Page 75 of Touch In Excess

Skye couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it felt like that to him. Tonight was the night. The big night. An ending of sorts but also a beginning. Rami hadn’t wanted to talk much aboutit, and Skye had been in no position to question him the night before.

But he realized they couldn’t go into the live without at least having some conversation.

“Can we talk?”

Rami looked up from his empty plate. ‘Bad?’

Skye smiled, shook his head, and responded back in sign. ‘No. But tonight is big.’

Brows furrowed, it was obvious Rami was trying to make sense of what Skye meant. He’d used the sign for large when he should have used important, but before he could correct himself, Rami nodded.

‘Big changes.’

Skye sagged forward in relief that his boyfriend understood him. ‘Let’s go into the bedroom.’

Nodding, Rami stood and offered his hand, and Skye took comfort in the warm press of his fingers as they moved down the hallway. The bed was still unmade, so Skye shifted the covers back and pressed his back to the wall, Rami crawling in beside him.

He was still a little warm from sitting out in the sun, and he smelled like the outdoors. Skye took a deep breath in, then rested his temple against Rami’s curls. “Can we talk?”

“Out loud, you mean?”

Skye nodded. “My ears are still really bad today, but I need to make sure we’re both on the same page.”

“Mm.” Rami took Skye’s hand and began to play with his fingers—tapping his fingertips, tracing lines on the insides of the knuckle bends, running his thumb over Skye’s nails. “Good page, right?”

“I hope one of the best pages in the book of our life,” Skye told him. “I know you’ve been struggling with the channel ending.”

Rami let out a breath, and though Skye couldn’t hear it, he could feel the tremble of his exhale. “I don’t know why.”

Skye pulled back and looked down at Rami. “I think you do.”

Rami looked angry for a brief second, and then his face crumpled. Skye felt a surge of panic, like maybe he’d touched a raw nerve and fucked this all up. Then Rami curled against him. “What good am I?”

Skye’s entire body startled at the question. “Wait. What are you talking about?”

“I don’t…I have nothing. I have this house that I should have sold because I can’t afford to keep it up,” Rami said, his voice trembling. “I’m too…I’m too fucking Autistic to work the way my parents want me to work. I’ve tried, and I get fired every time because I’m weird and strange and socially awkward. I have one skill that won’t ever pay my bills, and I can’t keep relying on someone to pull me out of a financial hole.” Rami squeezed his eyes shut. “But I was good at this. At making people want a naked body that has only ever been ridiculed and mocked.”

Skye’s soul ached to be able to leave his own body and wrap around Rami’s, protecting him from the pain he’d felt in the past. “Sweetheart…”

“I wasn’t a virgin on purpose,” Rami said. “I was a virgin because, before you, no one wanted me for me. If they wanted to sleep with me, it was because they wanted to see what it felt like to be with a man who had two penises. They wanted to watch me touch myself and see if my pleasure was as odd and different as I was. Like I was some sort of carnival attraction. But online, I was…I was something else.”

“You are something else,” Skye told him firmly. “If you need hundreds of people telling you that you’re worth it in order to feel like you’re worth something to the world…”

Rami looked up, his jaw tense, eyes full of fire. “Then what? What if I do need it? Does that make me pathetic?”

Skye met his gaze. “No. Not even a little bit. And I will be there with you. I’ll help you however you need help. As long as no one recognizes me, I can be on your channel with you if that’s the direction you want to go. Or I can help you set up scenes. We can come up with clever auctions for people to bid on that won’t cross your personal boundary lines. Or mine.”

Rami’s chin wobbled for a second, and then he swallowed heavily. “That wasn’t what I thought you were going to say.”

Skye’s brow furrowed deeply. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“That I was a joke if my self-worth was rooted in the admiration of anonymous strangers,” Rami told him honestly.

Skye held back a startled laugh. He cupped Rami’s cheek and rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “First of all, I’m the last person who could ever judge you for needing that kind of validation. Secondly, never once in the weeks of knowing you have Ieverthought you were a joke. Or pathetic.”

Rami took a beat. “I don’t need the admiration of strangers for self-worth. I know I’m worthy. But I don’t know how much I can ever contribute without this. I’m nowhere near as talented as August. I’ll never have an art gallery.”

Skye turned his body so he was almost on his side, and he tugged Rami against him. “I will buy you a goddamn gallery if you want one. And I would offer you mountains of money, but I know you won’t take them.”

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