I JUST WANT YOU TO LIKE ME | ✓

▬ 20: climb to paradise

Ziri's weight on my chest makes it difficult not to fall back asleep. Or it would, if he wasn't pressing his forehead against my sternum with enough force to shatter my ribs. My palm remains on the back of his head through all his writhing, the other hand holding Tehanu as I read it out loud, though I think he stopped listening a while back.

It's well into the evening and we've hardly got out of bed. It's too hot to do anything but complain about it. Never have I waited for sunset as eagerly as today, but heat still pours in through the open windows. We tried to form a draft by opening one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen, keeping the door from slamming with a pile of Ziri's university textbooks, but it only managed to bathe us in salt from the sea and the scent of pani puri from the Nepalese restaurant below. Not even a breeze has eased the heat that presses down on us.

At least once an hour, Ziri groans that he's going to kill himself if it gets any warmer, that he'd rather spend two weeks in the Sahara than a day in England when it's above twenty-five degrees. I tell him it's not funny, but we definitely need to buy a fucking fan.

I had promised Má I'd come visit today, but I texted her that I'd got stuck with a last-minute shift at work, which is obviously not true, but I couldn't tell her I'm just too tired. Even Ziri stayed home for the weekend, though the explanation he gave his parents was "I want to cuddle my boyfriend and I'm not getting on a train in this heat".

'It's not fair!' he cries, interrupting my reading mid-sentence. 'I want to be able to live in your bones. I should be allowed to.' He pushes his face so firmly against my chest that I'm sure he can't breathe. 'I want to live in your skin.'

'Not like Silence of the Lambs, I hope.'

Ziri lifts his face up, looking like he's genuinely about to cry, and I stuff my laughter into my stomach. 'God cursed me into this physical form, and I'm filing a complaint. Mon lapin–!'

'I don't want you to call me that anymore.' The words escape me before I catch them and my ears burn.

All the valves burst open. The house starts to drown.

His melodrama vanishes in an instant, and I expect anger to take its place, but Ziri just nods. 'Okay. You can be a duck, or a teddy bear, or a cabbage, or a chicken.'

He doesn't even ask for a reason... All the water suffocating my mind rushes to my eyes instead.

'Cabbage.' I choose this one because it's the least cute. There are no hunters after cabbages... just like farmers, who aren't very scary and probably aren't doing it for the thrill.

For a moment, Ziri smiles gently. Then drops to take a pretend bite of my arm, imitating chewing noises. 'Mmm, delicious cabbage.' Laughter bursts in my stomach, and I try to push him away, though he only licks the sweat from my skin as if drinking the bowl of phở tattooed there. 'It's even seasoned.'

I shove him off me, rolling over to pin him down. Tehanu flattens under his back. His fingers brush my ribs, and I pin his wrists down before he can attack me with tickles.

Ziri accepts his position without struggling. 'Cannibalism is totally homoerotic.'

'You are dead fucking weird.' He just smiles up at me, so effortlessly beautiful. My glasses slip lower on my nose. 'Dead weird...' I repeat, though it sounds more like "I love you", so I say that instead as I lower my head to kiss him.

Ziri kisses me back, trying to sate whatever hunger he has. The tendons of his wrists press into my palms. When I don't let go, he wraps his legs around my waist and pulls me flush against him.

The sensation distracts me enough that Ziri gets his wrists free and in an instant, his fingers are cupping my face, pulling me down so he can kiss me deeper. It's a salacious kiss, all tongue and saliva. He tastes of salt. Both of us wear sweat like a layer of skin, and this is certainly not helping.