Page 6 of Touch In Excess

In all honesty, Rami might have let them too. He wasn’t really a sentimental sort of guy. Objects didn’t hold value in his head the way they did for other people. But he’d grown up in this house. He’d learned every skill in art he possessed under that roof. He sat at the knee of his grandfather and absorbed everything he possibly could, and it was a place that allowed him to be himself.

And for that reason alone, it was impossible to let go.

His parents loved him, but they expected more out of him. It wasn’t just a cultural thing, though that played a large part in it. It was also the fact that his parents’ only exposure to the idea of Autism came from media that insisted all Autistic kids were geniuses with talents that could lead to big money counting cards in Vegas—or whatever.

They didn’t expect their son to be mediocre and disinterested in anything that could lead him to a lucrativecareer. Of course, Rami also grew up a nervous mess because one kid had pantsed him in the seventh-grade locker room and learned the secret his parents demanded he guard with his life.

The whole school knew by sixth period, and the bullying was so bad within two days that he’d been put in the in-school suspension room for his own safety.

They’d moved after the incident, and his mother had planned to fight for an exception for PE so he wouldn’t risk changing in front of the other kids and his secret would be safe again. But the only school that could take him and offer him possible protection was the Catholic private school up the hill from where his grandfather lived. It might not have been so bad, but his parents, being devout Muslims, had struggled with the decision until the deadline to enroll him again.

He didn’t fully understand what the problem was. He’d never really believed Allah was real, whether it was the Christian version, or the Jewish one, or the imam who spoke to them every other Saturday when his parents dragged him and his siblings to mosque.

But Allah was just another figure, for the most part. Just another parental set of eyes watching him for the sins he might want to commit, and being as hyperobservant as he was—and eventually as obsessed with history as he became—he quickly realized that there were actions and consequences, and no amount of prayer or faith saved anyone.

So stepping foot in a Catholic school so he could finish his education around a bunch of kids who would never know the truth about his body wasn’t the worst punishment. Even if it was an exhausting one. The kids were cruel for other reasons—the curls in his hair, the shade of his skin, the fact that he stimmed openly in class when he was thinking and that his social awareness never extended to knowing when to stop info-dumping when someone tried to make polite conversation. It was hell, just like all middle schools were hell.

What made the whole thing bearable was sitting at his grandfather’s feet every afternoon and losing himself and all of his anxiety to the stroke of a paintbrush on canvas. That eventually led to carving marble—something he lacked the fine motor skills for. He eventually found his passion in clay sculptures, and it was the only thing currently keeping him from losing his mind as he struggled to handle the financial mess of the house.

His grandfather was gone now, but the memories remained, and he was resolved to do everything in his power to preserve this one lasting memory.

Which meant making choices his family could never know about because they were unhappy enough when he announced he was an Atheist on Eid al-Fitr the year he turned seventeen. He didn’t think they’d forgive him if he told them he was selling his body on a website in order to pay off his grandfather’s debt and have money left over so he could comfortably enjoy his life and be an artist without the starving part.

Or…maybe they would. But he wasn’t willing to risk it. He loved his parents and his siblings, and he didn’t want to make it weird.

His biggest problem was he was severely lacking in brain-to-mouth filter, and he tended to say whatever popped into his head without worrying about potential consequences. The only way for him to stop that was to lean hard on his hypervigilance, which tended to lead to frequent meltdowns and fatigue so severe he couldn’t work.

And that was something he couldn’t afford to do right now.

So he was planning for a very lonely year where he made excuses as to why he couldn’t go visit for holidays or his nieces’birthdays, and he’d resume life as normal once he made the final payment and the house was secure.

But he missed them all.

A lot.

Making friends at his age was hard enough as it was. Making friends as a thirty-two-year-old Autistic artist was harder. Making friends as all of those things, plus having a secret FanCore account, was even worse. He’d actually met a guy at his gym, and they’d become workout buddies until the guy recognized his tattoo—something he struggled to hide when he was filming. Things got awkward as hell, and it took him a long time to realize why.

He changed gyms after that. It wasn’t worth the pain and suffering of listening to the guy make excuses why he was too busy to work out with Rami anymore.

Luckily, neither his parents nor his siblings knew he had a tattoo either, so that part wouldn’t give him away if they ever decided to venture into that side of the internet. He was safe there. He was just…very,veryalone with this secret.

And he kind of thought that was how the rest of his life was going to go, except a hard-of-hearing man toppled into his driveway one afternoon and turned everything upside down. Rami had been certain his atrophied social skills would have sent the guy running—if he could run, though with his knee torn to shreds from the pavement, he wasn’t going anywhere fast.

Instead, the man—Skye—had asked for his number.

Which okay, no. That wasn’t true. With his rambling, Rami had been the one to ask for his number. And to suggest lunch. But instead of looking at him like he was a freak, Skye had just laughed softly and then let Rami put his number in his phone.

He’d promised to text that night, but instead of leaving Rami pacing and worried that the text would never come, onehad popped through five minutes after his ride had pulled away from the house.

Unknown: This is Skye. Here’s my number so you have it.

Rami liked the way his name was spelled. He couldn’t help but pronounce theEin his head when he said his name. Sky-ee. It felt funny on his tongue but in a good way. Sky-ee. It fit him for some reason.

He was probably one of the most unique men Rami had ever set his eyes on, and he had an immediate urge to sketch him. He was tall and thin, but he was deceptively strong. He was denser than Rami was expecting him to be when he helped lift him off the lawn.

He had very European features—a sort of pinched, thin nose, barely there lips, rounded fingernails, and tattoos all over his pale skin. His hair was cut short—very trendy and sculpted in ways that Rami’s curls would never be.

Rami had fought the urge to ask to touch it so he could see if the product he used made it crunchy. But he also hated it when random strangers touched his hair, so he wasn’t about to be like them. He kept his fingers curled into his palm unless he was signing with Skye, and he’d resisted the desire to give in to his intrusive thought.

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