Work Text:
The second step of Elias's front stairs had a crack running through the stone. He'd known about the crack for three years and had never moved.
Across the street, the light was on in Alexander's room.
He had moved in six weeks ago, from Brussels, with his dad and a younger sister and a complete inability to understand why anyone would want to live somewhere with only one decent café within walking distance. Elias had watched the whole arrival from these steps. He'd been sitting on these steps a lot since then, which was a thing he hadn't examined closely. It was easier not to.
The thing was this: in the past six weeks, Elias had started to find the ordinary hours of the day organized around Alexander without meaning them to be. Whether he was home. Whether his bike was at the curb. Whether the light in his window was the lamp or the overhead, which indicated different things about what he was doing. He noticed things he had no reason to notice. He noticed them carefully and filed them somewhere he didn't look at directly, which was fine, which was a workable system, which had been working perfectly well until about ten days ago when he had been lying awake and the system had comprehensively failed him.
He had been doing a thing he did sometimes, in the quiet of his room, which he had never previously had feelings about. He had been doing this thing and the face that arrived had been Alexander's, which was new, and the aftermath of that had been sitting in the back of his head ever since like a splinter, specific and impossible to ignore.
He had drawn him. That was the other thing. He had a sketchbook and he drew things: his street, the view from his window, the house across from his. Three days ago he had drawn Alexander without meaning to, and the drawing had been good, which was somehow worse. He had put the sketchbook under the bed afterward and had not taken it back out.
The light in Alexander's window was the lamp, which meant he was at his desk. Probably at the piano. He had a specific way of sitting at it, leaning forward on one elbow with his hair falling sideways, and Elias knew this because he had been in the room twice and had noticed it and filed it.
He was aware that this was a lot of filing for someone who kept claiming not to look.
Six weeks ago, in the first week, Alexander had sat on the front steps with him and told him about a boy from Brussels. His voice had been level, looking at the street, the way he talked when something cost him something. The boy had been in his class. Nothing had happened. He had never said anything. The boy had moved away at the end of the year and that had been the end of it, except that it hadn't been, really, in the way these things weren't really the end of them. He had said: *I just needed to tell someone.* He had said: *You're easy to talk to.* He had said it simply and then gone quiet and Elias had sat there beside him and felt his own pulse in his throat and had said: *I get it.* Which was the truest and least informative thing he could have said, and Alexander had nodded and they had gone in for dinner, and that had been that.
Except that had not been that either.
His phone buzzed.
*hey. ice cream run? theres a place 2km out. yes i already know which roads, no i wont get lost, before you say it*
Elias looked at the message. He looked at the light in Alexander's window. He typed back: *okay.* He pushed off from the step, careful of the crack, and went to get his bike.
Alexander was waiting outside with the expression of someone who had already decided the evening was going to go well. He was wearing a grey shirt with something printed on the chest that had faded beyond legibility, and his hair was loose, and Elias added this to the file without meaning to.
"Ready?" Alexander said.
"You texted me four minutes ago."
"City time. Four minutes is basically forever." He pushed off. "Come on."
The road out was flat and warm, the late light going gold between the rooftops, the kind of evening that felt longer than it had any right to. Alexander talked through most of it: a Chopin nocturne he was learning, the left hand not doing what he wanted, and then a theory he had developed about the woman at number fourteen who had a different visitor's car parked outside every single evening. He had theories about the neighbors. He had theories about most things in the neighborhood that Elias had grown up considering entirely unremarkable, and the theories were always wrong and occasionally interesting, and Elias had stopped correcting them because it was better not to.
"Okay," Alexander said, as the shop came into view. "Proposal."
"No."
"You haven't heard it."
"I can tell from the tone."
"Hear me out. Worst flavor, you have to finish the whole thing, no complaints."
Elias looked at him. "That's not a dare. That's just eating ice cream."
"The worst flavor, Elias. The full commitment." He coasted to a stop. "I'm talking mint chocolate chip."
