Chapter Text
Dunk couldn’t remember afterward who threw the first punch. He just remembered Aerion sitting against the wall behind the shed spitting blood at his feet and laughing. His face was pleased but somehow rabid. One eye was swelling shut.
“You fucking psycho,” Aerion said, and spat again. “You almost killed me.”
“You’re a psycho yourself.” Dunk could barely breathe. Everything hurt. His head was buzzing. “They’re gonna expel us both.”
“Yeah, who fucking cares.”
“I care.”
The next day Dunk got called to the principal’s office. He walked there with his legs like lead, ready for anything. His grandfather would just kill him, no question.
In the office sat Aerion, hair combed, in a clean shirt, and some grown man in a coat. The uncle, as it turned out later.
They came out of the office together. Dunk was limping. Aerion had a black eye and the same rabid look. No one got expelled.
“Hey,” he said when they reached the stairs. “You owe me now.”
“What?”
“What. My uncle stuck his neck out for you too. You’re mine now.”
Dunk wanted to say something, but Aerion was already walking off, not turning back, like everything had been decided. And, well, it had been.
They went everywhere together now. Aerion decided things, Dunk did them. Who to beat up, who to corner behind the school, who to shake down for cash. It wasn’t right, but he couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy it, either.
He and Aerion made a good team. Aerion was the brains, Dunk was the muscle. But Aerion could throw down too. He was fast and mean, and when he went into a fight, Dunk’s heart would just stop for a second — that’s how good-looking he was. His nose had been broken, but so what, Dunk’s had been broken too. Twice, actually.
A week later Aerion came up to him during break.
“Saturday, behind the shed. Two on two.”
“With who?”
“Luke and his buddy. Remember Luke?”
“That the one who tripped you in PE?”
“That’s him.”
“And he didn’t apologize?”
Aerion looked at him like he was an idiot.
“He spat on my back in the cafeteria. In front of everyone.”
“Oh.”
“You coming?”
“I’m coming.”
Saturday a crowd gathered behind the shed — twenty people at least. Word had gotten around. They stood in a half-circle, somebody filming on a phone. Dunk hated this kind of thing. Fighting in front of people felt like being on stage, and he was always afraid of fucking up. Aerion was the opposite. Aerion bloomed in front of an audience.
Luke was huge, two-hundred-plus pounds. His buddy was smaller but mean, with a knife. The knife got taken away before it started, though — one of the older guys said “no weapons,” and the kid handed it over without a word.
Aerion stood across from Luke. Looked small next to him, skinny. Dunk thought, fuck, they’re gonna fold him in half right now.
“Well?” Aerion said. And smiled.
After that Dunk didn’t really think. He went for the buddy because the buddy was closer, and the buddy turned out to be weaker than he looked. Dunk hit him in the jaw once, then again, and then he was down and not getting up. Dunk stepped back, turned around — and saw it.
Aerion was barely holding on. Luke had him pinned in a corner against the shed wall and was working him over — that huge fist going up and down like a piston, and Aerion just managing to cover his face. One punch got through. Aerion’s head snapped sideways.
Dunk lunged in from the side and swung Luke in the ear. With everything he had. Luke rocked, distracted for a second, turned to Dunk — and immediately sank his fist into Dunk’s stomach. Right under the ribs. The air went out of Dunk’s lungs all at once, he folded in half, gasping like a fish. Everything blurred.
When he straightened up — Aerion was already on top of Luke. He’d dropped him, and now he was hitting him in the face, methodically, both hands taking turns, like he was kneading dough. Luke was groaning underneath him, trying to cover up. Aerion wasn’t letting him.
There was blood everywhere. On the asphalt, on Aerion’s hands, on his shirt. Aerion was smiling. Happily. Like a kid.
Somebody in the crowd shouted, that’s enough, knock it off. Aerion didn’t hear. Dunk stepped over and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey. Enough.”
Aerion didn’t react. Kept hitting him.
“Aerion. I said enough.”
Nothing. Once, twice, a third time — fist coming down, going up, coming down. A shiver went down Dunk’s spine, because he understood: Aerion was about to kill him. Just beat him to death, wasn’t going to stop. And no uncle was going to fix that one at school.
