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George flicks the switch on the electric kettle, the little red light illuminating the shapes of his face. He sighs, tapping his fingers against the counter. It’s cold, and he’s exhausted, but sleep was far from imminent. It doesn’t matter the time or that he’d just spent the entire day doing finals. His brain has decided he was not going to sleep, and George finds that he does not have the authority to argue.
“Can’t sleep?” Clay asks, opening the fridge. He has a blanket draped around his shoulders, and George shivers. “Don’t shiver, baby.” He takes the blanket and wraps it around George gently, placing a soft kiss to the side of his head.
“Maybe I wouldn’t if you didn’t keep the house so cold,” George replies, his voice low. He can’t bring himself to take on a joking tone right now. Not when Clay is so close, his hands resting lightly on George’s waist. “Or if you didn’t stand so close to me.”
Clay raises an eyebrow, bringing his mouth close to George’s ear. “I make you shiver?” he whispers, and George feels his heart stop. Fuck. “You like that, don’t you.”
“I hate when you act like this.” George pours the hot water into a mug, the tea bag seeping the liquid with dark, minty flavors. “Why don’t you love me in the daylight? When you’re thinking straight?”
Clay doesn’t respond. Instead, he places a soft kiss to George’s neck. George turns around quickly, a hard glare on his face.
“Stop it, Clay.” Why did you kiss me there? You’ve never done that before, he thinks, but he won’t say it. Not right now. Not when they’re so close, Clay’s arms still on George’s waist, his hands gripping more tightly now. “I hate you.”
You don’t, Clay considers saying, but he decides against it. Instead, he surrenders to George’s words and makes a gentle offer. “Come to bed with me?”
“Only because I can’t sleep. I’m not doing this again, Clay.”
“You said that last time,” Clay comments, and George doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have to. It’s always the same: they’re nothing more than friends in the daylight and ambiguous after nightfall. George would give anything to kiss Clay so hard that he lost his breath, kiss him until he felt like his lungs were going to give in and then some.
He would’ve been tempted to try it if he hadn’t been mauled by sleep as soon as his head hit Clay’s pillow. Before he drifts off, though, he presses his fingers to the place where Clay had kissed his neck. Marking it. He wants Clay to mark him in a thousand other places, leaving whispered signatures across his skin.
He wants Clay to break him down and build him back up as something of his own. He doesn’t care for who he is anymore. He wants to be Clay’s, hand-crafted by the man he’s certain could hold stars in the palm of his hand and touch the sun if he so dared. Undefeatable, undeniable. George wants to be a product of courage, molded from the painful mysteries of Clay’s unspoken words.
Clay has already taken him apart, piece by piece. Weakened his knees, mystified his brain, left him sobbing on the floor, desperate for slivers of breathless love he would bask in as if they were heaven’s golden rays. All that’s left is the rebuilding. All George needs is to be repaired.
“Fix me,” George murmurs, knowing that Clay’s listening. “I’m tired of being broken, Clay. Fix me.”
“You’re not broken, George,” Clay whispers, his voice sounding so gentle and so fucking unusual. “I’ve got nothing to fix.”
“If you had nothing to fix, you wouldn’t have had anything to destroy,” George replies, his voice thick with exhaustion. “And look at what you’ve done to me.”
Clay pauses for a moment before speaking. “Sleep, baby.” George is too tired to argue but too stubborn to listen, so he stays still, willing his eyes open.
He doesn’t remember when he finally gave in. He wakes up with blankets tangled around his legs, Clay’s warmth having long disappeared. Off to class, George assumes, or maybe he's just avoiding me. He shakes his head. It’s too early to think, too early to get caught up in his typical hurricane of dizzying thoughts.
Quietly, to avoid disturbing his other roommate, George steps out towards the kitchen. He can’t quite tell if the previous night was real, if he’d really felt the quiet touch of Clay’s lips against his neck.
Clay’s lips that often said such angry words, lips that had broken his heart time and time again. George almost can’t believe that those same lips could be so gentle, pressing against his neck like a butterfly. The gentleness doesn’t matter, though. It cuts him just the same.
When he walks into the kitchen to force himself into breakfast, he stills. The mug of peppermint tea sits on the counter, having cooled somewhere in the dim hours of the night.
It was real, he thinks, dipping his finger in the liquid to test the temperature. It was all real.
Something unfamiliar bubbles up in his chest, and George can’t tell if it’s a product of long-forgotten rage or deadly longing. He’s tempted to throw the mug against the counter and shatter it, to watch as the liquid spills across the marble, spreading across the tile like blood. My blood. My blood from when you broke my heart. He wants to scream and let the ceramic bits prick into his hands, desperate to feel something other than Clay. To want something other than Clay.
But he doesn’t.
Calmly, his hands unfamiliarly still, he places the mug in the sink and tosses the teabag into the trash can. He won’t let Clay win, not anymore. He’s so tired of the desperation, the days spent counting down the hours until the moon graces the horizon and he can allow himself to be held again. When he can feel again.
For so long, Clay’s been the one breaking him under the guise of putting him back together. In reality, though, he only forces George into sickly dependency. Clay tortures him until George needs him, until he can feel George’s pain and desperation radiating from the silent gazes that pass between them. He likes to feel indebted to George, as if fixing him is an obligation and not a pastime.
But George doesn’t want that anymore. It’s time to take his reparation into his own hands, to take the shattered pieces and independently build them back together, so fortified that Clay will never be able to divide him again.
Never again.
“If you won’t fix me,” George mumbles, gazing into his reflection on the sink, “then I’ll have to fix myself.”
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