"That's not the worst flavor."
"It tastes like someone brushed their teeth inside a chocolate bar and then made it cold. It is objectively the worst flavor in existence."
Elias considered this. It was not wrong. "Fine. But I pick yours."
Alexander's eyes lit up in a way that meant this had been the plan all along. "Deal."
Inside, the shop was small and fluorescent, the kind that had been the same shop since before either of them was born. Elias picked mint chocolate chip for Alexander without deliberating. For himself he considered his options at some length before settling on strawberry. Alexander looked at the strawberry with genuine disappointment.
"Strawberry," he said.
"It's reliable."
"It's what you pick when you've given up."
"That's not true."
"Elias." He held the door open. "It is absolutely true."
They sat on the bench outside. The evening was warm and the light was going soft and the road was quiet. Elias ate his strawberry, which was reliable and good, and watched Alexander work through the mint chocolate chip with the expression of a person who had made a bet they intended to honour even if it killed them.
"Well?" Elias said.
"Fine. It's fine."
"Your eye is twitching."
"It's an acquired taste."
"You've been at it for five minutes. Your eye has been twitching for four."
Alexander looked at him, then at the ice cream, then back with the expression of someone making a tactical retreat in the form of a joke. "You know what this flavor actually reminds me of?"
"Please don't."
"You. Clean. Crisp. Unexpectedly refreshing."
Elias stared at him. "That is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me."
"I'm workshopping it."
"Stop workshopping it."
Alexander grinned. It was a good grin, wide and slightly uneven, and Elias had been filing it for six weeks. "Tell me something," he said, and his voice went a half-register lower, which was a thing his voice did sometimes that Elias had also filed. "Do you ever think about what this is." Not really a question. He gestured, vaguely, at the bench. At the space between them.
Elias looked at his ice cream. "Sometimes."
"And?"
"I don't know what to do with it."
Alexander was quiet for a moment. A car went past on the road. A moped went past in the other direction. "That thing I told you," he said. "The boy from Brussels."
"Yeah."
"I didn't tell you that for no reason."
Elias looked at him. Alexander was watching the road, his jaw doing the specific thing it did when something cost him something. "I think about it more than sometimes," Elias said. "What this is."
Something in Alexander's face settled. "Good," he said. He took another deliberate bite of the mint chocolate chip with the expression of someone taking their medicine. Then he held the cone out toward Elias. "Try it."
"No."
"Come on. Try it."
"I'm good."
"Coward."
"Completely."
Alexander laughed, the sound going out into the warm evening. It faded and he went quiet, looking at the road, and Elias watched the side of his face in the last of the light. After a moment Alexander turned. They were closer than Elias had quite registered. He leaned in and kissed him.
It was brief and warm and it tasted of mint chocolate chip, which Elias had not predicted. When they pulled apart they were both still for a moment.
"Sorry," Alexander said. "Was that - "
"Don't apologize."
He looked at him. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Okay." A small pause. "It tasted like mint chocolate chip though."
"I know," Elias said.
"I'm specifically sorry about that."
Elias felt the smile happen against his will, the way it usually did around Alexander, and Alexander saw it and got the grin again. He looked at his ice cream, then at the road, then back at Elias. Something in his expression had gone from the usual easy confidence to something more careful.
"What if someone finds out," Elias said.
Alexander looked at him. "What do you mean."
"I mean. What if people find out. What if they... " He stopped. The sky had gone blue now. "What if they laugh. Or worse."
Alexander was quiet for a moment, and Elias waited for something vague and reassuring, and instead Alexander leaned in close, his voice level: "Then that's their problem." He pulled back and looked at him. "If we're happy, that's the whole thing. That's all of it. Okay?"
Elias looked at him. He looked at the road. He thought about the second step and the light in the window across the street and the sketchbook under the bed and the six weeks of carefully filed things he kept not looking at. "Okay," he said.
