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Chapter Text

Lukas had never seen a guy quite like the tall guitarist from music class. He had brown, kind of fluffy hair, and blue eyes like his own, but without that blue-eyed stare. Lukas’s heart sort of melted when he first saw him, and he knew that was the fastest he fell for someone. How strange, he thought when he’d been laying in bed that night, I’ve always thought I liked girls.
And of course, Lukas had to sit next to him. Every day. For one hour “straight”.
“Alright class, my name is Ms. Linkytė,” said the teacher. She was one of those millennial teachers who wore cardigans and looked like she taught English on 3 hours of sleep and a Starbucks drink. “Introduce yourselves to the person near you.”
Lukas spoke to the guy next to him, too shy to meet his eyes. “I’m Lukas. Lukas Radzevičius.”
The guy nodded, oblivious to Lukas’s nervousness. “That’s a nice name. Mine’s Alanas Brasas.” Alanas looked at Lukas’s guitar in its case. “I play guitar too.”
“Cool.” Externally, Lukas was just quiet and tired-looking, internally Lukas was yelling at himself for getting these feelings from the extroverted hyper kid.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Alanas looked Lukas up and down, seeing how his short brown hair fell over his face, covering those piercing blue eyes.
Lukas turned away, trying not to blush at the attention this guy was giving him. “I sing, does that count?”
“Maybe.” Alanas looked away for a moment, as if he was pondering the question. “We should probably get each other's phone numbers, I know Ms. Linkytė’s gonna make us do some projects together.”
Lukas nodded, writing down his number on a scrap of paper, feeling like that's not the only reason Alanas wants his number. “Here you go.” He handed the paper towards him.
Alanas took out his phone and started typing the number into his contacts. It read “Lukas” and Alanas tilted his phone away before adding a heart emoji, but Lukas saw it anyway.
Heart emoji? Lukas thought to himself, what the fuck? He tried to brush it off, maybe Alanas is like that with all his friends, but it seemed like something more.

Lukas flopped down on his bed, running his hand through his soft brown hair. What the fuck was that?
His phone buzzed. Alanas was texting him.

A: heyy Lukai
L: oh hey Alanai
A: soo
A: should we work on the project at my house or yours?
L: probably mine, I have a good microphone on my computer at home
L: I'd have to ask my parent first though
A: yeah alright, my mic is shit lol
A: also could I bring my friend Jokūbas, he's really good at drums
L: Jokūbas Andriulis?
A: yeah
A: do you know him or something?
L: he's my cousin
L: we live together
L: so yeah you don’t even need to bring him

Lukas didn't even realize he was kicking his feet until his older sister Emilija walked in. “Aww, someone's got a crush!”
“Shut up, Emilija. I do not.” Lukas threw a stuffed animal at her. “Could you ask Nem if Alanas and Jokūbas can come over?”
“Alanas? Is he some boy you're crushing on?” Emilija said teasingly, sitting down next to him on the bed.
“I do not have a crush on him.” Lukas looked away, not wanting her to see how hard he was blushing.
“Fine, since you're too lazy to walk a few yards to ask Nem, I'll ask them.” Emilija walked out of the room.
“Lukas has a very obvious crush on this boy from music class and wants to invite him over with Jokūbas,” Emilija said to their parent.
“That's fine, those two can come over.” Their parent’s voice had some amusement in it, obviously having heard Lukas trying to deny it when Emilija was talking to him.
When Emilija walked back into Lukas's room, Lukas threw another stuffed animal at her. He had a lot of plushies on his bed and in his room. “Why'd you have to tell them about the crush part?”
“What, are you admitting it?” Emilija giggled, enjoying tormenting her little brother.
Lukas sighed in defeat, still blushing a deep red shade. “I like him. Happy?” Lukas texted Alanas he and Jokūbas could come over. “You're really annoying sometimes, you know that?”
“Well yeah, I'm your sister.” As she was walking out, she said over her shoulder, “If you need any help with Alanas, you know who to ask.”
Lukas rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like you can pull any better than me.”

Chapter Text

Lukas was sitting on his bed, in the dark. He didn't realize it was dark until Jokūbas walked in and flipped the light switch on.
“Holy shit, that's bright,” Lukas said, blinking his eyes and reaching for the sunglasses on his night table.
“We're not creating music in the dark. Besides,” Jokūbas lowered his voice to a whisper. “Don't you want your crush to see you?”
Lukas looked away, a hand over his mouth. “Emilija told you?” Lukas asked, shocked and beet red for the about the hundredth time today.
“I'm not telling him, don't worry. You know how well I keep secrets. Also stop turning red, you look sunburnt.”
At this point Alanas walked in. Of course, he saw Lukas doing a bad stop sign impression, and was, obviously, concerned. “You good Lukai?”
“I'm fine,” Lukas managed to choke out, his older cousin putting a hand on his shoulder. “Just a little sunburnt.” This was a horrible lie. It is physically impossible to get sunburnt in Lithuania.
“You don't seem fine.” Alanas brushed it off a few seconds later, leaning his guitar in its case against the wall. “Are we gonna work on the project or not?”
“Right. The project.” Lukas pushed his hair out of his eyes and took his sunglasses off, still adjusting to the light in the room. He took his guitar off the rack next to his bed.
Alanas took his acoustic guitar out of the case and started playing. “I was thinking we could maybe do something like this…”

