was on him, mouth firm and almost vicious against his own, one hand sliding into his hair, the other curling tight around his jaw.

Though Bruno was holding him against the shelves, Pol knew he could easily escape if he wanted to. He was bigger, after all, and Bruno wouldn’t keep him there if he protested.

Pol didn’t protest. The little voice in his head that he been telling him to back away a second ago had disappeared the moment he’d felt Bruno against him again. As much as he denied him in words, he found he was helpless to deny him in touch.

It was Bruno who finally pulled away, smirking faintly still. “You were saying?”

God, he was fucking irritating.

“Shut up.” Pol shoved him back enough to get his hands on Bruno’s hips. He unfastened the button with deft hands, pulled down the zip, grabbed hold of the waistband of his jeans and his boxers, and pulled them both down in one go.

Despite his bravado from just a second ago, Bruno looked abruptly winded. He watched with his mouth hanging open as Pol swiftly dropped to his knees. Wonderingly, as if he were unsure, his hand came to rest in Pol’s hair again. He kept it there as Pol nuzzled the trail of hair leading down to his cock and as he mouthed a kiss into the thin skin under Bruno’s navel.

“What are you...”

“What does it look like?” Pol asked, sounding more confident than he felt.

In truth, he had no idea what he was doing. He was just obeying what his body demanded. The only goal he currently had was to make Bruno feel good enough to shut up.

Bruno didn’t look like he had any more questions. His fingers curled more securely into Pol’s hair, scratching at his scalp. Surprisingly, that sent a jolt of heat to Pol’s gut. He ignored it in favor of leaving more wet kisses on Bruno’s pubic bone. He reached up and cupped Bruno’s balls in his other hand.

He had no idea what he was doing, really; he was only replicating what felt good on himself, but it seemed to be working. Bruno’s head fell back, his breath caught in his throat for a second.

Cautiously, Pol trailed his mouth lower and lower, until his lips were at the base of Bruno’s cock. He used his free hand to lift it, then, and angled his head so that he could tongue the underside. With his other hand, he rolled Bruno’s balls gently in his palm, and watched as his thighs shook.

Mesmerized, Pol jerked Bruno once, twice, before drawing the head to his lips. Bruno was already leaking, and the taste was salty and a little bitter but not entirely unpleasant. It wasn’t much better or worse than the way a girl tasted, in fact. He let his eyes close as Bruno’s fingers sunk deeper into his hair and guided him gently forward.

At least half of Bruno’s cock was in his mouth before the stretch was a challenge. But Bruno, for all his initial eagerness, was patient with him. He massaged the bolt of Pol’s jaw gently as he tried to take more, and never pushed him too fast or too hard. When Pol pulled back a little to swallow, Bruno didn’t resist.

Pol didn’t like to quit at things. He took a moment to breath and work his jaw from side to side, and then he took Bruno into his mouth again and slowly worked himself farther down than before, encouraged by the breathy sounds from above him.

Pol wasn’t sure what to do from there, so he tried his best to replicate what he liked when a girl was doing it to him. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked gently, then moved back enough that just the tip was in his mouth. He paid extra attention to the sensitive head, playing his tongue along the slit, collecting all of the precome that dribbled out. There was a lot, which was an unexpected turn on for Pol.

Bruno’s breath got more and more ragged, and Pol took more of him into his mouth again and began to bob his head back and forth as he sucked. Fingers dug into his scalp and Pol took that as a good sign and sped up his movements.

Bruno snapped his hips forward, looking unable to help himself, and Pol had to pull off abruptly. Rather than being annoyed, he took one look at Bruno’s expression and felt an unforeseen surge of pride and something darker, something like possessiveness.

“Does Nicola make you feel like this?”

Pol hated himself the moment the words were out. It was the wrong thing to say, but Bruno must have been too lost to care, because he just pulled Pol’s head closer to his wet cock and asked, “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Pol answered honestly, without thinking.

“It’s different with him,” Bruno said breathily. “I don’t-- nevermind. Just...”

“Okay,” said Pol, pursing his lips around the head of Bruno’s cock. He brought a hand up to help speed up the process for Bruno, who looked like he desperately needed to come, and began jerking him off while he teased the head with his tongue.

Bruno let out a long, low sound that went straight to Pol’s own cock. Pol hummed in response and then had to hold Bruno’s hips down to keep from being choked.

“Close,” he said finally.

Pol moved his hand faster and hollowed his cheeks as much as he could, taking more in his mouth, and Bruno tugged at his hair, a clear warning that he was about to burst. But something stubborn took root in Pol’s chest, and he refused to pull away.