Alexander stood up, binned his remaining ice cream with the relief of someone released from a sentence, and held his hand out to Elias. Elias looked at it. He took it. They walked back to their bikes with their hands together, which was, Elias thought, both ordinary and not at all ordinary, and neither of them said anything else until they were back on their street.
Elias followed him inside. Neither of them said anything about it.
Alexander's room was up the narrow stairs, second door, and it smelled of old wood and something lived-in, a room made someone's own quickly. Posters on the walls, a keyboard pushed against the far wall, a window facing the street. Elias had been in this room twice before with normal pretexts and had filed too many details on the way out both times.
He sat on the edge of the bed. Alexander sat beside him. Neither of them said anything for a moment.
"So," Alexander said.
"So," Elias said.
"Are you nervous?"
Elias thought about it. "A bit."
"Good." Alexander leaned back on his hands. "So am I. It'd be weird if you weren't."
"Is that meant to be reassuring?"
"A little bit, yeah."
Elias looked at him. Alexander looked back. The room was warm and quiet and the window was dark now. "We're only fourteen," Elias said. "We still need to figure out algebra before we tackle..." he gestured vaguely at the space between them.
Alexander stared at him. Then he started laughing, the kind that took a moment to start properly. "Did you just. Was that a joke? Was that an Elias joke?"
"It was an observation."
"It was a terrible joke and I loved it." He wiped his eye. "Okay. In that case. Want to play a game?"
Elias looked at him with some care. "What kind."
"Strip poker."
"I don't know how to play poker."
"Neither do I." Said with complete sincerity. "We'll make up the rules."
"That's just taking clothes off."
"You're so quick. Has anyone ever told you that?" He tilted his head. "Each round, one person guesses what the other is thinking. Wrong answer, something comes off. Wrong question too, actually, I'm still workshopping the rules."
"That's not a game. That's a guessing game with no rules and an agenda."
"What am I thinking right now?"
Elias looked at him for one moment. "That you've already won."
Alexander's grin went wide. "See. You're exceptional at this."
They were down to their underwear in twenty minutes, which Elias had suspected from approximately the second round. Something was playing low from his phone on the desk, slow and unhurried, and the room was warm and the lamp was on and Elias was aware of Alexander beside him on the bed in a way that was different from the six weeks of watching from outside, more immediate, less theoretical.
Alexander had no chest hair, the same as Elias, his torso smooth and pale above the waistband of his boxers. He was slightly taller than Elias and lean in the specific way of someone who moved a lot without being particularly aware of it. Elias had been aware of all of this in the abstract and was now aware of it in the specific, which were different things.
"Question," Elias said.
"Mm."
"Are you ticklish?"
A pause. Alexander turned to look at him. "Why."
"Curiosity."
"That is a deeply suspicious kind of curiosity."
Elias reached over and put two fingers against Alexander's ribs. Alexander made a sound that was not even slightly dignified, grabbed Elias's wrist, and looked at him with an expression of profound personal betrayal.
"That," he said, at a slightly elevated pitch, "is a violation of the truce."
"We didn't have a truce."
"We had an implied truce. The truce was implied by the general atmosphere."
"I don't think that's how truces work."
"I will retaliate," Alexander said, "and I want you to understand I have no mercy."
"I'm terrified," Elias said, and meant it slightly, which was why he wasn't quite fast enough. Alexander was faster than he looked, which was always the way with Alexander, and he was significantly less merciful. Inside thirty seconds Elias was on his back on the bed laughing so hard he had stopped making sound, and Alexander was sitting over him with an expression of pure satisfaction.
"Yield," Alexander said.
"I yield," Elias managed, between breaths. "Fully. Completely. With no reservations."
"Good." He sat back. His hair had come half-loose and was falling sideways. "Truce?"
"Truce."
"Also your feet are cold."
"You grabbed them."
"I know." He was still holding one of Elias's ankles, and he was looking at it with the expression of someone forming a proposal. "Dare."
