Archive of Our Own

It's just another weekend.

Thorns has another gore-y psychological thriller on and even though Elysium hasn't mentally recovered from sitting with him through Bly Manor and Suspiria 2018, it's at least milder and old-timey enough for Elysium to just kind of let pass.

He knows Thorns doesn't really mind that he does.

It's raining outside on a Saturday night and he'd declined yet another invite to a mixer because this was easier. Also, Thorns had a coupon for two large pizzas now sitting cold on his headboard next to where his laptop was propped up.

Logistically speaking, two grown men (relative–but they were in university so that had to count, right?) shouldn't be physically able to squeeze in next to each other on a twin bed, but because they’d both picked a room with its own bathroom that meant they couldn't get a couch, and it was a lot more comfortable than the floor.

Ding.

His phone lights up with a notification and Thorns doesn't even bother with a glance at his direction, just keeps his eyes trained on his laptop’s screen, thumb caught between a nail bite as he concentrates on the movie. Cute.

Elysium turns down his screen brightness out of courtesy, leans back against the pillow behind him with a soft thud, which–wait a minute.

That's not a sound falling back against a pillow should make.

Elysium hazards a glance to his side instead of up. And thank god for it, because Thorns is a lot closer to earth than he is, the top of his head would've met the underside of his chin if he did. He instead finds Thorns’ leg and his arm, and Thorns’ chest decidedly cushioning him comfortably.

Naturally, either this flies over Thorns’ head completely or he's just gotten really good at ignoring Elysium-and-the-weird-stuff-he-happens-to-do-sometimes. Thorns’ words, not his.

Elysium stills, hands hovering over his phone’s keyboard. The message he’d pulled up was only about to be a discussion on next week’s report topic for Professor Nearl’s history class.

Thorns moves.

Maybe after a beat or a full minute. Elysium can't tell anymore. But he only moves to adjust his legs so that it's caging Elysium securely, his posture too, probably so Elysium doesn't have to hunch over to not knock his head accidentally if they planned to stay like that any longer.

He doesn't know. Do they?

Thorns is still watching. He even says “oh, gross,” under his breath when they show the bottom part of a severed head roll into the screen, maggots sticking out.

Elysium adjusts accordingly, because he is nothing if not adaptable and not so shallow to 1) read too much into it, 2) think too deeply about it either (which arguably mean the same things, but he digresses).

They've been doing this (the moving watching on one bed in close proximity) almost every weekend since the third month of roommate-hood. Why stop something good and easy for a gesture as inconsequential as leaning on a friend? Right.

It's some 30 minutes into this that Elysium realizes he's forgotten entirely about the chat window, another five when it registers his eyes are closed, he's slumped a little against Thorns’ chest, and there is definitely a hand in his hair now no doubt, carding through it gently.

“This is nice,” he thinks is only a thought until it actually leaves his traitor mouth and Thorns only hums a quiet, “mn,” in response.

The way his heart races at the touch, the rumble of Thorns’ chest against his back when he makes that sound isn't something he is going to pick apart today. Not on his calendar. Not on the agenda.

“I'm picking the next movie!” He announces, because changing the subject is always easier.

There's a lot to Try and Not Think About. Thorns is not very good at this. Decidedly.

There are things that occur to Thorns only when movie night is over and Elysium has rolled back into his own bed and deep into his sheets.

There's a lingering feeling in the air.

He's not sure if it started after he put his chin on Elysium’s shoulder, after his brain registered vaguely, sea salt and a hint of bergamot, or after he'd decided he liked the smell and Elysium, taken aback possibly by Thorns all up in his personal space when usually, Thorns would mind, pulled away and told him, “Alright, I think we should call it a night.”

True, it was a little bit unfair of Thorns to allow himself to crowd into him when he'd begrudge the reverse (but let it happen anyway, roughly 80% of the time). There was just something Not Quite Right and he couldn't put his finger on it.

He looks at Elysium across the room, on his own bed now, back turned to him.

Thorns has seen this so many times in the last couple of months, but he really can’t shake the feeling that something was off.

