Page 65 of Margins

“Hey,” Elijah echoes. “You okay?”

“I am, yeah, I—of course. But I—I didn’t—I—”

“You don’t have to say it, Alex.”

He doesn’t. He knows that. But the words keep knocking against each other in his mouth, and it has nothing to do with any sense of obligation at all. It’s that he wants to say them, almost desperately, but he’s held on to them for so long because he’s still so new to wanting and each small syllable tastes sweet on his tongue.

“Please,” he says instead, mostly because it’s the first sound to make it all the way out.

Elijah turns his entire body toward him, the movement visible from the corner of Alex’s eye, and Elijah’s hand lands against the far side of Alex’s face to help turn his head. Neither of them has buckled up yet, and it’s almost too easy to meet Elijah in the middle, Elijah’s fingers so gentle where they stay at Alex’s jaw.

“Please what, sweetheart?”

Alex sighs, an exhale Elijah is close enough to feel. “Please love me.”

The rain taps out a beautiful rhythm as they kiss, the first touch almost nothing at all, familiar and chaste. They don’t back away from it though, not even when they both know they’re in the middle of a San Diego parking lot with a hotel reservation only a few miles from where they sit, Alex opening easily when Elijah wants more, their mouths such a warm contrast to the chill inside the truck. It lasts forever, or maybe Alex just wants that to be true, but then Elijah slows and smiles against him.

“I love you,” Elijah says. “And I love you enough that—I don’t—you don’t have to say anything. It’s okay. I know.”

“No, you can’t—don’t let me keep taking from you. Not like this.”

Elijah kisses him again, quick and needy. “Okay. Then tell me.”

“I love you. I think I have for a while.”

“Mmmm, and will you still love me if I tell you I don’t want to go to the hotel?”

Alex chuckles. “We can have an early dinner if you want. I’ll still love you, even if you’re hungry already.”

“No, that's not—I mean, you can keep saying that you love me because I like hearing it, but no—I don’t want to go out to dinner, and I don’t want to stay in San Diego at all.”

“Okay, yeah, we—” Alex is confused, maybe from their visit with Edgar or the unexpected rain or the kissing or the I love yous or the idea of them not sticking to any of the plans they’d made, but ever since he walked back to Elijah’s that second morning, he’s not sure he could’ve denied the man much of anything. “You just want to go home?”

“Please. Any of them. Anywhere.”

Alex smiles into another kiss. “See, this’ll be much easier when there’s just one home to choose from.”

Elijah ducks away, almost shy about it when he rolls his eyes and finally gets the truck started, steering them onto the freeway within minutes. They’re nearly as quiet on the drive back as they had been on the way down that morning, but their moods have shifted and Alex hates that he’s struggling to find the words to describe how he’s feeling now. There’s nothing wrong, obviously, the two of them looking different pasts in the eye and coming out all the better for it, but they left a lot behind in Edgar’s room, far more than a faux Poe collection, and while Alex understands Elijah’s desire to avoid restaurant and hotel crowds on a San Diego Saturday night, he hasn’t figured out how best to handle the solitude they’re about to share.

The sharpest edges of their grief have been dulled, but Alex’s skin tingles with the subtle scrape of a thousand other things, and he senses the same restlessness in Elijah already. The same need to tether themselves to something more solid than a love story that never really belonged to them, and personal promises they haven’t had time to believe in. And when Elijah pulls into Alex’s driveway, neither of them has spoken about how they’re supposed to get from one fragile place to another, but Alex aches with the need to figure it out.

He's the one to grab their unused duffel bag from the backseat, maybe just to keep himself busy with something that doesn’t require a steady hand, his keys tossed to Elijah to open the front door.

Elijah seems to understand enough to let them in without a word.

It’s not until the door is locked behind them that Elijah presses the keys back into Alex’s hand and holds him there. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Are we okay?”

Alex doesn’t bother to answer aloud as they kick off their shoes, and he just barely nods before he takes Elijah’s hand and leads him upstairs, past the mostly empty walls he might not need to fill with new pictures after all, and into his bedroom like a couple of decades of lies don’t linger in the sheets. He closes the door behind them unnecessarily, but maybe he needs their entire world narrowed to something small tonight, their bag dropped to the floor before Alex presses Elijah against the wall.

“We’re gonna be good,” Alex tells him, his fingers light where they brush over the sleeves of Elijah’s flannel, up and down until he stops to help remove it entirely. Elijah’s t-shirt is next, and once it’s on the floor, Alex has a perfect view of the deep breath Elijah takes before he kisses away the crease between Elijah’s brows. “I think I just really need to feel you right now.”

Elijah fists the back of Alex’s henley, the roughness of his touch a counter to his gentle kiss. “I need it too. I think it feels like I’ve been floating away ever since we left.”

Since we left could mean the moment Elijah picked Alex up that morning, or perhaps when they said goodbye to Edgar in San Diego, but Alex doesn’t ask Elijah to clarify when the precise length of time doesn’t matter, and Alex has brought them upstairs to solve that problem anyway. They kiss again, a little more intent behind it, and then Alex lets Elijah undress him. As soon as everything’s gone, Alex works to finish the favor, and then they’re wrapped up in each other, maybe more comfortable than they ever have been, sure of this even when so many other things still feel brand new. And then Alex finally pulls away, okay with the distance only because he knows he isn’t going far and won’t be alone for long.

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