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It’s the summer after high school they’re both too young to be careful and too stupid to care, they spend all their time in each other’s beds and it finally finally feels like everything is okay. They’ve gotten into the same university, and this is the beginning of the rest of their lives.
It takes exactly six weeks and two days and an unlocked door for someone to catch them. After that, it doesn’t feel so much like a beginning as an end. There’s a lot of screaming and crying and ultimatums but in the end they both choose each other and end up in a tiny one room apartment with no central heat or air conditioning. It’s fine, they’re young and stupid and all they need is each other.
---
Halfway into winter break, they run out of money and live a week off dry cereal and the goodwill of their friends. Mizael is bundled up in five layers and still cold to the bone when he meets Alit outside of the coffee shop on campus. Alit is fifteen minutes late and out of breath from running when Mizael finally breaks.
“We can’t live like this,” He cries into Alit’s shoulder as the shorter boy soothingly pets his hair with a thick mitten.
“It’ll be okay,” Alit tries, “We can get you a job.”
---
“Are you stupid?” Mizael screams and stands up so abruptly that he knocks a plate off the table. They can’t really afford to break things, but neither of them try to catch it as it shatters on the ground.
“Mizael please, we have neighbours.”
“I don’t care!” There are tears leaking from his eyes but he’s not shouting anymore, “You have to stay in school!”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t love literature, the way you love computer science...”
Durbe takes his glasses off and massages the bridge of his nose, “But I’m the only one who’s been offered a job and we can’t keep borrowing money from our friends you know.”
Mizael looks down at the broken pieces of the plate and slowly sinks back into his chair. When he speaks his voice is a soft whisper, “Rei said that I could help him, you know... sell things...”
It’s a testament to the situation they’re in that Mizael is willing to compromise his personal morals to make a few quick bucks. It pays better than the job Durbe would be getting and he would be keeping every dollar he made.
“Let’s go to bed,” Durbe looks at the clock and sighed deeply, “Something will come up.”
Neither of them really believe it, but they go to bed anyways.
---
It’s a week before winter term starts, and Mizael is once again waiting for Alit outside the coffee shop when he’s approached by a strange woman in a long white jacket.
“Have you ever done any modelling?” Her eyes are too big for her face and her teeth are so white they’re practically blue in the sunlight.
Mizael shakes his head and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.
“Call me if you think about it,” She smiles and hands him a business card that reads Galaxy Eyes Modelling Agency with a name and a number under it. He pockets the card as Alit approaches, once again running and out of breath.
“Sorry,” He wheezes, “I didn’t wake up until ten minutes ago. I’ll buy you a coffee.”
Mizael just smiles vaguely and thanks every single one of his ancestors by name.
---
At first it’s just pictures for the American Eagle website and a lot of sending out headshots to various designers. But in a month he’s made enough to pay off Durbe’s tuition and the rent for the next three months.
Mizael begs Durbe not to tell anyone, but Alit still shops at American Eagle and prints out a stack of his photos and sticks them all over the coffee shop the next time they meet there. Mizael groans and keeps his head down, but the owner gives them free coffee and Alit seems determined to congratulate him. It’s a little hard to go anywhere near campus without being recognized, after that.
---
“Hey stop,” Mizael pushes at Durbe’s face as he sinks his teeth into the bare flesh just below his collarbone.
Durbe stops and looks up at him, “What’s wrong?”
Mizael blushes violently and looks at the wall when he speaks, “I got in trouble last time so you can’t do that anymore.”
Durbe smirks, “Do what?”
“You know!” He rolls on his side, away from Durbe’s lecherous stare.
“What, this?” Durbe bites into his shoulder and Mizael wails.
“Yes! Stop!”
It takes twenty minutes for Durbe to get Mizael so worked up he doesn’t care anymore and Mizael ends up with marks in places he didn’t even know existed on his body.
Ah well, at least they live in the age of makeup.
---
On the bad days, they’re both out until midnight. Durbe slaving over his codes in the lab, and Mizael out schmoozing with some designer or another. He had a few editorials under his belt but to be the face of a brand would really get him places, or so his manager says. He doesn’t really care either way, whatever pays the bills.
On the good days, Durbe comes home early to an empty apartment and microwaves leftovers and tries to wait up for Mizael to come home. Sometimes Mizael comes home early to find Durbe passed out two feet from the bed with all his clothes on. Just one more year he reminds himself. One more year and it won’t be so hard.
---
Durbe requests three tickets to his graduation and lets two of them sit on the kitchen counter for weeks. Neither of them has tried to contact their parents since Mizael called home, that first winter and his father claimed to have never had a son. Mizael was a zombie for weeks after and Durbe could only imagine how it must have felt.