Instead of Not Thinking About It like he’s supposed to, he sifts through every possible scenario in his head because that's all it can really do at this point anyway. Think about Elysium and his stupid hair and his stupid grin and Elysium’s stupid laugh or how everything about him is loud, and vaguely annoying but at the very least entertaining enough for Thorns not to completely shy away from the idea that he could get used to the sound.

Huh.

In Thorns’ mind’s eye, playback goes like: Elysium gets a text message (as one does) and moves to get comfortable in his seat. His seat is Thorns, which is predictable enough that it doesn’t surprise either of them he supposes, because the college dorm beds are tiny. They did not get the couch rooms because they went for a private bathroom. The floor was uncomfortable to sit on. So. Bed. So, Thorns is chair.

This is usual Elysium behavior. Hallmark of his character. He just does “these things” and granted, Thorns lets him do it.

Usually, Thorns would have something to say about this by now. Like, “get off,” maybe or, “you’re heavy.”

But the rain is still coming down in droves outside. He is pizza-sated enough and pleased enough over a quiet weekend, all things considered.

He is well aware that he picked a shit movie, and that Elyisum isn’t paying attention anymore—but Thorns doesn’t really mind either of those things.

His brain was side-tracked the minute Elyisum had clambered onto his bed in sweats and Thorns’ engineering department-issued sports festival shirt, two sizes too big for either of them. By now, he doesn’t remember how the movie started, he is likely incapable of remembering how it’ll end either.

Naturally, his department-issued sports festival shirt (it really does say ENGR DEPT in big bold letters on the front) commits the highest act of treason against someone trying not to think too hard about their stupid loud, stupid handsome roommate, and slips off his shoulder in the middle of Thorns’ watching-not-watching. It happens while Elysium’s back is pressed against him like this isn’t a big deal at all. Spoiler: it is a little bit of a big deal.

Thorns clings to his last shred of propriety like a lifeline.

He has to do something. Anything.

With his hands preferably before his mouth can go anywhere it isn’t supposed to. The closest thing within reach is—Elysium’s hair?

Elysium hasn’t looked up from his phone. Just wiggled a little in his seat to adjust his body, fitting better into the space Thorns’ has apparently allowed for him to take.

Time moves.

The movie goes on.

The rain doesn’t stop.

Thorns' brain does the figurative equivalent of short-circuiting.

Elysium vaguely says something like, “this is nice,” to which Thorns deigns to agree with out loud. Sort of.

He hadn’t really been thinking when he put an arm around his waist, or when his chin came into contact with the offending shoulder. But he wonders, maybe that’s where Elysium had drawn the line?

Thorns frowns, acutely aware of how he’d just spent the last 20 minutes reminiscing about a moment that literally just took place in the same room on the very same bed not even a whole hour ago.

Was disappointment supposed to taste like the air that had replaced the small expanse of skin on Elysium’s neck, the very one he was supposed to put his lips on, had they stayed there maybe a minute longer?

Did Elysium date guys?

Does Thorns know how to date full-stop?

Did this all just start tonight?

Scientifically speaking, that was highly unlikely. Weedy would tell him it would be dumb to believe so, and that he’s dumber even, for getting it bad over his roommate.

The statistics for this working out painlessly and with only minor incident didn’t look so great either, and by his calculations, this could end in either awkward avoidance, manufactured civility to unsuccessfully mask any discomfort, and then, ultimately, an amicable rejection.

Was the 4.3% of this going anywhere worth it?

Thorns thinks back to the easy dynamic they’ve built over the last few months. Everything about the course of their relationship, predictable by now. Anything more would probably throw their rhythm off balance.

Thorns sighs, pulls up his blanket close to his chest and wills himself to go to sleep.

Of course Monday arrives without much preamble.

Elysium doesn’t know why he’d thought otherwise, but the weekend had been like many others that preceded it. Except for the one incident—which, isn’t really. Maybe it was just something they’d do. Should do. Could get used to?

In all honesty, he wasn’t complaining, and neither was Thorns, it seemed.

