Fatigue still clings to me as sleep slowly retreats. Even when I'm awake enough to feel Ziri caress my cheek, my eyelids remain too heavy to open, my lashes glued together. He must sense I'm approaching consciousness because he whispers, 'Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes. Do you feel like eatin or do you just wanna sleep?'

I'm about to tell him I want to sleep but just as the words reach my tongue, I realise how hungry I am, like I haven't eaten in weeks. Ziri smiles when he sees my eyes part. The room is dark, save for a light glow that cleaves through the ajar door and my eyes shift to the window to find a square of pitch-black sky. How long did I sleep for?

I crashed into bed the moment I got home from therapy and the sun were still bright then. I know that because I distinctly remember thinking that I don't have the energy to close the blinds — honestly, it's lucky I had enough energy to not crash the car. From now on, I'll have to go to therapy by bus because it's definitely not safe for me to drive like this.

'I'll eat.'

Ziri picks up a glass from the nightstand. 'Brought you some water.'

I push myself up onto my elbows to take it and gulp several mouthfuls. It's cold and tastes like it came directly from a blessed mountain stream.

Ziri continues to stroke my hair as I drink. 'How was therapy?'

'Exhausting.'

He hums a laugh. 'I know what you mean.'

I sip the water, hoping it'll last forever so I have an excuse not to talk, but I'm too thirsty to savour it properly and the glass is empty within a minute. I place it on the table.

'He — Dr Qureshi — wants me to talk to you about boundaries during sex. Which I told him is stupid cause we've never had sex so what boundaries are there to talk about? But apparently, it's "useful for the future".' I inject enough mockery into my imitation of him to ensure Ziri understands I know it's ridiculous and don't actually want to do it. I'm perfectly happy ignoring the homework as I did most of the time in school, hastily scribbling summat two minutes before class.

'You wanna do that now or some other time?'

I stare at him. Surely he has better things to do. But when he waits patiently for a response, I have to accept that he genuinely wants one.

'I guess now.' If I'm already exhausted and having an awful day, I might as well get all this over with and there's a chance tomorrow won't be as awful, though I'll probably be dead tired. I wouldn't mind being put in a coma for a few weeks right about now.

Ziri climbs over me to sit comfortably against the wall rather than on the edge of the bed. I turn over to face him, sitting up properly as I do, and though I open my mouth, nowt comes out. My eyes claw up to meet his. When they do, I blink repetitively to escape the care and affection in them.

Eventually, I wring my hands and look down at them to be able to speak. 'I feel bad, cause we've been waiting for five years and all and now we have to wait even longer just cause of me, like.'

Ziri remains silent for a long time and when I finally dare to look up enough to see his mouth, I find it curved into a stubborn smile he tries dutifully to repress. 'K– Miles... do you not hear the double standard in that?' A laugh escapes from his stomach even as he tries to swallow it. 'You have been tellin me bout how you don't need sex and how I don't owe you sex. I don't need that either.' He reaches out for my wrist to still my wringing. 'We don't need to have sex.'

I finally meet his eyes, black pupils lost in black irises. Everything about him is whole.

'I do wanna have sex with you,' I say earnestly. 'I well wanna have sex with you. That's the whole point of this therapy thing.'

Ziri's smile grows though it has a tautness to it that tries to pull it into a frown. 'No, Miles, you aren't goin to therapy so we can have sex. You're goin to therapy so you can heal from your trauma, or at least begin to.'

I stare at him, then hang my head. I fight the urge to open the scab on my thumb but with Ziri watching, I try to substitute it by repetitively scrunching my toes. Maybe I'm disgusting and sex-obsessed. Maybe I'm making our relationship into summat perverse — maybe I'm the one who did it with Dominic too, maybe he didn't even want to have sex.

Maybe we shouldn't have sex, I shouldn't ever touch Ziri with such sick hands.

Predicting my thoughts, just as I go to shift away, Ziri moves forward and takes hold of my other wrist too, pulling my hands apart to take them in his. 'I love you,' he reminds me, caressing my knuckles with his thumbs. 'We don't have to have sex but if we do, what boundaries do you want to make?'

My palms itch in his hold — my whole body itches. I need to run. I need to leave.

