Page 56 of Margins

“Trying to, sweetheart.”

Alex thinks he’s doing just fine, but he still wants Elijah’s body closer, needing to be grounded by it for reasons he doesn’t fully understand, and he reaches for him as well as he can while he tries not to go wholly dizzy with pleasure.

“Come back.”

Elijah groans, his hips stuttering as he falls forward to do as Alex has asked, holding himself up by one forearm, his hand cradling the side of Alex’s face. “Didn’t really go anywhere.”

And maybe he didn’t, but everything is so much better now anyway, Elijah still able to take everything Alex thinks he could possibly offer and then give it all back over and over again. It gets harder to speak, the two of them sweaty and breathless, Alex clawing at Elijah’s back again as they rock together, increasingly sloppy and loud and needy. And when Elijah leans down for a messy kiss, their mouths open against each other as much as they manage anything else, his stomach rubs against Alex’s cock just enough to drive him crazy, Alex reaching down to stroke himself as soon as Elijah moves far enough away, suddenly bold and eager to get himself off while he encourages Elijah to do the same.

“It's good,” he pants. “You can let go. We can both let go.”

Elijah’s cry is one of pure relief, and Alex imagines his must sound the same, the two of them coming so soon after one another that it’s almost impossible to know where one moan ends and another begins. After a few seconds, another wave hits one of them, and then they’re both boneless and shaking and Elijah does his best to roll to Alex’s side, still landing half on top of him as if Alex would ever mind at all.

“I—god, Alex, I—”

“I know,” Alex says, a laugh bubbling inside him and breaking into something utterly wrecked on its way out. There’s just so much happening and he’s feeling it all at once, Elijah immediately rising with concern, though Alex tugs him right back down and refuses to let him go. “No, no, I’m okay, I just—I didn’t know. And I kinda can’t believe I was lucky enough to have you be the one to show me.”

Elijah kisses him, a simple and perfect thing, before he rolls away to get them both cleaned up, Alex far too enamored by the sight of Elijah’s lazy post-sex stumble to be frustrated by his absence for long. Still, he’s grateful a few minutes later, when they’re a little more recovered and a little less messy, and Elijah crawls back into bed with him, the covers pulled around them until they’re comfortably cocooned there. They kiss again, Alex’s tongue sweeping into Elijah’s mouth just one more time, and then Elijah’s fingers dance over the hair on Alex’s chest until he can press his palm against a heartbeat that has slowed to something subtle.

“Don’t think it was luck that got us here,” Elijah muses. “Just think you needed to be ready—you needed to want to know.”

“But now what?” Alex asks. “Now that I know what I want, and it can’t be that easy, can it? To just—have it forever?”

“They had it, though,” Elijah says, and Alex doesn't have to ask who they are when his heart has been beautifully crowded by them for weeks now. “All those years together, with so many things they didn't get to have—they still had this. And it might've been the only thing that was ever easy. The nights when it didn't matter whether the rest of the world knew anything about them. Nights when they got to hold each other and love each other and commit a hundred acts of wonderful, private defiance. Way back then, they still had this, and all of it happened when they were ready to want it.”

“So maybe that’s where the luck comes in. Maybe if I'm lucky, the person who waited for me to be ready will want that same kind of forever.”

Elijah nuzzles into Alex's neck, his breath warm where Alex's skin is just beginning to cool. “Mmmm, maybe so.”

Chapter Fourteen

They wake up a couple of times in the middle of the night, bodies that should be fully sated somehow not. Those moments are sleepy ones, slow and lazy and messy, and then they close their eyes again, sure of things that have probably been true for a while now. And when they finally get up to share a shower and a secret or two, it’s Thanksgiving.

Everything Alex wants to say about that sticks to the roof of his mouth.

“I honestly can’t figure out which one of us should ditch our own family to crash the dinner at the other’s,” Elijah jokes over a late breakfast at his kitchen counter.

“I mean, my family is still half hysterical about my divorce, though that should be finalized next week, so maybe it’s a great time for them to freak out about something new.”

Elijah sets down his coffee and tilts his head. “How do you feel about that?”

“My family always needing something to freak out about? I’m pretty used to it by now, though I wouldn’t mind if my sister could figure out a way to take the heat off me for a bit.”

“Alex.”

Alex’s eyes fall closed, because he knows what Elijah was really asking, and he’s not all that sure he has a good answer, his divorce something that has been a long time coming, even before he knew that was true.

“I think I’m good?”

“Okay,” Elijah nods. “And you know you can talk to me if you’re not, right? I don’t want you to think you have to keep anything to yourself, just because it’s about Cassidy.”

And yeah, he does know that, and his gratitude is sort of overwhelming, both Elijah and Cassidy somehow wholly accepting of someone they haven’t met, even in these early days, when everything could be an uncertain disaster. Alex is sure there will be some problem at some point, somewhere down the road, because even while Elijah and Cassidy insist there are no bad guys, they’re all gonna make mistakes, but things are good right now, and he’s not about to take it for granted.

“Yeah, I know,” he promises, falling into a kiss that might prove he means it.

He packs up his things not long after that, and heads home to get ready to spend the rest of the day at his parents’ house with more people than should probably fit into a space like that. Elijah will be at his mom’s, with both siblings and their families too, but they’ve agreed to check in with each other throughout the day, and Elijah’s already asked Alex to spend the night again. It will make four nights in a row, and Alex thinks maybe he’s supposed to stop and breathe and step aside and let some time pass between them, but there’s no part of him that wants anything but exactly this, so he’s agreed, his bag packed and in the back of his car when he leaves to see his family. His body is sore, but it feels like a sigh of relief.

The day is exactly what Alex expected, or maybe even a little bit better, when almost every question he’s asked is very pointedly about Cassidy and Elena, his family rarely making the effort to ask much about how he’s feeling or what he’s been up to. He doesn’t think he would’ve been bothered by the slight on any occasion, but Alex definitely doesn’t care now, when he can keep his relationship with Elijah tucked away for another time.

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