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Ever since their strange kiss a few weeks ago, Frei has been showing up unexpectedly and without warning at Lewandowski’s door.
Frei has always known where he lives - he knows where Frei lives too! He’s been over several times, though mostly in a group setting - but he’d never taken the initiative to come over himself, and he’d certainly never done so alone before that one afternoon outside the supermarket.
“What are you gonna do if I don’t answer the door, huh?” Lewandowski asks, begrudgingly letting Frei in, closing his apartment door behind him. Frei is holding a small plastic bag. He starts taking off his shoes as though it’s completely natural. “Even I go out at night sometimes…!”
Frei’s fingers still on his shoes as he’s setting them to the side of the entryway. He looks up. Lewandowski isn’t used to having this vantage over him. Frei’s eyes are dark blue and unreadable. “You’re not doing this with anyone but me, are you?”
“Huh?” Lewandowski frowns. “Well, no, but…”
Frei finishes putting his shoes aside and stands back up. “Nothing to worry about then.”
“Hey, don’t ignore me. And now that you mention it, what even is this, anyways?” Frei heads to the kitchen and Lewandowski follows him, feeling a bit like a lost dog in his own home. “We’ve never really talked about - “
“Be quiet.”
“Urk…”
Silence settles between them. Frei looks somewhat out of place in Lewandowski’s dingy apartment. He’s always had this odd air of elegance about him, even when he’s not trying for it in the slightest.
After a moment, Lewandowski sighs. “I’m a pretty easygoing guy, but even I’ll get offended sometimes, y’know?”
Frei’s hands stop on the plastic bag he’s set on the counter.
“Do you want me to leave?” he says.
He’s facing the wall, so Lewandowski can’t see his face. Frei’s asymmetrically cut hair is covering his left temple. All Lewandowski can see is the gaunt shadow under his cheekbone and the slight movement of the corner of his mouth when he speaks.
Lewandowski deflates. “No, it’s not that…”
Frei busies his hands again with the bag. The sound of plastic crinkling fills the air. In the beginning he’d made excuses as to why he’d come over - usually he’d brought groceries or claimed Lewandowski had forgotten something at the bakery - but as time has gone by the reasons have gotten smaller and smaller.
Lewandowski peeks around Frei at the bag. This time he’s brought four apples.
“I still haven’t finished the peaches you brought last time.”
“You should eat more fruit.”
“My diet is fine…”
Frei glances at him. “Bring them to your sister, then.”
“Alright.”
Frei finishes putting away the apples and tucks the plastic bag into the cabinet that Lewandowski stores them it. Frei knows where everything in his kitchen is located by now. Lewandowski still doesn’t understand. Is this some weird form of penance?
Done with his task, Frei turns his flat gaze to him. Lewandowski swallows. He never used to get nervous around Frei before.
“Uh, do you want dinner?” he asks. “I was about to start…”
Frei steps up to him.
“Not particularly.”
They’ve been doing this for weeks, but they’ve never gone past kissing, and the farthest they’ve made it so far is Lewandowski’s couch. For some reason Lewandowski can’t quite picture what Frei would look like in his bed, if that’s even what he’s working up towards.
“You should get a new couch,” Frei says, shifting on his thighs. His knees are tucked around Lewandowski’s waist and he’s leaning over him. His jacket has disappeared, discarded somewhere on the kitchen floor. Underneath that he's wearing a thin sweater vest and a dress shirt. Lewandowski by comparison hadn’t been planning to go out today, so he’s wearing a t-shirt and sweats. He’s still fully clothed. “The springs on this one are broken.”
“Uh… it seems like a waste of money,” Lewandowski says, looking up at him. His hands are laying tentatively on Frei’s sides. He doesn’t quite have the audacity to slip his fingers under the sweater vest. He’s trying his best to keep his eyes on Frei’s face, even though he’s not quite sure why.
Frei’s brows rise by a fraction. “Does the bakery not pay you enough?”
Lewandowski chuckles on instinct. “Ah, well…”
Frei sighs. “Right. Never mind.” ‘ You’re sending all your money to your sister’ goes unsaid.
“Hospital bills are expensive, y’know.”
Instead of replying, Frei starts to take of his sweater vest. It’s a pale grey. The material is soft against Lewandowski’s fingers. Frei has always paid more attention to clothing than Lewandowski.
He shuffles and pulls the vest over his head; the motion leaves his dress shirt rumpled and one side of the collar sticking up in the wrong direction. His hair becomes a bit more disheveled. He puts one hand on Lewandowski’s chest to steady himself, his fingertips delicate pinpricks of pressure, and looks down at him and Lewandowski feels his pulse skip.
“That’s not it, is it?”
Lewandowski twitches under Frei’s gaze.
“You don’t think you deserve to live a good life as long as your sister is suffering.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?” Lewandowski usually doesn’t shy away from these kinds of topics. He thinks that maybe, even, he should be giving more to Frei, who’s been insistently pushing at his boundaries for weeks now, but for some reason something in him rebels against it. He’s trying to find himself in me. It vexes him more than he’d expected. Lewandowski isn’t a mirror for Frei to peer into.
