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“I have this fantasy,” Nicky says unprompted, fiddling with the controller in his hands.
Before he can elaborate, Aaron pretends to gag. “Keep it to yourself,” he snarls, pausing the game.
Andrew, seated at the windowsill, a few feet away from Nicky and Aaron in the beanbag chairs, also starts rising as if to leave.
“Come on, not like that! It’s not sexual! I can’t believe that’s what you think of me,” Nicky starts, unpausing the game. Although— “Well…”
“No,” Aaron says firmly. “We don’t want to know.”
Nicky looks to Andrew, who looks like he’s choosing between his knives and his lighter to threaten Nicky with.
“Fine, I won’t tell you then.” Throwing his hands up in resignation, he drops the controller and watches as his character dies as he fumbles after it. “Shoot.”
He respawns to the sound of Aaron sighing at him, and they continue playing in silence for a few minutes. Well, silence apart from the squelching noises of gore coming from the screen.
“It’s just—,” Nicky says, ignoring his cousins’ synchronous groans, ”Erik’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. His twenty-fifth.” He waits for a sign that the twins are listening, but grows impatient and continues anyway. “I have this fantasy where I surprise him by coming to Germany for it.”
Aaron and Andrew look at each other, wearing equally displeased expressions. “And?” Andrew eventually prompts, and Nicky wonders if they were silently battling to not have to be the one to ask.
He shrugs. “And nothing.” Looking back at the screen, it takes him a second to realize that the twins are both still staring at him. “What?”
Aaron scoffs. “‘And nothing’,” he mocks.
“Like we’d believe that,” Andrew drawls.
“So now you want to know?” Nicky exclaims in disbelief. Impossible, the two of them.
“No,” the twins say in unison. Instead of saying ‘jinx’, they just frown at each other. “Tell us anyway,” Andrew continues.
Aaron nods. “So you’ll stop moping.”
Nicky raises his eyebrows as if to say ‘Really?’, and the twitch of the twins’ brows in return say ‘Bring it on’.
“Alright,” Nicky starts. “And I don’t tell him that I’m coming. To divert him from why I won’t be able to text him all day I say I have a big exam, and that my phone will be turned off. His mom picks me up at the airport, and we set everything up. We order takeout from his favorite restaurant, but the cake is homemade. If there’s time, I decorate it, with hearts and flowers, and candles, of course. There’s a few balloons and ribbons and such too, but Erik doesn’t care much for those, really. I’m wearing that purple top I wore to Eden’s a couple of weeks ago, you know the one. Erik loves it. His parents have invited him for cake and coffee at their place, so that’s where he goes after work, but obviously they haven’t told him I’ll be there. I’m hiding behind the kitchen island with a bouquet of lilies — his favorite flower — and just as he’s walking into the kitchen I jump up.”
Nicky continues to stare at the screen as he speaks, but when he comes to a stop, he looks up. Aaron’s expression is one of disbelief, and Andrew’s eyebrows are slightly raised as he’s begun on a new cigarette.
“That’s a lot,” Aaron remarks, avoiding Nicky’s eye slightly as if uncomfortable.
Nicky shrugs. He could tell them more, but they’ve already objected to hearing the sexual parts. “It’s just a stupid fantasy,” he tells them, and himself.
Andrew huffs once, imitating laughter. “Yeah,” he says. “Stupid.”
Weeks pass, and Nicky almost forgets about it. Not the fantasy, of course, but that he’d told his cousins about it. Which is why it takes him a couple of minutes to connect the dots, even with the plane tickets in his hands.
“What’s this?” he asks dumbly, not for the first time.
Aaron sighs. “They’re still plane tickets to Germany. And back. For this Friday to Tuesday next week.”
“For me?” Nicky asks, like there’s someone else they know who might want to go to Stuttgart on a whim.
Andrew rolls his eyes. “Who else?”
Nicky turns the tickets in his hands, but they look legit, and not like something they printed in the library to mess with him.
“But— How— Why—” he starts, unable to find the words to express his disbelief.
“Did you already forget about Erik’s birthday?” Andrew mocks.
“Look,” Aaron starts before Nicky asks them why again. “Just take them, and go see him.”
