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It’s gone three in the morning and Robert stopped drinking an hour ago, but the lingering buzz of those last few drinks still has the room a little more out-of-focus than usual and his steps a little more deliberate. His mind, though, is singularly focused.
There is a picture of Arek on the bookshelf. It shows him gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance like some great philosopher, and it’s somehow even more captivating in its glass frame than the subject is in real life.
Robert should probably stop stealing people’s personal photos.
This one’s for an investigation, though, and it’s not as if Arek can’t take another one. Robert needs this one. Besides, anyone at the party could have stolen it. It’s the perfect crime.
Almost as soon as Robert has clumsily stuffed the photo of Arek into his back pocket, the man himself appears in the doorway. Robert fumbles for a book and an excuse.
Arek is casual, hands in his pockets and stride unhurried. His advance is terrifying nonetheless. “Want to borrow it?” He nods towards the book that Robert grabbed at random. “You sensed him. He’s one of us.”
Robert looks down at the cover rather than meet Arek’s eyes. “I knew I’d seen him somewhere.”
Arek hums, as if the conversation he himself started isn’t interesting to him, and makes to take the book from Robert’s grasp. Robert holds it tighter. Arek, unperturbed, simply loops his fingers around Robert’s wrist, a shackle Robert could easily break if he chose. “Maybe at the university. He’s our lecturer.”
Without the light, buoying drunkenness that propelled him through the rest of the party and smoothed over the awkward edges of his lie, Robert doesn’t know how to make a graceful exit – or, if he were to stay, how to steer the conversation towards safer waters so that Arek won’t step closer to him, like he is now, and gaze at him with those soft, appraising eyes. Robert would – should – guide them back to shore.
But Arek’s hand is on his arm, a light touch that nevertheless draws Robert helplessly out to sea and steals a stuttered cool party from his lips. Robert swallows.
“So,” Arek says.
Robert swallows again. Manages a weak answering “so.”
Arek’s eyes go half-closed on a laugh, but Robert doesn’t miss their slow flick down to his lips and back up again to meet Robert’s gaze. Robert can’t remember the last time he blinked. He can’t let himself, though, not now, when he might miss Arek’s next move, or some minute change of expression telling him his next move.
Arek isn’t blinking either. His eyes dart back and forth to stare directly into Robert’s searching and unsure. His lips curl up into a conspiratorial smile.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Robert does mean to answer, but Arek’s hand is on his bicep now, inching its way towards his shoulder and the nape of his neck, and until it stills Robert can’t find the words to shatter the anticipatory silence. He doesn’t even dare nod, lest Arek take that as a sign to halt.
Arek’s smile grows. “I like you,” he says, simple as that. As if it is that simple. Arek says it like he has no reason to fear Robert’s response, despite every circumstance of their acquaintance nudging him towards caution, and something in that is as emboldening as it is terrifying. Arek will get himself into trouble, trusting strange men like that, but not tonight. Robert will break his trust someday, but he will not betray this shy, schoolboy smile, more suited to a childhood romance than a college party.
Robert almost can’t fathom it – something so simple and innocent from a man he met outside a public toilet. He is left floundering, adrift, anchored to the floor only by Arek’s eyes on his. “You do?”
Arek steps closer, crowding Robert against the bookshelf and cutting off his view of the door. Robert grips his borrowed book to his chest like a small, ineffective shield, good only to keep enough space between them to hide how fast his heart is beating.
Arek pushes the book gently aside. “Couldn’t you tell?”
“You flirted with everyone tonight,” Robert says. He knew it was flirting; he grew used to noticing and then ignoring men’s appraising looks long ago and he doubts the first half of that skill has failed him now. But it was easy enough not to dwell on it when he could console himself that Arek was like that with everyone. No need for self-restraint; there was nothing there to steel himself against.
But now there is.
“Maybe I did,” Arek says, plucking the book from Robert’s unresisting grip and replacing it blindly on the shelf. His eyes never leave Robert’s. “But I like you best.”
Nothing remains between them but air: Robert backed against the shelf, hardcover spines pressing into his shoulder blades, Arek’s foot nudging between his own off-kilter ones. His heart races, but he feels as though he is taking no breaths at all, lightheaded and desperate for oxygen.