Bruno shuddered, then, and Pol watched the muscles in his lower abdomen and pelvis contract as he came. He tasted even saltier before, but still not too bad that Pol couldn’t swallow most of it. The sound Bruno made at that was amazing: a long, keening whine like he was so overstimulated it hurt.

Pol disentangled Bruno’s loose fingers from his hair and got to his feet just as he was coming down from his high.

“Good?” Pol asked cheekily.

“Shh,” Bruno mumbled. “Take your dick out.”

Pol did, and Bruno immediately took over, gathering him in hand and jerking him in short, efficient strokes - the kind Bruno knew he liked. Pol let his head drop forward onto Bruno’s shoulder, closing his eyes and reveling in the sensation of being touched.

Bruno pulled away after a few seconds, licked his palm, and continued. Pol buried his nose in the crook of Bruno’s neck in approval, and Bruno said, “God, you’re so fucking--” sounding absolutely wrecked, like he was the one currently getting jerked off instead.

Pol nipped at the delicate skin of Bruno’s neck, tracing his teeth along his jugular and then soothing it with his tongue, leaving marks like he’d always been too afraid to before. Marks were permanent. Marks said ‘Pol was here.’

Fuck it. He was here.

He bit down again, gently, just enough to tease, and Bruno let out a breathy half-moan and thumbed over the head with practiced ease. Pol, already close, thrust his hips forward once and came without warning across Bruno’s fingers and his shirt.

They panted against each other for a good minute or so until they mutually decided to pull away enough to do up their jeans. Afterwards, Pol collapsed beside Bruno against the counter and a silence settled between them.

Bruno broke it a while later with a quiet sigh. Usually, Pol would have let it slide, but after everything that had just happened, he was finding it difficult to detach himself as well as he always did.

“What is it?” Pol asked before he could stop himself.

“Merlí’s right. I have been moping.” Pol opened his mouth to ask for clarification when Bruno added, “But it has nothing to do with Nicola.”

Pol licked his lips. This conversation felt dangerous. “What’s it about, then?”

Bruno slowly turned to face him. The expression on his face was one that said ‘do you really have to ask?’ He didn’t.

“I don’t think you should fuck Ivan’s mom.”

“Yeah?” Pol raised his eyebrows. Normally he’d get defensive, but his head was still swimming in post-orgasmic bliss, and Bruno’s expression wasn’t provoking. He looked open, vulnerable, like he was expecting to take a hit.

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Pol prodded. “You think she’s too old for me? Think I can do better?”

Bruno’s face changed between one blink and the next, becoming a mask of bravado and self-confidence again. “I think you’re already doing better.”

Instead of rising to the bait, Pol shrugged. “Maybe I am. And so are you, right? With Nicola.”

The mask cracked apart just as quickly as it’d been constructed, and Bruno was laid bare again. He ducked his head, said, “I guess,” like the words were a curse.

Pol couldn’t help it. Something inside of him urged him to keep pushing, wouldn’t let him rest until he got it all out.

“Do you love him?”

“Do you love Ivan’s mom?” Bruno shot back sarcastically.

“What?” Pol barked out a bewildered laugh. “Of course not. I just think she’s hot.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait...” Pol couldn’t quite work his mind around what Bruno was saying. He wet his lips and scraped his fingers through his hair. “I thought you and Nicola--”

“We aren’t even together!” Bruno burst out, an unexpected surge of energy in the otherwise still room. He let out an incredulous laugh once the words were out, looking relieved. “We never were, okay?”

Pol swallowed, taking a step back. The words rung in his ear for a few moments before settling like a sinking stone in his gut. Maybe the confession should have made him feel lighter - he wasn’t getting in between two people after all - but instead he felt like a pair of invisible hands had just fastened a noose around his neck.

“Why did you lie?” Pol asked, half-afraid of the answer, half-anxious for it.

“Do you have to ask?”

“Is ‘Nicola’ even real?”

Bruno laughed. “There was a Nicola. We fucked around a few times during the summer. That was all. Neither of us wanted more than that.”

“Why?”

“No,” Bruno bit out. “It’s my turn to ask questions.”

Pol spread his hands open, unsure if it was in surrender or in an attempt to push Bruno away. In the end, they just hung awkwardly in the air for a moment before he dropped them back down to his sides, defeated. There was nowhere to run. He couldn’t just leave the bar without closing up, and he’d have to see Bruno sometime again either way.

“Do you want me, or am I just a warm body to you?”

“Bruno, please don’t...”

“No. I need you to answer me.” Bruno looked straight at him, eyes burning intensely. “Am I a convenient replacement for Miriam or Berta or whoever?”