Monday was here, and like any first day of the school week, he was supposed to get up at 7:30AM on the dot and pad to the other side of the room, navigate through Thorns’ pile of clothes and paper and miscellany to reach the very person, shake him awake once, maybe tease him a little for still sleeping, and then hit the shower himself.

Then he’d get out, get dressed, head back into the room, and do the same thing maybe two or three more times until inevitably, and a little grumpily, Thorns, rumpled shirt, disheveled hair, mild annoyance coloring his features, will wake, tell Elysium to “cut it out, I’m up,” and go about his own morning routine himself.

If it ever crossed Elysium’s mind that Thorns’ scratchy-morning voice was ever hot, no one would know. No one had to know.

When Elysium throws off his blanket and checks his phone for the time, it dawns on him that there are two things amiss.

One, is that it’s now 8:00AM, and two, Thorns is not only awake already, but he’s gone.

Elysium isn’t sure why, but he thinks this is a bit strange.

Maybe, he wouldn’t mind so much any other day. He’d probably immediately think that Weedy and Glaucus had come to pick him up early for something, maybe a project or a class rescheduled early. But he would have known.

Elysium would have managed to talk enough for the two of them over the weekend and get him to complain a bit about an earlier class on monday or a project or Weedy and Glaucus coming to pick him up. But he didn’t know then, and he doesn’t know now. It’s not exactly information he’s entitled to either, but there’s a strange hollow feeling in his stomach when he sees the unmade blanket across the room, piles of sheets and some clothes and pillows askew and no Thorns.

Elysium shakes his head.

This was probably a one-off thing, right?

They were fine.

They’d fought exactly three times over stupid shit since they started roomming together, and this was nothing like that. As far as Elysium was concerned, there was nothing to worry about.

Still, he pulls up his phone as he makes his way to the bathroom, he throws Thorns a text about maybe grabbing dinner with him before heading back up to the dorms later, and hopes food is going to be enough to get rid of whatever weird juju was going on in the air of their shared room.

They don’t see much of each other the entire week, which is just as well.

He “had” to decline dinner that Monday over some stuff he had to finish for a class.

Then there was that big report on Wednesday, the test on Thursday, and then another useless drinking party with the rest of the engineering society that he couldn’t bow out of on Friday night, which happened to be today.

Technically, he could bow out, just, he’d lost the fight in him sometime midweek when he’d woken up with a start at 4:30AM from yet an nth dream with Elysium in it.

He hates that his mind has decided on its own to work this way. If he wills himself not to think too hard about him during the day, it comes and bites him back in the ass in the middle of the night. Sometimes literally.

They were mostly mild dreams.

No big events, just small snapshots of scenes big enough to fit in his pocket. Deceptively realistic. Like, the one where he takes Elysium back to their hometown for summer vacation. Or the one where he wakes up and they’re not in their tiny little dorm room and live in a tiny little apartment in the middle of the city instead. Pipe dream fantasies that follow an off-screen confession which, by some miracle, apparently went well.

Except his dreams couldn't tell him what words he’d managed to eke out, how to say it, or whether it might actually work if he tried it out in real life.

The solution is no solution.

It’s Friday night, and he only protests silently and by walking slowly behind the rest of his club when they head to the small barbecue restaurant just outside of campus.

He doesn’t even reject the glass proffered by Closure, their president, or the third refill, or even the sixth that gets poured into his cup by 10:30PM.

By what part of his consciousness assumes to be almost 1:00 in the damned morning, he swears he sees Elysium, bundled up in a scarf, Autumn-rain having just let up but the cold ever-present, crossing the street after a car passes. He sees Elysium throw a look at him, disbelieving.

He vaguely registers that it is Weedy reluctantly propping him up on one side, and Glaucus on the other. Maybe a telephone pole behind him, but he isn’t so sure about anything else at this point.

He doesn’t remember when he’d been dragged out into the street, or why Elysium is even here.

His face feels warm.

Warmer even, when Elysium unwinds his scarf from his own neck and throws it over Thorns instead, securing it around him with a little laugh, or when Elysium moves to take hold of his shoulders, guiding him to the direction of campus, of their dorm’s building.

