Merrick/Raphael for 27, "pulling the other one towards them"
modern (professors???) AU, babyyy!! also on AO3 with some silly bonus content i didn't feel like formatting here 🙃
“What about that new girl in your department?” Minna asks. “Grace…something?”
“Grace Carrow?” Merrick offers dubiously. When Minna nods emphatically, he adds, “Grace Carrow isn’t in my department. She’s physics, I’m bio.”
“Oh, whatever,” Minna says. “It’s all science, isn’t it?”
“So is archeology, for that matter, but you’d never say she’s in your department.”
Minna turns to Clem, who’s been blessedly silent during this whole conversation. “Well, someone’s in a mood.”
“Em is just put out because Grace is younger than Mori’s boy, and we all agreed Mori’s boy is a bit young for him,” Clem replies, looking ambivalent.
“Which makes Grace far too young for me,” Merrick adds.
“I thought we agreed not to call Thaniel a boy anymore,” Minna says, distractedly.
“Did we?” Clem asks, interested now. “How magnanimous of us.”
“Besides,” Merrick interrupts, before this gets too far away from them, “Grace Carrow is engaged.”
“She is?”
“She wears a ring.”
“Oh, that could mean anything. It could be her mother’s, for all you know!”
“It doesn’t matter, really,” Merrick says. “She’s too young for me. And I’m not interested in her.”
“That’s very much the problem, dear. You’re not interested in anyone, and yet you complain about being a third wheel. I’m just trying to help.”
Merrick sighs and sinks further into the overstuffed armchair in Clem and Minna’s living room. The staff mixer for the end of the semester is always a source of stress. It’s important to go and be seen by the head of your department and any other higher ups who chose to attend, not only to come off as a team player who showed up to social events but also to appear calm and prepared, like someone who definitely has all their finals graded already and is looking forward to winter break like a professional and not like a desperate shell of a human.
As long as Merrick’s been at the university, he’s never had a date to bring for this party, and while that’s certainly not a requirement, there does always come a point in the evening where all the couples have clustered together to have actual intelligent conversation while the single faculty members are left to commiserate over the slog to get to the end of the semester and pair off unenthusiastically, if possible. It is not a pretty sight. He recently made the mistake of complaining about this in front of Minna, who has now taken it upon herself to pair him off with any faculty member she happens to know is single. And she knows everyone.
“I wasn’t really complaining,” he says, to head her off at the pass. “Just thinking out loud about how annoying these events are for the singles among us.”
“Besides,” Clem says, reaching over to fill his wife’s wine glass, “if Em’s that desperate for a date, he can just grow a pair and finally ask Raphael.”
Minna perks up immediately, reminding him, both amusingly and terrifyingly, of a hunting dog who’s caught the scent of its quarry. “Raphael?” she asks, with a look that tells Merrick his goose is officially cooked.
Clem, to his credit, looks sheepish. “Ah, I take it Minna didn’t know about the Raphael situation.”
“Well, she does now,” Merrick says, draining his own glass and holding it out pointedly for a refill.
“She certainly does not,” Minna exclaims. “What is the Raphael situation?”
“It’s nothing. Really.”
Minna gives him an unimpressed look that could puncture a lung on a lesser man, and then swivels to look at Clem. “Markham,” she say, firmly, “you know there are no secrets in a healthy marriage.”
“That’s not fair!” Merrick shouts, but it’s a lost cause.
Clem wavers immediately under his wife’s gaze. “Merrick attended that lecture Raphael gave last month at the opening of the Inca exhibit at the museum, and they chatted briefly afterwards, and he hasn’t shut up about him since,” he admits in a rush.
“That’s not totally accurate,” Merrick hedges.
“He also had a dream about him.”
“Clem—!”
“WHAT?!” Minna shrieks at the same time. Merrick debates pointing out that they have a sleeping baby upstairs to worry about, but decides against it. “I cannot believe you kept this from me. I’m way better with this kind of thing than Markham here is and you know that.”
Merrick rolls his eyes. “You two met when you were twelve and have never been with anyone else. Neither of you are an expert on dating.”