I look at him, look away, clear my throat. 'I don't know if I'll be comfortable bottoming for a while. Maybe ever.'

'That's okay.' Ziri's thumb pauses on the knuckle of my ring finger to massage it before he continues to travel the hills and valleys. 'Tassano, we don't even need to have penetrative sex at all. It's not any less "real" without penetration. Oral, mutual masturbation, all that — it's still real sex.'

My eyes snap up to him and I go to disagree but I close my mouth before I say owt.

Deducing my thoughts once again, Ziri leans forward to press a kiss to my forehead. 'You need to unlearn your internalised heteronormativity, babe.'

I smile though this is nowt I want to smile about. How does he have the patience for me? He should be with someone who don't drag him down or hold him back, someone as intelligent and as much of an actualised queer as him. I can't even hold his hand in public.

Ziri continues to caress my knuckles. 'If we do have penetrative sex as some point, what are your thoughts on condoms?'

'What d'you mean?'

It's his turn to be embarrassed. 'Well, we're in a committed relationship, innit. Unless you're cheatin on me—'

'I'm not cheating on you!'

'I know that.' Ziri recaptures my hands that I yanked back in my shock. 'It was a joke.'

A groan rumbles at the back of my throat. 'I'm too tired for jokes.'

'Sorry.' A sheepish smile tugs at his lips. 'Anyway, if we both just get tested first, I'm fine — um — not using them.'

I consider it for a moment. With Dominic, we started out using condoms but after a few months, he stopped. The first time, I were already lubed and pinned to the bed when he reached into the drawer of his nightstand where he kept his condoms only to find nowt but an empty box. I asked if he could run down to the nearest shop but Dominic's breaths were pummeling into my neck. Please, bunny, his voice wormed hot in my ear. I need you so bad.

Mrs Watt's nasal voice echoed somewhere in the backroom of my mind where she lectured a group of twelve-year-old boys who laughed every time she said penis about always using condoms, no matter what, unless you were married. But if I said no, Dominic might stop answering my texts again and somehow that felt worse than the apocalypse.

'I already got tested when we started dating,' I say and shrug. 'Guess we'd save money not using them.'

Ziri makes a sound between a laugh and a scoff. 'I don't know how much sex you reckon we'll be havin that we'll save any significant amount of money on condoms, but sure. Every pound counts. You wanna start a swear jar but with condoms, so you put in fifty pence every time we have condomless sex and in fifty years we can go on holiday?'

I shake my head but the bands of anxiety around my chest finally ease a fraction. I pull my hands from his so I can hug him. 'I love you.'

            I glance over the laptop screen to check that Ziri is still focused on his phone. Sprawled on the sofa, he's on a video call to his parents because he decided to stay home this weekend. (I hope that's not because of me though I'm pretty sure it is.) His laughs hum at the back of his throat as he talks to them about nowt in particular and he don't seem to be aware of the world outside his screen. Good.

I open Facebook and, with light fingers as if Ziri will hear what I'm writing from the sound of the keys, type Dominic Eaton into the search bar and hit enter. I've done this so many times by now that I find his profile with ease.

I never get further than a glance before I have to shut the tab but I'm determined to see more today. So, even as my body feels like it's deteriorating at hyperspeed and I'll crumble from old age within minutes, I scroll through the information panel that lists his job, schools, and universities until I get to lives in: Leeds, England and I realise summat's missing. The only place of study is the University of Leeds, but he did his master's in Germany, didn't he? I can't remember where — I'm not sure if he ever told me where — but that's why we split, because he moved to Germany.

I click on the photos tab but his account were created in 2008 and there are no pictures from before then. I glare at the screen for refusing to give me answers before I open a new tab and go to MySpace. I never took Dominic as the type of person to actively post on MySpace but turns out he were (maybe I just didn't know owt about him). As I start scrolling down two years' worth of "pics" as the site calls them, the rational part of me suggests that maybe he just didn't add his German university to his Facebook profile. There are a million reasons why he wouldn't and he did make his account after he would've graduated.

The more rational part of me suggests that I may actually be insane because there are very few non-crazy explanations for me MySpace-stalking my ex. But I can't bring myself to stop.