When he stumbles by the school gates, he doesn’t even protest when Elysium crouches down and tells him to climb on his back. He wants to say, he can barely walk, how the hell is he supposed to climb, but instead, just does as told and lets Elysium take care of him despite his better judgment.

“Up we go,” He hears Elysium heave a little, but manages to carry Thorns in any case and can walk without letting him slip (or drop for that matter).

Thorns’ mind is muddled.

It’s cold again and against Elysium’s back it’s nice and toasty and he smells a bit like lemongrass now too.

Thorns was never a talkative drunk, but he’ll reach for anything nearby like he’s sensory deprived and just needs something to touch so he knows he’s still on earth, or alive. Which is just what he does, wrapping his arms around Elysium’s neck tighter, finds the crook of it and calls it home.

“Hang in there, buddy, we’re almost there.”

“Mn.”

His vision goes blurry before it fades completely to black.

A wise friend of Elysium once told him, “you can think with your brain and your dick Ely, it’s not mutually exclusive, for better or worse.”

The adage was a little longer, involved elaborate explanations, a spilled can of beer (and then some), and even less reassuring examples to illustrate their point better, which neither served to calm down his nerves over being literally ignored the whole week, but also unable to shake the images of Saturday on his mind, or the ways they twisted too far off from we-could-just-be-friends-who-cuddle-sometimes.

The dawning realization that it hadn’t been enough (‘and far from it!’ his merciless conscience which vaguely sounds like Myrtle calls out to him internally) is happening right now.

Right this very minute.

It could be one or two things.

Or actually, it’s really just the one thing.

It could be that when they’d stumbled into their dorm room together, Elysium, tired from lugging Thorns around, and Thorns passed out on his back, had quite literally toppled them onto his bed. He’d shielded Thorns from the impact of the wall behind him, but that meant a small bump on the back of his own head. He’s fine, it seems, though he kind of wishes it were a concussion right about now.

Thorns is pressed impossibly close to his chest, literally splayed on top of him like a blanket, but human, warm, and unfairly good looking for someone wearing yet another shirt backwards, hair a mess, and drooling a little in his sleep.

Elysium’s brain has the audacity to think that it’s cute before it occurs to him that Thorns is on top of him, passed out, sure, but on top of him, only their clothes separating them from each other and—

“Holy shit.”

“Huh?”

Thorns stirs.

Elysium recites all the prime numbers in his head.

It gives him neither peace of mind nor mental fortitude to muster up an explanation for Thorns even though there is nothing to explain here. He was tired, the bed was near, he probably tripped on a shirt in the dark, or his legs gave out, it probably doesn’t matter.

But Thorns only shifts in his position so he’s part on the bed, part curled up against Elysium like he’s determined to turn him into a human bolster pillow. Thorns’ face finds the side of his neck, buries it there and wraps his arms around Elysium’s waist, tugging him close.

Elysium turns beet red.

He doesn’t remember what Thorns is actually like drunk. He has hazy memories of any occasions they’d ever had any drinks together, outside or at home. Elysium knows he’s always the one who gets knocked out first and it’s always Thorns who has to drag him to bed and tuck him in.

The idea of being able to witness Thorns smashed out of his mind would have been great. He could tease him the next day over it while making him juice for his hangover, but Elysium’s mind has ceased to function as it should.

It’s like, he knows it’s still in there, and it’s doing its best with what little resolve he’s got left, but Thorns, snuggles into his side, breath ghosting over the skin of his neck and making the back of his head tingle in a way that isn’t entirely unpleasant.

“Thorns?” He hazards, bringing a hand up to the back of Thorns’ head, meant to nudge him lightly awake with it. The hand, instead, ends up acting of its own accord, staying threaded in his hair.

“Mm?” Thorns, bastard that he is, nuzzles, and Elysium feels the vibration go from warm on his neck all the way down to his dick.

Elysium tugs at his hair involuntarily in response, immediately regrets it when Thorns lets out another soft breath right next to him, suspiciously sounding like a moan. God help him.

