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"Here," Martín says, setting one of the plastic cups he's carrying on the corner of Andrés's desk, taking a sip from the other one like this is nothing at all.
Andrés looks at him and then at the nondescript cup, a little suspicious. He only met this guy a week ago, when he asked for Andrés's notes from the previous lecture.
"I'll hear what you've got to offer me," Andrés had responded. That's how it all began: with distrust, with the promise of equivalent exchange.
"Look, it's pretty obvious," Martín shot back, with the impatient sigh of someone whose value should have already been clear. Someone who deserved things and knew it. "I can trade you for last Friday. I know you missed that one."
In the end, Andrés had agreed, but he had done so just because he did need those notes. He came to see that Martín was meticulous, that his notes were detailed and neat, and his thoughts were sharp and quick.
But he had thought their dealings were done and over with after that one exchange. They have exactly this one shared course, and Andrés doesn't really see any benefit from any further time spent together.
"You drink coffee, right?"
"I prefer tea," Andrés says, because he's struggling to understand why Martín's doing this.
"Noted." Martín takes the cup from him and downs it, which– rude, incredibly rude, Andrés would have drank it. "Did you have a good weekend?"
"I suppose. Why?"
There's a shrug in response, and Martín loiters there still. "Mine was fine, too. I got a job at that bar – you know the old–looking one, near the library?"
"No."
"Well, I got a job there. Had my first day, on Saturday. It was busy, but it was fine."
"Okay, then."
"This seat taken?" He doesn't wait for a response, puts his coffee on the corner of the desk and drops his bag on the floor. He sits down and ignores the glare Andrés gives him.
Andrés keeps glaring at him, as Martín spreads out his things and begins taking notes, expects that the other shoe may drop at any moment now, and then he'll find out why he's really here.
Martín offers him no further explanation.
"Here you go," Martín says, a few days later, "Got you a tea this time."
"Thank you," Andrés says, taking it in his hands before Martín has the chance to rescind the offer again.
Martín looks at him up and down. "I like your scarf."
"Thank you."
"Handmade?"
"Yes. Tatiana knitted it, I think." Andrés doesn't fully understand crafts, but she had been awfully proud of her work.
"Oh. You and her still a thing?"
"No."
"Shame," Martín says, but he doesn't look it. No, he looks like he's collecting small change in his pockets, and is only a few coins short of something he wants.
He takes out his lecture notes – Andrés sees that they're not neat, after all, but actually rather all over the place. Nothing like the ones he copied last week. He takes note of this, but doesn't ask, as he would not want to seem like he cares, either way.
Martín trails by his side, after the lecture, making one–sided but constant conversation. They run into Tatiana and Martín greets her warmly – apparently they're already acquainted. Andrés feels strangely sidelined as they exchange pleasantries. He can see Martín's body language become more relaxed as he speaks to her, and it annoys him.
Once she's made her excuses and left, with one last, apparently meaningful, glance at Andrés, he turns to Martín.
"Are you interested in her?" he asks, suddenly having a realisation. "Is that what this is all about? You're trying to get with Tatiana?" It makes sense, when he thinks about it, this whole act – getting into Andrés's good graces and using him to gain an introduction to her.
Martín laughs, which to Andrés is honestly incomprehensible. Tatiana is gorgeous, one of the most beautiful women he has ever seen.
Just because it didn't work out between them, it doesn't mean he can't still appreciate that. He did not turn blind overnight.
"No, I'm not," Martín says.
"Why not?"
"I'm gay," Martín says, looking at Andrés like he's half–prepared to fight him.
Andrés hums at that thought.
"Well, I suppose that is a reasonable explanation."
"Sure," Martín huffs, "Because every straight guy has to adore her, right?"
"She's lovely," Andrés insists.
"Oh, I don't disagree. She's just not my type. All yours."
"I'm not interested in her anymore."
"You were quite interested, for a while there. The it couple, all that."
He shrugs. "We've both moved on. She makes for a decent friend, though." He was surprised that she wanted to stay friends, but he doesn't mean he minds it. She's beautiful, and she's funny.
"Good for you, then," Martín says. "Hit me up if you ever want to try it with a guy, hm?" He laughs to punctuate his words, but Andrés thinks there's some truth to them. An offer he would doubtlessly make good on, if put on the spot.
