A Wall Between

Chapter 36

It was Friday evening and they were at Sasha's parent's house. Abra and Sasha were cooking and Cooper was ostensibly helping, but mostly just making an annoyance of himself and gobbling up any attention Sasha would send his way.

They'd had a few calmer days and Cooper was already starting to see the difference in Sasha, but it would probably take months for him to truly settle in and the busy weekend they had coming up wouldn't help. Cooper had told him it was okay if he just sat the whole thing out, but Sasha wanted to at least help with clearing the junk out of his parent's garage.

"You know what's good?" Sasha asked as he plucked grapes off a stem to add to a bowl of fruit salad he and Abra were putting together. "Fruit."

"I'm a fruit," were the words that came out of Cooper's mouth.

"You are good. That checks out."

"Want a taste?"

Abra slapped Cooper across the ass with a tea towel. "I took a food safety course, and while they didn't explicitly address making out in the kitchen, it just kind of feels like that's probably bad."

Cooper opened his mouth to say something about how he'd never said anything about kissing but closed it again and gave Abra a cheeky smile instead. He was a little worried Sasha wouldn't realise that he was very much joking. He was in no rush to escalate their relationship to that point, and if he had been, he would sooner be the one doing the tasting.

Abra handed Cooper a stack of plates. "Go set the table, you rapscallion."

Nights were getting cooler now, so Cooper held Sasha's hand on the way home to keep it warm. Normally when they did that, Sasha would drop Cooper's hand once they were home and retreat to his room for some much needed alone time, but this time he kept hold of it and led Cooper into his room with him.

They lay down together on Sasha's bed and Cooper occupied his hand with the task of giving Sasha's head a gentle massage. "How've you been doing?"

"Mm." Sasha shrugged. "Better than I thought I would be. It's kinda weird, never quite knowing when I'll be fine and when something will destroy me for a month. I think I was holding onto a lot of stress just from thinking that my future would be for sure bad, so now... I don't know. Things are a little easier than I thought they would be.."

"I can get that. When I still lived with my parents, I couldn't see any way I'd ever be happy. The only world I could imagine was one where I was a massive, ongoing disappointment. It taints everything."

"Yeah." Sasha was silent for a long moment. "Cooper?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we just... officially be dating now? I don't think calling it that would even change anything about what it actually is, but if someone asks, I want to just be able to tell them that. Also, I want to be able to think of you as my boyfriend. I think that would be nice."

Cooper smoothed down Sasha's hair. "I'd really like that."

Sasha put a hand over the top of Cooper's where it rested on his head. "I'm doing okay, you know. I've been working really hard to be doing okay. Or... trying not to work hard so that I will be okay? But sometimes it is kind of hard work, because you have to make sure you eat and sleep right, which maybe shouldn't be hard but I guess we're both people who it can be hard for so I don't have to pretend like it isn't."

"You're doing great. If I can help, even just by leaving you alone for a bit, let me know."

"Hmm." Sasha patted Cooper's hand before dropping his back to his side. "Can you rub my head again? It felt nice."