Elias looked at him. "No."
"Elias. In the spirit of the ice cream."
"The ice cream was a disaster."
"The ice cream led to the kiss. I maintain it was a masterwork." His thumb moved along the arch of Elias's foot, a slow specific pressure, and Elias's leg decided to do something involuntary about this. Alexander noticed. Of course he noticed; he noticed everything. "Dare. I do that, but with my mouth. You kiss my... " he considered briefly, "nipple."
Elias looked at him. "Those are not equivalent dares."
"Both involve mouths. Both involve a specific location. Clearly equivalent."
"One of those is significantly stranger than the other."
"Which one, though. Think about it."
Elias thought about it. He could feel the warm weight of Alexander's hand on his ankle, the patience of it, and the room was warm and the music was on and the six weeks of carefully filed things were all open at once. "Fine," he said.
Alexander leaned down and pressed his mouth to the arch of Elias's right foot.
The jolt went straight up the inside of Elias's leg, direct and specific, and he made a sound he had not planned. Alexander looked up at him from the floor with an expression of patient interest.
"Good?"
"That's," Elias said. His voice had done something. "That's a thing. I didn't know that was a thing."
"Loads of stuff is like that." He pressed his mouth to the same spot again, slower, watching Elias's face carefully. "You just have to actually look."
"Okay," Elias said. His voice still wasn't entirely his own.
"Your turn."
Alexander lay back on the bed, unhurried, his hair spread, and looked up at Elias with complete composure. Elias sat up and leaned over him and pressed a kiss to his chest. Alexander's breath changed, and his hand came up to Elias's hair and rested there without gripping, just the warm weight of it.
"You taste like ice cream," Elias said.
"You taste like feet," Alexander said, without any hesitation at all.
They looked at each other. Then they were both laughing, the kind that takes a moment to arrive and then shakes the whole bed, and when it settled Alexander pulled Elias down by the back of the neck and kissed him again, longer this time, and mint chocolate chip had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Alexander's hands moved to Elias's back; he felt the warmth of his palms through the skin and pressed closer, and Alexander pressed back, and the kissing slowed and then stopped and they lay looking at each other in the lamplight, both of them understanding something without saying it.
"Still okay?" Alexander said.
"Yes," Elias said.
"Good." His hand moved down Elias's back to his hip, and paused there, asking. Elias shifted in a way that was an answer and felt Alexander smile against his mouth.
They lay there like that for a while, learning the shape of each other with the specific attention of people doing something for the first time. Elias found the spot on Alexander's ribs that made him breathe differently, not in the ticklish way but the other way, and came back to it. Alexander's hand on Elias's hip moved in small slow increments that communicated their intentions clearly.
"So," Alexander said, his thumb at the waistband of Elias's boxers. "Shall we, uh." He gestured.
"Anatomy lesson?" Elias said.
Alexander burst out laughing. "Yeah," he said, "exactly, yes, anatomy lesson." His eyes were bright. "I wasn't going to put it like that but now I think that's the only phrase that works."
"I'm workshopping it," Elias said.
"It's fully workshopped. It's done. That's the term."
Alexander's hand slipped under Elias's waistband and Elias went very still and then very not still. The hand was warm and unhurried and it knew what it was doing, which was a thing Elias had suspected and could now confirm. He pressed his face briefly into Alexander's shoulder.
"You okay?" Alexander said, his voice lower now, a different register entirely.
"Very," Elias said, into his shoulder.
"Good." His thumb moved. "You're, uh." He paused.
"What."
"Nothing. Just. You're very." He paused again.
"Are you complimenting me right now?"
"I'm observing," Alexander said with dignity, "that you seem to be enjoying yourself."
"I'm going to need you to stop talking," Elias said.
"Okay but you're a bit like a fountain, is all I'm... "
"Alexander."
"Stopping. Stopped."