On Tuesday, Martín is back, with another tea in his hand, his fingers red where they meet it and pale otherwise. He doesn't say anything this time, just places it on Andrés's desk.
"Why are you doing this?" Andrés asks.
Martín shrugs, and it makes him look elusive. "I don't need a reason. We're friends, that's good enough. It's cold out there, and I always go grab myself a coffee anyway, I wouldn't survive here without one– so why not?"
Andrés doesn't know what to do with that one. He thinks he might have just preferred it, if Martín confessed to some criminal masterplan, aimed at ruining his whole entire life.
But that he considers them–
"Hmm."
"Satisfactory answer?"
"Not entirely."
Martín laughs. "Fine. I plan to poison you one day, when the time is right. I'm making sure you're used to accepting drinks from me, no questions asked."
Andrés, too, finds himself laughing at that. It's in the delivery, in the glint in Martín's eye as he talks – like he's convinced that they're on the same side of this particular joke, just them.
"I'll haunt you."
"And then we can get into corporate espionage or something. Bet you'd be stellar at that."
"Here," Andrés says, placing a coffee at the corner of Martín's table in the library.
The way Martín's eyes widen slightly, and the way his expression softens into one of joy, makes Andrés feel like he might have been a bad friend all this time.
He owes Martín so many coffees by now.
"Why are you here, anyway?" he asks to change the subject, so that they don't need to unpack all of that, today or ever. "You don't seem the type."
Martín grimaces. "I'm not – it's the heating."
He doesn't elaborate, but while Andrés isn't mathematically gifted, he can still put two and two together.
He doesn't particularly enjoy the feeling that follows from this realisation.
But he's still back the next day, another coffee in his hands.
"What's this for?" Martín asks him, even as he accepts the offering.
"I owe you – quite a few of these by now."
Martín sighs, and for a moment it looks like he wants to bang his head on the table, but his laptop is in the way. "That's not what this– you know what, never mind. You don't owe me a thing, but thank you anyway."
Andrés doesn't really understand that, so he chooses to ignore it.
"You with someone?" he asks instead.
"No," Martín says, clearing some of his things to make space for Andrés on the other side of the table. "Stay. It'll be less awful if you do."
He does.
And it is.
On Friday, Martín sips his coffee once, grimaces, leaves it to cool on the corner of his desk. It's uncharacteristic, to say the least.
"What's wrong with your coffee?"
"Too much sugar."
"Let me try it."
Martín raises an eyebrow at that, amused. Andrés can read the joke from his eyes – a talent he hadn't known himself to possess.
He takes the coffee and sips it.
"You're right, it is vile. What did you do to it?"
"It's the vending machine's fault. Completely. You know it has settings for sugar, right? It maxed them without asking me. I'm going to ruin its career, later. Now it's either I suffer through that or I suffer without coffee. It's more than vile – it's inhumane."
Andrés smiles at his theatrics, at the way Martín wasn't even going to complain until Andrés invited him to, and how is now going on a mile a minute.
"We could go to the café," Andrés offers, "Grab you a new one. On me, for your truly inhumane suffering."
"Oh, but it's promising to be such a riveting lecture. A guest speaker and everything. I don't know if I have it in my heart to miss this one."
Andrés gathers his sketchbook and coloured pencils, which he had already spread out for the lecture. When he turns to look at Martín in question, his friend is already halfway out the door.
"You know, there is a flaw with this plan. It just occurred to me."
Andrés doesn't know much about Martín, but he can still tell that this didn't just occur to him. He doesn't know how, or when, or why, but he has learned to read something in between the lines, written in a language he hasn't mastered but there all the same. "And what's that?" he asks, anyway, entertaining the question.
"Since we're both here," Martín says, barely hiding his smile, "Missing the lecture. Who's going to take notes?"
Andrés laughs. "Do we care?" he offers in return. "We can steal them from somebody, if we want them. I'll distract some girl while you rip the pages from her notebook. Easy."
"You could come to mine."
Martín stares at him.
"Heating's included in the rent, so I keep it on all the time."
"Lucky bastard," he mutters, which Andrés notes isn't actually a no.
"We could study together. And it would be a nicer place to concentrate."
"Everyone's so fucking annoying here, I agree. Did I tell you some girls were doing their makeup on the stairwell? I had to quite literally step over them. And they were so fucking loud."
"I can believe you. So?"
Martín shrugs, feigned casual. "Suppose I can come check it out. See how the other half lives."
