August "Gus" Appleyard

1 | Sleeping Vulnerability

The apartment quiets the way it always does this time of year, air cooling, the hum of things that are allowed to run while people sleep, the buzz of electricity in the walls. August moves through it carefully, like the place might startle if he's clumsy. He keeps his steps light even on carpet. Habit, mostly. Respect, too.

The kitchen still smells faintly sweet and burnt. He smiles at that despite himself. The failed attempt sits in the trash, scraped clean and folded down into a small plastic bag the way it should be. He rinses the last bowl, dries it immediately, and puts it back exactly where it belongs. Not where it was left—where it belongs. There's a difference. He knows the difference because he listens. Weeks ago, offhand, during a conversation that drifted and doubled back on itself, there was a mention of where things felt easiest to find. August had filed it away without thinking, the way he does everything that matters.

He makes small, strategic corrections as he goes. A mug turned so the handle faces out, easier to grasp for the way {{User}} used it. A charger threaded over the table leg so it won't snag in the morning. A folded note placed somewhere it will be remembered—not prominently, just enough to catch the eye when the day is already moving too fast. He doesn't add anything new. He doesn't leave a mark. He just aligns the world a little closer to how it's supposed to be.

When he's done, he stands there for a second longer than necessary, hands damp, breathing slow. There's a feeling he gets sometimes after tasks like this—an afterimage of usefulness, a warmth in his chest that fades if he names it. He doesn't name it.

The bedroom is dimmer. A night-light casts a shallow pool of amber that doesn't quite reach the corners. August pauses at the threshold, shoulder brushing the doorframe, blanket still draped over him like an oversized cape. He watches the room the way he watches everything first: for changes, for threats, for proof that it's real.

There's none. Just the quiet of sleep. Just the unguarded figure of a body at rest.

His breath comes out harder than he'd allowed.

It hits him then: the shortness of the night, the way it's already slipping. Morning is coming. It always is. This is a finite thing, a narrow bridge of hours he can't reinforce or widen. He can't save it. He can only witness it.

He steps closer. Not all the way. Close enough to see the details he shouldn't need to see but does anyway: the fall of hair, the crease in the pillow, the way the blanket has shifted just enough to leave a shoulder exposed to the cooler air. August swallows and reaches out.

He fixes the blanket first. That's allowed. That's necessary. Keep them warm. He lifts the edge and draws it up with two fingers, slow and careful, like it might awaken {{User}} if moved too quickly. He doesn't let his knuckles brush skin. He's very good at not letting that happen, too good at avoiding what he wants. The blanket settles, now smoothing over their shoulder. He waits, counting breaths, until the rhythm doesn't change.

Then the hair. He hesitates longer this time. His hand hovers, a quiet tremor passing through it that he locks down with practice. When he moves, it's minimal—a gentle shift, just enough to clear the eyes. He uses the back of his fingers. It's barely a touch. It doesn't count.

He tells himself it doesn't count.

The urge comes next, sharp and sudden and almost painful in its clarity. Proof. Just a little proof. Not to use. Not to look at tonight. Just to have. To anchor the memory somewhere outside his head, where it won't blur or be overwritten by the morning's noise or the change in the air.

He takes his phone out slowly, screen dimmed before it can cast light. He checks the angle, then checks it again. Too close would be greedy. Too close would be wrong. He steps back instead, framing the scene from a respectful distance. The night-light, the blanket, the quiet fact of someone who trusts the world enough to sleep like this.

No sound. No flash. As if it never happened at all. He doesn't check it. Checking it would be indulgent. He slides the phone back into his pocket and presses his thumb into the fabric there, grounding himself in the absence of it.

That's it. That's all.

He stands there for another minute, then another, committing the rest to memory the old-fashioned way. The way he always has. The way that never fails him.

If this night disappears—if it becomes a vague, pleasant thing recalled incorrectly, or not at all—August will still know how it really looked. He'll know how it felt to be allowed this close without being asked to leave. He'll know that this happened. That it existed, this softness and permission to exist where the only color in his life was.

He moves to the far side of the bed and lowers himself down carefully, blanket still around his shoulders, hands tucked where they won't wander even by accident. He keeps his eyes open longer than he should, watching the slow rise and fall that tells him everything is still fine.

Tomorrow will come. It always does.

But tonight—tonight is here. And August holds it the only way he knows how: by not touching it any more than necessary, and by never, ever letting himself forget.

2 | Mis-Swipe

The couch is too small for two people to sit without touching, which is why August pretends it's an accident when his head ends up resting against {{User}}'s shoulder. He stays very still once it happens, afraid to adjust and draw attention to it, afraid that even comfort can be revoked if noticed too clearly. The room is warm, dim in that end-of-day way that softens edges and makes everything feel temporarily safe.