“But— These must have been so much money, you shouldn’t have—”
“Consider them a birthday gift from us to him. I guess he deserves one after basically paying for our mortgage for the first year.” When Nicky is still holding out the tickets as if begging the twins to take their money back, Aaron sighs and continues. “They were last minute tickets, so we got them for a fair price. We both still had fun money left since working at Eden’s, while I know you don’t, or never had, considering it all went to keeping us alive. We wanted to do this.”
“Just take them,” Andrew repeats.
Carefully, as if afraid the paper will disintegrate and turn into smoke in his hands, Nicky tucks the tickets into his shirt pocket, so that they rest over his heart.
Of course, reality rarely allows fantasies to come true.
Looking closer at his tickets, it turns out that Nicky won’t arrive in Stuttgart until a few minutes past midnight on the day of Erik’s birthday. Asking Erik’s parents to pick him up at the airport at that hour seems too much to ask for, and it’s not like they’ll host a surprise party then anyway.
On Friday morning, Nicky finds his purple shirt in the laundry with an unsalvageable stain, and considering the length and time of the flight he ends up wearing one of Erik’s hoodies to the airport.
The flight itself is something Nicky’s dreams hadn’t accounted for at all, but, as always, it’s unbearably long. His seat neighbour is nice enough to lend him a magazine of crosswords when it becomes apparent that he hasn’t brought anything to entertain himself with, though they’re only slightly better than staring at the seat in front of him. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem like the type to react kindly to hearing that he’s travelling across the globe to see his boyfriend, and his legs jitter with the force it takes to keep that to himself.
When they finally land, Nicky almost kisses the ground before he hurries off to pick up his luggage and leave. Just as he’s walking out to find a taxi, a convenience store that’s just closing up shop catches his eye. “Wait!” he exclaims, immediately repeating himself in German as he rushes towards the tired worker locking the doors. Outside the entrance is a small flower stand with a few sad bouquets still left in their buckets. There’s a couple of them left with lilies in them, so Nicky inspects all of those to try to find the one that is most likely to survive the taxi ride to Erik’s apartment.
Before he can choose one, the worker sighs loudly. “Those are just going to get thrown out anyway, take all of them. Just leave so I can lock up and go home. Please.”
Nicky thanks him profusely as he picks the three bouquets with the most vibrant lilies and hurries away before the worker can start schooing him. Walking towards the taxis, he picks the bouquets apart, throwing away wilted roses and daisies until he has one large bouquet of lilies in various colors.
Once he’s found a taxi, he powers his phone back up to find where he’s saved Erik’s address, and discovers an unread message from Erik.
Good night, Liebling. I love you.
It was sent two hours prior, and it’s the first time Nicky hasn’t responded to his goodnight message. He can’t tell if the feeling in his stomach is guilt, nervousness or excitement as he reads off the street name to the taxi driver and they drive off.
Twenty minutes later, he’s finally standing outside of Erik’s front door, his luggage behind him and the bouquet grasped tightly in a sweaty hand. He takes a deep breath, and rings the doorbell. For a minute, he thinks the chime hasn’t woken Erik up. Then, just as he’s considering giving it a second shot, he hears movement on the other side of the door — shuffling, and quiet German grumbling.
Then — finally, finally — the door opens, and Erik is looking at him like he’s still trying to blink the dreams away after waking up. He’s in a faded tee, and his hair is both flattened to his face and standing straight up in places, and he’s never looked more beautiful.
“Surprise,” Nicky says, feeling how his entire face stretches into a smile. “Happy birthd— oof!”
Erik’s sudden hug squeezes all the air out of Nicky’s lungs worse than any body check ever has, and he returns the embrace just as tightly.
The bouquet falls to the floor as Nicky’s hands travel across Erik’s back to hold on to him, and Nicky laughs. “Sorry, dropped your gift,” he mumbles into Erik’s shoulder.
Erik pulls away an inch to look at what Nicky meant, but pays the bouquet no mind. Instead, he looks deep into Nicky’s eyes, and says, “This is better than anything I dared to wish for.”
This time, it’s Erik’s turn to have his breath taken away as Nicky pulls him into a kiss.