Archive of Our Own

Iris tiptoes to peer somewhat groggily through the peephole, verifying that the corridor is deserted before exiting his room. Half the reason he wakes up this early is just to be sure he won’t encounter anybody on his way down to the kitchen on the first floor of the dorm.

As he waits for the elevator, he rubs his hands together and blows on them, trying to coax warmth into his fingertips. It doesn’t help that all the shirts he owns are ratty, worn things that put up little resistance to the morning cold. He tries not to wear too many layers indoors. His one cardigan is thin enough that he needs to condition himself to only need its paltry warmth when it’s windy out.

Before getting his milk out of his allotted fridge space, Iris glances around the empty kitchen. Then he mentally chastises himself. It’s food. People eat food. Quit it.

That doesn’t stop him from carrying his bowl of cereal back upstairs with a distinct air of furtiveness, though.

He spends the morning bent over his canvas, the room gradually brightening as the sun struggles free of the horizon. Every so often he shifts, cricking his neck or back, but each time settles back into a singularly uncomfortable position in which to continue painting. Because clearly, bodily discomfort is an integral part of the creative process.

It’s lunchtime before he knows it. Or rather, he finally glances at his watch to find it’s already 3pm and he’s skipped past hungry right into cold and vaguely woozy.

At least it’s an off-peak kind of time. Iris puts in his earbuds and heads downstairs, intending to cook a batch of several meals at once to justify washing up. Having blink-182 blasting away in his ear provides a necessary screen from the sleep-deprived or hungover college students he has no choice but to encounter. It discourages people from initiating small talk.

The kitchen that makes up most of the first floor of the dorm is divided into many separate kitchen spaces equipped with the basics: a stovetop, an oven, a sink, a microwave, a toaster. Bins for food waste, bins for recycling plastic containers or glass bottles. Iris colonises one kitchen space with all the paraphernalia he’ll need. On one arm he balances a pile comprising his saucepan, pot, chopping board, knife, tea towels, dishwashing liquid, and sponge, and upon his other arm hangs a plastic bag containing ingredients, spices, and a stack of reusable plastic containers. The bag swings and hits his hip, but it doesn’t throw him off. He’s had quite a lot of practice.

He feels more than sees the gaze that is attracted to him as he sets down his load and briskly gets some pasta boiling. He doesn’t look up, and the gaze trails away after a while.

All part of his routine. Iris slices up some zucchinis and carrots, and opens his can of diced tomatoes in advance so he won’t have to fumble with it later. Intermittently, he checks on his pasta, stirring it around with a wooden spoon.

Somehow it still seems like someone is watching him. Iris pauses to up the volume until all he can hear is Tom DeLonge’s voice, repeating don’t waste your time on me, you’re already the voice inside my head.

Then he gets a large onion out of the bag and, bracing himself, begins dicing it.

He gets the skin off and is halfway through slicing in one direction before the tears start pricking up painfully in his eyes and he has to reel away from the chopping board for a good few seconds. Agh. This is always the worst part. Half-blinded, Iris forces himself to keep going. He blinks rapidly to compensate; it’s fine, he just has to power through…

“Dude, stop. Just stop, alright? It’s killing me to watch you.”

The voice is brazen and loud enough to cut right through his music, which has moved on to Marianas Trench. Josh Ramsay is midway through reminding him you haven’t had enough, you haven’t had enough when Iris yanks one earbud out, simultaneously looking up for the first time since entering the kitchen, to scowl at his interlocutor.

Who is — wow. Okay. Whoever he is, he has bright hair falling into his eyes, and a lopsided smile. There’s a dusting of freckles, too, over his nose and frankly unfair cheekbones. The stranger is watching him from the next kitchen space over, leaning close to the partition in earnest. In an instant Iris cycles through the stages of surprised what-the-hell-he’s-hot then alarmed oh-no-he’s-hot and right back to the safe and restrained fine-he’s-hot-but-also-probably-a-jerk-and-straight .

He stares back, blinking through onion-induced tears, in a way he hopes is defiant.

The other boy leans in even more, crossing his arms atop the partition and resting his chin on them. “You’re sure enough of yourself in the kitchen, but man , you take less joy in cooking than I do in listening to your emo tunes secondhand. Onion-tears and alternative rock do not a happy person make.”

Iris’s look morphs into a scowl and he moves to pointedly put his earbud back in.

“No, hey! I didn’t — I didn’t mean it like that. I…”

He’s pulling back, cocky grin fading, and running one hand through his hair. All at once he seems to deflate, dropping his gaze and taking on a sad puppy expression. But what makes Iris stop mid-motion are the bandages wrapped around his wrists, previously obscured from view. Oh, he thinks, and then immediately wonders if he’s jumping to conclusions. Projecting, maybe.

Either way, Iris can feel his scowl softening. He’s able to school his expression into neutrality, though, before the stranger looks tentatively back up at him. When he eventually does, Iris says, somewhat stilted, “It’s cool. We’re good.”

That’s about as far as his desire to not be a dick will allow him to defy his social anxiety. Iris waits a beat more and then returns his attention to his half-diced onion and one-sided stereo music. In some bizarre conspiracy on the part of the universe, the second verse seems to be ventriloquising for the other boy: I still need you, need you, don’t mean to tease you; if you want me, I’ll come back and meet you.