Dunk grabbed him from behind, arms around his chest, and hauled him up. Aerion turned out to be light. Light and hot, like he had a fever. He thrashed, tried to break free — Aerion had that other strength, the rabid kind — and Dunk barely held on. Pulled him back a couple of steps, pinned him against the wall.
“That’s it. That’s it, you hear me.”
Aerion was looking at him and not seeing him. Pupils blown wide, black. Breathing in short bursts through his mouth.
“Aerion. It’s me. Enough.”
Aerion blinked. Then again. Started coming back gradually — Dunk could actually see his eyes turning back into eyes instead of two holes.
“Huh?” Aerion said hoarsely.
“You’d have killed him,” Dunk said. “That’s it. Enough.”
Aerion looked sideways, at Luke. Luke wasn’t moving. Some of the people were already running over, leaning in, shaking him. He started groaning — thank God, alive.
Aerion looked at his own hands. They were shaking.
“Let’s go,” he said to Dunk. Quietly.
They went. Aerion walked beside him, still shaking a little, and Dunk watched him out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t figure out what he had inside. Something was there. Not fear. Not disgust. Something else entirely, something Dunk had never had before.
Nobody called Aerion out for a fight after that. Not for a long time.
The kid’s name was Eric. He was in his year — skinny, long-necked, glasses. Aerion had taken against him at some point — Dunk hadn’t caught when. Aerion never explained.
That day they cornered him in the toilets. Aerion was vaping, leaning against the sink, looking at Eric like he was bored. He stood relaxed, one hand in his pocket, the other with the vape at his lips. Dunk looked at him and thought, what an asshole, how can he not give a shit. Eric was crying, and Aerion wasn’t even interested.
“So tell us again,” Aerion said. “Which boys you like?”
Eric was silent. His hands were shaking.
“What’re you quiet for? You were telling everybody in PE. Alex told me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You did. Alex wouldn’t lie. Well? Who?”
Eric shook his head. His glasses slid down to the tip of his nose.
“You’re seriously gonna lie to me,” Aerion pushed off the sink, came closer. “I’m not gonna let it go. You know I’m not gonna let it go.”
“I didn’t—”
“Name.”
Eric was silent.
“Name,” Aerion repeated, quieter.
“I didn’t say anything to anyone. I just… in the locker room… I looked the wrong way. By accident.”
“By accident,” Aerion snorted. “By accident. So who did you accidentally look at?”
Eric raised his eyes. Not at Aerion. At Dunk.
Very brief. Half a second. Looked down right away.
Dunk stood there thinking Eric was about to piss himself from fear, and that would be just embarrassing.
Aerion went still. His jaw clenched. He went quiet — Dunk was surprised, because Aerion almost never went quiet — and then smirked. Crooked.
“Got it,” he said.
“Got what?” Dunk asked.
“Nothing.”
Aerion took a drag from the vape, blew the cloud into Eric’s face. Eric squeezed his eyes shut.
“You’re disgusting,” Aerion said. “Do you understand how disgusting you are? You physically make me sick. I wouldn't touch you with a bargepole, that's how disgusting you are.”
“I didn’t—”
“You stood in the locker room and stared. At guys. Looked at their dicks. You think that’s normal?”
Eric was crying openly now.
“What’re you quiet for? Is that normal — yes or no?”
“No.”
“Louder.”
“No.”
“Good boy.”
Aerion was quiet for a while longer. Pulled on the vape, exhaled, pulled again. Dunk was already starting to feel bad standing there — his own cheeks had started burning, because Eric had again, one more time, slid his eyes in Dunk’s direction. And looked away. And Dunk only just then figured out that those quick glances — they weren’t “somewhere,” they were specific. At him.
Dunk shook his head like he was shaking something off. No way. He was making it up.
“Dunk,” Aerion said, not turning around. His voice had changed. Even. “Fuck him.”
Dunk thought he’d misheard.
“What?”
“You heard me. Pull his pants down and fuck him. Since he wants it so much.”
“Aerion, I’m not doing that.”
