The house sounded different at night. Not quiet, never quiet, but tuned. A stair creaked like a note played on purpose. Pipes ticked in the walls. Somewhere a stereo murmured the tail end of a mixtape, the drum fill riding out into tape hiss. The upstairs hall held the day’s heat and someone’s spilled cologne, and the carpet had a way of swallowing footsteps if you knew where to place them.
Ethan did. He placed them carefully, eyes on the thin bar of amber at the base of Eli’s door. He stood there longer than necessary, one palm flat to the panel, feeling the minute vibration of the box fan beyond. Then he knocked once, soft.
The latch turned. A slice of lamplight cut his shoes. Eli’s face appeared in the crack, a fingertip raised. “Hey,” he said, almost a breath, and the door swung just wide enough for Ethan to slip through.
It was the same room as the first time and not. Same fan rattling in the window. Same curve of light across the desk, a stack of folded shirts that never seemed to shift. But there was a new dent in the pillow and an ashtray perched on a Norton anthology, and Eli himself was looser, barefoot, shirtless in old gym shorts, the cocky set of his shoulders replaced by something that looked like relief.
“You took your time tonight,” Eli said, not accusing, not anything at all. He spoke over his shoulder as he crossed to twist the blinds closed.
“I had to get past Clay’s patrol.” Ethan nodded toward the hall. “Clipboard rounds.”
Eli’s grin flashed. “I almost forgot.” He flicked the lamp a notch lower. “You good?”
Ethan nodded as he leaned against the door until it shut, until the latch clicked the room into a sealed world. The week slipped off like a jacket. He crossed the two steps that were always two steps and put his forehead to Eli’s cheekbone, a touch that became a hug, then Eli turned his head and the point of contact became a kiss, hard, testing, the kind that asked, You here? and answered itself: I am.
They weren’t clumsy this time, except on purpose, like a joke they were in on together. Ethan’s fingertips trailed the line of hair at Eli’s sternum and Eli swatted at his wrist and said something low about cold hands, and then there was nothing to say. Shirts traveled the same arc as before, a careful toss toward the chair no one ever sat in. The fan kept its steady drone. When Ethan’s knee hit the mattress edge, Eli’s palm found the back of his neck and held, not possessive, not gentle. Familiar.
As Eli pinned him to the mattress, Ethan didn’t try to name the rush. He let it fill him. The week had been an unspooling of errands and cheap wine and the wet-throated bark of orders that rattled his bones; this was narrowing, the way the eye tightens to a single star. He let himself memorize the domestic smallness of it—the nick in Eli’s lamp shade, the faint detergent clean of the sheets, the cigarette resting in the ashtray sending up a ribbon of smoke without being smoked. He had the sudden absurd thought that if he cataloged enough of these details, the night couldn’t evaporate in the morning.
When Eli shifted, the mattress talked. When he laughed, it was quiet, a shape in his throat more than a sound. He kissed like he was teaching and learning at once. Ethan laughed once too—nervous, happy, both—and Eli hushed him by running a thumb across his lip. “Don’t wake the dead,” he murmured, then contradicted himself with a kiss that would have woken anyone attuned to it.
Reaching into the nightstand, Ethan said with a crooked grin, “I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise.” Soon Ethan was on his stomach, Eli slowly working him open Patient and sure.
“Fuck me,” Ethan whispered, no longer able to wait. Eli complied, pulling Ethan’s up by the waist slightly as he pushed inside. Ethan gasped then he felt Eli’s weight on top of him, almost suffocating as Eli began to move in and out. Arms wrapped tightly around Ethan’s chest, using his shoulders for leverage. Ethan groaned as he buried his face into the pillow, but he didn’t want it any other way.
They paused only when the room asked them to—when the house shifted, when a door shut down the hall and muffled laughter smothered into private sound. Eli’s eyes flicked to the knob. Ethan felt the flick like a static snap and watched the moment something armored slid back into place behind Eli’s face and then, just as quickly, slid away again.
After, they lay angled in the soft heat, the fan moving the smoke in lazy ellipses. Eli propped on an elbow, Ethan flat on his back counting the slow revolution of blades and the beat at his own throat. A car door slammed out on the Row. The house answered in muffled whoops, as if acknowledging a point in a game.
“Don’t—” Eli started, then stopped, thumb on Ethan’s jaw. “Just don’t tell anybody.”
“I won’t,” Ethan said, because he couldn’t imagine telling anyone and also because the rule made it feel more real. A thing you kept was a thing you had.
Eli reached past him without looking and found the cigarette, drew once, then let the ember glow hang between them. He offered it with two fingers; Ethan took it, tasted the ash of Eli’s mouth on the filter, and balanced the butt in the ashtray again without cracking the quiet.
“Can you spend the night?” Eli asked, voice softer now.
“What about Mark?” Ethan whispered.
“He’s dead to the world right now, trust me,” Eli said a little too cockily.
“Don’t get used to this,” Eli added, too quickly, like he’d practiced the line.
“I already am,” Ethan admitted, before he could stop himself. He felt the flinch and knew better next time.