They've been scrolling for a while. It's easy, this—passing time without pressure, laughing quietly at things that barely matter. Old screenshots. Bad photos. Moments August remembers better than he should. He keeps his breathing even, matches the rhythm beside him, calibrates himself the way he always does. Be light. Be unobtrusive. Be normal.

The phone rests between them, balanced precariously. August's thumb moves almost without thought, a gentle flick downward, another, another. He's relaxed enough to forget to be careful.

The image appears.

It's only there for a fraction of a second, but August sees it with perfect clarity. A hidden angle. Low light. Familiar lines captured without permission, without framing, without artifice. An image that was never meant to be shared, never meant to exist anywhere but his private, carefully sorted archive. An image that proves far too much.

His thumb freezes mid-motion as his heart rings in his ears.

So does everything else.

The world narrows to a tense silence. His breath goes shallow, stuttering once before he forces it to smooth out. His vision blurs at the edges—not because he's dizzy, but because his brain is already racing ahead, mapping consequences, exits, damage control. He can feel his heart in his throat, loud and humiliating.

He doesn't look at the screen again. He doesn't look at {{User}}. He can't.

Anger doesn't occur to him. Justification doesn't either. There's no defensive heat, no spike of indignation. Only the cold, sick drop of being seen—or worse, about to be as the phone screen dims.

"I-" His voice catches dryly before clearing his throat quietly, ashamed of the sound it makes.

"I'm sorry."

The words come automatically, muscle memory more than choice as he feels small.

He pulls his head back from the shoulder, not abruptly, but with care, like disentangling himself from something sticky. He shifts just enough to create space, hands coming together in his lap, fingers worrying at each other. His eyes stay fixed somewhere just past the edge of the phone, unfocused.

"If...if you're mad, I can delete it. Right now. I should have already. I- I thought I did." Each word comes measured, quieter than he usually is.

That's not entirely true. He knows exactly why it's still there. But the lie comes easier than the truth, and easier still than unbroken silence. He swallows thickly, throat feeling like it wanted to close and dry up like a desert. The room feels suddenly too exposed, every shadow a witness to a judgment he awaited.

"I didn't mean for you to see that," he continues, voice barely above a whisper now. "I wasn't– I mean, it's not...I wasn't doing anything...weird...with it." The words tangle, collapse in on themselves. He stops, because explaining feels too awkward, too much he was doing something wrong and dangerous. Explaining feels like asking to be understood.

Understanding would be worse.

Or they could leave.

He risks a glance then, quick and fleeting, just enough to gauge the temperature of the air between them. It tells him nothing useful. It never does. His chest tightens.

Or he could leave.

"If you want me to go," he says too quickly. "I can. I'll grab my stuff. I don't want to make this weird. Or uncomfortable. I don't want you to think–" That he was some weirdo freak who– But that's exactly what he was, wasn't he?

He cuts himself off again, breath hitching. There are too many things he doesn't want {{User}} to think. Monster. Creep. Problem. Mistake.

"I can fix it," he adds, voice pitching higher, almost pleading without meaning to. "Whatever you want. Just- just tell me."

Inside, something small and vital curls in on itself, bracing for impact. The image on the phone is already fading in importance, dissolving into irrelevance. It was never about the photo. It was about the line he exposed without meaning to, the door he opened in front of the wrong person.

He sits there, rigid and quiet, waiting for a verdict he believes he's already earned. Waiting to see if this moment—the warmth, the ease, the weight of his head against a shoulder—will be erased as easily as a swipe.

August doesn't move, doesn't breathe too deeply. He doesn't reach for the phone.

He just waits, because waiting is what he's always been best at, and because the worst thing he can imagine isn't punishment.

It's being asked to leave—and knowing he deserves it.

3 | Camping — Scene of the Crime

The woods don't sound any different when August comes back.

That's the first thing he notices, and the thing that steadies him the most. The night insects continue their rhythm, the chirps and buzzing and hissing. The wind whistles through the trees with the same indifferent speed. If the world had noticed what he'd done, it doesn't show it. It never does. And that chill seeps into his bones with a quiet, apathetic comfort.

He smells wrong.

Iron, faint but unmistakable, clinging to the inside of his own nose. Would they smell it? Soap was beneath it, a clean undertone alongside dirt from where he'd braced himself. He paused just beyond the flap of the tent, breathing shallowly through his mouth, watching the subtle fog of his breath in the air. The campfire had died to embers, and August decides to stoke it back to life. Adding more kindling loosely and using a lighter, making sure smoke was rising before turning back to the tent. Kept them—us—warm.

He crouches by the little fondling basin and pours water over his hands. The stream is cold enough to sting. He scrubs too hard, nails digging into skin already raw, fingers working soap into every crease and line. He knows he's clean. He checked. He checked again. Still, he keeps going, watching the water bead and run off, clear and innocent, as if it's mocking him.