“And did I ask your opinion?”
Dunk looked at Eric. Tears and snot were running down his face, and he was looking at the floor like he wanted to sink through it.
“Get out of here,” Dunk said to him.
Eric didn’t get it right away.
“Go, I said.”
Eric jerked toward the door, slipped past Dunk sideways, and was gone.
Aerion didn’t move. Stood there, vape at his lips. Then slowly exhaled.
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Aerion, I’m not going to rape a kid.”
“Do you even understand what you just did?”
Dunk was silent.
Aerion came closer. Close — Dunk could hear his breath, sweet, vape-flavored. Aerion was a head shorter, he had to lift his chin to look him in the eye. And he looked like he was actually deciding, hit him or not.
He slapped him. Not with a fist — open palm.
Something turned over inside Dunk at that, in a bad way. His cheek was on fire. He stood looking down at Aerion, and Aerion was looking up at him, and neither of them moved. Aerion was breathing hard, like he was the one who’d just gotten slapped, not the other way around. His eyes were black, no iris. The same ones as that time, on Luke.
Beautiful. Beautiful like a prince. But on the inside — a monster.
Dunk couldn’t have explained afterward what exactly happened to him. It just happened — fast, like someone had turned on a tap. He stood in that bathroom with a ringing cheek, and he was hard. And the fact that he was hard made it worse, because he didn’t understand why all of a sudden.
Maybe from the slap. Maybe from how Aerion was looking up at him. Maybe from how close he was standing. Dunk wasn’t sorting it out. He couldn’t have sorted it out — he was sixteen, he didn’t understand a fucking thing about any of this.
The main thing was that Aerion shouldn’t notice. Because how would you explain it to him?
“On your knees,” Aerion said.
“What?”
“On your knees, I said. Since you felt sorry for the kid — suck me off.”
Dunk got even more thrown. Aerion came closer still — right up against him.
“Aerion, I don’t want to.”
Dunk could tell from Aerion’s face that Aerion got it. Something in Aerion’s expression flickered for a second, and he looked away, like he’d been burned.
“Yeah, then why are you hard?”
So he had noticed. Dunk dropped his eyes. He really was. Hard enough that you couldn’t miss it.
“You owe me.” Aerion was speaking evenly, quietly, and that was worse than if he’d been yelling. “Did you forget? My uncle stuck his neck out for you. You wouldn’t even be in this school anymore. Your grandpa would’ve kicked the shit out of you at home. And here you are setting conditions.”
“I’m not—”
“On your knees.”
Dunk got down on his knees.
It started happening often. In bathrooms, in the locker room after PE, once behind the school when they were ditching the chemistry test. Aerion was never in a hurry. He seemed to like specifically that Dunk was bigger than him, that Dunk could break him in half, and was on his knees anyway.
Afterward Aerion always smoked. Quiet, for a long time. His face would change — just kind of empty, calm. Dunk liked watching him like that. Aerion in those minutes didn’t twitch, didn’t snipe, didn’t say anything. Just smoked and looked somewhere at the wall.
One time he looked at Dunk. For a long time.
“What?” Dunk asked.
“Nothing,” Aerion said, and looked away.
The look was strange. Dunk thought about that look afterward.
It happened in the locker room. Everyone had already left, and they’d hung back — Aerion had pulled him behind the lockers, and everything was as usual: Dunk on his knees, Aerion above him, hand in his hair.
But at some point Aerion suddenly pulled back. Looked down.
“Wait.”
Dunk lifted his eyes. Aerion was looking not at his face but lower — at his fly.
“Show me your dick.”
“What?”
“Come on. You stare at mine all the time.”
Dunk was looking up at him and couldn’t tell if it was a joke. Aerion stood like he was standing, pants undone, looking calm, like he hadn’t asked anything weird.
“Well.”
Dunk reluctantly undid his belt. Took it out.
Aerion whistled.
“Fuck, you’re a monster.”
Dunk felt his ears burning. Told himself it was from embarrassment. Actually, no. It felt good. That Aerion was looking, that Aerion’s face was like that — almost surprised, like a kid’s.
