Page 68 of Icarus

“Can you do it again?”

Helios gazed at him for a while.

“What do you think about, when this happens to you?” he asked, first.

Icarus cringed. Nothing. He couldn’t think of anything.

“It’s . . . complicated.”

“Have you ever let someone just touch the same spot over and over again? It might be different than what we did before.” Helios propped himself up on his elbow and pushed his hair out of his face.

“No. We could . . . we could try that.” Icarus turned on his side and offered Helios the inside of his wrist.

Helios let out a sigh, but the look on his face was inscrutable. Icarus didn’t know what it meant.

Then, Helios licked the tip of his pointer and index fingers and pressed them to the center of Icarus’s wrist.

“Gross,” Icarus hissed reflexively, fighting the urge to tug his arm away.

Helios laughed dryly. “Many things are gross.”

Like earlier, in the morning light, soft prickles shot up Icarus’s arm. Then buzzing got brighter and rougher until he had to curl around his arm again, pull his knees up tight, wrap his other arm around his waist to withstand it.

Helios was steady, dragging his fingertips down just one inch before starting at the top again. Each time the sensation stopped it was like a vacuum until it began again, and the rhythm of it was beating behind his eyes.

Icarus knew he was breathing hard. He knew when it tipped over into whimpering.

“What are you thinking about?” Helios asked again.

“I . . . I can’t,” Icarus panted.

“Your eyes, when you’re like this . . .” Helios murmured. “It’s like watching you dream awake.”

Icarus didn’t know what to say to that, so he just pressed his face deeper into the pillow and tried to keep quiet.

“Can we try pressure?” Helios didn’t wait. He stopped the soft stroking and rubbed his thumb hard into the same space.

Instead of increasing the feedback, it muted it. Icarus was finally able to catch his breath.

“Oh god . . . oh my god? I think that turns it off,” he said, in wonder.

Helios hummed and rubbed the shivery feeling away until Icarus could feel the skin getting raw and his heart slowing back down.

“That’s amazing,” Icarus said. “I didn’t even know—”

Helios dragged his fingers over the red patch of skin, soft like he had before, and Icarus shouted, doubled over, and snatched his arm out of Helios’s reach. Something like pleasure lanced itself deep in the base of his spine and Icarus pushed himself to the edge of the bed to tremble it away.

“Make it stop again make it stop again make it stop again—” The words fell out of his mouth without his permission.

Helios grabbed Icarus’s wrist tight with his whole hand.

Icarus fell still with a sob of relief.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t know that would happen,” Helios said, panicked.

“This shit is so fucking embarrassing.” Icarus wiped his eyes with his other hand, and laughed, shivery and pained.

“It . . .” Helios took a deep breath. “It doesn’t have to be, I don’t think. It could be good if someone cared to try and understand it. And I want to try.”