“Fine. Just for that, I demand you tell me about this dream of yours.”
“Absolutely not!”
Minna turns in her seat. “Markham—”
“Christ, Minna! It was nothing,” Merrick says, feeling his face warm with a blush that immediately contradicts him. “I just had a dream that he and I were hanging out again and then…it’s stupid.”
“Oh, dear. You don’t have to be embarrassed. We’re all adults here. Sex is nothing the be ashamed of!”
Merrick makes a useless gesture with his hands that he hopes conveys his frustration. “That’s the stupid part! It wasn’t about sex at all! In the dream, all Raphael did was hug me goodbye before he left and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s ridiculous!”
Minna and Clem exchange a look at that, which is not precisely reassuring. When Minna’s gaze returns to him, she reaches out to take his hand across the coffee table. “Darling, I think you’ve been single a little too long,” she says, not unkindly.
Merrick laughs, shakily. “No kidding.”
“Do we need to hug you more?” she asks, and she is, unfortunately, serious. “Are we failing you as friends? Are you completely touch starved?”
“Okay, I’m going to walk into traffic now…”
“Em is fine, Minna,” Clem says, placing his hand firmly on Merrick’s shoulder, so they’re all connected in a tiny triangle. “He just needs to buck up and make a move.”
“Again, you’ve been in a relationship since before you hit puberty,” Merrick says. “I’m not taking notes from you on this. Besides, I can’t believe you’re encouraging me to date Raphael. I thought you two were rivals.”
“Yes, well, I’m an exceptionally generous friend like that,” Clem replies with a smile. “And there’s every possibility that if Raphael were to get laid, he might argue with me less during department meetings, which would suit me just fine.”
“You have enormous faith in my sexual prowess, Clem, if you think I can do anything that might make Raphael despise you less.”
Clem raises his wine glass in a mock toast. “You’re like my own personal Mata Hari, Em. The anthropology department thanks you for your service.”
“I don’t even know if he’s single,” Merrick says, ignoring him. “Or if he likes men. Or me, for that matter.”
“Ah, but these are things we can find out,” Minna says, with a mischievous smile.
Merrick recognizes an uphill battle when he sees one, and resigns himself to Minna’s machinations, whatever they turn out to be, with a very large sip of wine.
*
Grace Carrow, it turns out, is very fun to hang out with at faculty mixers because she’s as unhappy to be there as he is. They spend most of the evening being cranky bastards together at a mostly empty table, and he’s honestly kind of disappointed she turned out to be so cool. She is engaged, though, a fact that he confirms when she abandons him fairly early on in the evening by announcing her intention to meet up with her boyfriend, who’s working on a PhD in Japanese poetry at a university across town, for a late dinner.
“Boyfriend?” Merrick asks, keeping his tone light enough that she won’t mistake his curiosity for romantic interest. “I assumed you were engaged, what with the ring and all.”
“Oh,” Grace says, looking embarrassed. “Yes, I suppose I’m going to meet my fiancé. It’s recent so I just can’t get used to saying it. I never could with Thaniel either.”
“Thaniel?”
“Steepleton. I thought you two knew each other.”
“We do. I wasn’t aware you did.”
Grace waves a hand. “We were engaged very briefly a few years back, before he and Mori…well, you know. It’s a very long story for what was ultimately a very short relationship, and I’d rather not talk out of school, you understand.”
“Of course,” Merrick says, magnanimously, but he’s already looking forward to sharing this bit of gossip with Clem and Minna. Every small piece of information they can gather about Mori’s life is a boon, given how private Mori is with the details now that he’s happily in a relationship. “Have a good night.”
Grace waves again, this time as a goodbye, and heads for the doors. No sooner has she disappeared from the room than Merrick feels someone sit down heavily in the chair Grace recently vacated.
“Dr. Tremayne,” Raphael says, by way of greeting.
“Professor Santos,” he replies, turning to face him, “at what point in our relationship do you think you’d be open to using my first name?”
Raphael’s expression gives away that he has to, with some effort, bite back a sarcastic retort before it mellows out into something genial and vague. “My apologies, Merrick,” he finally says.