Iris sighs and pulls the other earbud out, pausing his playlist as he does.

“Well, I’m not conceding the point about my ‘emo tunes', but what would you suggest I do about…?” He trails off, waving a hand to vaguely encompass his chopping board and the clearly evil vegetable on it.

The other boy brightens instantly, a fact that gives Iris an inordinate sense of satisfaction. “Cut it closer to the open fire where your pasta is boiling,” he replies promptly, as though he’s been just waiting to be asked. “It’ll help.”

Iris’s eyebrow quirks up but he nudges his chopping board over and continues dicing. He tenses up, waiting for more tears, but they don’t come. It’s painless, and the neatest job he’s ever done, seeing as he’s not fumbling half-blinded.

“Thanks,” Iris is surprised into saying, glancing back up.

He’s met with a nonchalant shrug belying how pleased the stranger is. “No problem, Iris. Oh. Is it okay if I call you that?”

His brain stutters to a halt. Have they met before, and he just forgot? Nah, he wouldn’t have forgotten a face like that. “Uh, I haven’t mentioned my name, have I?” Iris asks slowly, wary.

“Oh! Uh, try not to be creeped out or anything, alright? I know who you are because I’ve seen some of your art. At the, the school gallery?”

Without consciously deciding to, Iris folds his arms across his chest, subliminally defensive. This wouldn’t be the first time somebody at school found out about his painting and mocked him for it. Hey Iris, what’s with the lame field of flowers? Didja paint them for your girlfriend?

Man, ‘course he didn’t, ‘cause he’s a—

Suppressing a shudder at the memory, Iris grinds out, “If you’re going to make fun of my artwork—”

“No! Hey, I was just gonna say that it’s really good. You’re talented, you must work on it heaps.”

Iris is stunned into momentary silence. His pasta threatens to bubble over just then and he pokes at it till it subsides.

“Thanks, I guess,” Iris says again, still slightly apprehensive even though it turns out there’s no need for his hackles to be raised. It’s not often that he gets complimented like this, and it’s certainly the first time someone who’s not a classmate or instructor has known who he is based on his work. “And yeah, you can call me Iris.”

They smile at each other for several beats, until the other boy seems to recollect himself and gathers up his cutlery and plate from the counter. He’s made himself an omelette with cheese, bacon, and mushrooms in it, and Iris can smell how good it is even from some distance off.

“I guess I’ll, uh, see you around. Iris,” he repeats, his tone somewhat awed.

As he’s about to leave, Iris surprises himself by calling out, “What can I call you?”

“Tonight,” comes the immediate quip, and then, amid somewhat self-deprecating laughter, “Sorry. It was the perfect set-up. My name’s Lillium.”

Lillium flashes him one last grin over his shoulder, his lips curving wickedly, and then waves goodbye.

“Lillium,” Iris says quietly, testing out how the name tastes on his tongue. Slowly, he replaces his earbuds. This time, though, he scrolls through the songs on his phone till he finds something synth-y and brassy. Something with a beat to tap his foot to as he cooks.

Several days shuffle by. Iris goes to class, practises art, sprawls across his bed, and listens to music. He’s distantly aware of people heading out to clubs together at night — it’s hard not to notice, what with the sounds of their drunken singing perpetually wafting up to his room window. It’s not his scene, he tells himself. He would hate the crappy dance-floor music and the press of gyrating bodies and the strobe lights turning everything into some kind of psychedelic, hellish nightmare.

And yet he hears the opening bars of some slurred ABBA and yearns for… for something. Contact, perhaps. The whole stereotype of college as comprising wild nights out just doesn’t apply for someone like him. And outside of that, as he’s discovering, college seems to be an extended exercise in isolation. The peak of his sociality generally involves just awkwardly greeting people who live on his floor when he steps into the bathroom and someone happens to be at the sink.

So that’s definitely the reason why, when he runs out of ready meals to reheat and needs to go cook something else, Iris gets a squirmy feeling in his gut at the thought of maybe happening to see Lillium there. Right? That sounds logical.

Less logical is how he bothers to check his reflection in the mirror before heading to the kitchen. Hm.

As he lays out his pots and pans, Iris honestly can’t tell if he’s experiencing the usual throes of social anxiety, or something he’s even less equipped to deal with: the beginnings of a hopeless crush, building on his initial attraction.

He glances around. No sign of that bright hair and brighter smile. And again: is he disappointed, or relieved? Isn’t it mildly creepy and maybe kind of pathetic to look forward to a repeat of the one meaningful social interaction he’s had since, well, the start of the semester?

Anyway, the odds of running into Lillium again are low, so he should just put in his earbuds and go get his ingredients from the fridge, or—

“Look what I’ve got!”

It’s Lillium’s voice. Iris has a moment for his emotions to war unobserved across his expression, before Lillium comes around from behind him and dumps a minor avalanche of groceries onto the counter.

Iris tucks his earbuds into the back pocket of his skinny jeans.

“I went to the farmer’s market this morning,” Lillium explains, giving Iris a quick, earnest glance before turning his attention to his haul. “Obviously, we’re college students, so we don’t go in for that insanely priced organic produce they have for upper middle-class working professionals who want to and can afford to buy the idea of holistic health and environmental responsibility — agh, why are you letting me ramble on judgmentally, I’m incorrigible — anyway, look.” Lillium pulls a plant, an actual plant in a tiny plastic pot, out from his bag and sticks it right in Iris’s face.