Still, he wonders what it might feel like to rub it in their faces. I made it. No, we made it and we didn’t even need you. When he’s alone and staring at the two pieces of printed cardstock he can admit that it might be nice to see them again. It might be nice to see that they’re proud of him.
In the end, he gives the tickets to Rei and Mizael’s manager. Only one of them shows up, and it’s not the one he would have preferred.
---
It’s hot and the gown is itchy and his hat won’t stay on and there are about ten million people he doesn’t care about before him. He just wants to get this over with and go home and celebrate with Mizael. He knows for a fact that there’s an entire cake waiting for him in the fridge and if he’s lucky Alit and GIlag won’t even eat all of it before he gets a second slice.
Mizael insists on staying through to the end, though. Durbe can’t refuse when he sees how proud Mizael is, but he almost does when Mizael dumps a dozen red roses into his arms and asks Rei to take a picture of them.
“Is that Jean Paul Gualtier?” He wrinkles his nose at the unfamiliar stench and hates himself for knowing.
“Yes,” Mizael simply states, “It was free.”
---
Five months after graduation, Mizael gets home from Paris to an empty apartment. They still live in the same ugly one bedroom apartment, but it’s become a home to them. Mizael takes up 107% of the closet space and Durbe doesn’t complain.
Mizael sends Durbe a text got home safe. miss you. and presses his face into Durbe’s pillow.
He wakes up to a text at 2AM sorry. still at work.
It was supposed to be easier now.
---
They settle into a routine. Mizael flies out to Milan and New York and Paris a few times a year and Durbe tries and fails every time to meet him at the airport. It’s not like Mizael minds, he knows that Durbe is working hard to build up his career.
He doesn’t.
It’s just that sometimes when he goes to sleep curled around his pillow and wakes up in the same position, he wonders if Durbe is even real. If maybe the past six years (and the twelve before that) have been a dream.
It feels like he spends his life waiting around just to say hi to him. Hi Durbe! How was your day? Let’s go catch the midnight showing on the latest James Bond movie? Are you tired? Do you want to take a bath together?
Sometimes they go out for a quick dinner if he comes home early but most of the time, he comes home too tired to take off his own shoes.
Mizael tucks him in, removes his glasses and kisses him on the forehead.
Everything will work out.
---
Mizael wakes up to the sun bright in his eyes and a once familiar smiling face hovering over him.
“What’s going on?” He croaks out, voice hoarse from sleep.
“Come on! Get dressed! Let’s go out!”
“I don’t know if I have to be anywhere today.”
“I checked, you don’t” Durbe calls cheerily, already making coffee in the kitchen.
Mizael groans, rolls over and pulls himself out of bed. He was sore to the bone, but it was so rare to see Durbe this energetic that he didn’t mind too much. It’s been ages since they’ve spent the whole day together.
It takes Mizael an hour to shower and get dressed, then another forty minutes to do his hair and make-up.
“Are you reaaaaady?” Durbe bounces on the bed, sounding like he was twelve again.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Well now I have to get dressed again, these are hardly the pants for a surprise.”
Durbe drags him out the door by the arm.
---
Mizael starts to think maybe this is an elaborate plan to take him somewhere no one will recognize him and murder him. The smile on Durbe’s face is starting to scare him and they’ve been driving for more than a while.
Still he keeps his mouth shut (a rare occasion) and looks out the window.
Durbe parks the car outside a beautiful condominium and Mizael is almost afraid to ask why. Quietly he follows Durbe into the elevator and in front of a door 1102. He knocks twice and behind the door he can hear muffled voices.
“Durbe?”
“Shhhh. Just wait.”
Mizael raises and eyebrow. The door opens a crack to reveal Alit’s bright smiling face.
“Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“Jeez Mizael just say yes, you’re ruining it.”
Mizael doesn’t reply, just stares until Alit sighs and swings the door open.
“Surprise!”
Mizael stares stupidly into the doorway. The place was gorgeous: giant windows, lofty ceilings, marble tiles, almost like the place another one of the models at his agency lives in.
“Wow, did you guys get a new place? It’s really nice. Very tasteful, i guess you guys got a designer huh?”
Alit stares at him, exasperated and flicks him in the forehead, “It’s yours stupid.”
Mizael blinks twice, then two more times before turning to Durbe.
“Durbe?”
“Surprise!”
Mizael starts crying right there, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks, face scrunched up like a pug. Durbe just laughs and runs his fingers through his hair.
“Shhhh. There, there. It’s going to be okay.”
Mizael wipes at his face with his sleeve and takes another look around, “You’re the worst.”
Durbe laughs again, “I know but you’re stuck with me now.”
Mizael sniffles delicately and nods, “Yeah.”