“Much better,” Merrick says. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. Your first name isn’t that fun to say.”
Merrick feels himself blush. Stupidstupidstupid. “I meant, at the party.”
“Oh, of course,” Raphael says, not looking the slightest bit chagrined. There’s amusement lurking around the corners of his eyes, but he doesn’t seem to be indulging it at all. “Truthfully, I’ve always found these end-of-semester affairs to be a bit of a slog.”
“Really?”
“Don’t tell Dr. Wellesley,” he says, tipping his head in the direction of the tall woman who’s deep in conversation with Clem and Minna on the other side of the room. She’s the head of the anthropology department and thus Raphael’s boss.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Merrick says. “Besides, I feel the same way.”
“So, if my secret gets out, I’ll go straight to the head of your department as revenge.”
Merrick snorts, thinking about how Sing left this party after five minutes and wouldn’t care at all to hear anyone disparage it. His boss would probably agree with the sentiment. He doesn’t say that, though, because he has the distinct feeling Raphael is flirting with him and he doesn’t want that to stop anytime soon.
“Mutually assured destruction,” he replies, instead. “What a lovely idea.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
There’s a lull in their conversation, which allows Raphael to look around the room and Merrick to panic about what to say next to keep this possible flirtation going.
“Are you finished with your grading for the term?” He finally asks, after many moments of deliberation, and he really could die of embarrassment. That’s apparently the best he can do for flirting.
Raphael seems to find this offering pitiable too, if the ways he raises his eyebrow inquisitively is any indication. “Yes, I finished grading the last essay this afternoon, as a matter of fact,” he answers, clearly trying to put Merrick out of his misery.
“Lucky bastard,” he grumbles under his breath, and Raphael surprises him by laughing. Merrick always finds an odd sort of pride in getting Raphael to smile or laugh, given his no-nonsense, straightforward demeanor. He thinks it’s a reputation he courts, being seen as serious and unapproachable, but he also knows that his classes have waitlists every semester and his grad students are utterly devoted to him. The only professor more popular in his department is Clem, but Merrick chalks that up to Clem being more widely published and outwardly jovial. Once the students see what a brutal grader Clem can be, he loses some of his shine to them. Raphael, on the other hand, seems to only grow in popularity with his students as the semester goes on, so he can’t be a complete tyrant in his classes.
Still, it’s the rarity of his smiles that endeared him to Merrick in the first place. It’s hard to say now, when he’s felt it for so long, when exactly this stupid crush started, but it certainly wasn’t from the beginning. It takes a while for Raphael to really open up and be himself, for all he is notoriously blunt with everyone at all times, and his sense of humor does require some getting used to, in all honesty. That only made it more rewarding for Merrick, though, to realize that Raphael was cracking jokes with him and seeking him out at faculty functions.
And then there was that damned opening for the new Inca exhibit at the museum. Merrick had gone out of general interest—he comes from a long line of academics, though everyone in his family chose disparate fields of study, and some of them had spent considerable amounts of time in South America, which meant he learned a lot about the Inca as a small child—but also because he and Raphael are friends in a vague way and he wanted to hear his remarks for the opening. He’d heard Clem complain enough about how popular Raphael’s classes were getting that he’d been curious to see him in action.
He hadn’t been disappointed. Raphael is an engaging speaker, without trying too hard to be entertaining or relatable. He has a way of presenting even the driest information so that it feels vital and interesting, but he doesn’t speak down to anyone. He assumes his audience is intelligent and interested, and by some weird transitive property, that’s what they become. It had only been a short speech about the subject and the importance of the exhibit, but Merrick had fully understood the fuss surrounding his classes. Even if he hadn’t gone into that situation with a small crush on him, he probably would have left with one. Now, though, it’s anything but small. His crush on Raphael is raging out of control.
“I’m guessing that means you’re not finished yet?” Raphael asks, somehow still maintaining that insouciant flirtatiousness despite Merrick’s unsexy topic of choice.
“No,” he says, flustered in spite of his best efforts. “Not even close.”