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The group was interrupted an hour or two later by Lukas and Emilija’s father, Silvester, knocking on the door and peeking in. “Lukai, dinner will- oh hey Jokūbai. And who’s this?”
Alanas set his guitar down, looking at the tall man with an odd metal thing over the bridge of his nose. “I’m Alanas. Are you Lukas’s father?”
“Yes, and Jokūbas’s uncle. You can call me Silvester. Or Mr. Belt. I don’t mind what you call me.” Silvester reached over and shook Alanas’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Belt.”
“Anyway, as I was saying, Lukai, dinner will be ready in about an hour.” He turned to Alanas. “Would you want to stay for dinner? My spouse has made more than enough for just us five, and we'd love to have you here.”
Alanas spoke, sounding way more formal than usual. “I'd love to, Mr. Belt.”
“Alright, you can stay.” Silvester left the room, going to go talk to his spouse, Nemo.
Just a couple minutes after Silvester left, Emilija walked in, sitting next to Lukas on his bed. “What have you three been doing for the past hour and a half?”
Lukas looked at his older sister, still annoyed from what she'd done a couple hours ago. “Emilija, can we talk? Outside or something?” Not waiting for a response, Lukas stood up and practically dragged his sister out of his room and into the backyard. “Why the fuck did you tell Jokūbas? You know how close he is with Alanas.”
Emilija ran her hand through her curly hair. “You know damn well he's not gonna tell Alanas. Jokūbas is always saying some nonsense anyway, so Alanas would probably just think it's a joke.”
“That's not- ugh.” Lukas didn't finish his sentence, slumping down on the bench, his hair covering his eyes.
“Hey. I'm sorry, okay? Really.” Emilija put a comforting hand on Lukas's shoulder, sitting down next to him on the bench.
“Yeah, I forgive you. Today's just been- a lot.” Lukas looked up at her, taking his sunglasses off, blinking a bit from the light.
“It's the first day of sophomore year, I get it. With going everywhere and then Alanas.”
Emilija pulled Lukas in for a hug, then let go a couple seconds later.
Lukas and Emilija sat in silence for a while. Neither of them had any clue what the other was thinking about. Breaking the silence, Lukas asked, “Could you bring your bass to the room with Alanas, Jokūbas and I? Please?”
Emilija was obviously perplexed by the request. “Why-” she stopped talking for a moment, “okay.”
Lukas kind of cheered, which was very out of character from his dark, sad personality, before going back in the house.

Chapter Text

A few months had passed. Alanas was pretty much always over at Lukas’s, but Jokūbas and Emilija had been less frequent at practice. You know, college stuff. Lukas and Alanas had gotten a lot closer, and it was as if they’d always known each other. It was impossible to count how many times the two had stayed for the night at each other’s houses doing quite literally anything, or fallen asleep on the phone and let their phones die (much to their annoyance, because why would they pay attention in class?).
On one particularly snowy evening after after-school extracurriculars, they’d been laying next to each other on the snow in Lukas’s backyard. Platonically, of course, Lukas kept telling himself. Did it feel platonic? Well, no, but they were friends. Just friends is probably how Alanas thought of them, Lukas told himself every night he wasn’t with Alanas. They were both bundled up in their coats and gloves, because it would kinda suck if they got frostbite, and Lukas found himself wishing they could be closer and didn’t need all these layers. He didn’t even know how long they’d been laying there, and only realized it was late when Alanas hadn’t been speaking for a bit and Lukas saw him asleep. Rolling his eyes, he sat up and shook Alanas a bit. “This sleepy dumbass… wake up.” Alanas woke up, but he was obviously half-asleep.
“Huh? What time is it…” Alanas mumbled.
“It’s time to wake up and go indoors, you’re gonna get hypothermia.” Lukas had no idea if that was true, or how people even got hypothermia in the first place, but Alanas wouldn’t know, he was basically asleep anyway. “C’mon. Get up.” Lukas helped Alanas up, although he probably didn’t actually do much.
Lukas dragged Alanas in the house and into the first place he could think of, that place being the living room. Alanas passed out on the couch pretty much instantly, which was pretty fair since he’d had basketball practice while Lukas was in math club (he was actually really good at math for some unknown reason).
“I love you, Lukai…” Alanas was talking in his sleep, probably just muttering about nothing, but something told Lukas that it was more than that, something that made his heart race and his mind spin.
“What?” Lukas hadn’t meant to say it that loudly, or even say it at all for that matter. He saw Alanas waking up, and quickly took a sip of water, pretending nothing happened.
“Hm?” Alanas rubbed one of his eyes, blinking.
Lukas spoke quickly, almost too quickly. “Nothing. Go back to sleep. I’ll get you a blanket, it’s cold.” Lukas didn’t wait for a response before heading upstairs to grab a blanket.
When Lukas returned, Alanas was wide awake and not just half-asleep. “I heard you say, ‘what.’ Did something happen?” Alanas seemed concerned, but had a look on his face Lukas couldn’t read.
“You just… said something in your sleep. And I thought you were still awake, so I was just asking you to repeat it.” Lukas tried to act normal, but Alanas’s unconscious words replayed in his head, eating him from the inside out.
Panic flashed in Alanas’s eyes for a moment, but was quickly replaced with the same unreadable expression he always had around Lukas. “Well, what’d I say?”
“I dunno. Just muttering, I guess.” Lukas walked over to the kitchen to start doing the dishes, trying to forget it.
Somehow, Alanas materialized right next to him and took a breath, quite strange for his usual confidence. “Did I say I love you?”