Arek takes one final step and Robert sucks in an involuntary, hitching breath, dizziness clearing with the certainty and clarity of what is about to happen. Arek’s knee is between his own, nudging them apart, Arek’s hand dipping into Robert’s back pocket to pull Robert flush against him.
“What’s this?” he says, glancing down.
Robert’s heart stops.
Arek fishes the damning photo from Robert’s pocket, still just centimeters away, and frowns. “You stole a picture of me?”
“I,” Robert begins, but there’s no denying it. The evidence is right there in Arek’s hand.
“You know what that means?” Arek’s frown has melted into a gin, slyer and bolder than it was before. “I think it means you like me too.”
It’s too convenient. The perfect alibi for the perfect crime.
In that moment, it isn’t even a lie.
He attempts a smile to match Arek’s. If there is a shred of plausible deniability in saying yes without saying it, he will grab onto that with all the charm he can muster up. “Couldn’t you tell?”
“Well.” Arek brings his hand back up to trace a finger along Robert’s jaw. “I didn’t notice you flirt with anybody else but me.”
He sounds pleased, and he looks pleased when Robert says, honestly, “I don’t want to.”
Arek blinks, slow and satisfied, and Robert can finally look away. “What do you want?”
“I want –“ Robert’s eyes are watering, with tears or the dryness of being open too long or both. He closes them and breathes in deep. “What you wanted when you came in here.”
Arek makes no move. Robert can’t see his face, can’t tell what he is supposed to say next. He wants… he wants Arek to make the choice for him, wants the book back, wants a shield of self-deception and restraint.
He wants plausible deniability to go to hell.
“I like you. Please kiss me.”
The photograph flutters to the floor as Arek does.
This time, when Arek slips his hand into Robert’s pocket, Robert lets himself be tugged and speaks his assent in a sigh against Arek’s lips rather than say it out loud. Arek will know.
They part, hazy-eyed and grinning with the giddy shyness of boys consummating a schoolyard crush, only when Tadek and Maciek make their mumbled way towards the door. The silence around them has broken.
Robert sags back into the bookshelf and runs a hand through his hair, putting distance between them again. “I should head out too. I’ve got the kids in the morning.”
“Okay,” Arek says softly. If he is disappointed, he doesn’t look it. He leans in to press a gentle kiss to Robert’s lips and retrieves the book from its haphazard perch on the shelf. Then he stoops, grabs the photo, slips it into the dust jacket, and presses it into Robert’s arms. “Here. You might like this, too.”
“I can’t take your photo,” Robert says, but he clutches the book to his chest once more. It’s a grounding weight, solid and academic, a reminder of the real adult lives they both must lead. The picture on the dust jacket might come in handy.
“It’s a loan. I’ll let you take another one when you return it.”
Robert pulls the photo out to trace his finger over Arek’s pensive mouth, helpless to give it back like he should. “I couldn’t do you justice.”
“I’ll tell you another secret,” Arek says, taking it from Robert once again and putting it, once again, into Robert’s pocket. The warmth of his fingertips lingers like a brand just below Robert’s belt loop. “I just want a pretext to ask you back here.”
“Because you like me.”
Arek grins and reels him in for one last kiss. “And you like me.”
“I do,” Robert says, ducking his head so Arek won’t see him blink away the threat of tentative tears. “But I don’t think a shaky polaroid can capture all the things I like.”
“Then you’ll just have to keep coming back to look at them in person.”
Robert lifts his head for a final glance, an image of Arek’s smiling face to envision until he sees it again. He doesn’t want to leave. “You make it hard to look away.”
“Then don’t,” Arek whispers, fingers once again encircling Robert’s wrist, pulling Robert towards him, through the doorway and down the hall, an irresistible current carrying Robert out into the uncharted sea. “I don’t ever want you to take your eyes off me.”
In the following minutes, stumbling out of his clothes as he tries to memorize every plane of Arek’s body, Robert at least has the presence of mind to prop the photo safely against the dresser mirror. After, with Arek’s face tucked into his neck, peacefully asleep, Robert stares at that perfect face until he, too, closes his eyes.