Iris doesn’t quite gasp, but he does inhale sharply in surprise, and gets a whiff of something vaguely herbaceous. “Umm.” He hesitates and takes another sniff, more intentionally this time. “Is that… thyme?”

“Right you are!” Lillium crows, and sets the herb cutting on the counter. “I’m going to bask in the luxury of fresh herbs instead of the dried variety. Plus it’s easy to grow, so.”

He gazes almost lovingly at the thyme for a good few moments, while Iris watches him and may or may not forget to breathe for a good few moments. Then Lillium turns to Iris for corroboration, levelling that doe-eyed look on him for a fraction of a second that is, in a word, devastating .

Yeah. It’s not social anxiety. It’s the other thing.

Iris almost winces as he comes to this realisation, and Lillium plainly misreads his expression. “Sorry,” he blurts out, subconsciously taking a half-step back. “That wasn’t the most normal way to, uh, say hi. I’ll just get out of your hair now.”

“No, uh,” Iris stutters, scrambling to stop the situation from going south. “Unconventional is… good. I like it. I like… um.”

He begs his traitorous stammering mouth not to say you . “Y-yeah,” Iris tags on instead, pointlessly.

He clears his throat and finds the floor suddenly very interesting. Even staring at it, though, Iris can feel Lillium cock his head to the side — like a confused puppy, oh have mercy please — and watch him curiously.

“Okay then,” Lillium says slowly. “So, wanna learn how to make omelette rice? It’s big in Japan. Runny egg, yummy sauce.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Yummier chef.”

Iris feels his lips tug up into a smile even as his heart skips a beat. He pulls a funny, somewhat contorted face to compensate. “Well, if you put it like that,” he manages, after a while.

Of course, that’s when Lillium whips out an apron (an actual apron!) and begins tying it around his back. The apron is printed with the words Justice Is Blind , but that’s not what makes Iris’s heartbeat suddenly spike.

Proudly doodled below those words, in clumsy Sharpie, is a rainbow, followed by the scrawled declaration, And the Chef Is Gay! :D

The stovetops are on an island in the centre of the kitchen space, so Lillium stands on the opposite side of that island from Iris, who may or may not narrowly avoid losing a finger several times because he keeps sneaking looks at him.

Iris messes up his omelette because evidently it takes a special kind of sorcery to balance the eggs’ structural integrity and a good level of runniness. He flushes and starts apologising, with no idea why he feels compelled to. Lillium hums, calmly gets him to take the now scrambled eggs off the heat, and shows him how to make it fried rice with egg and chives, instead. Slowly Iris relaxes again.

As they cook together — how is this his life, honestly — Iris also starts throwing apprehensive glances at the long tables in the kitchen where people are sitting together and eating. There’s not exactly a crowd, but it’s still enough that the thought of joining them, even weighed against the incredibly tempting prospect of lunch with Lillium, makes Iris break out into a cold sweat. His stomach clenches.

When he looks back in front of him, Lillium has served himself his own perfect-looking omelette. “Plate up, Iris,” he says, eyes twinkling as though unaware of Iris’s barely concealed panic. He wanders over to his thyme cutting, sitting on the counter. “I need to re-pot this. Any creative ideas?”

It’s a flimsy enough pretence for standing around to eat lunch, in relative privacy, but Iris takes it. “I have an old jar I used to wash paintbrushes in. It got cracked and leaks. Should let the soil drain water, if you put a saucer underneath it?”

His stomach flips when Lillium grins, calls him a genius, and suggests they re-pot it together.

It’s — it’s not creepy, or co-dependent, or anything like that. They don’t make themselves accountable to each other or anything. There are still plenty of times that Iris goes downstairs and Lillium isn’t around, and vice versa, he imagines. (Iris tries not to think about whether Lillium looks around for him quite as earnestly as he does for Lillium.)

But when their (cooking) schedules do sync up… Well.

The thing is, even accounting for the crush on Lillium that Iris tries and mostly fails to squash down, cooking with Lillium is fun. When they’re standing at the stove together, or waiting by the oven, Lillium seems impossibly full of energy and enthusiasm, and it’s infectious. Iris goes back to his room afterwards in a blissed-out tiredness, a healthy and innocuous kind for a change, instead of the more worrying sort that seeps in sometimes, bone-deep, making him spend too long just laying in bed of an afternoon.

At first, if it’s Lillium who’s there first, Iris is awkward when he sees him. He shuffles his feet and lingers for far too long in front of the fridge as he sneaks glances at Lillium and deliberates whether it would be an intrusion to go over.

Lillium quickly catches on though. He starts calling out to Iris whenever he walks past, beckoning him over to sniff at a particularly gorgeous combination of spices, or to show him how a cream sauce he’s made several attempts at, has finally reached a satisfactory consistency.

Sometimes… sometimes, when Lillium hasn’t noticed Iris is there yet, Iris sees a different Lillium from the actual ray of flirty, rambunctious, sometimes aggravating sunshine he’s becoming familiar with. Not that it’s all an act, nothing like that — only, his eyes aren’t as focused. His attention is somewhere else than the food he’s making; he’s less present somehow. Almost sad.

