Chapter Text
The basement “apartment” wasn’t really an apartment so much as a storage unit that someone had been generous enough to rent to a human being. The window facing the alley let in about as much light as a dying flashlight (if the blinds were open at all), the walls might have been infected with some sort of fungus and the air conditioning stopped working a long while ago. The desk was scattered with energy drink cans and crumpled receipts and empty pizza boxes. Somewhere under the mess sat a plate that had once held noodles, or maybe something else – hard to tell now. But Elias had his computer, his router, and enough money coming in each month to keep both of those alive. That was enough.
His parents still wired him cash out of habit, little bank transfers like hush money for a son they never cared about, from two separate accounts belonging to people that never spoke to each other anymore. His dad was probably still in an office somewhere pretending Elias had grown up like a normal kid. His mother was probably still drunk, wherever she was. Neither of them ever called, not even when he turned twenty five years old a few weeks ago. Neither of them actually knew where he lived. Elias convinced himself that he didn't care, that it suited his routine.
Elias treated his routines the way other people had personalities. It was what defined him, and the only way to actually get to know him would be to learn his routines. Not that anyone ever tried.
He woke up late – sometimes noon, sometimes later – rolled out of bed, took his pills with yesterday’s flat soda (or an energy drink), and settled in front of his computer, which was the only actual light in the room, a light that would lure him in like a moth to a flame every single day. There were emails waiting for him from the faceless company that subcontracted his time: the only things he had to do were short coding fixes, quick bug reports, the kind of low-level IT work that no one wanted to waste their real engineers on. Elias clicked through those emails, solved them like crossword puzzles, and filed them away. Two or three hours of work, at most. Enough to keep his food orders going and his Wi-Fi active.
After that, the rest of the day was his. He could do anything, anything at all, and the thing he chose was more screentime. But this time, it belonged to Elias and whoever he chose to obsess over. And this time, it belonged to none other than Alexander Pierce.
Alexander Pierce wasn’t a friend or a colleague, not even an acquaintance. Alexander Pierce was a name in headlines, a face in high-resolution photographs from news articles, and on Elias's screen it was also the face in grainy screenshots he took from YouTube videos. Alexander was a surgeon, the surgeon, the one who had saved a senator’s life when the man’s heart decided to quit mid-flight. The story had been everywhere for the past week, about how the surgeon found himself just at the right time, October 14th, 9:36, and the right place, flight 227, from New York to DC. Alexander’s picture – a well tailored suit, a slight smile, calm, bright eyes – was burned into Elias’s brain.
Now, Alexander was part of the routine too.
Elias had whole folders for him. Articles clipped and saved, interviews bookmarked, photos downloaded from hospital websites and news outlets. He even left his "apartment" one time to print out some newspaper clippings, because he couldn't afford his own printer. He went home and pinned them to his whiteboard with little heart-shaped magnets. He read those print-outs over and over until the words blurred
but the idea of the man sharpened. Alexander was perfect, untouchable, clean, the kind of person Elias would never be but a kind of person he could, at least, stare at, like at a museum exhibit.
The only neatness in the room lived on the whiteboard. His little shrine. Elias had arranged it carefully; a few photos of Alexander at work from an interview, Alexander shaking hands with the senator whose life he’d saved, Alexander on a grainy still taken from a security camera at his hospital. Elias studied it, like a student cramming for an exam that he would actually never take.
Elias had always found people fascinating in the way one pins insects to a board – preserved, labeled, stripped of motion, their secrets exposed and yet somehow still unknowable, frozen in moments that revealed everything and nothing at all. Long before Alexander Pierce appeared on his screen, he had spent years looking at online forums, fan sites, and comment sections, fixating on strangers with this obsessive precision. High school had always been the beginning of everything – the quiet girl in his calculus class who always wore oversized hoodies, the boy in the band whose laugh sounded cute, the niche YouTube streamer whose voice made Elias’s chest ache. He documented them all, mapping out the tiny, invisible details of lives that seemed unattainable. While most of the obsessions had burned out quickly, others had lingered for months, leaving him with a desperate desire for attention, craving acknowledgment he would never get. Sometimes he would take a step too far and ruin it all, coming a little too close, actually being noticed, infringing on their personal life a little too much. It was a cycle he knew well, and yet he could not stop. When Alexander appeared, it was like the world had handed him a perfect object of obsession, the same feeling amplified tenfold.
He turned back to his computer and opened one of the anonymous forums. His latest thread was still sitting at the top of the page, untouched. Zero replies, zero views, zero likes. Just his username and a block of text, talking about his object of obsession. He read the post again:
piercedthrough227
one day, you will know. you will know how much you mean to me, how much i love you, about how i can't stop thinking about you, your voice, your bright, piercing eyes, even for a moment…
The cursor blinked beneath the paragraph. Elias considered adding more words to a hymn to a man that would never read it. But no – the post was already too long. People could get suspicious if he went on too much. Elias knew all too well about how you could find out anything about someone following just their online activity.