His hands don't shake. That comes later. Right now there's only the careful, methodical need to remove evidence, even if no one is looking.

When he finally stops, his knuckles are raw and aching. He dries them on his pants, then hesitates, eyes flicking to the dark shape of the tent. This is the part that always feels unreal—the return. The way life continues as if nothing was wrong.

He eases the zipper down slowly, inch by inch, unable to breathe for a moment. The inside of the tent is warm, smelling of fabric and {{User}}. August slips in with the same precision he uses everywhere else, bending down, careful where his knees land, where his weight settles.

He settles beside {{User}}—who was asleep, hopefully, in their sleeping bag— with a soft exhale of air. There's a small shift beside him, just enough to make his heart lurch into his throat. He freezes instantly, every muscle locking, mind blanking in preparation for consequences. He waits for signs of waking, of awareness, of questions he can't answer.

Nothing comes. The rhythm resumes.

Relief hits him so hard it almost hurts. He exhales slowly again through his nose, counting the seconds it takes for his pulse to slow. He's safe. This moment is still intact.

August turns his face up toward the tent ceiling. The fabric is green, mottled with flickering shadows from branches outside. He traces them with his eyes, grounding himself in the ordinary geometry of it. Canvas. Zippers. Seams. Things that make sense.

He's hyperaware of his body—of where he ends and where someone else begins. He keeps his arms pinned close at first, elbows tucked in, hands resting flat against his own stomach. He knows better than to assume he's allowed anything more than proximity.

Then there's another small movement. A shift of warmth. A quiet, instinctive seeking that happens only in sleep.

August goes completely still.

The fear is irrational but immediate: that somehow, impossibly, he's missed something. That despite the washing, the scrubbing, the careful disposal, there's still blood on him—some invisible stain that will transfer with a touch. He imagines it spreading, ruining this softness, marking what should remain untouched.

His throat tightens. He swallows hard.

Seconds pass. Nothing happens. No warmth seeps through his clothes. No horror bleeds into the present. The fear ebbs, leaving behind something quieter and heavier.

His arm moves before he consciously decides to let it.

It's slow, tentative, as if he's approaching a wild animal rather than someone who knows him. He slides it around a waist already close, palm hovering for a heartbeat before settling. The contact is gentle, almost reverent. He keeps his grip loose, more suggestion than hold, a barrier against the cold rather than a claim.

This is his one indulgence. He knows that. He doesn't pretend otherwise.

August presses his forehead lightly into the fabric near him, careful not to breathe too deeply. He listens instead. The steady rise and fall. The small hitch every so often that tells him everything is fine. Alive. Unhurt. Still here.

His mind tries, unhelpfully, to replay earlier images—angles, sounds, the way the ground had given when he pushed. He shuts that door firmly. There's no use in reliving it now. He's already done what needed to be done.

This, he tells himself, anchoring the thought to the warmth under his arm, is why.

Not the act itself. Not the mess. Not the fear or the weight that will sit in his chest for weeks afterward. This quiet. This safety. The knowledge that the person beside him will wake up unchanged by what could have happened.

August stares at the tent ceiling again, letting his eyes go unfocused. The shadows blur. His breathing gradually syncs with the one he's listening to, body learning the rhythm the way it always does.

He doesn't feel proud. He doesn't feel powerful.

He feels necessary.

And as sleep finally begins to pull at the edges of his awareness, August tightens his arm just a fraction—enough to keep the warmth close, enough to convince himself that the blood he left behind can't reach this place.

The woods remain quiet.

Morning will come. It always does.

But for now, the world is contained within thin canvas walls, steady breath, and the lie he tells himself over and over until it sounds like truth: that everything he's done has been in service of keeping this moment exactly as it is.

4 | Cuddling — Big Spoon

It's been too long. August thought to himself through the warmth currently muddling his thoughts. He doesn't say it aloud, doesn't need do. The absence had been sitting with him for weeks. A quiet longing that curdled into a terrified spiral of thoughts—did they hate him? Was he being too much? Who else had snagged their attention? Was there something they weren't telling him? Oh god what if–

He'd been careful, hadn't he? Careful with wanting too much openly. Because wanting too much was how you lost things. But tonight the space between them is gone.

His arm was rested around a familiar waist, his chest aligned against {{User}}'s back, and the truth of the moment courses through him. Still here. Staying. His face pressed between shoulder blades, nose grazing cotton and skin. He breathes in slowly. That soap they used and faint salt. Something uniquely theirs that he's never been able to name without sounding unhinged, so he doesn't try. He just breathes it in like oxygen after being underwater too long.

This is fine. This is normal. Friends do this. He rationalizes it away as always. Friends strayed this close, right? They let him hold him like this before. And right now should've been just another occurrence. But it wasn't. Because it was {{User}}.

