the art of being true to yourself
- - -
It'd been ages since I'd seen Sacha's band. As the three of them walked into the house, I watched them all visibly relax in the atmosphere. Sacha and I had been up all night writing lyrics again and he was excited to show them.
"I've missed coming here." Bodhi whispered to Isaiah, who moved to sit near Sacha's guitar stand. They'd spent ages trying to perfect their 'band logo', which stood out against the black paint. Sacha stood behind them both, sending both Kareem and I a smile before picking up his bass.
I noticed Isaiah's unusual quietness, studying him as he sat on the drum stool and relaxed instantly.
"Everything okay, Isa?"
"Just savouring the quiet."
Sacha sent me a look, which I translated as one of worry. Even Kareem looked concerned for the boy he'd never really met before.
"Talk to us, Francis." Bodhi nudged him, sitting on the floor in front of him.
"It's just the usual." He muttered. We knew what that meant. Isaiah's family life was quite difficult. His mother was always fighting with her boyfriend, keeping Isaiah and his younger siblings awake until the early hours. I remember when Sacha first met him, and the first thing I noticed about the soft boy was the deep, black circles under his eyes. I ensured that Sacha kept him out of home as much as possible, either making him bring them home or to Dexter's. It was easier that way, and his younger siblings could relax when Hendrix was around to tease them.
Both Bodhi and Isaiah helped out at the Bakery too, which gave Isaiah some time away for himself and a chance to help his Mom with the bills.
"We're going to get a proper gig soon." Sacha mused, confident as usual. They had some small bars lined up, trying to get the word around. "Bodhi's channel has been blowing up, right? We're going to get a record deal and tour the world, man. I promise you, it won't be like this forever."
Isaiah just let out a small smile but Bodhi huffed. "We need another guitarist, Cley. How are we supposed to perform properly without a solid guitar solo?"
Sacha scowled at his friend, making both Kareem and I laugh at his mock angry expression. "How about you just get better at playing guitar? Then maybe we won't need anot-"
"I can do it."
Sacha cut himself off, head whipping to face us. I didn't even register that Kareem had spoken until all the boys were staring at us, mouth open.
"What?"
"You're too old. As if you could play the guitar."
"Dude, that's my brother's boyfriend so watch your mouth." Sacha demanded, not leaving any room for protest. "Anyway, he wouldn't be able to play guitar that well given his age. We know this."
"You want to play guitar for them?" The last one was me as I stared at Kaz with wide eyes. He shuffled nervously under all our stares until he shrugged. I remembered that he learnt to play guitar when he was younger but his actual capability wasn't known to me.
"Yeah, I..." Kareem trailed off, hand rubbing along the back of his neck as he shuffled nervously under everyone's stare. "I started learning at the start of fifth grade."
"Go on then." Sacha challenged, gesturing towards the electric guitar that Bodhi couldn't play very well, which was why he tended to stick with singing.
To my utmost surprise, Kareem just stood up and went towards it. He fiddled with the weird sticks at the end before testing out a few notes.
Plucking the strings, I watched as he reached down and grabbed a pick. Sacha just watched him with a raised eyebrow. It was blatantly obvious that my brother had next to little confidence in Kareem's potential ability but was giving him the opportunity to show them all himself, instead of just brushing him off.
But then he started playing.
And all I could think was: Holy shit.
He only played a few notes but I could tell the boys didn't expect it. I recognized the song immediately and so did the others if their expressions were anything to judge by. Sacha looked as if he'd fallen in love for the first time, and Bodhi surely resembled a new-born baby with a gobsmacked expression.
Kareem placed the guitar down and, if I didn't know him so well, I wouldn't have recognized the small upwards tug of his lips.
"You can play Zepp." Bodhi's jaw dropped. "Shit, what sort of fifth grader learns how to play Led Zeppelin?"
"You should play with us! Shit, Bodhi you're done. Retired. Removed. We don't need you anymore."
"Hey!"
"Can you sing too? I'm not bad myself but if you can sing, you might as well replace Bodhi and join us full time. Actua-"
The boys all began to argue, throwing light insults as they bickered. Bodhi slapped Sacha's ear, making my brother cry out as Isaiah started throwing drumsticks at them to stop them complaining.
It didn't work.
Kareem tuned them out and gave me all of his attention.
My mouth curved into a smile, "You're really good."
