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Lucas feels the soft morning light across his face as he stirs awake, peacefully at first, and then squinting at the ray of sun that has found its way through the crack in Eliott’s curtains and onto his face. He sighs – Eliott has never managed to figure out how to close them correctly.
He reaches for his phone to check the time – 6:33 – and groans, burying his face into the pillow to hide from the light. He could, of course, just get up and close the curtains, but that would require more effort than Lucas is willing to put in so early on a Saturday morning and instead he rolls away from the light and toward the middle of the bed.
And then, suddenly, Lucas is grateful for the soft golden sun as it dances around Eliott sleeping softly next to him, bathing him in its hazy glow. He can’t help but smile at the sight before him – Eliott’s hair falling gently across his face, his mouth slightly open, his hand stretched out toward Lucas, unconsciously reaching for him across the mattress.
Lucas moves his body closer, aching for Eliott’s warmth, tucking himself gently into the space between them and reaching out to brush Eliott’s hair away from his eyes. Lucas feels his heart clench as Eliott sighs softly in his sleep and moves next to Lucas, his hand finding Lucas’ waist, pulling him closer, closer.
The heavy air hangs around them and Lucas feels so warm and so safe and he should really go back to sleep but he can’t help but look at Eliott, really look at him, and wonder what he did to deserve this kind of happiness, this kind of love .
Lucas had never really understood love before Eliott. He had never thought of himself as romantic or at all interested in the kind of total devotion love required. He’d never seen it be worth it. You show someone your heart, your soul and then give them the tools to rip you apart trusting that they won’t. But they always do. Or they always had in Lucas’ experience.
The first time Lucas learns about love is while he sits on the couch with his mother, watching some old black and white movie that she had put on. The room is mostly dark, the sun setting behind the trees painting the sky in shades of purple and six-year-old Lucas watches while the man on screen grabs the woman’s face in his hands and declares I love you .
“Mama,” he asks quietly. “What is love?”
His mother brushes something from her cheeks and looks at him with slightly swollen eyes that Lucas doesn’t quite understand yet, pausing for a moment.
“Well, mon chéri, love is when you care about someone so much that you feel it...right here.” She reaches out and places her hand over Lucas’ heart. “It’s when, even when you’re sad or angry, you still know that you’d always rather be around that person than be without them.”
“Oh,” is all Lucas says because he isn’t quite sure he understands what his mother means, but he does know that to his little world, she knows everything, so she must be right.
His mother must notice because she smiles at him and says “I love you, and that’s the only thing you need to worry about right now.”
Lucas thinks about this and maybe, starts to understand. “I love you too mama,” he says and then he thinks again. “What about papa?” he asks. “Does he love us too?”
His mother takes a deep breath and pauses, but nods her head. “Of course, mon chéri, of course.”
Lucas nods approvingly and snuggles back into his mother’s side, looking back at the tv as the movie continues to play. His mother leans down and presses a soft kiss to his hair.
Lucas remembers that conversation for a long time, pulling from it when he’s sad or angry or feeling a little alone. He remembers how his mother pulled him close, told him she loved him. And as he grows up, and his mother starts to pull away, she doesn’t say it anymore. So he clings to the thought that the love still lives in her heart like she said when she placed her hand on his chest years before.
His father though, ever the stoic absence in his life, never manages to utter the phrase. And Lucas spends his childhood trying to do anything that will make his papa proud enough to pay attention, look Lucas in his face and tell him that he matters.
But it never comes.
And when Lucas is fifteen his world comes crashing down around him and he doesn’t know what to do, how to live, how to breathe even and he decides that love isn’t for him – it was never really his to begin with.
He had been watching for the past year as his mother had slowly slipped from him, her mind turning her to dark places that Lucas can’t seem to reach. She calls out to him, to his father, to anyone, and Lucas tries to be there but she doesn’t seem to notice.
His father disappears then, when Lucas needs him most, resurfacing only to scream and curse at his mother when she touches down. His father steals those precious hours from his son and Lucas watches as they become fewer and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to break through again.
On the night his father sends his mother away, Lucas loses it. He comes home to find his mother missing and his father packing one of the worn out suitcases that has spent too much time hiding under their stairs.
“Where is she?” Lucas demands, fighting the urge to scream and cry and hit his father all at the same time.
“She’s at a clinic,” his father says.
“You sent her away?” And Lucas can’t understand, can’t fathom why this man who was supposed to love him, to love his mother, had decided to do only what helped him.
His father leaves then with the zip of a suitcase, a hand on his shoulder, and a tersely whispered I’ll send you some money , and Lucas has never felt so alone.
If this is what love is , Lucas thinks, it isn’t worth it .
