Ziri's weight on my chest makes it difficult not to fall back asleep. Or it would, if he weren'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 fucking hot to do owt 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 minute-long breeze has eased the heat the 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 have his parents were "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 don't even ask for a reason... All the water suffocating my mind rushes to my eyes instead and my heart tries to swell beyond the capacity my ribs have to hold it.

'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 crumples under his back. When did I drop it? 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.

'Ow!' Ziri's teeth knock into mine as he jerks back. 'Ow, ow, ow.'

He hits my forearm and I realise my hand has trapped a chunk of his hair. 'Sorry!' I fly back, sitting on my heels, and Ziri sits up too, massaging his scalp. 'I'm sorry.'

'It's calm.'

Offering me a smile, he finds a scrunchie from the nightstand and collects his curls into a puff at the top of his head. Then he picks up Tehanu to leave in its place and turns back to me. With my legs folded under me and his stretched out on either side of mine, he has to look up a little to make eye contact.

He inspects me for a moment with a gentle crease in his forehead before he kisses me again and this kiss is the opposite: light and soothing. His hands lift to my face but rather than cup it, he clasps the temples of my glasses. 'Can I take these off?'

Confusion clouds me for a moment. Who asks for consent to take off someone's glasses? But I nod and Ziri peels them from my face. His features blur. Even so, he's beautiful.

Ziri leans in to invite me into another kiss, just as slow as the previous one.

While I'm still dazed by his lips, his hands fall to my waist, bulking up the material of my sleeveless tee. Once they find my skin, they slide back until his fingers graze my spine, then move back to the front. He continues to massage my waist like this until we reach the end of the kiss.

'Can I take this off?' he whispers.

'Aye.'

I'm not sure why we're whispering but we are. My heart beats loud as I watch him peel the top off me. He traces the serpent that circles my waist until it meets a crane at the centre of my chest, depicting the legend of Lạc Long Quân, the dragon from the rivers, and Âu Cơ, the fairy of the mountains, from whom all Vietnamese people are descended. My heart beats louder as he takes my hands and guides them to the hem of his t-shirt.

We watch each other without moving.

I'm not sure what to do with myself. I never had to think with Dominic; he moved me around as he liked. Though I know it's not what he wants, I can't kill the urge to offer myself for Ziri's use. It grows louder with every second. The words climb onto my tongue and I open my mouth–

Ziri hugs me. He pulls me so close, his skin adheres to mine and he holds me for a minute, two, five... He holds me until the water from the taps that won't stay shut starts to seep out from the fissures of the house. When it falls into the crook of his neck, Ziri only lifts a hand to scratch my scalp.

I love him so much it almost hurts, only for that love to soothe any pain it causes. That's what this is, right? Healing. Dr Qureshi said I have to let myself feel things — emotions aren't foreign soldiers, they're just trying to defend themselves. Maybe my body will eventually learn to welcome them home.

In a whisper, he asks if I want to stop and I say no, but go slow.

Peeling back, Ziri dries my tears. His eyes are black, the pupil lost entirely into the iris. There are no sharp edges. I could look into his eyes forever.

'Tell me what you like.'

I stare at him blankly. My ears burn. 'I... I dunno.'

'Well, me neither. I don't even masturbate.' He laughs and I do too, though we try to stifle them so we don't break our unwritten agreement of silence.

Ziri's smile fades as his eyes trace the lines of my body. He plants a kiss on the plane between my eyebrows before his hands venture down. His touch is feather-soft until he grazes my neck with his teeth and I crumble into his arms, not because he tears some essential scaffolding but because I know it's safe to fall here.

When I touch him, he moans my name like a prayer. He don't use any of his usual terms, just Miles. We whisper into the heat that builds between our bodies — Is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay? I love you.

Ziri beckons me into the room with orange walls where I can't hear the roars from the basement. There's so much love in him it could make orchards grow in a bomb crater. And it does. I think that's what he does...

            'I want to eat an orange.'

Ziri rolls free from my arms and onto his feet. He pulls on his robe but presses one knee on the bed to kiss me before he leaves the room. I listen to the retreating shuffle of his dragged feet against the floor.

As his body heat fades, goosebumps raise on my arms and I grab the duvet from the foot of the bed where it has ended up. Once I'm cocooned in it, it turns into wet cement — heavy, locks me in. Fear carves at my chest, digging a grave for the bliss I felt moments ago.

What if he leaves? What if he got what he wanted and he leaves?

Ziri's footsteps return and the mattress dips. He says summat though his voice is lost behind the screaming from the basement in my mind. I can't bring myself to pry my stare from the ceiling until his hand falls to my shoulder.

'What's wrong, chou?'

His eyes are too soft. I wait for blue to crawl in, for his gaze to sharpen because I failed to deliver the fantasy he wanted.

'I'm sorry,' I mumble. 'You said you wanted it to be romantic.'

Ziri rolls his eyes. 'Oh shut up, Kilometres. I wanted it to be with you, innit.' He plucks a chunk of orange from the bowl in his hand, a smile growing onto his face as he chews. 'Besides it was romantic. I'm so happy I got to share this with you, even if we never do it again.'

He has peeled even the skin that compartmentalises the orange, leaving only the meat, so when he feeds a piece to me, it breaks into juice vesicles before I can swallow it. Tears brim in my eyes. My chest is somehow hollow and full at the same time.

Dominic only craved me in segments. He consumed the sweetest parts and left what were no use for him: my biceps, the arches of my feet, the band just above my waist where my two lowest ribs found the strength to resist him. The cheery tree were rooted so deep that tearing it out left damage in places I never expected.

'Baby...' Ziri tugs at the blanket and I let go so he can flatten himself against my side, leaving the bowl of orange on the nightstand. 'How are you feeling?'

My throat is stiched tight and I know my voice will come out as a high-pitched scrape; embarrassment arrives in advance.

'A lot...'

'I love you.' He brushes away my tears before they fall. He's pressed so close he must feel the sobs even if I try to trap them in my chest. 'It's okay if you feel bad.'

'I don't! Maybe. I dunno. I'm sorry, I know you won't, but I'm so scared you'll disappear or get angry for not doing it right. I'm so scared I'll feel ashamed then I'm ashamed for even thinking that.' I cover my face in my arms as the wall I've tried to build collapses.

'It's okay, chouchou.' Ziri kisses my shoulder. You have to let yourself feel it.

I cry and he lets me though it makes him cry too and this isn't remotely romantic anymore. Once I've cried enough to rinse the shame out of me, I rotate in our duvet-cocoon and hug him so tight I think it might hurt.

'Thank you.'

'Kanmot 3lik,' he says with summat of a groan — You're killing me.

I ignore his pretence of frustration and hold him tighter. Ziri don't complain about being crushed against my ribs. 'I feel safe with you. It means a lot to me, more than I like... realised until now. That sounds stupid. Like, I dunno, I think I might have lived all my life waiting for summat to explode and I've just never realised.'