"You weren't kidding about the heat– I think I've been cold to my very core since October. October. I think I genuinely forgot what comfort feels like." Martín takes off his shoes and his outer layer and heads straight for the radiator, pressing his hands against it. "I'm never leaving."
"How cold do you keep your flat, actually? Don't tell me you wear gloves indoors."
"I won't tell you, then. But it's cold."
The image doesn't please him, of Martín always with a coffee in his hands, not necessarily because he likes it, but because it keeps the cold momentarily at bay. Going to the library not for his studies, but for the 17–degree temperature inside. Never quite good enough, but beats the alternative.
"Time to go home," Martín says with a yawn. It jolts Andrés into noticing the passage of time and the darkness outside for the first time in a long while, and it's altogether unpleasant. "Thanks for having me."
"Sure. Thanks for coming."
Martín snorts. "Wasn't exactly a hard sell. I'd go to hell right now, so long as it was warm." He gathers his things, save for one of his engineering books, which is strategically hiding underneath two of Andrés's books on anatomy.
Andrés sees that. He suspects that Martín might see him seeing it.
Neither of them mentions it.
"You flatter me."
"Now, I never said this wasn't slightly preferable. Although we should get food, next time."
"That eager to come back?"
Martín shrugs, but there is a bashful look on his now downcast face. "I can cook," he offers.
"Can you?"
"I can put a frozen pizza in the oven."
"Wonderful. I'll make sure to acquire one, then."
"No mushrooms. Anything else is fine."
"Oh, but I love mushrooms."
"Do you, really?"
"Not particularly."
"Have you done something to your hair?"
The girl giggles, shakes her head so that her strawberry blonde curls bounce in a most exaggerated manner.
Martín rips three pages from her notebook, behind her back, efficient and surprisingly quiet. He grins to Andrés, clearly can't resist the temptation to show off his skills.
"Maybe it's the winter air," Andrés continues, just to make sure Martín has enough time to scram. "It suits you. Really brings your complexion to life."
"Do you have an Instagram?" she asks, already fishing in her bag for her phone.
"No," he says with a disappointed sigh. "But I'd love to give you my phone number."
He rattles off Martín's, because Martín won't be interested in this girl, and because he had dared Andrés to memorise it over the weekend, and he wants to show he still remembers.
It's worth it for the look Martín gives him, three rows up the seats by now. Amused, horrified, proud.
Martín works at Andrés's desk, and Andrés sketches him in pencil. It's easy to be drawn to the bold lines of his body, and it's nice to have a live model who's so absorbed in doing something real.
He knows that Martín knows he's being watched. It's in the subtle way he corrects his posture, in the way he tilts his face into the shadows and then to the light again.
That, Andrés considers, is a permission. An invitation, even. I'm here, the language of his body says. Unashamed, unabashed. Present.
"Can I bring my guitar here?" Martín asks, and before Andrés has the time to respond, he adds, "Not to play it, I just worry about it with the cold. If I could keep it here, until the spring… That would be great."
"Sure," Andrés says. "I didn't know you played." He also understands the other implication of this – that Martín doesn't have another warm flat to keep his guitar in. That there's no other friends eager to take it off his hands, no family members who would happily store the instrument in their spare rooms.
Either that, or he just prefers to ask Andrés. Whatever the reason, it makes Andrés feel like he's important to another person, in a way he hasn't truly felt since he was a child and his little brother used to think he was someone cool and worth admiring.
"Thanks. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I've played it for a long time. Guess it's the Argentina, you know?"
"It's no trouble," Andrés hears himself say, only realising in hindsight that he means it. That it really is no trouble to him, to keep something of Martín's lurking around the corners of his flat. That he's flattered to know Martín trusts something that's important to him in Andrés's hands.
"You could stay the night."
Martín looks at him, like he's just suggested a new brand of insanity.
"Your flat will be cold. And the weather is vile." Well, Andrés thinks it's vile – it was raining some hours ago – it might be raining still. Who's to know, really? They always say that accident doesn't come wearing a bell. There might be a horrible storm out there, and Andrés may have simply been painting for far too long to know.
"Right," Martín says, his tone most unconvinced, looking like he's about to bounce any moment now. "And where would you suggest I sleep?"
It's possible Andrés hadn't actually thought this through at all.
"We could share the bed," he says slowly. "I think?"