And he expects, truly, to be a love-hating, brooding cliché for years and years until a mop of golden brown hair and a caramel jacket walks into his life and changes everything. Lucas tries to fight it at first, convincing himself he’s content to exist in the weakly stitched together shell he’s managed to create since his father left, but Eliott is there at every turn and slowly the thread starts to unravel.
Lucas falls in love when he is sixteen. And when he realizes it a week later, it is blinding and all encompassing and he’s wondering how he ever breathed without it. It runs through him like blood in his veins and propels him down the road to Eliott, to what they can be.
And when Eliott tries to pull away, Lucas fights because now that he’s got a taste for love, he’s not sure he could live without it.
The truth is, I’d rather be upset because of you than not be with you at all.
He borrows his mama’s words in that moment, from all those years ago on their couch, about what it means to love. He thinks, finally, he understands what his mother meant when she stroked his cheek, and whispered to him in the dark what it meant to love. It doesn’t mean losing yourself in your love, or letting it change you. It means surrounding yourself with people who take you as you are.
And Eliott is that for him, and he is that for Eliott.
In the whispered moments under the sheets, in the loud laughs in the kitchen, in a hand finding his as they walk down the street, Lucas knows that this is the kind of love that is worth it.
But the first time Eliott says it, Lucas’ heart clenches and his stomach twists because he feels it there, he really feels it, but he’s never allowed himself to think that someone could mean it. That someone could mean it enough to say it.
Eliott is about to get on the bus and then it’s whispered there on the breeze. Short, simple, brave. Like he’s stating a fact that he couldn’t help but put out into the world.
“I love you.”
And Lucas feels it, he really does, but he hasn’t quite figured out how to say that just yet. The words are foreign to his lips and feel strange in his throat, but he wants Eliott to know he feels the same. Even if he can’t quite say it yet.
“Me too.”
But now, in the softly lit golden room, with Eliott laying next to him, his cheek pressed into the pillow, his hair disheveled, sleep still holding onto him, making him soft and gentle and beautiful , Lucas can’t help but feel the love pull at his heart. And he wants to try on this new language, wants his lips and tongue to learn the movements of those words until it’s no longer frightening to say them.
He reaches out with light fingertips to let them dance across Eliott’s face, trailing down to his arms and hooking his arm around Eliott’s waist to draw them closer still. Eliott murmurs then, eyelids fluttering open as he slowly wakes up. His eyes open to meet Lucas’ and Lucas can tell the moment Eliott realizes that Lucas has wrapped himself around him because he lets out a soft laugh.
“Well, good morning,” Eliott whispers between them, not quite ready to break through the quiet.
Lucas smiles, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Eliott’s face, completely in awe of the fact that this boy is his .
“What are you thinking?” Eliott asks, knitting his eyebrows together. Lucas knows that he’s probably been staring at Eliott for far too long to be able to get away with a non-answer but he tries anyway.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Eliott shoves him playfully and pouts. “You keep looking at me like that. What’s wrong?”
Lucas laughs slightly and feels a blush rise in his cheeks because he knows Eliott is going to force it out of him. “Nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing.”
“Lucas!”
“Fine!” Lucas has to bite back a smile because Eliott’s grabbed him and pulled them even closer together if that’s possible. “It’s cheesy.”
“Cheesy is good,” Eliott says seriously, his eyes searching Lucas’ face.
“I love you,” Lucas says, his heart beating quickly but surely. He’s not scared anymore. “That’s all.”
Eliott doesn’t try and fight the wide grin spreading across his face, his eyes shining. Lucas feels himself match that expression because there is nothing, nothing , more beautiful in this world than Eliott’s smile.
Lucas presses his hand firmly on Eliott’s back. “I realized I’ve never said it. I’ve never actually said those words, out loud, to you. And I want you to hear them.”
Eliott leans in and kisses Lucas softly, gently, bringing his hand up to caress Lucas’ cheek.
“Thank you,” Eliott says, his voice quiet. “I love you too.”
“I’m sorry I’m bad with words. But I love you, I do. I don’t want you to doubt that.”
Eliott just looks at him, in the way he does where Lucas feels transparent. “I don’t doubt it, Lucas. I mean, I’m glad you said it, but it’s okay. I know words aren’t your thing.”
“Maybe,” Lucas murmurs, meeting Eliott’s eyes. “But they’re yours.”
They pause then, for a brief moment, letting their words settle around then until Eliott lets out a soft laugh.
“God, Lucas, you’re such a sap!” he says, nuzzling his face into Lucas’ neck and Lucas feels so warm and content that he never wants to leave.
“Am not!”
“But you are,” Eliott says, pulling his head back to meet Lucas’ eyes before gently brushing their noses together. “But I love it. I love you.”
“I love you,” Lucas says.
I love you .
And in this universe and all the others, it’s worth it.