Something in Bruno’s voice was raw, and his eyes were liquid brown and soft. He was still so vulnerable, still laying himself so bare and trusting Pol not to crush him. He knew he owed it to Bruno to do the same, but he wasn’t sure he had the courage.

“I can’t--”

“Pol.” Bruno’s voice was cold and distant now, his eyes faraway. “If I am, fine. But I need to know, because-- because I can’t keep--”

The idea of Bruno walking out that door and never smiling at him again in the same way, never tracing the line of his jaw or combing fingers through his hair again, made panic bubble up in his chest like a shaken bottle of soda. His skin felt tight with so much pressure threatening to burst inside of him.

“No.” The single word was the hardest thing he’d ever said. “No, you’re not a replacement.”

Bruno’s gaze sharpened again. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Finally, quietly, he asked, “What am I, then?”

Were there words for what he was? If there were, Pol hadn’t heard of them yet.

“You... you’re my best friend.” But there was more. Pol swallowed, bracing himself. “You’re the person I trust the most. You’re someone I don’t want to hurt. You’re... someone I think about all the time.”

Pol drifted closer, driven by something akin to magnetism, and cupped Bruno’s jaw in both hands.

“I can’t get you out of my head, Bruno.” He laughed wryly, and the sound was terrible but also somehow fitting. “I could fuck a million people and you’d still be the one I keep coming back to.”

Bruno’s eyes were still strangely liquid, but on his mouth was the beginnings of a tiny, disbelieving smile. Pol had never seen someone look genuinely happy and so much like they were going to cry at the same time.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted you to say that?” Bruno finally asked.

“A year or so?” Pol guessed, remembering their first time together.

He’d always assumed Bruno liked him because he was just sort of there. Convenient and nice to look at, and probably less likely to reject him than someone like Joan or Gerard. Kind of like how if you were at summer camp and there was only one good-looking available girl, you naturally developed a crush on her even if there was no chemistry between the two of you. But if you had other options, she’d barely register on the radar.

Pol was pulled back to reality by the sound of Bruno laughing. It wasn’t bitter; he sounded mostly baffled.

“Pol, I’ve liked you since I met you,” Bruno said, incredulous. “I can’t believe you didn’t know that. I thought it was obvious, especially once we started messing around.”

“I had no idea,” Pol said. “I thought...”

“You thought I really had gotten over you this summer,” Bruno finished for him. Pol nodded, and Bruno’s smile turned sad. “It would take a lot more than a summer fling,” he said quietly.

“Oh.”

Distantly, Pol realized he was supposed to have a more legitimate reaction to this information, but all he could think was I’m not replaceable. He wasn’t interchangeable with any other attractive and willing guy who came along. He, specifically, meant something to Bruno. And this wasn’t a new development, either. Bruno had liked him since they were eleven. It was a lot to process.

“I can’t be like you,” Pol finally said. “I can’t be happy and proud of who I am. My life isn’t like that. But I don’t want to lose you. Or this.”

Bruno’s eyes softened again. “I understand that. Believe me, I do. But you can’t hide forever.”

“I’m not hiding. I like women. I like to fuck women.”

“And..?”

“And I like you, too,” Pol snapped, edgy from being pushed too far. “Isn’t that good enough?”

“That’s up to you,” Bruno said, shrugging. “No one can decide who you are but yourself.”

“You sound like Merlí,” Pol groused.

Bruno shuddered. “Don’t compare me to my dad right now.”

“Why not? Not all of us have the luxury of having a philosopher as a father.”

Bruno winced. “I know,” he said, smiling plainly. “I’m lucky. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though.”

“Yeah,” said Pol, “but I’m still not coming out. I know who I am enough to know that I’m not like you or Oliver.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Bruno countered. “I just want you to tell me what you want from me.”

Pol bit lip. This was harder than any time he’d ever fought with Berta or fucked another girl in his class and left promptly after. Admitting what he wanted from Bruno made this real, made it inescapable. But it already felt that way. Even if Pol couldn’t come up with an answer now, the way he felt about Bruno wasn’t going anywhere. A summer apart had proven that much.

“I just want you,” Pol managed eventually. He ran a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. “I want to be with you.”

“Then be with me,” Bruno said.

He made it sound ridiculously simple. Pol almost laughed. What about his father? What about his brother? What about Merlí and Berta and everyone else in his class? Could he deal with them seeing him differently?

He looked at Bruno, saw the determined and prideful jut of his jaw, the steel beneath his eyes, the strength wired into his posture. Bruno must have been just as afraid, once. But here he was, still standing here, as solid and real as ever.

Pol took a step forward, put a hand on the back of Bruno’s neck, and kissed him. It felt like he was doing more than just choosing Bruno. It felt like, for the first time in nine years, he was choosing himself.