He used to share a bed with Sergio, when he was nine or so. Surely they could manage that. His bed isn't exactly a double, but it's not a single, either. He's never shared it with someone else, but he thinks he could.
"And why are you offering?"
This question throws him.
"Why wouldn't I be?" he asks, since he doesn't have an answer ready.
Martín shrugs. "I doubt you actually care about the weather, that's all."
"I think your flat will be cold. And the weather is awful, I think. If you fell and broke your leg–"
Martín interrupts him with a raised eyebrow.
Andrés thinks he knows what Martín wants to hear, what he needs and deserves to hear, no less, but the words feel too heavy now, when he's been put on the spot like this.
"––I would be bored, and I'd have to drink tea all by myself."
He gets an eye roll for his efforts. It's not good enough, but Martín takes him up on his offer anyway.
Because it's still slightly preferable over hell.
Andrés puts it into motion as he best knows how to. He digs in his closet for a t–shirt he could see Martín in – in that it's loose, and the material is soft. He even locates a spare toothbrush, and is impressed to learn he's not completely terrible at all of this, after all.
"Which side do you want?"
"Wall."
"Fair enough. It's your bed – better I fall than you."
Martín watches him crawl into bed and make himself comfortable before lifting the covers and joining him.
Andrés has no idea what possessed him to make this particular invitation. He likes his own space, and he likes his privacy. He has never felt particularly burdened by empathy towards anyone else's suffering.
Martín clicks off the light without needing to be asked. "Are you having regrets yet?" he asks, amused in the calmest way imaginable.
Yes. Andrés hadn't realised just how casual Martín would be, how easily he would take this all in stride. How warm the look in his eyes remained as he watched Andrés set everything up.
"No."
Martín huffs a laugh. "Okay then."
"Are you going home for Christmas?" Martín asks him, when it's been quiet for so long Andrés thought they weren't going to talk anymore. He can't make out Martín's features in the dark – he can never sleep unless it's pitch–black – but he can feel the warmth of his breath on his skin.
"No."
Andrés doesn't elaborate, and unlike most people, Martín doesn't ask him to. Maybe he understands what it's like.
"Me neither."
"And do you have plans?"
Martín is quiet for a while. Andrés imagines himself being studied, like he's an undated sketch by a great artist. "Depends. Are you offering?"
"I might be. We could…" He realises he doesn't have much to offer. They could stay in his flat, and they could probably feed themselves, too.
It would be warm.
"Stay here?" Martín fills in. "Like this?" He makes the feeble offer sound like it's something worthwhile.
"Pretty much."
Martín smiles – it's in his voice. "It sounds great."
Martín's guitar, by the way, is a thing of beauty. It's dark wood and has clearly been through a lot: it has the appearance of something past its prime but well–loved, and the way Martín holds it betrays deep affection, almost reverence.
Andrés would ask to hear him play, if he knew the words to say.
Martín stays the night again the next day. They eat pizza – it tastes fine despite being half–burned and lacking mushrooms. In the dark, Andrés's fingers find Martín's. They wrap and loop and tighten and anchor him in the moment with demands of their own.
There's something comforting about the lack of sight, which turns everything into something less than real.
Martín taps the back of his hand with his index finger, just once. The gesture seems to say he's there. Nothing else.
They don't talk about it, in the morning.
Actually, they never go on to mention it. Some things are just too small to be captured with words.
When Tatiana asks him, with that worried, almost motherly frown, if he has made any plans for Christmas, Andrés says, "Actually–"
"We have," Martín cuts in, bright smiles. "I invited myself over to spend the holidays. Because my flat, you know? It's incredibly really fucking cold. The other day, I had the heating on for half an hour, and within fifteen minutes–"
Andrés tunes him out, suddenly annoyed by his presence.
"Why did you lie to Tatiana?"
"Hm?"
"I'm the one who invited you."
"Oh." Martín nods, like Andrés has only now started making sense. "Well, I thought I'd save you from all her… Insinuating and assuming. She would make more of it than what it is."
How completely unwanted. Andrés might have enjoyed it, the realisation in Tatiana's eyes, the connections she would have made rather quickly, the smirk on her face that would have melted into a genuine smile. He would have liked the way Martín would have reacted to that, in turn: looking to Andrés for his reaction, taking cues from him and saying, boldly, yes, we're spending Christmas together.