He kept at it with the patience he brought to most things, adjusting, reading the responses, and Elias gripped his shoulder and watched the ceiling and felt the specific accumulation of Alexander's attention and eventually his hand tightened hard on Alexander's arm and everything went briefly white and then very still.
He lay there after, his breathing doing what it was doing. The music had gone quiet at some point without him noticing.
"Good?" Alexander said.
"Don't," Elias said.
"I'm asking sincerely."
"Yes. Obviously yes."
"Good." He was looking at him with that expression again, warm and specific, the one Elias had first seen and filed and kept taking back out. "You know what I realized?"
"What."
"I love you." Completely matter-of-fact. The way he said most true things, like noting the weather.
Elias turned his head and looked at him. Alexander was looking at the ceiling with a mild expression.
"I love you too," Elias said.
"Yeah." He nodded, as if confirming something he'd suspected. "I thought so."
Elias looked at the ceiling. Down the hall, a door opened and closed; Alexander's sister said something at a volume that suggested she had forgotten what hour it was. "You realize," Elias said, "that you said that immediately after."
"Good timing."
"You have the worst timing."
"I have excellent timing." He turned his head. "Also. There's a situation."
"I know."
"I wasn't sure if you'd noticed."
"I noticed," Elias said. He sat up. "Your turn. Anatomy lesson."
Alexander's face broke into the grin. "I love you," he said again.
"You're doing it again."
"I know. I like saying it."
Elias pushed him flat with one hand on his chest and felt the warmth of him, the quick beat of his heart. "Can I?" he said.
"Anything," Alexander said. "Genuinely."
Elias pulled Alexander's boxers down. He took a moment to look at him properly, which he had not done yet; the room's lamplight was enough. Alexander was longer than he'd expected, and thick, already dark with blood; the foreskin drawn most of the way back, the tip already wet. A small patch of dark hair at the base, the skin smooth above it. He was, Elias thought, built the way Alexander was built in general, which was with a certain confidence about it.
"Holy," Elias said.
"Mm." Alexander was watching him with great patience from above, leaning on his elbows.
"You're." Elias considered the right word. "You're quite."
"Thank you."
"I haven't finished."
"You had a complete look on your face. I assumed it was a compliment."
Elias looked up at him. "So you're definitely one hundred percent gay, right," he said.
Alexander stared at him. "Are you." He started laughing. "Are you doing a bit right now?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're doing my bit. That's my bit. I do that bit."
"I don't know what a bit is," Elias said, and took him in his hand.
Alexander's laugh stopped at once and became something else entirely, a short rough exhale, and his head went back. Elias watched his face and adjusted his grip and felt the specific weight and heat of him and the pulse of blood under the skin and worked slowly the way he had been shown, which was not to rush the things you wanted.
"You're," Alexander said, and stopped.
"I'm what."
"Really good at this. For a first time."
"I pay attention."
"I know." His voice was not what it normally was. "I noticed that first."
Elias moved his thumb over the tip, learning the geography of it, and felt Alexander's hips make a small decision of their own. His hand came down to Elias's hair, not directing, just resting, the warm weight of it. Elias kept going, steady and thorough, and Alexander's composure came apart in small specific increments, his breathing going rough, the hand in Elias's hair tightening.
"Elias," he said, at some point. His voice had gone somewhere completely different.
"Mm."
"I'm going to." He managed to make this sound both urgent and apologetic.
"I know," Elias said. "It's fine."
"I'm just saying, in case you wanted to - "
"Alexander," Elias said. "I know."
He stayed where he was. Alexander's hand clenched in his hair and a sound came out of him that was low and broken and had Elias's name somewhere in it, and Elias felt the warmth of it across his hand and his wrist and kept going through all of it, until the last of it, and Alexander lay back in the bed with his forearm across his eyes and his chest moving with the effort of returning to himself.
The room was quiet. Outside, the street went about its business.
After a moment Elias looked down at his hand. He looked at Alexander.
