by Jerry Cole
By the time the credits start rolling, Evan’s breath has evened out. Scott can feel the warm puffs of air over the skin of his arm, and he reaches over to shake Evan awake before the girls turn around and notice them both half-asleep on each other. Evan mumbles something incoherent, shifts a little until his head is dangling loosely off of Scott’s shoulder, sandy curls tickling the skin of Scott’s cheek every time Evan inhales. Something in him shifts, stutters in his chest, and he has the sudden urge to lean forward ever so slightly and rest his cheek in Evan’s soft hair.
In a burst of impulse, he shifts ever so slightly, dropping his shoulder just a bit to ease the evident strain on Evan’s neck. His heart pounds thunderously, feeling suddenly much too large for his ribcage. He can hear it in the rush of blood in his ears, and he lifts the arm that Evan isn’t lying on. It’s tempting, so tempting. It would be easy to reach up and run his fingers through Evan’s curls, and so he pushes away the fluttering feeling in his chest and sets his hand atop Evan’s head. He hovers there, barely placing any pressure, just letting his fingers rest gently on the few stray locks that poke up impudently from Evan’s perpetually messy nest of hair, not quite able to work up the courage to touch him properly.
The wave of fireworks goes off in his chest again when Evan shifts, bumping Scott’s hand. He feels strange, something swelling in him that’s far too big to put a name to, and he feels so overwhelmingly affectionate that it scares him. It had never been like this with April. She had been by his side since they were children, with her it had been easy and given and never questioned. With Evan, though, he feels like he’s in a constant state of too much emotion, his heart doing cartwheels in his chest every time Evan so much as brushes up against him. He still smells like cloves and vanilla, and Scott half hopes the scent will stick to his clothes after Evan wakes up. Before he can stop himself, he leans down, the scant inches disappearing, and presses his lips to Evan’s temple—feather-light, barely there and then gone, stiffening for a second until he’s sure Evan hadn’t felt it.
Inhale, exhale. He drops his hand to Evan’s shoulder.
“Whazzat,” Evan slurs as Scott shakes him awake again, eyes still screwed shut. He shifts a bit, curls into Scott and nuzzles into the curve of his neck ever so slightly, and Scott feels like his head is full of cotton and feathers.
“What time is it?” calls Frances, turning from her seat on the floor to look for a clock, and Scott is suddenly very awake. He pushes Evan off of his shoulder as gently as he can manage, tipping him to the other side to rest against the arm of the couch just as Frances’ gaze sweeps past them.
“Just past one, I think,” Scott replies, reaching over from a safe distance to give Evan’s shoulder one last light jostle. “Will you two be okay getting home?”
“I’ll call a cab,” says Mitchell, more to Frances than anyone else. “You can stay with me. It’s closer.”
The room is dark, but the television light is just bright enough to illuminate the way Frances’ cheeks flush with color.
***
Scott walks Frances and Mitchell to the lobby, waving goodbye as they bundle into the cab together, and Evan is fast asleep again by the time he opens his apartment door. The aching feeling returns, the strange sort of constriction that feels like his chest is being vacuumed up from the inside out, and he stops himself from putting a hand back into Evan’s hair.
Instead, he makes his way around the living room methodically, tidying the stray dishes and switching off the television, bathing the room in soft darkness. When he can’t avoid it any longer, he leans over the back of the couch, face close to Evan’s, and shakes him awake again.
Evan comes to hazily, groggy with sleep but more coherent than he had been.
“They just left,” Scott says, keeping his voice just above a whisper. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
Red blooms on Evan’s cheeks and he slurs out an incoherent string of sounds, but he doesn’t protest when Scott steps around the couch and ducks under his arm for support. They stumble down the hall together, Scott hunched so Evan can lean on him instead of falling over or bumping into the walls, and when Evan tumbles into Scott’s bed, he lands with Scott’s arm pinned under him.
“Come on, man,” Scott grumbles, trying and failing to extract his arm with Evan lying on it like a dead weight. “I’m stuck here, just move over a little.”