Merrick checks his watch, the one Mori gave him for his birthday a few years ago. “A little more than that, but yes.”
“You’ll be fine. You teach botany, right? Isn’t their final exam just, like, growing a seed in a paper cup? How long could those take to grade?”
“I think you’re confusing my undergrads with third graders,” Merrick replies, drily. Still, he can’t help the smile that’s taking over his face, which ruins the effect a little.
“My mistake,” Raphael says, smiling back, unrepentant. There’s another brief pause where they sit in comfortable silence before he suddenly asks, “Markham says you might need a ride?”
Merrick stares back at him blankly for an embarrassing amount of time before he can form any sort of response. “Markham says—wait, which Markham? Minna?”
“Yes, I only know one Dr. Markham here.”
“That is objectively untrue.”
“No, it’s not. Dr. Markham’s husband also has a doctorate, but given how terrible his syllabus always is, I refuse to believe his degree is from an accredited university,” Raphael says, sincerely.
Merrick rolls his eyes. “Regardless,” he says, “this is another instance where using someone’s first name would be both helpful and appropriate.”
“Two things I always strive to be,” Raphael quips. “The one and only Dr. Minna Markham suggested you might need a ride home tonight.”
“She did? Why?”
“I foolishly assumed it was because you actually needed one,” he says, with a nonchalant shrug. “All she said to me was something about you probably wanting to leave earlier than her and her husband would, and that they’d been your ride to the party, so she felt like she needed to help get you home in one piece. I didn’t realize I would know more about this than you would.”
Merrick looks over to where Minna is now standing with Clem and several other professors he doesn’t know well, and she’s watching him and Raphael with her wine glass held up to her lips. She offers him a small smile—not overly gloating, just vaguely pleased—and makes a point of returning her gaze to her conversation partners—in a bid to give him some privacy, he supposes.
“Now that you mention it, she did say they might be staying late,” Merrick says, not entirely certain he’s even slightly convincing at it.
“Well, I told her I’d be happy to give you a lift.”
“Oh, well, you don’t have to, just because Minna twisted your arm—”
“Christ, Merrick! It’s a ride home, not a kidney,” Raphael says, but he looks amused. Maybe even charmed, though that could just be wishful thinking. “I am leaving now, though, so if you’d rather stay—”
“God, no,” Merrick immediately interjects. “I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
Raphael smiles again, that stupid, rare smile of his, and nods. “I assume you’ll want to say goodbye to the Markhams, and I need to talk to my boss before I leave, so let’s meet by the doors in five minutes.”
“Alright,” Merrick replies, trying to sound like leaving this party with Raphael isn’t making him incredibly nervous. He reaches for his cane, propped up against the table next to him, with sweaty palms and prays that his crush isn’t obvious to literally everyone.
He makes his way over to where Minna and Clem are standing and tries to capture their attention without completely interrupting the conversation. Minna catches his eye and turns towards him with arms already outstretched.
“How’d we do?” she asks, sotto voce, which saves him only a little embarrassment.
“Well, he’s driving me home, so I’m thinking maybe spring for the wedding,” he replies, with an eye roll.
Minna whacked his shoulder with the back of her hand. “Don’t be absurd, Em! You’d never be able to plan a proper wedding by spring! Summer, though…”
He’s spared from having to come up with a clever retort by a sudden pain in his knee that makes him wince and lean more heavily on his cane. By the time he’s collected himself, he looks up to find Minna watching him with concern.
“Everything alright?”
Merrick waves it off. “Oh, it’s fine. Just hurts worse when the weather’s bad. You know.”
Minna nods. “It’s supposed to be particularly nasty tonight. You’ll be careful getting home?”
“I won’t be the one driving, but I’ll do my best not to distract Raphael too much with my good looks,” he says.
“Don’t joke about that! You know, you’re very handsome, Em.”
“What’s that?” Clem asks, choosing this moment to join the conversation.
“I’m telling Merrick to stop being so damned self-deprecating and admit that he’s very handsome,” Minna replies, without shame. “Don’t you think he’s very handsome, Markham?”