"So," Alexander said, from under his forearm.
"So," Elias said.
"We're going to need something to clean up with."
Elias looked around the room. He reached over and took a sock from the floor, the first thing available. Alexander moved his arm and looked at it.
"That's my good sock," he said.
"You have a ranking system for socks?"
"Every man has a ranking system for socks, Elias. It's basic life management." He took the sock with the expression of someone accepting a difficult circumstance with grace. "Okay. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
They sorted themselves out, which took a small amount of time and involved more logistics than Elias had anticipated, and when it was done Elias lay back on the bed and Alexander lay beside him, and they looked at the ceiling.
"You know what I'm keeping," Alexander said.
"What."
He picked up Elias's discarded boxers from where they'd ended up on the floor. He held them up with an extremely self-satisfied expression.
Elias looked at him. "No."
"Souvenir of our first anatomy lesson."
"That is the least romantic thing anyone has ever said."
"It's very romantic. It's a keepsake."
"It is a pair of dirty boxers."
"A keepsake," Alexander repeated. "I'm going to have them framed."
"You're not going to have them framed."
"I'm going to have them framed with a little plaque underneath. *First anatomy lesson. A Tuesday.*"
"It's Wednesday."
"*First anatomy lesson. A Wednesday.*" He held them to his chest. "Priceless."
Elias took a pillow and put it over his own face. He could hear Alexander laughing. He removed the pillow after a moment and looked at him, this specific person, sitting on the bed in the lamplight holding a pair of boxers with the contentment of someone who had achieved exactly what they set out to achieve, and felt the thing in his chest that had been sitting there for six weeks, fully opened now, entirely unmanageable.
"Come here," Elias said.
Alexander put the boxers down and lay down beside him and they looked at the ceiling together. After a moment Alexander said: "She's still awake."
"She's always still awake."
"Does she know what time it is?"
"She knows. She just doesn't care."
"That's actually kind of admirable." He turned his head. "Hey."
"Hey."
"I meant what I said. Earlier."
Elias looked at him. Alexander's expression was the careful one, the one that cost him something. "I know," Elias said. "I meant it too."
Alexander held his gaze for a moment and then smiled, the real one, the wide uneven one that Elias had catalogued first. Then, because apparently he could not let a moment exist without dismantling it slightly: "Okay but seriously though." He tapped his own chest, at the nipple. "Did you mean what you said about these being functional?"
Elias put the pillow over his face again.
"Because I feel like that's a claim that should be tested," Alexander said, from outside the pillow. "In the spirit of the scientific method."
Elias removed the pillow. He looked at Alexander with an expression that he had been told was unreadable and others had told him was extremely readable. He leaned over and bit Alexander's nipple, lightly.
Alexander made a sound. "Okay," he said, in a somewhat different voice. "Yeah. Functional."
"Good," Elias said. He lay back down. "Glad we cleared that up."
The room was warm and quiet. The lamp was on at the desk and the window was dark and the street outside doing what streets did at night, which was carry on without requiring anything from either of them. Alexander's shoulder was against Elias's shoulder. They lay like that for a while, not needing to fill it with anything, and Elias felt the particular quality of the evening around them, specific and warm and entirely its own, and thought about the second step and the six weeks of things he had filed and not opened and understood that this was what had been in all of them, all along, which had been obvious and which he had taken his time about anyway.
Down the hall, something happened involving a door. Alexander started laughing again, quietly, into the ceiling.
"Told you she was admirable," he said.
"She's being loud," Elias said.
"Admirably loud." A pause. "Like me."
"You're not loud."
"I had mint chocolate chip ice cream."
"That was a dare."
"I accepted the dare." He considered. "Yeah, okay, maybe a little bit of an idiot."
Elias looked at the ceiling. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe a little bit."
Alexander's hand found his in the dark and held it, simple and warm, like it had always been there. The street went on around them, the night doing what nights did, and nothing came from down the hall for a while, and neither did they.