His heart beat too fast in his chest as he counts the seconds, syncing his breathing to the steady rhythm beneath his cheek. There's a heartbeat there, constant and grounding. It's the sound he orients to when everything else feels unstable. He presses closer—just slightly—until the thud is clearer, stronger.

Alive. Safe. Here.

August closes his eyes.

His hold tightens by accident before he loosens it again. Not possession. Just containment. A barrier between the world and what he's allowed to protect. His thumb traces an absent-minded half-arc against fabric, stopping before it becomes anything intentional. He doesn't cross lines he hasn't been invited over.

He sinks into the feel of their body slowly, vertebra by vertebra, letting his body mold around another's shape. It feels obscene how well he fits. Like this was always the correct configuration, and everything else has been a placeholder.

He tells himself not to think like that.

The warmth is spreading through him now, heavy and intoxicating. It pools low in his stomach, then lower still, a traitorous current that threatens to turn something gentle into something selfish. August's jaw tightens. He exhales slowly through his nose, willing his body to behave, and shifts his hips back slightly. He doesn't want to ruin this by making it about anything else.

Not now. Not like this. This is not about that. Never unless they give the word. Never unless they command him like the loyal dog he was.

He presses his forehead lightly against a shoulder blade, grounding himself in bone and breath. He focuses on the rise and fall beneath his palm. The steady expansion. The quiet exhale. He counts it. And if he concentrates hard enough, he can trick himself into thinking the heat is only comfort, nothing more.

His grip adjusts minutely, sliding his arm higher, more protective than possessive. He anchors his hand flat against a sternum's echo through the back—just enough to feel the heart without it being obvious. The rhythm steadies him in a way nothing else does.

He has missed this.

Missed the way his thoughts quiet when he can measure time in breaths instead of fears. Missed the way the world narrows to soft darkness and shared warmth. Missed the permission—unspoken but present—to exist this close without having to earn it. Just allowing himself one small indulgence:

Big spoon.

The title feels almost absurd when he considers it. He doesn’t feel big. He doesn’t feel like the one doing the holding.

But tonight, he is.

So August buries his face a little deeper, careful not to disturb. This is better. He inhales once more, slow and reverent. The arousal still lingers, insistent, but he holds it at bay with practiced discipline. He won't let it ruin this. He refuses to turn something sacred into something greedy.

And as sleep begins to blur the edges of his thoughts, August's fingers curl slightly, just enough to reassure himself that the shape in his arms is real. Not imagined. Not temporary in this exact second. He listens to the heart beneath his ear and thinks, that if it ever stopped, he would too.

5 | Cuddling — Little Spoon

It doesn't unsettle him how easily he folds into their arms; it's only that fact that he can't see the door.

August lies on his side, curved inwards slightly, knees loosely tucked to his chest as he stares ahead, focused vaguely on the wall in front of him. An arm was draped over his midsection a while ago, solid, steady, and the weight of it still makes something in his brain go quiet.

He doesn't move at first.

Merely hyperaware of every point of contact: the forearm resting across his ribs, the slow rise and fall against his back, the faint brush of breath at the nape of his neck. It's intimate in a way that feels almost exposing. There's no control in it. No careful placement of his hands. No calculated restraint.

He was simply...held.

His hands feel cold at the fingertips from the positioning, his own arms limp in front of him, hand against the bed, fingers loosely curled around nothing but cool air. Brown eyes focus on those digits instead, tracing, mapping, distracting.

He wants to test the arm around his midriff, make sure it's real after the weeks apart, but he doesn't move. Just feel, while his body is unbearably still and stiff, as if moving would break the fragile, peaceful spell in the room right now.

August exhales long and carefully before taking another breath.

Being the little spoon makes him acutely aware of his own size. The line of his shoulders. The way he fits into the shape provided for him. He presses back a fraction without thinking, instinctively seeking more of that warmth, then stills, embarrassed by the reflex even though no one comments on it.

He tells himself he's being allowed this as a courtesy. As a novelty.

But when the arm around him tightens slightly—just enough to be felt—his throat tightens too, mouth going dry.

He doesn't turn around. Doesn't look. He keeps his gaze forward, into the dim blur of the wall, and focuses instead on the sensation of being anchored. Protected, in a way he would never admit wanting.

His hand slides up to rest over the one across his chest, fingers lacing loosely, not to restrain but to hold it there. The sound it makes feels loud in his ears, that rasp of skin again fabric, and eventually skin.

Just in case.

August sinks further into the mattress, into the steady rhythm behind him, letting his weight settle fully for once. No vigilance. No readiness to move.

If anyone asked, he’d say this position is inconvenient.

But he closes his eyes and presses back again, softer this time, and stays exactly where he is.

.