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“Demetri, please. Why can’t you just hear me out?”
He supposed Eli made a good point. It would be the easiest option to just hear his best friend out. It would stop his own internal turmoil of grief and doubt and questioning and frustration that were cycling around his head like annoying pop music on the radio. It would also stop Eli’s incessant nagging, paired with his incessant irritation, and the turmoil their bickering was absolutely causing the rest of the team.
But it wasn’t that simple. Not for a stubborn, hard-headed bastard like him, anyway. Not for someone who’s whole life was being flipped on its head again and everything he had ever planned and known and wanted was being snatched from him by Eli, of all people. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he said:
“I can’t hear anything you say over the waft of your terrible breath. When was the last time you brushed your teeth?”
“You watched me brush my teeth half an hour ago!” Eli cried out, exasperated. “You walked in on me because you needed to piss and ‘we might as well bask in the only time we’ll ever get as roommates now’.”
“I stand by that point,” the lanky boy huffed. “Here’s to finding a roommate with better dental hygiene at MIT.”
“Fat chance of that. Most of those computer nerds don’t know how to shower.”
“Oh, ho, ho! I know how to shower. You know I do, since you took it upon yourself to use all the hot water yesterday, so I had to shower cold. And then you stole my towel from the toilet seat.”
“Did not,” Eli skulked, only because he had run out of other things to say. Watching as Demetri shuffled back against the headboard of his bed, stuffed his headphones in his ears, and crossed his arms across his chest, the boy relented again. “Dem, please. I don’t know what else I can say.”
The boy pretended to look uninterested, not moving his eyes, but he snapped unhappily anyway. “You can say ‘you were right, Demetri. Like usual. I should have applied to MIT like we had planned to do together since we were twelve’.”
“I’m not going to say that.”
“Why?” Demetri swivelled around finally, tugging out his headphones, arms in the air in his usual melodramatic fashion. “Why won’t you say that? It’s all true!”
“I don’t care if it’s true, Demetri! I don’t need you putting words in my mouth!”
“I’ll put something in your mouth!” He fumed, and the words dropped from Eli’s tongue instantly. Demetri’s brain seemed to catch up to his mouth, and his eyes widened at his own innuendo-threat amalgamation that he’d spat at his best friend. “That is not what I meant.”
“What else would that mean?”
“Shut up, Hawk. My mouth was just moving too fast-”
“What’s new there?”
Demetri scowled, and Eli knew that his comment had stung, but he found no joy in that. He found no joy in any of this– in the arguing, the not communicating, in hurting his best friend, the most important person in his life, again. However, the part of him that knew Demetri better than he had ever known anyone or anything knew that every stone he threw got closer and closer to getting that glass house to shatter.
“I’m going to tell everyone you want me to suck your dick.” He ducked his head just in time for a pillow to go sailing over it.
“I do not want you to suck my dick.”
“You said it.” Eli shrugged dismissively before chanting like a little kid. “I’m going to tell Robby and Miguel that you want me to go to MIT with you so I can suck your dick.”
Demetri was on his feet quickly, his face red with outrage. “I don’t want you to suck my dick. Especially not with your bad breath. If I wanted someone to suck my dick, it would happen.”
“Would it?” The mohawked boy cocked an eyebrow judgmentally, rolling up the sleeves of his pyjamas and wringing his hands together. “But, Yasmine broke up with you.”
“You know what?” Demetri seethed, his fists tight beside his sides and his face drawn taught in a way that he thought hid his upset but didn’t, lips pressed together. “I hate you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Eli challenged, taking a step closer to the boy and flaring his features. “Well, I love you.”
The pillow Demetri had been gearing up to chuck landed back on the bed with a soft thud.
“Wow.” Eli laughed sheepishly. “If I’d have known that was all it took to silence you, I would’ve said it a long time ago.”
“Did you mean it?” The lanky boy asked, a catch in his throat.
Eli swallowed thickly before nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, I meant it. It’s why all I’ve wanted is for you to hear me out. So we can stop fighting.”
“You love me?”
“Yeah, yknow? You’re more to me than my best friend, or binary brother, or whatever.” His neck was flushed red. Sure, he hadn’t exactly meant for their moment of quarrelling to become a profession of the feelings he’d kept buried deep beneath his ribs since the age of about eight, but if that’s what it took to get to Demetri to talk to him, he was prepared to put his heart on the line.
“You, Eli Moskowitz, love me?” Demetri’s repetition was starting to unnerve him.
“Yes, dumbass. I love you.”
Demetri shoved his shoulders. Hard. He sat down on the bed with a thud.
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“What?” Call him an egotist, but that wasn’t really the response Eli was expecting. How could it be the response anyone was expecting when admitting their feelings to the homoerotic friendship of all homoerotic friendships?
“You heard me. Fuck you.” Another shove to his shoulders. Demetri loomed over him ominously. “You- you abandon me for a karate psycho. You kick my ass over a Yelp review. You hunt me down for sport. You break my arm. And you love me?”