“Oh, exceedingly,” Clem says, in that mild way of his where it’s impossible to tell if it’s sarcastic or not. “You’re not bad to look at at all, Em.”
Merrick is certain he’s blushing furiously now. “Thank you both so much for the pep talk, but unfortunately I must be going now,” he says.
Minna pulls him into a gentle hug, careful not to throw off his balance now that she knows his knee is bothering him. “Like I said, be careful,” she whispers to him.
“Yes, yes. I will be.”
“You don’t suppose Raphael would be willing to carry you to the car, on account of your leg and all, do you?”
Merrick groans and pulls back from her. “You’re a menace,” he says, blushing even more now.
“He’s just so strapping,” she says, with a diabolical look in her eye. “I bet he could do it.”
“Unfortunately, we’ll never know,” Merrick replies, breezily, and turns to hug Clem goodbye.
Clem embraces him, but has the audacity to say, before they break apart, “The entire anthropology department is rooting for you, my friend.”
“You are both terrible,” Merrick says, “and I cannot believe you’re my best friends in the entire world.”
“You’ll be much more appreciative of our efforts once you’ve gotten laid, my dear,” Minna replies, cheerfully, as she reaches out to fix his collar.
“We’re not—I didn’t say—That’s not what’s happening!”
“Keep an open mind, darling,” Clem says, toasting him before effectively ending the conversation by turning back to the other group of professors.
“Safe travels,” Minna adds, “and we’ll see you for the holidays!”
Merrick sighs, defeated. “Yes, ma’am,” he replies, leaning in to give her a kiss on the cheeks before departing.
True to his word, Raphael is waiting for him by the exit when he gets there, and with nothing more than a nod in his direction, heads out of the room. Tonight is definitely not going to end in a win for the anthropology department, Merrick thinks, glumly, as he follows. Once they’ve crossed through the lobby of the building and out into the actual night, the force of the cold, damp air hits Merrick like a wall and he pauses to button his coat all the way up to his neck and readjust his grip on his cane. There are fat snowflakes the size of doilies falling through the air and landing uselessly on the ground where they melt almost immediately. Here on the main campus, the groundskeepers have salted the pathways generously, so it will be a long while before anything can accumulate. He imagines the roads will be just the same, for the moment at least, and he’s glad for multiple reasons to be escaping the party at this particular moment. Driving home any later would likely be a nightmare.
He’s thinking about texting Minna and Clem a weather update and is halfway through pulling out his phone, when he remembers that he’s not alone. Raphael stands a few feet away, waiting patiently and looking amused. It’s neither of those things that truly capture Merrick’s attention, though.
“Is that really what you’re wearing? In this weather?” he asks, instead, gawking at him.
Raphael looks down, as if he’s never considered his own clothing before. “What’s wrong with this?”
“It’s a suit.”
“We were at a party, Merrick. Suits are appropriate.”
Merrick shakes his head, disbelieving. “Usually, in the middle of snow storms, an actual jacket is helpful.”
“This is a jacket,” Raphael says, plucking at his lapels.
“It’s a suit ja—wait, are you honestly telling me you don’t have a coat? You didn’t just forget it inside?”
“This is what I wore to the party,” Raphael says, slowly, like maybe Merrick is the moron here.
“Aren’t you cold?!” Merrick asks, indignant and just barely holding himself back from stamping his feet to keep warm as the chill settles in.
“Not really,” Raphael replies, with a shrug. “You are, though, so maybe we should start walking.”
Merrick reluctantly lets this argument go, and nods. He’ll text Minna and Clem about the roads once they’re on their way, but he focuses now on getting to the parking garage without falling on his face. This part of campus is very pretty, especially in the snow, with its quintessential liberal arts college architecture, big, stone buildings with massive arched windows and cobblestone paths everywhere. But the very things that make it quaint and picturesque can make it harder to navigate with a cane, Merrick finds, as his gets stuck between two uneven cobblestones in the path they’re taking to the edge of campus, where Raphael is parked. He swears under his breath, but not enough to avoid Raphael hearing, apparently, because he looks over with concern.