“What’re you staring at?” Dunk muttered.
“Nothing. Suck.”
But he looked for another second. And Dunk remembered it.
Aerion vaped, Dunk smoked cigarettes. Aerion would laugh at him for it.
“You’re like an old man,” he’d say. “You smell like an ashtray.”
“And you smell like a Christmas tree.”
“Fuck off.”
“You fuck off.”
Sometimes — after a fight, when both of them were high on adrenaline — Aerion would shove him into a wall in some apartment building entryway, and Dunk would get down on his knees without waiting for the order. Aerion was especially quiet those times. Just breathed hard and held Dunk by the hair.
“Here,” Aerion held out his vape. They were sitting on the emergency staircase, ditching geography.
“Nah, I smoke my own.”
“Take a hit. You’ll like it.”
“What is it?”
“Take a hit, I said.”
Dunk took it. Aerion had never offered before — and Dunk didn’t want that chemical garbage himself. Dunk put his lips on it, pulled. It was sweet and fragrant. Not like berries, different. He held it in his mouth, breathed out.
“Well?”
“Not bad.”
“More.”
Dunk did it again. Aerion was watching him from the side, smiling at the corner of his mouth, without meanness, almost human.
The next class Dunk let out a long drawn-out “fuuuck” and stared at the ceiling till the end. Colored circles were pulsing up there, you couldn’t look away. The teacher was asking him something and he couldn’t make it out. Aerion in the next row over was laughing quietly into his fist.
After school Aerion caught him in the hall.
“So how was it?”
“Fucking awesome.”
“Want more?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
Aerion stood there a second like he was going to say something else. Didn’t. Slapped him on the shoulder and walked off.
Dunk used to picture girls. Maya from the English class, or that blonde year 10, the busty one. And it was all fine, only in his fantasies he always felt guilty — like he was hurting them, like you weren’t supposed to do it that way. They were always so fragile in his head, like glass.
With Aerion it wasn’t like that.
Aerion wasn’t glass. Aerion was hard, bony, mean. You couldn’t break anything on him, because he’d break anybody first. Dunk pictured him squirming under him all over, looking at him with those black eyes, growling. Dunk really liked the way he growled. He growled like that when Dunk hit him with his fists — back then, in their first fight — and then, when Dunk was sucking him, too.
Dunk knew it would hurt him at first, but that was fine, Aerion liked it when it hurt.
He didn’t even feel ashamed. He tried to be ashamed — he used to be, after all — but here it wasn’t working.
One time when they were alone in the locker room for another round, Aerion looked down at him and said:
“You wanna fuck me? Don’t even think about it.”
Dunk didn’t answer because answering with a dick in his mouth was awkward. He just looked. And apparently he looked the wrong way, because Aerion didn’t let it go.
“You hear me? Don’t even think about it.”
Dunk pulled back.
“I hear you.”
“I’m not a faggot.”
“Okay.”
The fuck "okay"?
“Okay, not a faggot.”
Aerion looked at him another second. Then turned away.
“Let’s go, we’ll be late.”
He put his dick away and they went.
But Dunk thought about it anyway. A lot.
It was on a Wednesday. Aerion came up to him during break, like nothing was special.
“Friday, come over to my place.”
“Why?”
“To play.”
Dunk looked at him.
“I’ll be alone,” Aerion said. “Dad’s going to entertain the suits. Daeron’s going out whoring. If Valarr shows up, I’ll handle him.”
“Okay.”
“At seven.”
“Okay, I said.”
Aerion nodded and walked off. Dunk watched his back and thought, his heart was pounding for some reason, like before a fight.
Their house was the kind that made Dunk regret coming the second he saw it. Not a house, more like a mansion. Wide staircase, paintings on the walls, a vase in the hallway up to his waist. Dunk was afraid to move so he wouldn’t hit anything.
“What’re you standing there like a post,” Aerion said. “Come on.”
They went up to his room. The room was the size of Dunk’s whole apartment. Big TV, console, couch, four-poster bed — Dunk had only seen those in movies.
“Your bed’s like a queen’s,” he said.
“Fuck off. It’s an antique.”