The shorter boy’s eyebrows tightened. “I don’t understand. I thought we were past all this.” His chest ached painfully.
“Well we’re not,” Demetri snapped, his face like thunder. “We’re not at all. You did all that. All of that. And you have the audacity to love me?”
He stammered over his words, fingers coming up to cover his scar out of an almost long forgotten habit. “I do love you, Dem. And I want to go to MIT with you, I do.”
“Fuck off about MIT,” the boy almost roared, his voice upping an octave like it did when they were kids arguing over Doctor Who or video game characters. “We wanted to go to MIT. That was our dream. And then you abandoned me, and you hurt me, and became everything we hated and then it became my dream. Mine. And I still wanted to share it with you. But you didn’t want that. Because you love me?”
“That’s not why I did it…”
“Then why, Eli?” Demetri demanded indignantly. “Since you’re all about telling me things right now, apparently, then tell me why.”
“I was scared, okay?” The shorter boy snapped, watching his best friend’s features longingly for an inkling of understanding or empathy. His face was stubborn and relentless, and worst of all, hurt. “I was scared that MIT wasn’t where I fit anymore. That our plans weren’t where I fit anymore.”
Demetri’s face, despite his best efforts, crumpled.
“No, no, Demetri. I was scared it wasn’t where I fit, because of me. Because of everything I did to you. I mean, not to mention the fact that I ruined my GPA whilst I was in Cobra Kai. I didn’t even know if I would get into MIT, even if I did apply, which is something I didn’t want to face. You were something I didn’t want to face, if I didn’t get in, all because I fucked it up. And truth is, I didn’t even know if you’d still want me there even if I did get in. We’re not the same kids we were when we made those plans, and that’s on me.”
“Of course I’d want you there, Eli. It was our plan.” His voice was still high strung and bitter, but it cracked slightly.
“But like you said. I abandoned you. I forced you to fight me. I hurt you over and over again. I guess a part of me thought I didn’t deserve to be there with you, like nothing had happened.” Something unfurled from where it was tucked away under the boy’s ribs and deep in his chest, unable to stop now it had started. His eyes smarted as they remained trained on Demetri. “Like you deserved your dream, and it would be better without me there. It’s… it's why I never told you I loved you before today. Not because I didn’t think you would love me back. I mean, maybe you don’t. I wouldn’t blame you. But because you deserve someone better than me and everything I did to you.”
The last thing he was expecting after pouring his heart out was a pillow hitting him square in the face. The last thing he was expecting after said pillow was Demetri’s lanky frame crashing into his, his gangly arms tieing themself around him and pushing them both back onto the bed.
“Idiot,” Demetri hissed softly into the side of his neck. “Stupid dumbass asshole.”
“Gee, thanks,” Eli coughed.
“Who’s mouth is moving too fast now, huh?”
Despite everything, Eli laughed lowly, his shoulders dropping as much as they could with Demetri still holding him in a tight embrace.
“Eli…” The boy pulled back, basically shaking his best friend’s shoulders with emphasis. “Despite it all, because of it all, it doesn’t matter. It’s our plan, Eli. It’s all I ever wanted.”
“Because…?”
“Because I love you, stupid.” Demetri relented, and though the words had never escaped his mouth in this context before, they felt familiar, and natural, and like Eli had known them all along, because he supposed he had. “MIT or no MIT. Though MIT would be nice. And convenient. And easier. And would adhere to my very long standing life plans.”
Giggling like a kid at the giddy feeling in his chest, the mohawked boy shoved at Demetri’s chest lightly, though his fingers were still holding his shoulders in a clamp. “I still stand by you being annoying, though.”
“And I still stand by you having bad breath,” he sassed in response.
“Oh.” Eli raised a playful eyebrow. “So you don’t want me to kiss you?”
Demetri turned as red as the beets on his favourite shirt, flushed all the way down to his collar.
“Presumptuous of you,” he tried, but it came out as more of a squeak, and Eli pulled his shrugging shoulders in for a kiss. Amongst the many other thoughts the movement of Demetri’s lips painted in his mind, Eli was amused to have finally found a successful way to shut the boy up.
When they separated, Demetri gasped like a fish out of water, but still managed to push out a witty remark. “Does this mean you’re applying to MIT?”
Eli pretended to shrug dismissively. “Guess it depends. I mean, I wasn’t lying about my grades.”
“We can study,” the lanky boy promised, kissing him again quickly. “Bonuses of having a computer nerd boyfriend, if you can accept the fact that I don’t know how to shower.”
“Boyfriend, huh?” Eli raised an eyebrow. “Not sure I’m sold. I’m gonna need proof your shampoo isn’t four in one.”
“Sorry, I forgot you were the hair expert.” Demetri tousled his mohawk the best he could amongst the layers of gel. “I take it all back. I hate you again.”
“Love you.”
“Yeah, yeah. You said,” he dismissed, though his face was spattered with a soft pink glow.