“Alright?” He asks, eyebrows drawn together.
Merrick feels himself flush even in the bitter cold air. “Yes, fine,” he says, trying not to grit his teeth. He usually doesn’t struggle this much, but the cold and the dampness are making his leg ache and the unfamiliarity of the situation is making him nervous.
Of course, the moment he waves off Raphael’s concern is also the moment he loses his balance. His foot simply slips out from under him on the wet stones and he starts to fall for a terrifying split second until he feels himself yanked back as Raphael pulls him upright by his elbow and into his side, though presumably that last part is an accident. Merrick is trying to catch his breath while keeping his eyes screwed shut to avoid facing the embarrassment of what just happened when he realizes Raphael is still holding him.
He opens his eyes to find Raphael watching him carefully, with an expression of mild terror across his features that Merrick suspects has less to do with fear over his near-fall and more to do with how close their faces are right now. Merrick is a little taller than Raphael under normal circumstances but in their current configuration—Merrick still slouched over slightly and Raphael keeping him close with one hand on his elbow and the other on his waist to steady him—they're eye-to-eye. He’s not sure he’s ever seen Raphael look nervous, although maybe he just always hides it better than Merrick does, but he certainly looks it now.
“Thanks,” is what Merrick manages to say, as faintly as humanly possible. If he’d been actively trying to do an impression of a cartoonish damsel in distress whose heart is racing more from the broadness of her rescuer’s chest than the danger she avoided, he couldn’t have done better. Then again, in his defense, Raphael does have an impressively broad chest.
“Sure,” Raphael says, and it was probably, given his general demeanor, meant to come out breezy and nonchalant, but instead he grits the word out stiffly, as though it takes all his concentration to say it correctly.
“I don’t—” Merrick struggles to find his words. “What I mean is, I’m not normally this…”
“I know,” Raphael answers, without waiting for him to finish. His look has been upgraded from nervous to petrified, and it almost makes Merrick want to laugh. It turns out all he needed to get calm, cool, detached Raphael off his game was to get within kissing distance of him. He wishes he’d thought of this months ago.
Raphael’s eyebrows draw together even further, adding a layer of guardedness to his expression. “Why are you smiling?” he asks, without a hint of amusement.
Merrick hadn’t realized he was. “There’s snowflakes landing on your eyelashes,” he says, because there are and he’s never had the opportunity to view that particular feature of Raphael’s up close before.
“Oh,” Raphael says, blankly. He doesn’t look happy with that answer, but Merrick is.
From anyone else, it would be a letdown, a mixed signal to worry over later when he’s home by himself. But for whatever reason, coming from Raphael, it is a clear sign that he’s doing something right. Nobody flusters Raphael. He might be the first in human history to manage it. All this time he’s been waiting for Raphael to catch on to his crush and make a move or reject him accordingly. It had never occurred to him that maybe Raphael had maybe been doing the same thing, circling around him, seeking him out at staff meetings and work parties, and hoping he’d be the brave one. He took Raphael’s confidence and self-assured demeanor in his professional life for granted as his de facto personality in every part of his life, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d found the thing that intimidated the otherwise unflappable anthropology professor that everyone admired. And it was him, of all things.
“It’s cute,” Merrick says, meaning the snowflakes and the eyelashes and the swooping in to save him and the fact that he’s nervous about it all now.
Raphael nods, the gesture both absent and enthralled, and clearly tries to think of something to say, but he gets distracted when Merrick wets his lips, which is all the encouragement Merrick needs to lean forward and kiss him. Raphael’s mouth is stiff under his for a long moment, which Merrick attributes more to surprise than disgust and vows to give it a few more seconds before he panics and backtracks. Raphael doesn’t so much burst into reciprocation—the way people do in the movies, like a switch from shock to passion has been flipped—so much as he melts into it. His disbelief and restraint mellows into something more yielding and he kisses Merrick back cautiously. He allows himself to be kissed, following Merrick’s lead and inclination, which on paper shouldn’t be sexy and yet, here and now, it is driving Merrick a little bit wild. After months of thinking about it, the best way to go about pursuing him, Raphael’s submission to him here feels deliriously good.