Around the time the seasons are changing and the leaves start getting their autumn colours, Iris comes into the kitchen by the back courtyard door, shivering from the cold through his thin cardigan. He freezes in an entirely different way, though, when he sees Lillium in the nearest kitchen space, staring at a mess of blood and partially sliced carrots on his chopping board.

“Alright?” Iris blurts out, a weird truncation after a brief internal struggle between Are you okay? and Is everything alright?

“Yeah,” Lillium replies immediately, but in a startled way, as though he’s just saying the word to give a response of some kind. He looks up at Iris and tries for a reassuring smile, holding out his cut thumb. “Knife slipped. Should have sharpened it, then I wouldn’t have to use so much force…”

He trails off, and after a moment suggests, in an undertone, “Or I was just distracted, I guess.”

Iris dumps his groceries on the counter and gets Lillium to wash his hand under running water while he salvages what carrot pieces he can and, giving the rest a dubious look, tosses it out. There isn’t a lot of blood at all, but he makes Lillium go upstairs and get a Band-Aid on the cut.

When Lillium returns, Iris has put his own fresh produce away and is deftly finishing up chopping the carrots. “Ah, young grasshopper, you have come far,” Lillium teases. Still a little off.

Well, Iris would be slightly at a loss too. Accidents happen, and this obviously was an accident, unlike — he tries not to look at Lillium’s wrists, which are, as always, bandaged. He hasn’t noticed in several weeks, now.

“Looks like I have to pick up your slack.” Iris smirks as he tips the carrots skilfully into a large mixing bowl that already has broccoli, capsicums, and shredded roast chicken in it, then adds pepper, salt, and a handful of dried herbs. Just the way Lillium does it. He might toss them around with a bit more flair than necessary, since Lillium’s watching.

“Oh, you just wish you could pick me up,” Lillium replies, and just like that they’re back to status quo, Iris pining and Lillium inadvertently provocative in every sense of the word.

As they wait for the vegetables to bake with Lillium’s homemade balsamic vinaigrette, Iris shivers in the cold breeze that sneaks in the door. Lillium shrugs off his jacket without a word and settles it around his shoulders.

It’s warm like a thank-you.

(Of course, then Lillium snorts and picks a leaf off Iris’s head, laughing about how Iris hasn’t noticed it. That little shit.)

At first, Iris mostly sticks to simple stuff that can’t really go wrong. Partly because his skill set is limited, partly because the last thing Iris wants to do is mortify himself in front of Lillium.

Gradually, though, he starts experimenting. Lillium seems to have a penchant for breakfast foods at all times of the day, so Iris looks up tips for poaching eggs, and although only one egg turns out like the video, and his mind promptly starts becoming a collection of sharp angles accusing him of failure, there’s no strain in Iris’s smile when he sees Lillium taking that first bite.

“Watch this, yeah? Just need two secs,” Lillium says on another day, giving Iris his spatula.

Iris can’t resist. “You just need to sex?” he repeats, with a slightly different stress to make clear what he means. He even throws in a little flutter of his eyelashes.

Lillium has gone over to the other end of the counter to quickly finish slicing some sausage that has been cooling after he pan-fried it in advance — in a thin layer of water to prevent the skin from burning before the meat cooks through, as he explains to Iris. There’s a beat after Iris finishes speaking, where Lillium blinks rapidly, taken aback.

Lillium directs his next words at the sausages. “And here I was, trying so hard not to make a dick joke.”

Iris almost takes his mournful tone seriously, then notices the curve of Lillium’s mouth, the one that means he’s this close to laughing. “Wait — so hard… Did you really?!”

His delayed reaction to the double entendre tips Lillium over the edge. Iris laughs along with him, and he’s already gasping for air when Lillium wheezes out between peals, “Stir the… the fry!”

“Stir the fry?! ”

“Shit, I meant stir the stir-fry!”

That sends Iris off into another bout of laughter, through which he clumsily but energetically jabs at the contents of Lillium’s pan with the spatula. When he next can, he composes himself enough to worriedly examine the vegetables, cut into pieces of more uniform size than he ever manages.

“Stop making me laugh, aren’t you worried this will burn?”

Sometimes Iris burns his own food a tiny bit. It’s still edible by far, but the taste makes him pull a face sometimes. Lillium’s food, though, that’s a whole ‘nother ball game.

Lillium’s laughter finally peters out. Half-joking, half-sombre, he says, “You’ve watched me make stir-fries how many times now? Relax. Trust yourself. I do.”

He winks at him and Iris has to take a moment to discipline the flutter of his heart.

With the same air of casual insouciance Lillium comes back over, narrowly avoiding hip-checking Iris with how close he gets. “Here,” Lillium murmurs, reaching over and adjusting how Iris is holding the spatula. His bandages brush, slightly rough, against Iris’s hand. “No need for the death-grip, Sparta, the spatula’s not a weapon and cooking isn’t a war.”

Iris’s heart thuds in his chest, loudly enough he swears it must be audible. Lillium’s skin is warm against his own perpetually cold fingers.