It takes plenty of scrolling but when the dates finally start in 2006, I slow down. Soon enough, I find a picture of Dominic surrounded by moving boxes with another man beside him captioned, moving day. The date is 23 June 2006. So he did move to Germany.

Except I click through the next few posts and the apartment is definitely in England because one of the photos is the view from the kitchen window and there's a printing service on the ground floor called Quick Print with a British phone number on the window. It looks a lot like Leeds. Why would he move flat within Leeds in June if he were gonna move to Germany in August? Or maybe he were just helping the other bloke move. But why would he post so much about that?

I look through the pictures until I freeze at one of Dominic and the man from the first photo on what can only be a date, which is confirmed by the caption: Two years. Love you forever. The man is tagged as the profile of Iain Cooke and the date is 9 October 2006. Two years.

My fist tightens around the mouse as I scroll down so quick I can hardly see the photos until I halt at random and find another picture with Iain Cooke. The date is 14 June 2005. I met Dominic only two months after the photo were posted.

As I stare at it, I realise that I recognise the bloke. One Saturday when Iris were on a playdate at Olivia Stonem's home, I couldn't take Má so I went to Dominic's — that's where I went when I needed to get out of the house, rather than running.

When I knocked, it weren't Dominic who opened the door, but a stranger. He were wearing nowt but a morning robe despite it being one in the afternoon. Though he were equally perplexed by my school uniform on a Saturday.

It took me a moment to slog out of my confusion. Sorry, is Dominic home?

The man smiled and stepped back from the door. Dom, there's some kid here to see you.

I remember my fury starting to simmer at that. Some kid? I wanted to correct him: he's my boyfriend actually, but, of course, I didn't have the nerve.

He retreated and soon Dominic appeared in the doorway, shirtless, in a pair of joggers, and his hair wet. Seeing me, his eyes widened a fraction and he stepped outside, pushing me away from the door as he shut it behind himself. What're you doing here? Did we agree to meet today?

No, but my mum is doing my head in and I needed to see you. I wanted to collapse into his arms but his face were taut and the relief that radiated through me at the sight of him were rapidly fading.

He moved closer to whisper. Right, but I thought you understood that you can't come over unless we agree ahead of time. Cause I'm still closeted, Miles. He nodded at the door. My mate's crashing over the weekend, you can't just show up. How am I s'posed to explain this to him?

Guilt stung my insides. He called me Miles... He never called me Miles unless he were well radged. I'm sorry. Fuck, I'm so sorry. I just needed to see you, I didn't think–

It's okay. Just don't do it again. I'm sorry, I can't... He gestured vaguely at the door to continue.

I shook my head fervently, adamant to express to him that I knew he were right and I weren't going to throw some tantrum about this like "some kid". No, of course not. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.

Smiling, Dominic cupped my face, angling it so my eyes met the sharp blue of his. It's okay, bunny. He fixed a kiss on my mouth. Why don't you come over on Monday?

I never even doubted him... Iain weren't his "mate crashing over the weekend". How were I stupid enough to fall for that? His flat only had one bed and no sofa or extra mattress anywhere I had seen. They were both practically naked.

I'm so fucking stupid.

Lunging to my feet, I swipe my glass to the floor. Ziri jolts up from the sofa. Somewhere far away, I hear him tell his parents he has to go, he'll phone again later. My blood boils, scalding my skin from the inside, hot enough to melt it off my bones. I stare at the shards, wrestling the urge to crush them into dust with my bare hands though I know that would only cut my palms open. I wouldn't even care.

The cherry tree turns into a beast when its roots are torn from the lining of my stomach. It claws and screams, trying to devour the flames even when they're devouring it. The anger that floods into me is unlike owt I've experienced. It turns me inside out.

But Ziri isn't afraid. He appears at my side, guides me from behind the table — taking the long way to avoid the glass shards as if he can read my thoughts — and leads me to the sofa. He holds out a cushion to me.

I stare at it and he pushes it toward me. Hesitantly, I take it, and though he provided me with no instruction, when it's in my hold, I understand. I smack the sofa with the pillow and after the first hit, I can't stop. I beat the sofa until my arms burn from fatigue, until my knees buckle, until I collapse onto the floor, hugging the cushion, rest my head against the edge of the seat, and break into sobs.