Merrick tests the waters by tracing Raphael’s lip with his tongue, and he’s rewarded with a small groan of pleasure before Raphael opens his mouth for him. He’s also rewarded with Raphael’s hand coming to tangle in his hair, wet from the snow that’s still falling and probably growing rattier by the second. He doesn’t want to deal with that reality right now, though, or the one where his leg is still bent at an awkward angle and starting to ache. He just wants to be able to ignore all that for another few minutes, to keep this going, because he can feel Raphael growing bolder by the second and he wants to encourage that way of thinking.
Eventually, though, he can’t help making a noise of protest as the pain in his knee goes from an ache to a stab. Raphael rears back immediately, looking dazed and alarmed, but thankfully not getting too far away. His warm breath clouds up the cool night air between their bodies.
“Sorry,” he says, more a reflex than anything else.
“Why are you—?” Merrick laughs. “What are you apologizing for?”
“I don’t…know,” Raphael says, sounding lost. It’s both concerning and flattering in equal measure.
Merrick shakes his head, amused. “It wasn’t you. It’s just my leg. With the weather being bad, it was already hurting and then I sort of landed on it weird. I’m sorry. It’s not normally—”
“Don’t apologize to me. Not for that. I should have thought—”
“It’s not a big deal. It’s just bad luck, with the snow and all. I promise I’m not always complaining about it, it’s just—”
“Merrick,” Raphael interrupts, solemnly, “I don’t care. I mean, I care, but not like…you don’t have to minimize it. You’re not turning me off. Am I—Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” he manages to reply, even though his throat feels kind of dry. He knows that he spends a lot of his time trying to wave off concern from well-meaning people who don’t understand how someone so young and healthy could need a cane, and diverting the attention of less well-meaning people who want to ask a thousand questions about how it happened or tell him exercises that helped their third cousin’s bridesmaid with their mobility after their accident. He finds it hard to believe that this could be the reason someone wouldn’t find him attractive at all, but he’d never actually realized before how much time he spends minimizing his complaints about bad days and the lack of accessibility on campus in order to not come off as a bummer—or, god forbid, high maintenance—to other people. He didn’t realize how nice it would be to have someone give him blanket permission to talk about it, or not, to his heart’s content without the risk of judgment.
“Minna suggested having you carry me,” he adds, stupidly, after a moment. He can’t think of anything intelligent to say, because his brain is too focused on getting back to the kissing part of the evening.
Raphael’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “She did?”
“She said you were strapping.”
“I suppose compared to her husband, anybody would seem—”
Merrick shoves his shoulder, though not particularly hard. It makes him feel like a teenager again. “Be nice,” he says, fighting off a grin. “She’s rooting for us.”
“Oh?” Raphael’s eyebrows climb higher, but his tone betrays some amusement.
Merrick shouldn’t have said that part, but it’s too late to backtrack now. “What?” He asks, indignant instead. “Did you think tonight was the first time I thought about kissing you?”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it that deeply,” Raphael says, pensively. When Merrick laughs at that, he scowls. “My mind was, as you might expect, elsewhere.”
“Oh?” Merrick says, trying to match Raphael’s intonation. “Would you like to elaborate on where exactly your mind went?”
Raphael wets his lips, eyes on the ground. “When you kissed me, you mean?” he asks, without looking up.
“Yes.”
It had never occurred to Merrick before this that maybe Raphael wasn’t haughty or aloof, but rather that he was shy and cautious. He also thought his infatuation had been extraordinarily obvious, to everyone, yes, but to Raphael above all. Now, he’s thinking maybe it wasn’t. The idea he’d had in his head of Raphael as cool and unaffected, as the person holding all the cards in their interactions, might have been a fundamental misunderstanding of him, he now realizes. Because the man in front of him is nervous, is holding himself back out of an abundance of caution. The man in front of him has made it clear Merrick is, in fact, holding all of the cards. That doesn’t stop him, though, from making a move, as he lifts his gaze to meet Merrick’s again.
He smiles, softly. “You still want me to take you home?”