“Sheesh, how are you still cold?” Apparently not noticing Iris’s gaping, Lillium tugs at the collar of Iris’s jacket. Well, Lillium’s jacket. That Iris has now taken to wearing, because he just hasn’t given it back. When did that become a thing?

Satisfied, Lillium practically sashays back over to the other end of the counter. “How you hold the spatula, though, that’s interesting,” he comments after a moment. “Like you’re about to do some calligraphy. Like a paintbrush.”

Iris regains control of his voice long enough to snark, “Oh yeah, because green beans are a work of art. I’m a regular Picasso over here.”

Lillium hums. “To be fair, there is something of an analogy between stir-fries and Cubist paintings,” he casually muses, waving his hand over a pot to waft its fragrance to his nose.

And that’s the moment Iris realises that it’s not just that Lillium is hot (although that’s never not going to be part of it). He likes Lillium. Because Lillium is clever without being ostentatious about it. Because Lillium is kind and reassuring and understanding. Because Lillium pushes past his walls and makes the same kind of dumb jokes and gets under his skin.

Iris is so done for.

They chat while they cook. Sometimes about school, sometimes about the most random things. One debate that occupied the entire length of time it took to make Chinese rice dumplings from scratch, was over the best way to heat up hot cross buns.

(“15 seconds in the microwave and ta-da, perfection.”

“You heathen. Oven or nothing.”)

Dumb stuff like that. Only, Iris hasn’t met anyone so amenable to just talking, without making it an awkward social performance that he just wants to escape, or a draining exercise in putting his best foot forward to keep impressing the other person.

Lillium is an anthropology major and likes to joke about aspiring to be like Indiana Jones (“Archaeological anthropology is a thing, alright, that ship has not sailed, don’t crush my dreams, crush these garlic cloves instead.”). Iris talks about his portfolio work for this semester and Lillium listens.

They’ve become friends, Iris realises at some point. And their friendship makes preparing food enjoyable, makes actually eating the food become more than bearable, and dare he think it, makes Iris almost happy. Content, for sure.

Except for how Iris still glances up sometimes to ask Lillium if some onions are well-caramelised, and his breath catches in his throat.

To take stock against Iris’s original verdict of fine-he’s-hot-but-also-probably-a-jerk-and-straight : not a jerk, and not straight either. So. There’s that, to make it complicated. To tempt Iris to entertain fantasies where all these charged moments between him and Lillium are actually that, instead of just the product of his crush-addled brain.

Yet for whole stretches at a time, with Lillium, Iris forgets how complicated it is, how tangled-up he’s getting in him. Lillium makes it better, and life is… life is looking up. He’s still got problems with food and anxiety and a looming slippery slope into dysfunction in general, but he’s buoyant, somehow.

Then Iris decides to try make ravioli from scratch.

He buys all the ingredients and he watches endless tutorial videos. He checks the time and day: yes, Lillium can often be found in the kitchen on a Friday afternoon. (They still just find each other there.) So Iris goes downstairs, sets up, gets going. Any moment he’s expecting him to show up. Iris hopes that Lillium appears at a stage when he’s looking competent — sometimes he still fumbles, it happens. He hums in anticipation.

Only Lillium doesn’t show up. Iris is distracted and the ravioli doesn’t hold together, maybe because his choice of flour wasn’t right somehow, maybe because of his stupid, clumsy hands, but either way it’s a mess, and without Lillium there he feels like people who walk past are judging him for panicking. Which he does, more and more openly.

It’s a disaster and it’s not Lillium’s fault at all, he’s under no obligation to be there in the kitchen. It’s not like they’ve arranged anything. But Iris messes up, and he hates that he feels so needy, and it stings of failure when he has to salvage the best-looking ravioli and spend more on groceries to make up for the wastage.

Lillium doesn’t show up that day. In fact, Lillium doesn’t make an appearance for the next three weeks.

At first, after the initial muted trauma of what Iris is thinking of as the Ravioli Incident, he shrugs it off. As the days pass and still no Lillium, though, he starts looking for him around campus: maybe he just got swamped with schoolwork, Iris reasons.

In a self-deprecatory way, Iris is amused as he observes his own pining, as if from outside. Since their majors come under different schools entirely, there’s no reason he might expect to see Lillium. Nevertheless, when he has to go to the library, Iris glances oh so casually at the desks along the wall, wondering if he’ll see Lillium’s head, bent forward as he reads, his hair maybe caught in the sunlight coming in through the tall windows. As he walks in between classes, he doesn’t stare fixedly at the ground as he always has. Instead, he’s looking around the green, noticing who’s walking by.

But then it gets to be a whole week and a half and it’s not so cutesy anymore. Instead of looking for Lillium, studying or commuting or cooking alone, Iris starts picturing him, skinny jeans and Han Soloesque vest-thing and all, laughing as he makes his way down the corridor with a whole posse of friends, all confident and clever and with their lives put together. It’s never even occurred to Iris before now to wonder if Lillium isn’t a loner like he is.

In Iris’s evidently masochistic imagination, Lillium has his arm draped around someone’s waist, probably a goddess of a girl, and he wouldn’t notice Iris as he walks past.

Which doesn’t even make sense, because his apron , all the flirting, and surely Iris hasn’t been living a delusion? Please, no. No.

