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The knock is gentle, at first.
Then it grows teeth.
Ijekiel doesn’t look up from his notes when the first slam hits the door. But he does pause. Briefly. Like a deer catching scent of blood on the breeze.
Then the voice: loud, lazy, unmistakable.
“Oi, Ijekiel! Open up, you bastard!”
Of course.
Of course it’s him.
He exhales slowly, a sharp breath through the nose, as if that will somehow make the pounding go away. It doesn’t. It only escalates, turning his study session into a farce, every word on the page blurring into noise under the tantrum outside his apartment.
“Coming!” he snaps eventually, chair scraping back as he stands. His tone is flat, clipped, annoyed in that very specific way you can only be with someone you care too much about.
He swings open the door.
Freezes.
Lucas looks like ruin.
His hair is a mess of black ink curls plastered to his forehead, shirt hanging loose and crooked on his frame. His eyes are red. Not the sharp, cocky crimson that cuts through a room like a blade. These are glassy, wet, lost. There’s a bottle-shaped bruise on his breath and it clings to him with the shamelessness of someone who’s fallen too far to care.
Ijekiel says nothing.
Just grabs him.
He pulls Lucas’s arm over his shoulders, wordlessly, like the world hasn’t just shifted a few degrees off-axis. Lucas leans into him without resistance, dead weight and heat.
“You smell like horrible,” Ijekiel mutters, more to himself than anyone.
Lucas doesn’t answer.
He dumps him on the couch like he’s returning something broken and expensive, hands already moving toward the kitchen. But a tug at his pant leg halts him.
“We broke up,” comes the whisper.
Ijekiel stills. Turns, slowly. “…What?”
Lucas doesn’t lift his head. “She dumped me.”
The words knock something loose in his chest. A breath. A thought. A memory.
Athanasia and Lucas, orbiting each other like gravity was designed for them. Like she was the sun and he was a star too stubborn to burn out. Ijekiel had seen it — how soft Lucas was when he thought no one noticed. How his hands curled around her like she was fragile, rare, divine.
Ijekiel had seen it, and—
Felt it.
What it meant to be outside of that. Looking in.
He doesn’t say any of this.
Instead: “Okay. Got it.” He shrugs Lucas off his leg. “Let me get you some water before you throw up on my floor.”
Lucas doesn’t let go.
Instead, he clutches harder. Childlike. Unsteady.
Ijekiel huffs, returns with the glass and crouches beside him. Lucas tries to take it, but his fingers tremble too hard. So Ijekiel does it for him.
Tilts his chin. Presses the glass gently to his lips.
Their eyes meet.
And God, Ijekiel forgets how close they are. How pretty his mouth looks parted like that. How his lashes tremble like they’re fragile.
He catches himself staring.
Curses under his breath.
Shoves the water at him a little too forcefully.
Lucas sputters. “What the fuck was that?!”
“You’re lucky I didn’t drown you,” Ijekiel mutters, ears tinged red as he hurls a towel in his direction. “Go take a shower before you make my entire apartment smell like your bad decisions.”
He expects a snide retort. A drunk whine. Anything.
Instead, Lucas looks up, quiet.
“If I shower,” he says, voice soft, like it might break, “would you stay?”
Ijekiel blinks.
What kind of question is that?
“Hey.” Lucas’s eyes are shiny. “Would you?”
And the way he says it — raw, exhausted, empty — it’s too much.
“…Yeah. Whatever. Just go,” Ijekiel says, waving him off like it’s no big deal. Like his ribs aren’t creaking with the pressure of holding everything in.
The water stops.
Ijekiel’s back is turned, fingers sifting through a drawer he’s already checked three times. Anything to not think. Not feel. Not remember the way Lucas asked him to stay.
The door creaks.
He turns.
And nearly dies.
Lucas stands in the doorway, skin flushed pink from heat, a towel slung recklessly low on his hips like shame never existed. Droplets trickle down his chest and trail along the hard lines of his stomach, a silent, treacherous map for Ijekiel’s eyes.
He throws the hoodie too hard. “Get dressed, you menace.”
Lucas grins, slow and lopsided. “Why are you looking away?”
“Because I value my dignity,” Ijekiel says, ears burning. “Put the hoodie on.”
Lucas doesn’t.
Instead, he walks forward slowly, deliberately, teasing. Like he knows. Like he wants Ijekiel to look.
He doesn’t. He can’t.
Until suddenly he has to, because Lucas is pressing him against the wall, towel still very much in place and a whole storm of consequences hanging between them.
“What are you doing?!” Ijekiel yelps, heart slamming against his ribs.
Lucas just rests his forehead against his shoulder, quiet now. Quieter than he’s been all night.
“Will you sleep with me?” he whispers. “Please.”
And Ijekiel’s breath hitches.
Because he wants to. God, he wants to.
But not like this. Not when Lucas is drunk and broken and thinking of someone else.
“Go to sleep,” he says, gentle but firm. “You’re not thinking straight.”
Lucas doesn’t fight it. Just lets himself be guided to bed like a wounded thing.
But just as Ijekiel turns to leave, an arm snakes around his neck, dragging him down.
“At least give me a kiss?” Lucas mumbles.
Ijekiel freezes.
He doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t mean him.
“I’m not Athanasia,” he says, voice barely above a breath, his head pressed to Lucas’s chest.
Lucas hums. Sleepy. “Didn’t say you were.”
Liar.
Ijekiel closes his eyes. Wishes he could fall asleep and wake up on the other side of this moment.
But he doesn’t. Not yet.
Because something stupid and soft is stirring inside him. Something that wants. Something that hopes.
Just this once.
He lifts his head, presses a trembling kiss to Lucas’s cheek, and turns away before he can see the damage it does to either of them.
He checks.
Lucas is asleep.
Good.
Or maybe not.
He doesn’t know.
He tries to peel himself free from the arm wrapped around him. Fails.
Eventually, he just… gives up. Lets his body settle beside Lucas’s, lets exhaustion take the wheel.
His eyes flutter shut.
“…Goddamn it,” he whispers, one last time.