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“you like it,” she says, eyes glimmering from the stars spun overhead. crying, he nods; he holds her tight.
his mama’s hands are warm where they press over his back. she gives good hugs, and she gives them freely. he likes that she does: her fingers in his hair where she scratches lightly, lovingly, gentle arms the only solace when he’s hurt, when it’s time for bed, when he needs it; even when he doesn’t. she doesn’t hold back, and neither does he. the vanilla of her hair is his favourite smell, maybe. it makes him feel safe.
her touch is warm, soothing. light. his father’s, on the other hand, is not.
he does not hug. doesn’t like to, lucas thinks. instead, he’s fond of giving a firm pat on the back, or rough handshakes, or a high five on a very rare occasion, all buddy-buddy slaps entirely not meant for a ten-year-old. his fingers are cool and clinical and commanding when they grip his arm, and they grip it often. lucas can only do too much to not shrug it off, to not recoil away from his touch.
his ways stand in such violent contrasts with his mum’s. he never curls up with them on the movie nights they have on saturdays, that’s just how he is, because he’s the same with his mum, as far as lucas knows. even when she becomes sick and dwindles away and does not get well again, he remains cold; he isn’t warm, never will be.
lucas has learned not to expect anything less than careful, meaningless touches.
he gets used to it, to locking that part of himself away that still wants. that never learned how to stop. over the years, he’s been given little leave to express himself, and he learns how not to. to pull away, to never let his hand linger, to repress the memories of his mum’s touch and her hands. he’s never been the one to forget. lucas misses her, misses the warmth that usually settled in her hold, and in the cool vacancies of the night, everything is far more pronounced. but that kind of things barely let him breathe, leave him with a terrible ache in his chest. he has to learn to put them away.
he doesn’t find much warmth in his new home, or rather, his only home. his nights are spent awake in a bed that feels too big, with the bone-crushing knowledge that he does not even have a previous home to miss. he gazes wistfully at mika when he places his arm around lisa so carelessly, mindlessly. the way lisa snuggles closer to him on the couch. they learn to leave him out of it, because, well, it’s his fault, isn’t it? he’s grown so sensitive over the years that little touches come to him as a shock, especially when he’s not expecting them. so.
he pulls away when arthur moves to rest his chin on his shoulder. flinches, without meaning to, when mika reaches forward to what he can guess is ruffle his hair, too many times. and they take it as a hint to keep their hands to themselves, after a while, to not linger too much near him. they’ve assumed it’s the touching that bother him, he believes, and not the fact that it happens without intent or unexpectedly. it hurts, but no one says a word, so he doesn’t have to, either.
it’s easier this way.
he doesn’t date much throughout high school. there are occasional flings, but he leaves too soon. before there can be any questions. the sex is great, mostly, it’s the after that makes him queasy. he’s never wanted to stay, anyway.
and then there is marc, who breaks up with him towards the end of summer, when he’s still trying to deal with the fact that college is starting in less than two weeks. marc’s whole face goes red when he says those words, as though he’s let them out accidently. they sound hollow, distant, but he doesn’t take them back.
“i’ve never been with someone who’s so distant after sex. during it, even,” he tells lucas, barely glancing in his eyes, stuttering throughout. the tight line of his narrow shoulders makes lucas want to reach out and touch him.
he merely shrugs, eyes averted.
“you’re doing it again. putting up a front,” marc says, in that soft voice he uses when he talks to his parent’s labrador. strangely enough, it stings. “i know something's wrong, but you won't talk to me. it’s not fair to me, lucas.”
and lucas wants to say – there’s nothing wrong. something does not have to be necessarily wrong for him for him to be like this. he wants to say that this is how he’s always been, how he’s cultivated to be. it’s just that the thought of being that physically close to someone without any intent makes him ache. he wants to. he doesn’t. and it’s another one of his faults.
it ends with a whispered apology from lucas, a promise of no hard feelings from marc. it ends, and it hurts. but it’s already ended before lucas can think about redeeming himself. and marc doesn’t take these words back. lucas isn’t sure if he really wants him to.
the university life starts without much fanfare. it rains for a week straight, thunder and lightning draping over paris in a watery sheen. the nights take on a gray hue, shivery and mildly unpleasant in the residual heat. dried leaves adorn the sidewalks and the grounds, and there is always some other thing that’s dying. the taste of an approaching storm is too blatant on his tongue; a perennial chill in his fingers that never goes away. nights are the same with their sullen clouds. it makes him miss the sun, and strangely enough, the stars too.