The thought left a sour taste in his mouth. Alexander would never know, no matter how much he dreamed about it. Elias got up, shoved a plate from his desk to the floor in frustration, and sat down again. The glow of the monitor greeted him, just like always. One of the only comforts he had in life.
There were a few unread messages in one of the forums. Not replies to his thread – never replies – but a couple of new posts in the celebrity gossip section. Elias scrolled through them, half-distracted, until he got to the bottom of the page. There was one post that caught his eye – the title read Alexander Pierce: a Miracle Story?. Elias scrolled through it quickly; it was some sort of conspiracy theory about how the whole situation was a set up, a story made up to promote the political campaign of the senator or something along those lines. Elias closed his eyes for a second. He couldn't bear to watch the love of his life being disrespected like this. With a deep sigh, he reported the post. He clicked on the comment section, but he couldn't think of anything to write. He just stared at his username: piercedthrough227.
Elias traced the letters with his mouse. The username was a play on words, maybe a bit too on the nose. The number meant something to him, though he knew nobody else would get it. It wasn’t a random number, it was the flight number of the plane where Alexander had performed the miracle surgery. Flight 227. The number made him feel closer to the doctor, like he had a code only he and Alexander shared. Of course, Alexander didn’t know. He’d never know. But Elias liked to think that if he did, he’d understand.
He opened another tab, the one with his image folders. Dozens of subfolders lined up like surgical tools in a cabinet: Interviews, Hospital Gala, Press Conferences, Misc… He clicked Misc and scrolled past the same photos he always seemed to linger on – the closeup of the expensive suit, the bright blue eyes that seemed to be looking straight at the camera, the smile looking effortlessly genuine as if Alexander had no time for lenses or flashes, only for the human lives that needed saving. Elias leaned closer to the screen. He’d memorized every pixel, but every time he looked it felt sharper, more defined. He reached out as if to touch it, but his finger stopped just short of the glass. He hesitated as if he was unworthy of even looking at such a flawless person. His fingerprints would only smudge the perfection.
The whiteboard caught his peripheral vision again, and Elias turned, staring at the clippings pinned in neat rows. His handwriting scrawled underneath one of them: Miracle in the Sky. It was the headline from the Times. He’d written it down in black marker, underlined it three times.
Miracle in the Sky.
He whispered it once, twice, like he was saying a prayer.
If only there was some miracle waiting for him too, somewhere…
His life was always filled with cruel mistakes, for as long as he could remember.
Elias had known he was a boy for as long as he knew anything about himself, long before he had the words for it. Transitioning hadn’t always been the problem, though his parents didn't help him at all – he’d saved, fought, carved his way into the body he lived in now, and he didn’t regret that for a second. What gnawed at him was the echo of how people had looked at him before, and how they still sometimes looked at him now: as if they could peel back his skin and find something fraudulent underneath.
He remembered being cornered in hallways at school, called names, shoved against lockers, the laughter still echoing in his mind.. Those voices had followed him into adulthood, even when he’d grown taller, sharper, more himself. Some nights the only way to drown them out had been to carve into his body more literally, neat lines of pain etched into skin turned into a routine like everything else in his life. Other nights he’d thought about ending it altogether, no one cared about him, so no one would even notice. This loneliness was the thing that cut the deepest – the ache of never being held, never having someone’s hand rest on his shoulder in comfort, never the warmth of skin pressed against his own. He wanted to be desired, to be touched, to be remembered, to be chosen – anyone would do – and yet he was always alone. But then there was Alexander Pierce. Alexander was everything Elias wasn’t – perfectly composed, effortlessly respected, handsome in a way that seemed to be the reflection of his faultless soul. Elias wanted him, maybe wanted to be him, maybe both at once.
The forum tab beeped with a new notification, snapping him back from the depths of his own mind. Elias’s pulse jumped, and he clicked back immediately. But again, it wasn’t his thread. It never was. Someone had just posted in a different one, and his own words sat there, lonely, untouched, just like he was.
He thought about writing something else, something that would make them all understand… He wrote a few words, stared at it for a moment, then deleted the draft and closed the box.
Instead, he clicked open a blank Notepad document. These weren’t for the forums. These were private. The forums were too public, too open, in everyone's reach. Here, he could say anything.
people don’t see him the way i do. they don’t pay attention to the details. his hands. always steady, always clean. the way he smiles only slightly, not too much, while still looking so genuine. the way he stands so straight it hurts to look at. but he doesn’t waste himself on people who don’t matter. he never wastes anything. he’s seamless, and no one will ever see him the way i see him… not even himself.
He saved the document in his folder. His digital diary was the place where he could be the most honest he'd ever been. But not honest enough.
He opened another photo, moving his face closer to the monitor. He zoomed in, until the surgeon's face was the size of his own. He looked him straight in the eyes that seemed to pierce right through him.
"Goodnight, doctor…"
He looked into his eyes for just a moment longer.
Elias looked away first.