Whatever routine they’ve established, after the second week alone it slips away with alarming rapidity. Iris cooks out of necessity again, simple things just to keep his body fueled. Schoolwork is beginning to pile up anyway.

He still looks around for Lillium in the kitchen. He’s never there with something new and fascinating to enchant Iris with all over again.

Then comes the week his portfolio report is due and Iris is in no mood to dawdle in the kitchen keeping himself fed. The report mainly comprises what articles he’s been reading, what gallery showings he’s gone to, and his reflections on it all. He knows he’s done the legwork, but the upcoming deadline still weighs heavily on him.

Iris is running on fumes, sleep-wise, when he literally runs right into Lillium.

“Iris! Nice to see you again… You look like hell,” are the first words out of Lillium’s (still stupidly nice-looking) mouth (how could he have forgotten how nice-looking it is?). Somehow Lillium’s managed to catch Iris as he stumbles forward, and Iris notices in a flash the strength in his arms, and then immediately after that, the fact that they are bandaged.

Iris has gotten used to the sight of Lillium’s wrists and palms being bandaged. Actually, he hasn’t seen them without bandages on. But now the gauze wraps right around, up to his forearms, and Iris catches himself staring but can’t quite stop.

He drags his gaze up to Lillium’s questioningly. And there’s a distance in Lillium’s eyes that he’s never seen before.

Then Iris’s brain finally processes Lillium’s greeting, Lillium’s being here and bantering with him like no intervening time has passed, and Iris pulls back, disgruntled and relieved and almost angry, all at once. “Is it always gonna be like this with you?” he asks, his tone sour. “Are you always gonna stick your foot in your mouth first thing?”

And the truth is that Lillium hasn’t really done that since their first meeting, but Iris is lashing out, maybe because of the stress, maybe because somehow his brain has cast Lillium’s prolonged absence as a kind of betrayal.

Lillium’s expression has frozen up but he tries for his usual lazy ease. In fact, that signature cockiness of his makes a reappearance as he leans in closer. “I know that’s only an expression, but you seem pretty interested in what I put in my mouth.”

Iris’s scowl deepens. “Shut up,” he says, and the curious thing is that he swears he means it to come out as bashful teasing, but his heart’s not in it and the words wind up sounding far too sincere. Iris tries for a smile to moderate the impression he gives, but it’s too late.

He feels guilty about it as soon as he sees the look on Lillium’s face. He’s not proud of it, but Iris runs from that look, from the fact that he’s caused it. Iris storms past Lillium to his fridge, where he starts getting out a bag of baby spinach, hummus, and salsa. He has wraps waiting upstairs in his room. It’s a convenient lunch that isn’t two-minute noodles, so he tells himself it’s acceptable. Even if he’s been eating sandwiches and zero-effort foodstuffs for this past week.

Lillium has followed him and now stands awkwardly by the fridge, for once at something of a loss for what to do with his hands. “Iris,” he begins, his voice soft. “I only meant that you look insanely stressed. Rough week? Bad day?”

The thing is, he’s not wrong. He’s still skirting around the whole where-were-you-for-three-weeks issue, but Lillium knows Iris, can read him like a book.

Iris stops rearranging the contents of his allotted, numbered box for a fraction of a second. “Deadlines tend to make me anxious,” he replies colourlessly, standing up with his food.

Mercifully, Lillium doesn’t remark on his tacitness. He merely nods in sympathy, or maybe empathy. “You got this,” he reassures him, “even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

Somehow it sounds different, genuine, coming from him. Perhaps because of how certain he sounds, totally unwavering in his faith in Iris.

“Do you?” Iris says on an impulse, staring at the fridge to avoid meeting his gaze. Already he can feel his initial gall dissipating. “You’ve, uh. Basically disappeared for… a while. Stuck in the library?”

Lillium cocks his head at him, Iris can feel it even without looking. “Or I decided to pull an Indiana Jones and go off after treasure.”

“How does he keep tenure when he’s away from his job so much, anyway?” Iris tsks, going for levity and falling short of it.

“Yeah, I know, right.”

No explanation is forthcoming, so Iris shrugs and starts walking off.

“Take care,” Lillium tags on, abortively shifting as though to follow him.

“Yeah, you too.” And he means it. He tries to convey as much just by looking at Lillium a moment too long. Lillium has dark shadows under his eyes now, the colour of a bruise.

Where’ve you been? What’s happened that you couldn’t — can’t tell me?

There’s a post-it note on his container of hummus when he next reaches for it.

When Iris sees it, his first instinct is dread, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’s had a clean bill up to now in college as far as bullying is concerned, but if those days aren’t behind him after all…

Then he reads what the note says, and smiles instead. Very slightly, but still. He smiles.

Dork, you opened this on Tuesday and it says to consume within 3 days. Sniff-test it. Don’t give yourself food poisoning because you were too out of it to notice.

Iris does as the note says and, yeah alright, it does seem slightly off, in a way he might not have noticed in his sleep-deprived, preoccupied state. Not too off, though, so Iris is about to risk it when he glances down and sees a plastic container below where the hummus was. It too has a post-it note on it, in the same spidery, slanting handwriting. Lillium’s handwriting, the same as on his apron.

Just kidding, I sniff-tested it for you. Still safe but you deserve better than “this will do”. Hope you like spicy food.

