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It’s always a gift.
The first time it happens, it's something of himself. In a way, it's like something else that's gone unshared for now too. The physical touch, something he wants but something that is so much like this, in the way that it's private and vulnerable and full of delicate muscle-memory that he only remembers when he feels safe.
Eliott makes him feel safe.
He doesn’t have to think that much about this one. He’s learned it off by heart. Middle C in the middle as he plays the first note.
Eliott doesn’t expect it, Lucas can tell. He didn’t either, but he plays anyway. I love you. Not true yet, but it might be soon. More force to it than it's originally played, because it feels that way to him. Hurricane and body. It’s all so real.
When he turns around, Eliott is looking at him. Amazing, he says. Surprising. But Lucas is the one who’s surprised.
*
The second time it happens, Lucas has been broken and wrong and abandoned, and then he’s been put together again. Last night he gave Eliott something else, flutters of excitement and awakened desire. Beads of sweat and chest sugar-light with relief. Now he’s sitting at the keys again.
They’re always so familiar underneath his skin. Life is changeable, and Eliott is right. There is always another path you could have taken. But this is always true. The smoothness and weight of the white key.
It’s light outside. Golden. This morning he woke up by Eliott’s side and they’re still so barely awake. Sleep in the corner of both of their eyes. Lucas’s fingers travel like a caress, so reminiscent of last night.
“Sometimes I miss playing,” he says. They haven’t talked of anything else yet. Where did you go or why did you leave? Please, do you mean it this time? First boy? Boyfriend?
Eliott looks at him like he’s saying something sweet.
“Do you not have one of your own?” he says. “A piano?”
“No. I used to," Lucas says. "But it’s really my mom’s.”
He pays attention to the silence afterwards. He’s not as foolish as he sometimes may seem. He doesn’t have any of the answers yet, but he knows that they’re there. That something happened.
“It’s still at her house. She taught me to play.”
“I thought you didn’t talk to her?”
“Well.” Lucas pays notice to the question and stores the little knowledge that it gives him away. Keeps it safe. “That’s halfway true. I don’t do it as much as I should.”
There are many more things he would say if he could. He’s closeted and scared that she won’t love him. He’s scared that she won’t be okay. He’s scared that all of this is on him and he’s the one to fail her. He’s scared when he remembers what it felt to be a child and to stand in front of something so much bigger than him.
He remembers, sometimes, what it felt like before. Her smile and his adoration, like a child.
“Families are complicated, right?” he says now, quietly hoping that it will be a step towards the remedy of whatever he did wrong. No matter how many times he's failed, Emma and his mom and maybe Eliott too, it never stops him from feeling the guilt. “It was scary sometimes. But we always had this.”
In the silence afterwards, he looks at Eliott, intending to search. To say more if more seems needed now. Instead, he finds hope in Eliott’s eyes. Hidden, but there, in the softness-filled corners of them.
He smiles, just a little. And then he turns around.
This time when he plays it’s a quieter melody. As his fingers hit the keys, he imagines it. The two of them and everything they might do now. Their smiles. Their hearts. All the other things Lucas finds on his sleeve now.
When he turns around, Eliott is looking at him. Soft gaze filled with wonderment.
“You don’t have to miss playing anymore,” he says. Quietly. Like a confession of sorts.
“No?” Lucas says.
“No.” He’s whispering. “What’s mine is yours.”
So much of Lucas’s life has been formed by disbelief. Betrayal and abandonment and quiet nights alone. Cousin, not family. Distance from his friends. A dad who doesn’t even care to help him with the rent.
Eliott has always been back and forth too, and maybe Lucas should doubt him. Maybe he should be unsure. But he’s not. He doesn’t know a lot, except he knows there’s something. That no matter what will happen next, Eliott is sitting in front of him right now and speaking the truth.
He gets up. Comes over. Joins him again.
They kiss and then he lifts his arms. Take my t-shirt off.
“What’s mine is yours,” he says. Also the truth.
*
Third time, there aren’t any questions anymore. Only answers and love and apology and hope. Lucas wakes up in Eliott’s bed again.
He was wrong before. He was closed off and angry and scared of everything. He was hiding and distanced. He was not himself. He was anything but this, but this is what he is. A boy who loves another boy. A boy who’ll sit by him and wait as they hold onto each other’s hands, watching the clouds leave to show off the sun.
It’s not a lullaby. It’s a waking-up song. When he presses down on the lightest G, he does it as gently as he possibly can. When he turns around again, Eliott’s awake.
“Good morning,” Lucas whispers. And this time it’s love.
“Good morning,” Eliott whispers. And Lucas comes back.
They sit together then, gently intertwined. Lucas soft like a cushion for him. Eliott watches the wall in front of them. Piano and drawings and record player. The hedgehog on the wall.
“Have you ever considered that I’m visuals,” he says. “And you’re sound?”
Lucas smiles. Eliott’s words like an artist’s confession of love but also like an open wound of vulnerability. Lucas knows both sides of him now.
“We compliment each other,” he says. It’s true. Both with their own little fears of the dark. Both with their own overpowering light.
Eliott is smiling when he looks at him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think so too.”