He beamed, the corner of his lips tugging into a lopsided smile as he put an arm around my waist, leaning in to kiss my cheek. "Thank you, Angel."
"Shit, Kaz, I didn't expect that." I told him honestly. When he first told me that he knew how to play, I assumed that he'd meant it as a childhood hobby at most, given that fact he'd never expressed an interest in the instrument much before, aside from the discussion we had after his nightmare.
"I used to play for the squad." He said lowly, so the others couldn't hear us. "Zepp used to love it, always giving me song suggestions and Lennon would sing for us."
My heart warmed, "That sounds lovely."
"It was," He leaned into me, resting his head on my shoulder. Sacha was now falling into his dramatics as Bodhi rolled his eyes. "Proper family bonding time."
"Do you miss it?"
"I miss times like that, yeah." He hummed, "I miss both of them so much. I still need to meet Zepp's kid, and I want him to meet you and Kezz."
My eyebrows shot up, "Me?"
He chuckled at my exasperation, "Of course. Is that okay?"
"Yeah," Searching his eyes, I settled on a soft smile before folding back into his side. "Of course."
The band decided that they were going to print more posters out to promote their next show, leaving Kareem and I the apartment to ourselves.
Needing to finish the accounts for the Bakery, I busied myself with my laptop while Kareem was flicking through my University books that I had still yet to throw out.
We worked in silence for about an hour before Kareem finally spoke up.
"I want to learn more about myself."
I lifted my head up from where I'd been focused on the laptop screen, meeting Kareem's gaze quizzingly. He was sitting across the room, curled up in the armchair that Sacha usually claims, with his head in one of my old books.
Before choosing a major, I'd spent months researching every topic I was interested in. That book that Kareem was currently holding was a psychology book focused on exploring family relationships and histories.
"There's so much I don't even know about myself." He said, "It feels stupid."
Shutting my laptop screen after quickly saving the spreadsheet I'd been working on, I nodded my hair. "Well, you already know where to start."
His eyebrows furrowed, eyes flicking down to his open page. "What do you mean?"
"You said your birth parents are Pakistani and Iranian, right?" As he nodded his confirmation, I continued. "So start there. Language, dialect, religion, culture, history. There's an entire world you don't even know about but you're connected too...so learn."
Kareem's face softened, his lips tugging up into a small smile. "I can't believe you remembered that."
Now it was my turn to be confused. "Remembered what?"
"About my birth parents. I told you that a long time ago." He clarified simply.
"I do listen to you, even if you don't think I do." I joked, "Of course I remembered; It's an important part of you, of who you are."
"I know, I just..." He tilted his head, teeth gnawing at his bottom lip. "From my experience, people don't tend to be the best with that."
I was the brown foster kid with no friends who joined the army the first chance I was given.
"Well as long as I'm here, you won't have to worry about that. Especially not from me." I promised wholeheartedly. I never wanted Kareem to doubt himself. "Your lineage makes you who you are. If you want to learn more about it then let's do it."
He nodded, beaming at me. The smile he gave me looked so innocent and child-like that it had my heart warming inside of my chest. It annoyed me that this was something that he had to learn about himself, that he was never given the opportunity to learn from the people who brought him into this world. It hurts that he never had that experience, that he never could fill out a family tree in Kindergarten because he probably didn't know how to. It hurt me to ever think that he's felt alone or abandoned or like he didn't know himself, because of a decision that he never had any control of.
"I'm going to bake cookies for the boys. Wanna help?"
"Sure." He jumped up, dog-earring the page and leaving it on the side. We headed into the kitchen and took out all the ingredients I needed.
When I offered for Kareem to help, I meant actually help. Kareem's translation, however, took it to mean sitting on the countertop and eating the cookie dough from the bowl.
I managed to mix all the ingredients single-handedly and then put them in the oven to bake. I busied myself with cleaning the bowls and utensils I used while Kareem flicked through his Instagram, having now moved onto the chocolate chips and leaving the cookie dough on the side.
Halfway through me taking the baked cookies out of the oven, Kareem spoke up.
"Hey, can I talk to you about something?"
Well, that definitely doesn't sound ominous.
My head shot up, the baking tray lay resting on my palm. I shuffled it onto the mantle so it could cool down. Nodding, I removed the oven gloves and attempted to sound more confident than I felt. "Sure, what's up?"
His phone was placed screen down next to him and he was fidgeting with his hands, nervous. "So I was doing some research, right? And I just wanted to ask you some things."