Ziri gets on his knees beside me. He pets my head but even the graze of his nails against my scalp fails to banish a fragment of my agony. My lungs are wrung tight like my body is trying to squeeze water out of them. My heart beats so fast it'll crawl out of my throat. The roots of my teeth dig into my gums from the force with which I clench my jaw.

The tree is on fire. The house is on fire.

Everything hurts.

'I hate him.' My voice is raw as if I've been screaming for hours. Have I? The words taste like blood.

My fear that Ziri will be horrified by my rage is soothed the moment he speaks. 'I know.'

'I hate him. I hate him, Ziri.' My sobs are so violent, they punch aches through my chest. My body is slathered in so much sweat, it feels like a layer of dead skin I'm shedding. 'I wanna kill him.'

Ziri moves closer so he can kiss my shoulder and pull me into his arms. 'I know.' His voice trembles and I know he's crying. It brings me such comfort that he cries with me, as weird as that may be. It makes me feel safe, validated, and understood much better than if he feigned strength for my sake. 'I know, hayati, I know.'

He continues to pet my head as he sings a Moroccan lullaby to me that soothes me though I have no idea what it means — Nini ya moomoo, hatta yTib 3shana. I don't know how many times he sings it but I sink a little with each word until my head ends up on his lap and not for a moment does he stop caressing my face. He wipes each tear as soon as it falls.

By the time I stop crying, the rich blues of the morning have thinned into a translucent shade. As the sun hangs directly above us, it bleaches colour from the sky as though from a wafter paper that might break if I poke a finger into it. Could I peel the sky back and step into summat beyond, to rise into the universe and see how tiny the earth is, constructed from cardboard houses and plastic figurines? Maybe it's all held together with magnets like Iris's old Polly Pocket. I could pack all my anxiety into a mass-produced toy suitcase and leave it behind as Earth shrinks to the size of a football, a tennis ball, a golf ball, until it disappears entirely. I'd never have to feel any pain again.

'Buddhism rejects the existence of bad people, of evil people...' The sentence is a ball of flint paper dragged up my throat; every syllable scrapes against blistered skin. 'I dunno how I'm s'posed to not think of him as evil.'

Ziri, still petting my forehead at a steady rhythm, remains silent. I turn my head on his lap to look up at him and he smiles sadly at me. His own tears have caked dry streaks on his dark skin.

'He'll have bad karma...'

I smile, not because it makes me feel better or because it's funny, but because he refuses to make promises or platitudes he can't keep. He don't attempt to solve my spiritual dilemma with a neat and pretty one-liner. I smile because I love him and the unwavering faith he has in his god, how willing he is to leave punishment to the heavens but how he also don't criticise me for wanting to deliver it myself. I love him because he has just spent literal hours holding me on the floor of our flat without a single complaint even though his legs must have fallen asleep long ago.

I love him because this may be the first time I've allowed him to take care of me and he does it like it's a privilege, like he'd spend his life taking care of me just as happily as he'd spend it lounging in a tangerine orchard.

'I hope so.' I've hardly said it before guilt stings my gut. I glance at the sky again. 'But that's cause I have a selfish want for revenge so I think that makes me a bad person.'

This time Ziri's smile is one of genuine amusement, the kind of grin that rises higher on the right side of his mouth than the left, the grin he makes when he's exasperated or about to make a joke he finds hilarious though nobody else will, the kind he wears before he calls me Kilometres.

'You're not a bad person. You just said Buddhism rejects the existence of bad people.' The grin softens and he wipes my cheeks of the last remnants of tears. 'You have every right to be angry.'

The beast has burnt into charcoal but still, it finds the energy to clamber around in my stomach acid. It bruises me from the inside and I doubt the nausea will subside for hours. There's nowt left of the house but the basement, the door to which was damaged enough by the fire for some monsters to crawl out. I'll have to repair it. I'll have to build a whole new attic to escape into.

'I don't like it.'

'I know you don't.' His lips twitch again. 'But you're human so unfortunately you'll experience anger at some point.'

My lips flatten into a frown. 'My grandma used to say that if I hold a grudge, I'm the one who has to bare the burden of sorrow, that, like, "true wisdom lies in the ability to forgive".'