somehow, lucas knows that none of them will make much difference.
he’s grown used to the feelings the thought of physical touch brings him. ache, longing, apprehension — it’s all there like an ugly monster; crowding in his chest and pressing against his ribs. feelings made of broken metaphors and similes; mindless little synonyms stuck in his throat. but he is not a poet, has never been.
still, there’s something to be said about the way eliott demaury makes him feel the first time he bumps into him, that very first day, and every other time after. he’s a year ahead of them, but he fits into lucas life as though he was always meant to be there. his smile is serene, pretty, those glimmers like stars in his eyes, ocean-clear and beautiful. an unnatural sort of charm in his voice. charcoal always stains the skin over his hands — lucas watches him run nervous fingers over the jut of his bottom lip, rub his thumb and forefinger together, and there’s charcoal. deep obsidian smudged at the edges of his fingertips, against the pale of his hand, on the underside of his jaw.
and the scent of forest and sunlight — it makes him feel like eliott might be warm.
the days when the sun does appear are spent in the courtyard, leaning against a concrete wall which remains cold to touch, blending in with the contrived shades. they don’t stay around for long, though, because autumn has come with biting wind – all that cold, it makes for a saturnine landscape. they’ve grown used to spending what little time they have on their hands like houseplants reaching for the sun.
not too far away, someone sighs. “i missed it so much.” footsteps shuffle on the cobblestone. above him, against the faint sunlight, eliott stands, gaze soft, entirely affectionate. and maybe there’s irony hidden in those words, but lucas does not mind. “did you?” he asks. all around, it still smells like dirt and mud. a burn stretches itself across his lungs. eliott shrugs. “didn’t you?”
“our lucas misses the stars,” yann says, snickering from somewhere to his right. it has eliott looking away, but lucas just stares, and all he can see are the moles dotting the side of his face like little birds and the way the sun haloes around him.
“ah, well, same difference.” he turns to face him with the corners of his mouth curving up softly. “in a parallel universe, some other star is the sun.”
it’s so unexpected, the way he looks so sincere, that it has lucas sucking in a sharp breath. his words are pretty, deceptively so, flimsy in the way they make lucas hope. he blinks, flustered. “i didn’t take you for someone who believed in them.”
“we all have something we believe in,” the conviction in his voice is unnerving. his eyes twinkle. “maybe you don’t know me well enough.”
maybe there’s more truth to it than lucas likes to believe. maybe there are a million different things he really does not know about eliott. but he knows that smile. his voice. the pretty things his hands are able to create. his gentleness to his words. and it’s enough. a certain fondness makes home in his heart.
“parallel universes?” basile is saying. “it’s so cool, isn’t it, lucas?”
no words come, so he nods. there aren’t many things he could say, anyway.
the first time eliott leans in and touches him, his body freezes up.
it starts, as it always does, with a jibe from basile, and soon it’s turning into meaningless banter. they’re standing outside the coffee shop they like to frequent at the end of each day, and lucas’ coffee isn’t hot enough to soothe his shivering body. his friends rise to the bait almost immediately; he tunes out most of it in favour of rubbing his hands together, and then arthur and basile are laughing, and yann is laughing with them.
eliott joins in, too, and he is bending forward, gripping lucas’ shoulder lightly as he laughs and laughs. it’s a pretty sound. his fingers don’t meet lucas’ skin, pressing just over the material of his scarf, but lucas recoils, panicking, heart beating all wrong. the sudden touch is too difficult to bear. eliott doesn’t seem to miss it; lucas watches him straightening up instantly, smile slipping. a speculative look adorns his features as he studies lucas’ face.
belatedly, he realizes that no one is laughing anymore.
“lucas—” yann steps forward, lucas steps back, quickly making to leave. eliott doesn’t say a word, but he watches him go. lucas wonders what he sees.
the second time never comes. eliott is careful, almost too careful, like maybe he doesn’t understand. but he doesn’t ask, and lucas never tells. eliott never makes another attempt to touch him, and it’s silly and it should not hurt. but it does. something pointy blooming in him, all-consuming, hot like the shame that floods his insides.
“you’re awfully quiet today,” eliott comments as they’re making their way to class. to lucas’ class; eliott doesn’t even study in the same building. today, yesterday, every day. the words echo with a strange sort of pain. “lucas—” it makes him stop and stumble. he turns, searching eliott’s face, thinking this is it.