Evan mumbles again, unintelligible at first, then more coherently. “Jus’ stay here, then,” he says, and Scott’s heart goes thump-thump-pang against his ribcage for an excruciating moment before Evan finally rolls over and frees his arm. Scott pulls back sharply, blinking down at Evan’s sleeping form and trying to will down the butterflies in his stomach. With a jerky, stiff movement he reaches out, runs his hand over Evans hair to smooth down the cowlicks.
“Good night,” he whispers, and turns to leave before Evan can reply.
***
Evan pads into the living room the next morning as Scott’s halfway through cooking breakfast, hair a wild nest on top of his head and expression groggy and half lucid. Rubbing his eyes with the back of one hand, he takes a seat at one of the barstools and mumbles a hoarse good morning. Scott feels a funny sort of twisting feeling at the sight.
Shaking it off, he turns back to the stove, cocking one hip and doing his best to flip the pancake in front of him without maiming it beyond repair. “Sleep well?”
Evan gives him an unintelligible mumble in return, a barely coherent string of words that Scott vaguely understands as yes, and visibly brightens when Scott puts down a plate of pancakes in front of him.
It’s not the first night they’ve spent in the same house, of course, but it’s the first time he’s seeing Evan groggy and sleep hazy in Scott’s own home. It’s strange, he thinks, how much Evan seems to fit in amidst the clutter of his private life. His glasses are askew on the bridge of his nose, his t-shirt is rumpled. It makes Scott’s chest clench, hot and aching.
God, he had forgotten what it’s like to make breakfast for two.
They eat in comfortable silence, listening to the city wake up around them. It’s early, early enough that the traffic on the streets hasn’t quite picked up yet. It’s jarring, Scott thinks, seeing Evan here in the bustle of the city instead of at ease by the ocean, but then again, Scott supposes Evan did live here, after all.
“Is it weird?” he asks after a moment of deliberation, making a broad, sweeping gesture with his fork. “Being back here. This was your apartment, wasn’t it?”
Evan laughs, takes a bite of his food. “I guess you could say that,” he replies. “I wasn’t here very much though. I went back and forth a lot. Mitchell has her business here, of course, but I think my father wanted us to be international representatives for the company. Being here felt a little stifling, if you ask me.”
Scott can see that. If Evan belongs anywhere, it’s at his little cabin by the sea. He fits in with the scenery like he’s meant to be there. Here, in Scott’s living room, he seems comfortable enough, but out in the city, among the crowds? The few times he’s been out with Evan, he’s always seemed just the drop of a feather away from booking it back home.
Evan’s a quiet person, kind and gentle and far too real for a city full of strangers.
“You know,” says Scott eventually, low and secret. “I don’t think it’s much for me, either.” Not since April died, he wants to tack on, but leaves it unspoken.
“Then why not leave?”
It’s a simple question, uncomplicated. Scott wants to believe it’s as easy as that. He wants to believe he can pack up, ship his life out to a little cottage away from prying eyes, finally be able breathe without the weight of living in the same city the love of his life died in. “You think I could do that?”
“Why not?” The look on Evan’s face is open, expressive, and Scott wants to reach forward and brush it with his fingertips. “I did, didn’t I?”
Scott snorts. “Yeah, and got punched by your si
ster for it.”
“I’m just saying,” Evan whispers. “If you want something bad enough, you should reach out for it. Sometimes things like that are worth it.”
Somehow, Scott has a feeling he isn’t talking about the apartment at all.
Chapter Fourteen
It’s late January before Scott actually works up the courage to step into the ocean, and he immediately regrets it. All it takes is a dare from Evan, a mistimed beat where Scott misses the window to back out gracefully before both of them are suddenly shedding their winter coats and electronics on the sand and running into the icy waves together.
“If I die in the ocean, do I die in real life?” he asks, the joke not quite coming across with the way his teeth are chattering. Evan gives him an amused snort, even though he doesn’t seem to be doing any better.
“This is real life, you dweeb.”