Frei leans down and moves his face closer to Lewandowski’s. His eyes are searching and piercing. At the same time he undoes the first button on the collar of his dress shirt with one hand. The motion is practiced. An image suddenly appears in Lewandowski’s mind of Frei returning home after a long day, standing in his bedroom alone, unbuttoning his shirt in the dark, his fingers moving on muscle memory alone.
“Why don’t you try being selfish once in a while?” Frei asks, bringing Lewandowski back out of his thoughts, though it’s phrased more like a statement than a question. His breath is soft and warm against Lewandowski’s lips. “It’ll be good for you.”
Lewandowski scoffs. “Like you?”
Now that Frei has put down the burden of hiding the circumstances behind his parents’ death, he’s been doing whatever he wants… to whoever. Mostly to Lewandowski. Maybe Lewandowski is just convenient. Maybe it could have been anyone.
“Mm.” Frei doesn’t take offense.
In all the time they’ve been doing this Lewandowski has never taken control. Fundamentally, the problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants. He’s never thought about taking anything before.
He brings one hand up to touch the side of Frei’s neck. Frei leans into his touch, his gaze not dropping from Lewandowski’s face, as though encouraging him to keep going.
He’s sure Frei wants him to kiss him. That seems to be Frei’s preferred method of taking control. Instead Lewandowski sighs again and pulls him downwards, sliding his fingers against the soft skin at the nape of Frei’s neck, and nestles his face into the crook of Frei’s collarbone. His other hand comes around Frei’s back to hold securely onto his waist.
Frei’s body is warm and delicate in his arms. He’s always been the thinnest out of the three of them. Frei is the brains, Lewandowski is the brawn, and Schmidt is… well, the leader, he supposes, since he has plenty of both.
Lewandowski presses his forehead against the side of Frei’s neck. The gentle bump of Frei’s pulse reminds him that Frei is a living, breathing person, no matter how flat and distant his affect may be. Frei sits there in his arms, unmoving. Lewandowski can feel the heat of his body through the thin fabric of his dress shirt and Lewandowski’s own t-shirt. Frei’s not wearing an undershirt.
“How am I supposed to know what to do,” Lewandowski says, his voice muffled even to his own ears by Frei’s shirt against his lips, “if you won’t tell me what you want?”
After a long moment, Frei’s hand comes up to press gently against the back of Lewandowski’s head.
“Are you saying you don’t want me? I’ll be offended.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then act on it. It’s simple.”
Lewandowski doesn’t move.
“You don’t get me at all, huh,” he murmurs into Frei’s neck. “Do you think it’s that easy for me?”
Frei exhales against him. The way his body moves in Lewandowski’s arms is oddly satisfying. Lewandowski has never held anyone else like this. It’s not for lack of opportunity - even though he’s not as popular with girls as Frei or Schmidt, he’s received his fair share of love confessions in his youth - but he’d always turned them down.
‘Er… sorry, I’m focusing on working and taking care of my sister. I don’t think I could be a good partner to you.’
He’s said those words more than a few times. After his sister had gotten wind of it, she’d gotten angry at him.
‘You shouldn’t use me as an excuse not to live your own life!’
Guilt settles in his stomach. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.
Their parents have been dead for a long time. Lewandowski had applied for guardianship of his sister as soon as he’d been able. He still remembers the hospital at night, the indicator light above the operating room, the clinical beep of the heartbeat monitor, her sickly, pale, post-surgery face, so young, the nerve-wracking days and nights waiting for good news or bad, an upturn or downturn in her condition, part-time shifts that barely earned him enough to scrape by…
And after all that, after rounds of surgeries and years of suffering and late nights and hazy prognoses, what he recalls most vividly is the thin, pained question that had fallen from her intubation-cracked lips.
‘Why was I born? Just to be a burden on you?’
Maybe Lewandowski is like Frei. Maybe he’s been frozen in that moment for all these years.
How am I supposed to move on when she doesn’t get to?
Frei pulls away from him after a long moment. He leans down and kisses Lewandowski. They kiss silently for a long time.
Lewandowski wakes up the next morning in his bed. Frei is sleeping on his chest. His pale face looks gentler when he’s asleep. His hair is mussed and splayed across Lewandowski’s t-shirt. Lewandowski wonders if he’ll have crease marks imprinted on his cheek once he gets up.
More than anything, he’s warm.
Lewandowski gently pulls the blanket up to cover Frei’s shoulders a bit more. He brings one hand up to wrap around Frei’s back, his fingers resting on his shoulder blades through the dress shirt he’s still wearing. Lewandowski can feel the unfastened buttons pressing into him through his own shirt.
“Mm.” Frei mumbles and shifts his face a bit in Lewandowski’s chest. “Don’t move.”
Lewandowski feels the corners of his mouth twitch into a small smile.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”