It’s pad thai, sweet and spicy and sour. Iris basically melts when he takes his first bite of it. It might be the first meal he’s actually enjoyed, in what feels like ages.

On two other occasions leading up to his deadline, he finds meals ready and waiting for him in the fridge. They tide him over and probably go a long way to preventing actual malnutrition. One is baked potato patties with a sauce of carrots, beans, and tomatoes. The accompanying post-it note has, ridiculously, what looks like a carrot with Iris’s hairdo on it, and a potato with a six-pack who must represent Lillium.

The other is a Caesar salad that is surprisingly filling, with a note that says It’s dangerous to go alone! Take these leaves with you.

If this is Lillium’s way of making up for three weeks of radio silence, he’s sure taking the apology seriously.

But they haven’t resumed cooking together. Iris sees him once in the kitchen and knows , just knows , that Lillium’s pretending not to notice him. So Lillium doesn’t beckon him over, and Iris doesn’t volunteer his presence.

For some reason, Lillium’s withdrawn from him.

Iris keeps Lillium’s post-it notes in pride of place, on a shelf in the corner near his art supplies. He has a habit, whenever he returns to his room after a class, of going to stand in front of his work in progress, mulling over what to do next, and before turning away from the canvas to set down his bag, now he glances at the post-it notes and smiles. It’s a bittersweet smile.

The canvas in his room is a half-finished painting of someone, a girl, standing at the stove in a white dress, her back turned to him. It isn’t one of his studio pieces; he’s just been working on it on and off, unable to get the image out of his mind.

At least two of the pieces in his installation this semester are obliquely about Lillium. Iris wonders if Lillium still goes to the school gallery. If he’ll see them.

Iris spends almost two weeks in this state, and finds himself one Thursday doodling, ridiculously, a chibi version of just his head with a leaf on it. He pauses, goes to his wardrobe, and wraps Lillium’s jacket around himself even though he’s indoors.

He thinks of Lillium’s last note to him for the billionth time. Then, with almost a growl of frustration, he goes downstairs, drawing in hand, to start peering at the contents of a bunch of fridges.

He doesn’t even need to take his earbuds with him anymore. Huh. When did that happen?

Friday finds Iris ploughing through an article written in what could charitably be described as borderline comprehensible English, when his phone rings.

Not his cellphone, mind. The landline in his room.

It hasn’t rung all semester because a) who calls anymore, and b) even though his dorm provides free internal calls, people just knocked on their friends’ doors instead usually, and c) Iris doesn’t exactly have many friends.

His heart skips a beat. Iris picks up.

“Is this the artist version of a love letter?” comes a voice over the line. If not for the fact that Iris has been calling to mind with embarrassing frequency how Lillium’s voice sounds, he might not have recognised it over the phone. But he has, and so he does, instantly.

“Or have I inadvertently commissioned a sketch from my favourite artist by paying him in food?” Lillium muses.

Iris’s mouth opens and shuts without any sound emerging from it.

Now Lillium gets worried at his protracted silence. “Hey, I did get your room number right, right? The number on your fridge box?” His voice goes deeper, shaded with concern.

“Yeah,” Iris finally squeaks. Great. He gets to sound like he’s swallowed helium while Lillium gets his bedroom voice on.

As soon as the thought occurs to him, Iris steers his mental monologue away from the notion of Lillium, in his room. His room that has a bed in it. Ahem.

“How did you figure out my room number, then?” Lillium asks, his relief audible.

Iris leans back in his chair and gazes up at the ceiling before replying. “We’re in a self-catered dorm. By this point in the semester, most people are living off two-minute noodles and regret. Yours was the most ridiculously stocked fridge box I could find. Plus it was all ingredients for breakfast foods, because you’re a child.”

Lillium lets out an exaggerated gasp. “My dear Iris, are you telling me you went on a quest to find me again? I’m honoured. I feel like precious treasure and you’re Indiana Jones, come to brave booby traps to retrieve me for science . Or, well. Human sciences.”

Iris can feel his lips pursing but also threatening to smile. “You’re the one who made the Zelda reference,” he shoots back. And this is comfortable, this is familiar, long-lost ground. Iris wants to paint a flag and stake a claim in it all over again.

“I want you to know that I appreciate your knowledge of internet meme origins,” Lillium says gravely. “Also, that it’s adorable how you drew a little speech bubble from your chibi face and wrote ‘Thank you’.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Iris moans, suddenly leaning forward and resting his forehead on the table. Two weeks of pining and now that he’s talking to Lillium again, he just — can’t deal with him.

“But my favourite detail,” Lillium continues, talking right over Iris, “are the words on the back of it. ‘It’s dangerous to go alone. Take me!’”

Iris essentially stops breathing. Lillium lets the pause grow for dramatic effect (again and eternally: the little shit). Then, quiet instead of ebullient, he says, “Now, Iris Black, that sounds like either a proposition inviting me to ravage you senseless as best I can, given how tiny our dorm rooms are, or…”

Or a genuine offer grounded in some vague sense of solidarity. An olive branch, a helping hand.

Because they’re friends, aren’t they? Never mind Iris’s feelings; they were friends first, and they’re still friends now.

Iris finds his voice after a few moments more of silence. “Or it just means what it means.”