Another wave crashes against Scott’s side, drenching him shoulder to waist. He stumbles, reaches out to catch himself and meets nothing but salty ocean water under his palm, and he’s pretty sure he can’t feel his toes anymore. Grimacing as another wave threatens to knock him off his feet, he makes a mental note to blame Evan completely if he ends up losing the use of his legs.
Evan gives up first, blissfully, and they wade to the shoreline together and drop onto the wet sand in heavy, waterlogged piles. The air is still winter-cold, still nips at their soaked skin and threatens to freeze them into vaguely human-shaped ice blocks, but Scott figures he can get away with a minute or two to catch his breath on the shore. Evan is shivering next to him, an exhilarated, adrenaline-fueled grin spread across his face, expression slightly manic from the excitement.
***
Evan’s house is warm, cozy like a furnace when they stumble inside, dripping sea water all over the floor in giant puddles. Scott is a frozen, shivering mess, and it takes Evan more than a couple tries to get his fingers to cooperate long enough to work the door handle open. He does eventually, though, and Scott has to stop himself from outright groaning in relief at the way the warmth of the house seems to envelop him like a cocoon.
Evan shucks off his top layer of soaked clothes right there in the entryway, and Scott has to look away when he’s down to his turtleneck, the gray fabric sticking to the lean curves of his chest like a second skin.
“You can shower first,” Evan says, his teeth chattering just enough to warp the words as he speaks. “I’ll make something hot to drink.”
Scott can’t argue with that. He pads down the hall, stopping for a moment to marvel at the fact that he just knows where everything is as he takes down a fluffy white towel from the cabinet next to the bathroom.
He sits on the side of the tub as he peels off his socks, grimacing at the way they leave puddles of salty water pooling on the floor. He doesn’t exactly know how to get them dry, and changing back into them sort of defeats the purpose of a shower, but after a moment, there’s a knock on the bathroom door and he opens it to see a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt folded neatly on the floor just outside the doorway. Calling his thanks down the hallway in Evan’s general direction, he picks up the clothes and takes them back into the bathroom with him.
With a groan of relief, Scott steps into the warm spray and realizes all at once that a hot shower may not have been the best idea after all. With the cold dissipating from his body by the second, his head is finally able to focus on things other than the imminent danger of hypothermia. Unfortunately, it chooses to fixate directly on the man just outside the bathroom door.
The two of them had been freezing when they came out of the water. But now that Scott is beginning to regain some little bit of lucidity, the only thing running through his head is the image of Evan coming out of the ocean, dripping with icy sea water, his thin shirt clinging to the planes of his chest like a second skin. It’s the closest Scott’s come to seeing him naked, and he doubts he could have ignored it even if he hadn’t just started coming to terms with the fact that he might have feelings for Evan.
With a guilty look past the shower curtain at the door, he grits his teeth and turns his attention to the insistent heat throbbing between his thighs.
He grips his cock hesitantly, hissing air in through his teeth as he leans against the icy tile of the shower wall. It’s the same as always, squeezing gently and turning his wrist as he begins to jerk himself. He needs this, and he needs it quick, before Evan comes around to ask him what the hell is taking so long. God, he feels like a teenager again, trying to stifle the groan that threatens to fall from his lips so he doesn’t get caught. Maybe he’s being paranoid, maybe Evan couldn’t care less how long he takes in the shower, but it’s better safe and sorry. Best to get it over with, wring the sexual tension from his body and try to look Evan in the eyes afterwards, not that he was doing a very good job of it before.
He hadn’t thought it through, spending time alone at Evan’s now that he’s started to face up to his feelings. It’s hard to ignore them, and even harder when he has to deal with Evan shirtless and dripping with ocean water. He tries to push the thought out of his head, thinks of soft bodies and curves pressed up against his own and long hair that he can twist his fingers in, and the faceless stranger in his fantasies somehow always manages to morph into long, lithe limbs and sandy curls and freckles that dot broad, bare shoulders.
It doesn’t help, either, that he knows Evan is just a handful of rooms away. The desire thrums through his body like an electrical current, his mind bombarding him unbidden with mental images of Evan walking into the room, Evan in the shower, Evan on his knees and gripping Scott’s thighs like a lifeline as he sucks him down.