Those words in that order, they could have meant something.
And Martín had rejected all of that.
"Whatever. I have to go. I have another lecture."
"No you don't," Martín says, without missing a beat. "Since when?"
"Since today. It's an extra. For one we missed back in September."
"For which course?"
Andrés glares at him, simply because he can't come up with an answer quick enough.
Martín sighs. "You're offended. That I told her that? Don't want to be seen spending time with me now? Really? I can tell her I made new plans. It's not that big of a deal. Additionally, I can actually make new plans, if it bothers you so much."
Andrés doesn't take any of these peace offerings, which are tailor–made for him and should normally have the ability to fix everything. He doesn't fully understand why, but he's hurt and he's angry, and he wants Martín to go away.
"There's no need for any of that. I'll see you tomorrow," he says and walks away.
That night, when he lies awake in bed, he knows Martín must be cold in his.
In the morning, he brings Martín a coffee. He takes it to his engineering lecture, because the lecture halls are warm and he now knows Martín literally can't afford to say no to that.
Martín seems tired, and he looks wounded. He meets Andrés with this inexplicable cold in his eyes, even as his fingers wrap around the warm olive branch.
"Look, I'm sorry," he says, sipping the coffee and looking dejected, like he's a cat that was thrown out the window of a moving car at the end of the summer. "I don't know why that was so awfully wrong of me, but I won't do it again."
"It's fine," Andrés says, when the rest of the words get stuck in his throat – the apologies and the explanations. They flutter desperately for a way out, but there's nothing for them out there. "We're good?"
"Yeah," Martín says.
But in the afternoon, he makes three different excuses for places he suddenly has to be, errands he has to run, a previously–unknown aunt who desperately needs a rolling pin, today.
Andrés offers to go with him, is hastily turned down.
Three days before Christmas break, and he finds himself alone in his flat, warm and useless, entertaining Martín's guitar and the emptiness that carries his shape.
Two days before Christmas break, and he presses his face into the pillow that still smells like Martín.
The day before Christmas break, and Andrés has to admit it: they need to talk things out.
So he finds Martín, at the library. He holds a plastic cup in his hands as a hostage and says they need to talk.
Martín sighs, deep and tired. But he stands up, follows Andrés to the little outdoor bit that most students use to smoke when it's not so fucking cold.
"I am freezing," Martín complains almost immediately, snatching the coffee from Andrés and stuffing his free hand in his pocket. "Can you make this friendship break–up quick?"
"I'm not trying to friendship break–up with you."
"Yeah? Then why the fuck did you get so– I don't even know what that was, honestly. Rude, for starters."
"You didn't want Tatiana to assume. That– I didn't like that."
Martín stares at him for a long moment, uncomprehending. "No, you didn't want her to assume."
"I never said that."
"You didn't have to, it's all over you."
"How about you stop thinking you know everything I'm– you know what, never mind. I wanted you to let her draw whatever conclusions she would."
"I didn't think you would."
"Evidently."
"I thought you were–"
ashamed of me, looking for a way out, I thought you wanted me to distract, to perform a sleight of hand–
"I know," Andrés says, doesn't want Martín to give those words life. They're ugly and monstrous, and they don't deserve a voice; least of all Martín's. "But I wasn't. You should not have done that."
"Noted," Martín says with a sigh, only the second time he has ever been wrong about Andrés. "And where do we go from here?"
"Back to my flat, I should hope."
"Yeah?"
"For Christmas. And New Year's. And the days in between."
"And then what?"
"I have no idea." Andrés does, actually, have an idea. But it's still frail, like the wings of a butterfly that turn into dust if you touch them too carelessly. And his fingers have been nothing but careless, for the past few days. "Why don't we find out?"
Martín, for his part, doesn't respond right away. He holds the coffee in his hand and tilts the cup this way and that, as if surveying its properties. "Why do you keep bringing me coffee? You don't owe me anything. You never did."
Here they are, again. "Because you're my friend," Andrés says, forcing the words out before they can wreak more havoc with their absence. "That's why."
Martín smiles, slowly. "Am I?"
It's possible, Andrés thinks later that night, their fingers laced together like they're otters and thus afraid of drifting apart in their sleep, that he might be more. That he would be willing to become a few things and more yet, if Andrés found the right words to invite him in.
He will figure it out, come next year. He promises himself as much. But for now, this is his, and it's enough.