"Shoot."
"The Asexual Spectrum. There's different classifications, and I just wanted to be certain that I understood them all."
I froze, hand mid-air as I moved away from the plate that I'd just lay next to the baking tray. My heart warmed at Kareem, a completely bizarre but welcomed sensation consuming me. He'd gone out of his way to research something personal to me, something that I found so difficult to tell him. Something that, regardless of my own self acceptance, I was still ashamed of telling people in fear of rejection or mockery.
"So what'd you need to clarify?" I asked, giving him my full, undivided attention. The cookies were ignored for the time being.
"So there's sexual on one side, where you feel sexual attraction, and asexual on the opposite, where you don't experience sexual attraction."
I nodded, sending him an encouraging smile.
"The two main terms that I saw were Demisexual and Gray-A. Demisexual was in reference to a strong emotional bond needing to be made before any sort of sexual attraction, and it tends to refer to an actual sexual orientation. Whereas, Gray-A was an identification that placed someone between asexuality and sexuality and people could fall into that bracket under a range of different circumstances, such as having a low sex drive or only experiencing a sexual attraction sometimes. Is that right? Or do I need to upgrade my sources?"
He seemed so nervous, timid. So different from how he usually was. It comforted me to know that this was something that he researched so deeply, that my comfort was so important to him that he'd gone out of his way to learn more about my asexuality and also other classifications that people fell into.
"That's pretty much right, yeah." I confirmed, the corner of my lips tugging up into a gentle smile. "But there are other identifications that are a little bit more specific. They all generally fall within one of four brackets though: Sex-Positive, Circumstantial, Indifference and Sex Repulsed. It's a very broad spectrum."
"That makes sense, thank you." Kareem said softly, gratefully. He sent me another small smile, before his hand moved up to the back of his neck, rubbing the sensitive skin there. "Is..Are you..I-"
I knew what he was aiming to ask before he managed to get the words out.
"I fall mainly within the Indifference bracket. I don't experience any sort of attraction but sex doesn't repulse me, and I've never actively gone out of my way to have sex because it doesn't interest me." I explained as clearly as I can, not wanting any information to get lost in translation. He deserved a full explanation, so he could make an informed and smart decision about whether staying in a relationship with me was the best idea.
"Okay-"
I cut him off again, "If you want to have sex, Kaz, we can. It doesn't bother me, we can if you want to."
It wasn't something that I enjoyed with Emery but maybe it'd be different with Kareem. I didn't want to disappoint him.
His eyes diverted away from mine, and his face looked deep in thought. My fingers laced up, hands entwined in my lap. I couldn't sit still.
Finally, he spoke. "Do you enjoy it?"
My eyebrows furrowed, "What?"
"Sex. Do you enjoy it?"
I just shrugged, not finding it within myself to explain the numbness it made me feel. My body could react, respond to the experience, but it did nothing for me. No happiness, no spark of internal pleasure.
Just emptiness.
He took my silence as the answer.
"Cool, so no sex." He nodded, and it didn't seem forced.
"It doesn't matter to me, Kar-"
"But it matters to me. Why would we do something you don't enjoy?" He questioned rhetorically, before reaching out and holding my hand. "You can have sex without a relationship, yeah? So why can't you have a relationship without sex? How I feel for you, Mr Clément, isn't determined by anything other than who you are. Sex isn't a deal breaker for me."
My arms are wrapped around him within an instant, his arms holding my body as I rest my head on his shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent as I completely immersed myself in him. Everything him.
I love him.
Fuck, I love him so much.
"Is kissing okay? Do you have any boundaries that you haven't felt comfortable telling me about?" He asked, "I don't want to do anything that you're not 100% comfortable with, Saint."
"Kissing's fine." I reassured him softly, letting out a little laugh. "Trust me, I love kissing you." I love you.
He surged towards me with the force of a tidal wave and captured my lips in a kiss. I laughed into it, eyes falling closed as our lips connected. His kisses were lush and tender, pressing against every single past insecurity entwined into my body and soothing them. Since telling him about myself in its entirety, I felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest, rendering me with the ability to breathe without the constant burden pressing down.
There's was something so ardently refreshing about being gifted with the opportunity to be so relentlessly and unapologetically true to yourself.
A/N:
can i marry kareem please?
they're proper softies <3 love a bit of band content too
until next time darlings
all the best for 2022!