He twists his wrist just right on the upstroke and has to pause, one hand still on his cock and the knuckles of the other pressed tight up against his mouth to stifle the groan that threatens to escape him. It hurts when his teeth sink into the sensitive skin, but not nearly enough to keep him from letting out a needy little groan that echoes off the white tiled walls of the shower. God, he hopes Evan hadn’t heard that.
His mind starts to wander again, to visions of Evan with his hair splayed out onto Scott’s pillow like a halo, of Evan perched above him and sinking down slowly. Scott wonders what his face looks like, at the moment when he’s hanging right on the precipice of orgasm.
There’s a knock on the door, and Scott curses an expletive as his hand slips and knocks down a bottle of body wash.
“You all right?” calls Evan, voice muffled from outside the door. Fuck.
“Just peachy,” Scott yells back, hoping to every god he can think of that his voice comes out sounding halfway normal instead of hoarse and fucked out. “Dropped something is all.”
Evan is quiet for a moment, then: “I’m just leaving another shirt out here for you. I found something that might fit you better.”
Scott calls his thanks and leans back against the shower wall with a long sigh of relief. His erection has gone down a bit, scared off by the sudden fear of being caught, but the adrenaline still hums through his veins as he lathers soap across his body. Listening closely for any sound of Evan in the hallway, he washes himself off thoroughly, letting himself sink into the warmth of the shower spray. It’s not long before he finds himself hard again, and when he puts a hand on himself and starts to stroke, it’s blissful.
He finishes himself off quickly, not letting himself get lost in fantasies again in case Evan makes his way back to the hallway, and when he finishes, he spills over his hand with white knuckles pressed tight up against his teeth.
The shower does help in the end, thaws him out in a wash of steam and vanilla shampoo that Scott definitely doesn’t lather up for far longer than he needs to. When he steps out, he feels refreshed, more like a human being than an icicle in the shape of one, and Evan presses a mug of hot cocoa into his hands once he finally makes his way into the living room. There’s a fire blazing in the hearth, filling up the living room with a warm, cozy glow that throws light into the shadows of Eva
n’s face and glints off of his glasses. He eyes Scott up and down, stifling an amused smile at the way the sweatpants end just a little too high up Scott’s ankles, the way the shirt built for Evan’s broader frame hangs off of Scott’s thin shoulders like a tent.
They bundle themselves in front of the fire, taking a seat on the plush, downy rug spread across the floor.
“It’ll take a little while to run the laundry,” Evan says after a moment, sounding completely unapologetic. Scott just shrugs noncommittally.
“I’ve worn worse.”
Evan’s eyebrows go up at that, disappearing into his hairline, the beginnings of a smirk pulling crookedly at the corners of his mouth. He leans over, bumps his shoulder against Scott’s—was he always sitting so close, his brain supplies unhelpfully—before leaning forward and taking a quick sip of his hot chocolate.
“That sounds like a story,” chuckles Evan, grinning as he lowers the mug from his face.
Before Scott can dwell too much on the patch of foam clinging to the corner of Evan’s lips, he shivers bodily, leaning forward almost on instinct to soak up what heat he can from the fireplace. Really, they’re both practically nestled into the hearth at this point. The fire itself blazes on jauntily, eating away at the wood and crackling just enough to be atmospheric without being distracting and generally remaining oblivious to the fact that Scott is having a minor crisis over Evan’s apparent need to be within touching distance at all times. He grabs a poker, prods the logs a little just to watch the flames sputter and flare.
***
Scott jerks awake like he’s been electrocuted, jolting upright and pressing a hand against his hammering pulse. There’s something thick and heavy over him, tangled around his arms, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s a blanket. He’s draped half over onto the floor, cushions piled up to create a makeshift nest around his figure, and Evan is nowhere to be seen. Grimacing, he tries to pry open his eyes more than a millimeter, thankful the room is dark enough that the dim light doesn’t immediately and very painfully try to blind him. Still, the act itself feels like grating against sandpaper, and his throat is dry and sticky as well when he tries to swallow experimentally.