“i don’t know what you mean,” he says. there’s panic bleeding through his voice. “—we’re here.”
eliott averts his eyes swiftly, apologetically. there’s something like hurt contorting his features. he nods and says, “we’re here.” and then, “see you, lucas.”
(back home, lucas feels the cold as it seeps through his bones. it’s relentless, still, lonely. he thinks about eliott and pain and eliott, and his friends all looking at him like he’s a weakling. he imagines eliott asking them about him, imagines everyone chuckling and saying things like, oh, you know our lucas. he’s a little fucked up like that.
guilt churns messily in his stomach. he shouldn’t even be thinking thoughts like these)
september bleeds into october. nothing changes much beyond that. a certain chill infuses the air, sharp and biting as it always is. nighttime lengthens and drags, pressing through his windows with an inexorable hunger; it feels too slow. the rain still hasn’t found a rhythm. it falls and falls and falls over melancholy shades, flowers staying dead, soft thunder brooding overhead. it’s all the same.
the second time does come, just not in the way he’d been expecting it.
the sun sets. it’s dark and cold when they make their way towards the party daphne has invited them to. a friend of my friend’s, she says, the house isn’t too far from lucas’ place, their breaths coming out in feathery swirls as they make their way over. he stays behind when everyone else moves towards the living room to dance, and then eliott finds him there, in the kitchen, as he’s nursing his beer and searching for an excuse to head home early. it’s loud and packed and it makes his skin crawl, but there’s also something feathery beating underneath his ribcage when eliott gives him one of his grins.
like maybe he understands.
“it’s getting crowded.” there’s something hesitant in eliott’s voice. “would you like to go somewhere else?”
he nods. “i’d like to get out of here.”
eliott leads him away from the kitchen and out towards the door. they pass by yann and basile and arthur as they cross the living room, all of them giving them exaggerated thumb-ups and not saying anything else. they gather their jackets and lucas’ scarf by the door and emerge out into the front porch. the night is dark, so dark and completely lacking colour, but it isn’t raining. he breathes out a little easily.
eliott pulls out a joint from behind his ear as they walk. he turns to glace over at lucas, at the way he fidgets with his hands, his eyes colourful and colourless all at once. “do you mind?” his voice echoes strangely in the night.
lucas shakes his head. “it’s fine.”
the streets are empty, lit only by the streetlamps; there are no stars out. they’ve started walking towards lucas’ flat-share without him realizing, and he watches, enthralled, as eliott lights the joint and takes a hit, cheeks hollowing out. the smoke he exhales curls upwards in the air before disappearing.
wordlessly, he passes the joint to lucas, holding it so their fingers don’t touch when lucas takes it from him. the smoke settles almost hesitantly in his chest. he coughs on it, weakly.
“we’re nearing your place,” eliott states, after the joint gets stubbed under his shoe, and it’s another thing he knows about lucas without having to ask. the thought should alarm him. it doesn’t. “can i ask you something? you don’t have to answer, of course.”
worry eats away at his edges. glancing up at the saturnine sky, he thinks, this is it. “go on.”
“do you mind me touching you?” there’s a soft hint of reluctance in eliott’s voice; it’s not a why, or a how, either, but the words are still sharp. he could choose to not answer. he could. it’s eliott after all, he’d understand.
“i—no,” he says instead, and because it’s eliott, he makes himself keep going. “no, it’s not that.”
eliott nods. keeps on walking forward. doesn’t say anything else.
it’s cold, so cold, and maybe it’s just that, or the way eliott seems to keep his distance. it must have been the warmth lucas knows eliott wicks off, but the words come out frantically. “it’s not the touching.” he stops, they both do. “or maybe it is. it’s also that it happens without any intent, and when i don’t expect it.”
there’s a moment of silence before eliott speaks. “okay.” the light in his eyes is burning, barely concealed.
“okay,” lucas says, letting out a breathy laugh, disbelief hidden in the layers. there’s not much to say after that.
soon enough they’re outside lucas’ flat, and then eliott’s stepping closer right into his space, his fingers hovering right in front of him, never touching.
