Page 25 of Margins

“Elijah.”

“Alex,” Elijah bites back, nothing sharp about it. “I’m obviously not going to force you to come home with me, but I have a very comfortable couch and an old dog who will probably keep you company there.”

“Oh, well, if Poe will be there—”

“Mmmm, works every time,” Elijah quips.

They both grin, the easy happiness almost out of place as Elijah heads back to the bar and Alex picks up the glass again. He has no idea what the hell he’s doing, and right now he’s finding it very hard to care, watching as the crowd dwindles and a few stragglers laugh. Elijah starts cleaning and restocking while the other bartender takes care of a drink or two, and then he looks to be closing up his register before ducking into the back, Alex’s third beer gone by the time Elijah reappears with keys and a hoodie in his hand.

“You can leave already?”

Elijah shrugs and picks up the empty glass. “We close soon anyway, and Tyler said he’s got it. I’ll probably just stay later tomorrow night.”

“Because of me.”

He shrugs again and gestures for Alex to head toward the door while he drops the pint glass at the bar and waves goodbye. They have a few blocks to walk, Elijah’s truck in a nearby parking garage, but the cold air feels good when Alex is this unsteady, and he watches his breath get lost in the dark as Elijah untucks his shirt and pulls the hoodie over his head. The streets aren’t totally empty, but it’s late enough on a weeknight that the silence feels right, and neither one of them seems to be in a hurry to change that. The ride to Elijah’s condo is as quick as he promised, and Alex follows him inside, Poe there to greet them both, as calmly friendly as he has been since the morning they met.

While Alex shuffles toward the sectional that takes up plenty of the cozy living room, the dog close behind, Elijah goes into the kitchen and brings back a bottle of water, pushing it into Alex’s hand.

“Drink that. I’ll be back with clothes and blankets and stuff.”

Alex does as he’s told, and when Elijah comes back with sweatpants, a t-shirt, a pillow, and a couple of blankets, the water gets set aside and his makeshift bed gets made. Poe is comfortably settled on the opposite end of the sofa, already fully adjusted to the new sleeping arrangements, and Alex goes to change in the bathroom, a splash of water on his face and his reflection in the mirror suggesting nothing is all that different—red eyes aside—even when he’s afraid everything is.

He's wrestling with his past and Alex doesn’t want to have to fight it at all, doing what he can to make peace with everything when he opens the door just as Elijah comes out from his bedroom, his hoodie gone, and his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants instead. Elijah’s untucked shirt is only partially unbuttoned, like maybe he changed his mind about it somewhere along the way, and because the hallway is too small or because they’re standing too close, Alex doesn’t think before he reaches for the hem, as though there’s a chance that one point of contact can make the present important enough that memories of the past won’t have to hurt.

“It was never bad—being with her. I didn’t hate it or anything,” Alex rasps, his eyes trained on where his fingers are curled around soft blue cotton. “I mean, being married to her was good and easy, but the rest—the physical intimacy—I never thought it was bad.”

“It probably wasn’t. But I think you’re being a little unfair to yourself by trying to define any of it in those terms. Sex can be more than one thing at a time.”

“It still wasn’t enough for her.”

“Among other things, no, it probably wasn’t. But Alex, you—” Elijah trails off and takes a deep breath. “At some point, you’re gonna have to be more honest and ask yourself if it was really enough for you. Whether good and easy and content and comfortable were ever going to be enough when you could let yourself have those things and so much more.”

Elijah already has his back to the wall, but while there’s nowhere for him to go when Alex slips that much closer, he doesn’t push him away either. Alex lets go of Elijah’s shirt only to play with one of the buttons instead. He feels a little like Elijah now, so eager to touch.

“Tell me what you think I could have. Tell me about more.”

“Probably not a good time for that,” Elijah says, his voice devastatingly low, and his mouth a hiccup away from Alex’s ear.

“M’not that drunk,” Alex argues.

“You’re not that sober either.”

“Maybe not.”

“We can’t do more than talk right now.”

“I wouldn’t know how anyway,” he admits, and he finally looks up to meet darkness he didn’t expect to find in Elijah’s eyes. It’s so new, this chance to see his own desire reflected in another man’s gaze, and Alex isn’t ready to walk away. “So, tell me everything. All the things I don’t know.”

It only takes a single step for Elijah to press Alex into the opposite wall, his hands out of his pockets now and nearly bruising against Alex’s skin, just above where the waistband of Elijah’s own sweatpants ride low on Alex’s hips, their bodies kept carefully apart while their foreheads fall together.

“You can want to be with someone, not because it’s soothing or feels nice, but because it sparks something blazing hot beneath your skin and makes you claw at the other person for relief. You can want to reach for them, not because it’s part of a routine you memorized a while ago, but because every goosebump on their skin, every whimper or moan or gasp you pull from the back of their throat, will leave you aching with need.”

Alex chokes on at least two of those sounds now, his fingers curling around Elijah’s forearms. “Isn’t that selfish?”

“You can be selfish sometimes,” Elijah whispers. “I’m not worried about you knowing how to give, but I want you to know you’re allowed to take, too. You need to learn how to take, Alex.”

“From you?”

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