'Yeah,' he concedes, 'but a grudge is, by definition, persistent and anger is a temporary emotion. You have to feel your anger to get rid of it before it rots into bitterness.' His caresses become intentional again. 'You have every right to be angry, baby.'

Ziri makes the world so simple. Most people would call him naïve for it, for perceiving the whole of existence as centred around love, but I appreciate the planeness of it. He makes it so easy to believe that maybe all there is to life is loving and whatever must be done to be able to love deeper.

His love is so gentle I'm not entirely sure where I'm s'posed to put it.

The first time I had sex, properly, I were so hungry I were barely conscious. Dominic had told me not to eat.

It were only after three months of dieting smoothies and porridge that I learnt about douching from an internet forum. They never showed it in porn so I assumed it's what they all did: stay hungry even when their mothers slapped them for refusing food she had worked herself to the bone to afford.

Dominic didn't like it. He said that it took too long (which it did, at least in the beginning before I got the hang of it) and by the time I were finished, he weren't in the mood anymore. So I compromised: skipped lunch and rushed home to douche before racing to his place. Normally the run would be fine but with the amount I were eating, it were lucky I never passed out.

He always anchored a hand to the small of my back so I couldn't arch it. He never said my name, only bunny, but sometimes his moans became slurred enough that I could stitch them to summat similar: Mile, Mills, Isles, even if I had to do it without a thimble.

Towards the end, before he moved — moved in with his real boyfriend, apparently —he would sometimes watch porn at the same time, his laptop placed beside my head so their exaggerated moans echoed in my skull to cover up the absence of my own. The next time, I would try my best to mimic the wide-eyed twinks in his videos and his pupils would shove back the ice from his irises and I were so happy to please him. But then he would get bored again.

When he finished, Dominic pulled away and wiped himself clean and I would lie on his bed, my thighs sticky with lube and his semen. I think he ejaculated shame into me — I were always crippled by it in the moments after like I wanted nowt more than for my body to disperse into dust and be lost in his sheets.

Two months ago — fuck, two hours ago — I would've said it were just internalised homophobia but it weren't, were it? He made me feel used. He made me feel used because that's what he were doing — using me. I s'pose I always knew.

How the fuck were I stupid enough to think he cared?

Ziri sniffs as quietly as he can so as not to attract attention to himself. He's always apologising for crying but I wish I could cry the way he does. I wish I could express an emotion without feeling like I exist too much, I wish emotions didn't feel like colonizers in my body.

'But he didn't.' By now, my voice is so hoarse it's barely audible. 'Anyone else could see that he didn't give a fuck about me. I'm so stupid.'

'That doesn't make you stupid.'

We're still on the floor. The rug has imprinted onto my shoulders and elbows, debossed itchy rashes into my skin. With my head in his lap, Ziri has not stopped caressing me for a moment. By now, there's no doubt his legs are entirely numb.

I adhered my eyes to a Parma Violet that has rolled under the sofa and didn't look at him once as I told him about it. I still can't look at him but I take his hand from my cheek and interlock our fingers. I didn't tell him much — I didn't tell him enough. But I can't bleed more today or I'll bleed out. So I squeeze his hand and hope he understands what I mean by it: thank you for listening but please don't ask more of me, or summat like that.

For the first time in hours, Ziri shifts his position and my head drops a tad lower. He pulls his finger coils over one shoulder with his free hand. 'I just want to ask... have you thought about if you want to go to the police?'

I laugh, a cold laugh he don't deserve but my throat is too raw to hold it back. 'What are they gonna do about it? I were sixteen and I never said no. No court's gonna see that as rape.'

'Okay,' he says like it really is okay. 'If you ever want to, I'll help you any way I can.'

'Ta.'

Ziri smiles down at me. 'Do you wanna watch Imagine Me And You?'

I almost start crying again because I'm so tired and I want to stop feeling awful, I want to stop bleeding and Ziri offers me a DVD like a bandage because he knows me. He knows me even if I've kept so much from him.

I struggle to sit up, my abdomen fatigued by keeping the beast from tearing out through my stomach. Wiping my eyes, I nod. 'Yes.'