“a strand of your hair is sticking up,” he murmurs, his stare burning through the cold. “can i?”
and lucas — he nods.
it’s not touching, not really, but he has to breathe deeply as eliott fixes the strand. “see you, lucas,” he says, like all those weeks before, and he’s already turning away before lucas can form any sentence.
it’s not touching, not really, but it’s the first gentle thing he’s ever allowed himself in what feels like forever.
it shouldn’t come as a surprise when, after that night, it doesn’t become a thing. eliott doesn’t ask again, doesn’t come close enough that lucas has to back way. he’s always touching someone else, though: a hand to the crook of yann’s arm, playfully shoving arthur’s shoulder, ruffling his own hair often, like maybe his fingers are aching to hold something. it doesn’t stop lucas from wanting to reach out, his heart taking on an odd beat that only grows worse.
the carnival happens towards the end of november, when autum has already given way to winter and hard frost, the incongruous way with which it engraves itself over the ground. no one seems to mind it; lucas has long since stopped sharing how he really feels, because, well, his words are frayed and loose enough that they might run away, were he to set them free. he often wonders how long he can keep them in for.
it shouldn’t come as a surprise when they all end up going, when eliott asks, low and sure and not too long after, if lucas wants to leave. and, maybe, that has become a thing. it surprises him, however, when this time they end up at eliott’s place. he raids his fridge as lucas peruses the living room. there are sketches taped to the walls, and a piano pushed towards the corner, blending in with everything else. his place is cluttered, messy in a way that feels lived in. home. a small part of lucas envies him for it.
eliott comes out of the kitchen with two bottles. he’s smiling in that entirely soft way of his. “make yourself at home,” he comments, plopping down on the couch and placing the beers on the coffee table. lucas watches him tuck his hands under his legs. he’s restless.
lucas joins him soon after, close enough to touch, but there are still many inches between them. silence is all there is, neither of them willing to bite the bullet. he doesn’t know what he is here for. doesn’t know how much longer he can stay before leaving becomes necessary. he knows that, maybe, eliott wants to talk. maybe they’ll do that. that, or maybe, eliott will kiss him. he doesn’t know.
and it shouldn’t surprise him when the thought does not fill him with trepidation. he trusts eliott. completely, utterly, recklessly, he trusts him. it’s probably what makes him talk.
“i don’t touch, eliott,” he sniffs, aware that it’s not new information, not really. men didn’t touch without intent, that’s what he’s been taught. “sometimes i don’t want to. sometimes i can’t. i will never initiate, sometimes i’ll ask you to. but it — you do understand that it’s not something you can expect to change, or try to, don’t you? this is how it’s always been— how I’ve always been.”
he averts his gaze, body shrinking into itself, breathing weirdly. hands clenching in his lap, uncomfortable inside his skin, and he’s tired, so tired and cold, everything hurting. the beers stand forgotten, sweating improbably on the table. one of eliott’s hand twitches at his side. the lights glow a waning shade of white, so different from the moonlight, yet so similar in the way they wash eliott’s skin in plain ivory.
eliott doesn’t say anything for a long moment. glancing up, lucas sees him swallow. “i would never, lucas,” eliott says eventually. it’s so stiff that it startles him, and maybe there’s desperation bleeding through his voice. it breaks him. “i would never do that, you know that right?”
lucas looks at him, just looks. eliott looks back. his eyes are a haunting gray.
“eliott —”
“—unless you ask me to—”
“eliott,” he says again, voice wavering but it’s loud enough to drown the beating of his heart, colour burning on his cheeks, his ears. when it feels like he’s not going to fall apart — “my hands are cold.”
the statement hangs in the air for a moment. and then, eliott breathes out, almost like relief, a smile tugging the corners of his lips up, and when he shifts closer, minutely, a hand coming in front of him, he exhales too, his own smile pulling across his mouth. everything else seems to fall into place, feathery, alight. hopeful.
“i’m going to hold your hand now,” eliott breathes, “is that alright?”
he nods, sure. eliott’s smile is blinding, moon-like.
a hand reaches out towards his lap, before a fingertip traces delicately over the metacarpals, trailing down to his knuckles, his fingers, and then — and then eliott’s hand wraps around his own. it’s tender, so tender, like maybe eliott is a little skin-hungry himself. lucas inhales sharply, the sensation of eliott’s skin, the heat pouring out of it, the affection — it’s too much, but it’s not unpleasant. lucas watches it all, barely breathing, awed.
eliott demaury is careful with his words and his touch, and with everything else he is. careful in the way the night is with its assembly of stars, that is so unlike what lucas has always known, a certain gentleness in his bones. he pulls away, leaning back against the couch, sympathizing with the beer bottles standing bereft, but his heart is singing, flailing in the cage of his body. eliott leans back, lucas watches, his eyes shut closed, mouth curved up in a soft smile.
he lets out a breathy laugh, night curling around them, soaked in understanding and maybe-love in the heady proximity and it’s warm — warm, warm, warm.