Lillium is silent a while longer, long enough that Iris is initially worried the line has dropped or something. Then he says, “Yeah, I might take you up on that offer.”

They have dinner on the rooftop, because it’s getting too cold out for most people to venture there in the evening. Iris bundles up and brings along Lillium’s jacket.

Lillium makes him keep it.

He also brushes his knuckles over a smudge of paint on Iris’s cheek, and plucks another leaf out of Iris’s hair, which, what, when did that get there? Lillium gives him a lopsided smile before letting the breeze carry the leaf away. They lose sight of it in the dark silhouettes of high-rise buildings against the setting sun. For a few seconds, Iris just watches Lillium watching the leaf go.

“So I made spaghetti and meatballs,” Iris says tentatively, gesturing needlessly at the plates laid out on two mismatched stools he’s brought up to the roof. One is from his room. The other is, well, temporarily misappropriated from the dorm’s mini art studio.

Lillium gives him a look that would be coy if not for his goofy eyebrow waggle. “Please tell me you were thinking of The Lady and the Tramp. Not in a weird way, or anything—”

Iris snorts. “‘Or anything’,” he mimics.

“—but that movie sort of made it my lowkey lifelong dream to do that spaghetti strand thing. You know the thing. Or the meatball thing.” He gestures vaguely. “You know what I mean.”

Which would make this, what, a date? Maybe. Who knows. Iris just grins and gestures for him to sit down.

When he does, Iris roots around in the pocket of Lillium’s jacket (now apparently sort of his jacket) and produces the note on one of the meals Lillium made for him.

“You kept it?” Lillium is startled into saying. He doesn’t even rib Iris about it, he’s that stunned. Then, “Wait, what were you going to do if I’d taken back the jacket?”

Iris pauses. “Hope that you’d find the note before putting the jacket in the wash? Anyway, hush, I’m trying to give a nice speech here before the spaghetti gets cold.”

For once Lillium complies, perching atop the art studio stool and balancing his plate on his lap. Iris stands awkwardly to the side of him and doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands.

“So I’ve been thinking about this one thing you wrote, out of context,” Iris begins. He drops his gaze to the note. “You said you sniff-tested the… the hummus for me. Okay, that sounds dumb. I’m not good at speeches. Or. Or.” Or feelings, generally.

Iris clears his throat. “But yeah. You wrote ‘you deserve better than “this will do”.’ And I do. And so do you.”

He looks at Lillium then. Lillium’s expression is a complex mixture of apprehension and surprise and a deep, emergent vulnerability. He doesn’t seem to be even remembering to breathe.

“That’s all, I guess. Just wanted to tell you that.” Iris shuffles his feet a couple times, then goes over to sit next to Lillium. “Spaghetti’s getting cold.”

There’s no fanfare. There aren’t any melodramatic declarations. Disappointingly enough for all parties involved, there isn’t even any anatomically tricky spaghetti-strand kissing. But once they’re done Lillium sets his plate aside and takes Iris’s hand. Fusses about how cold it is. Holds it till it’s warm.

At the end of the semester they go to the art school’s gallery together.

There are lilies hidden in the background of all Iris’s paintings. Lillium’s breath catches when he notices them. One lurid sunset scene contains the exact pink of Lillium’s hair. And there are swooping arcs in the feathers of an iridescent bird immortalised mid-flight, that Iris has modelled after the curve of Lillium’s lips.

Iris doesn’t tell Lillium about those, though. He holds them in the base of his ribcage, like a secret to protect.

It goes something like this, now: Iris staggers downstairs to whip up a quick study-break snack and there Lillium will be, bending to get freshly baked lasagna out of the oven. Or Iris returns from a grocery shopping trip, and Lillium jogs up to him in the corridor to relieve him of a heavy bag and chatter on their way into the kitchen.

And then they’ll clutter up the same kitchen space. And Iris feels comfortable reaching over to borrow one of Lillium’s cooking utensils without asking, because he knows which ones Lillium favours. And suddenly he and Lillium have a plastic basket of spices they’ve jointly bought in large quantities for the sake of budgeting, and they know how to move around each other in close quarters, like a complex dance they can both hear the rhythms of.

Lillium likes to flick soap suds at Iris while they wash up. Iris likes to have Lillium’s pot of thyme over to his room for a sleepover. (It’s something of a joint custody situation.)

They cook on Mondays, because Tuesdays are hellish and full of classes for both of them. But the rest of the time, Iris looks out for Lillium in the kitchen. He looks out for him figuratively too. They’re both works in progress.

He likes it best when he finds Lillium cooking up some dish from scratch. Ratatouille, or risotto, or potato gnocchi that he makes himself. Goodness knows where he finds the time to cook so elaborately, plus they’re all broke college students, but Lillium does, still.

And it’s such a delight still to watch him, tongue stuck out absently as he concentrates on slicing, and humming songs from various musicals. Iris will have darted to the fridge for a stick of butter or something else they’ve forgotten, and when he gets back he’ll just watch Lillium a while, no longer feeling the need to scowl to cover it up.

It’s even more of a delight when Lillium feels him looking, looks up at him, and says, “Come on, Iris, what’d I say? No letting go of my hand.”

As much as possible, he doesn’t.