“An antique with little curtains.”
“Shut up and sit down.”
They sat down to play. Aerion in one corner of the couch, Dunk in the other. At first they didn’t talk, then Aerion started cursing at the game, then at Dunk, then at the game again. Aerion was winning but losing his mind anyway. It was normal, familiar — like at school, only without school.
A couple hours in, Aerion threw the controller on the couch.
“Fuck this. You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll order.”
He was tapping on his phone, not looking. Dunk sat there watching him from the side. Aerion in his own clothes was different. In sweatpants, a t-shirt, hair messy. Without the uniform he looked softer somehow, Dunk wanted to touch him.
“What’re you staring at?”
“Nothing.”
The food came. Aerion put on some movie — Dunk wasn’t paying attention to which, only saw blood flying everywhere. Dunk sat on the floor leaning back against the couch, between Aerion’s knees. Aerion didn’t finish eating and started smoking.
The house was quiet. Nobody. For the first time Dunk thought he was actually scared — not of anything specific, just generally. Of how quiet it was.
“Hey,” Aerion said from above.
“What.”
“Come here.”
Dunk lifted his head. Aerion was looking at him with that same look — empty, calm, like the after look. Only now it was the before.
“Come on,” Aerion repeated, quieter.
Dunk went.
He got home late. His grandfather was asleep, thank God. Dunk took off his shoes in the hall, went to his room, sat on the bed.
Sat for a long time. Didn’t undress.
The same thing kept turning in his head, in fragments, out of order. How Aerion had said “come here” — without an order in his voice, just said it. How Dunk had sat down on the couch next to him, and how they hadn’t moved at all for a while, like two idiots. How Aerion had then done the thing Dunk hadn’t even been thinking about — leaned right up to his ear and said quietly:
“You want me to suck you off too?”
Something happened to Dunk’s eyes then — he stopped blinking, stared like a dead fish. He didn’t even understand right away that Aerion meant it. Wanted to ask again. Couldn’t. Nodded, maybe. Or didn’t nod, and Aerion got it himself.
And then Aerion’s hands were shaking. When he was undoing his belt. Dunk was looking down, watching Aerion’s hands shake, and not believing it. Aerion’s. Aerion who could punch a wall hard enough to send plaster flying.
After that Dunk remembered in pieces. How Aerion had looked up at him from below — once, very brief, and looked away immediately. How Dunk’s palm had ended up on the back of Aerion’s head on its own, and Aerion hadn’t flinched, hadn’t pushed him off. How quiet it was in that huge house — not a sound, just breathing. How Aerion had then silently turned away, wiped his mouth, lit the vape, and just sat there, not looking at Dunk, for three minutes maybe. His face was the same as always — empty, calm. Only now Dunk understood that the face wasn’t empty. It was just that Aerion didn’t allow himself to keep anything on it.
“Hey,” Dunk said then.
“What.”
“Nothing. Just hey.”
Aerion snorted. Didn’t look.
Dunk left late. Aerion came to see him off at the door, in his clothes, hair messy. Said “later,” like usual. Dunk said “later.” And that was it.
Now, on his own bed, Dunk sat trying to sort it all out. It wasn’t working. He’d never even fantasized about something like this before — never let himself. Aerion under him, that was one thing, Dunk allowed himself that, because Aerion in his head was tough, you could want him and not feel like a bastard. But that Aerion himself, that Aerion to him, on his knees, with shaking hands — there’d never been room in Dunk’s head for that. He wouldn’t even have made it up.
But Aerion did. On his own. And went and did it.
Dunk pulled off his hoodie, lay down, pulled the blanket over his head. It was stuffy under the blanket. He lay there listening to his heart hammering in his ears, and thought not about what had happened but about how Aerion was probably also not asleep right now. Lying in his stupid bed with the curtains, also thinking.
And how Aerion tomorrow was probably going to act like nothing had happened. He was going to be the same as always — mean, cocky, vape in his pocket. And Dunk would have to play along.
Dunk thought he'd play along. Like he had a choice.
But he knew now. And Aerion knew that he knew.
That couldn’t be undone anymore.