It begins the same way it ends. At night, when the wine deep sky sinks down into the space of his bedroom and swims into the smallest corners and cracks of his walls.
It starts with warm skin under his, tentative hands and whispered promises into the air. Ones he knows they’ll never be able to keep, yet he kisses him with the promise like the continuation of seasons. He kisses him like nothing will come of tomorrow. Like they’ll stay in his room, where midnight seems boundless, forever, even knowing that Eliott won’t be there in the morning. It feels safe, the way Eliott presses a kiss below his ear, his palm on his hip, the leg locked between his thigh. It makes him forget that what he’s doing is selfish, cruel. Not to anyone else but his own heart.
It ends, the same way it begins. It ends as Eliott kisses him into the mattress, as he pins his hands down, as he sighs deep into his mouth. It ends as Eliott leaves in the early hours of the morning when the world is still asleep, when streetlamps forge sunlight, when there’s a weird feeling of calmness but uncertainty still gripping onto the air.
Eliott leaves with a kiss pressed to his forehead, a hushed I’ll call you as soon as I land, leaves refusing Lucas’ pleas to drive him to the airport. He leaves with his bags packed, carrying Lucas’ heart with him and only with the ache staying with Lucas, in his bedroom.
He does, call him when he lands. He calls him when his sun rises and when Eliott’s sun sets. He calls him and on the tinny line of the receiver tries to reassure him that they can make it work. Distance doesn’t mean anything, he whispers.
It means everything, to Lucas, however.
And Lucas leaves Eliott, like that. A broken and shitty connection with the words I don’t want to hold you back. Eliott’s words are raspy as he tries to tell him that he won’t, that Lucas isn’t holding him back from anything.
“Maybe in another time,” Lucas says back.
A pause on the line, and then,
“Yeah, okay.”
It’s not a promise, more like a what if, yet Lucas clings on to it like a thread. One that dwindles over time, until it’s nothing but a weak and frayed thing. But, months, years, they pass, like winter all year round; endless and bitter and too long. But they pass, and Lucas learns to cut it off completely. Between different people, ones that don’t feel the same as he did, that will never, really feel the same, but Lucas buries it.
That is, until Eliott comes back.
In the tail end of a party already deep into Saturday morning, dawn clawing its way into the world with its deep violets and peach skies, Eliott comes back. It spreads all around the house as people have already started to filter out, as the alcohol tingeing Lucas’ body starts to dissolve into nothing but a tender headache.
“Hi,” he says, soft, and Lucas wants to laugh.
“Hi,” he says back. “Fashionably late to the party as always, then?”
Eliott nods, shrugs his shoulders.
“This is where Yann said you were.”
“Oh.” Lucas eyes flick down to the floor of the kitchen, fixing his eyes on the stretches of wood grain.
“Can I walk you back?” He asks, shuffling forward ever so slightly, hands twisting nervously.
Lucas says yes, and then they’re walking back. Hands and arms brushing brushing too close, and Lucas clenches his fist when Eliott’s hand touches his. Accidental or not, Lucas shoves his hand in his pocket anyway.
The silence stretches, long and thin and uncomfortable.
Lucas wants to ask a lot of things. But they all fall short before they even leave his mouth. The only words ushered between them are when Eliott goes to walk down the wrong street, and Lucas has to say that he’s moved, that he no longer lives down the road they turned down for so many nights. Eliott’s face twists, something akin to regret, at that, and the cynical part of Lucas pinches. You were the one that left.
“How have you been?” Lucas pushes out.
“Okay.”
“And New York?”
“New York’s good.” Eliott turns to him, smile stretched and unconvincing. “It’s lonely.”
Lucas looks back at him, then back to the road they walk on.
“Lonely? In the city that never sleeps?”
“You know what I mean.” Eliott whispers, still watching him as they walk.
Lucas lowers his eyes, stays quiet as they walk back to his flat.
When they reach it, Lucas stops in front of it.
“Well, this is me now.”
When he turns, Eliott grabs his arm.
“And you? How have you been?” He doesn’t let go of his arm as Lucas turns, and he’s looking at him with a gleam of something in his eyes, something like hope.
“Okay.” Lucas nods. “I’ve been okay.”
As okay as I can be.
There’s a moment, then, between them. It flickers like a flame and lingers like its smoke, wavers and drags thin between them, and Eliott’s crowding his space before he can even think, his back pushed up against the cold wall.
Lucas puts his hand on Eliott’s chest before he can lean in.
“Eliott,” Lucas whispers. Eliott closes his eyes, presses their foreheads together.
“Lucas,” he sighs. “Please.”
“Are you back? For good?”
Eliott opens his eyes, locks eyes with Lucas’. He shakes his head, and the thread Lucas had slowly been stitching back together rips again.
“Only for a week.”
“Eliott—“
“Lucas, I’m sorry.”
His palms come up to cup Lucas’ face and Lucas wants to give in, because, god, Eliott’s skin against his feels like a balm to burn he’s held for years now. It makes him close his eyes. He’d forgotten how good it felt, Eliott’s hands on his.
Which is maybe why, he stupidly, lets Eliott brush their lips together. And lets himself be kissed, lets Eliott push him into the wall, and let himself kiss back.
“Give me this week.” Eliott whispers into his mouth, the air between them.
“And what then, Eliott? You go back to New York again?”
Eliott shakes his head. “No,” he swallows, “I’ll come back. I promise.”
Lucas shakes his head, but Eliott hands stops him.
“I promise.” He whispers. “This is our time. We’ll make it our time.
Maybe it’s because he’s still a little tipsy, maybe it’s because deep down he’s tired, maybe it’s because he loves him so much he’d forgotten, in an evening, what torture the past years had been, that he whispers back okay, that he lets Eliott take him up to his apartment, to his room.
Lucas gives Eliott a week, and when he leaves, it’s hard to think he’ll give him anything again.
But he holds on. To whatever it is, he holds on so tight, because otherwise he’ll tear apart completely.
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