“Thorns you’re…” Elysium trails off, not knowing what to say or whether Thorns is actually listening to him.

“What?”

Elysium startles at the slight lucidity of Thorns’ voice. Thorns moves again, sluggish as he is, sitting over Elysium’s torso this time bent over him, caging his head with his hands.

His eyes are still closed, and his head is probably pounding. Elysium half hopes he isn’t about to puke on him and half hopes this isn’t about to be Thorns revealing himself sober and throttling him for displaying so much unabashed attraction to him in the last 15 minutes.

Elysium is paralyzed beneath him. Paralyzed, confused, and guiltily aroused.

It’s a lot and these feelings put together just spell out pain in big bold letters. There was nothing to gain here, only lose.

He looks up at Thorns, whose eyebrows are bunched up like he’s already trying to stave off a headache.

“Elysium.”

“Hey now, don't say my name like that! A guy could get the wrong idea, you know.”

Thorns leans in close, lips just above Elysium’s neck again. Why does he keep doing that?

“And that! Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?” He mumbles back, and then, “this?”

Thorns kisses the spot once just warmed by his breath, the first, actual soft press of Thorns’ lips on his skin. It doesn’t last very long, but the feeling lingers.

“The—what?”

“Did you not like that?”

Elysium wants to say he doesn’t know.

He wants to say he doesn’t know but he’s already thinking about what it might feel like if Thorns would do that again and again and just not stop. His brain is going on overdrive trying to think of a way to say yes he, in fact, might like it and maybe Thorns could try that again so he could make sure, but also, what the fuck was going on?

Elysium’s train of thought is cut short when Thorns shifts himself up a little so that he’s level with him. They're so close this almost feels like they could—

“These dreams are starting to feel stupid real,” Thorns mutters, before shaking his head and losing his grip and falling back asleep.

When Thorns wakes up the world is teetering.

The way everything moves is slow, like his vision is sloshing in front of him, and he has to keep his eyes closed to make it go away. It makes him feel a little gross, but at least it feels like he’s wearing clean clothes, and he probably didn’t vomit at all the day before, so perhaps he could allow himself to be a little proud of that.

Their electric kettle’s on button makes that tiny clicking noise to signal that it’s done and Thorns hears the unmistakable sound of liquid being poured into a mug.

Elysium pads over to him, sets the drink down on his headboard, already dressed to head out.

“Ah! You’re awake,” Elysium beams at him.

Thorns squints at him in mild suspicion before scooting over to take the warm mug in his hands and blow on it.

“Who would’ve thought you’d be such a fussy drunk, huh?”

“Ugh.”

Elysium laughs, and even though the sound is too loud for hangover brain and hangover ears, he doesn’t complain.

“How’d they get you down like that though? D’you lose a bet?”

“No.” Thorns says, taking a sip of his drink.

It’s tea, something herbal he probably wouldn’t know the name of. If he’d bothered with a proper answer then it was no, he did not lose a bet he just had a lot on his mind. If he’d bothered to think about what the actual answer was then it would be, no, he did not lose a bet, he just had a lot on his mind, and at the very front and very center of it all is standing right across from him.

Naturally, he doesn’t say anything more.

They stay like that in relative silence.

Mostly silence for Thorns. Elysium is rattling on about going out to help Myrtle shop for a new dress or something close to it, his mind is on trying to figure out how he got from the restaurant to his bed or why Elysium, though chipper and energetic as he typically is on a weekend or on a regular day even, has not once looked him in the eye while talking to him.

He went out. He let Closure pour him that first cup. He downed it thinking about wanting to cuddle with Elysium on a semi-regular basis in their dorm room, and then the next thinking that he might actually feel more than amicable roommate and close friend-like affection for him, and then the one after that thinking ‘no way that was going to happen,’ and then maybe two or three more before he completely went under.

He remembers Weedy telling him off for doing that.

Then how cold it was outside of the restaurant, and then how warm it was all of sudden on Elysium’s back?

Thorns blinks.

Elysium is done tidying up in their mini-food corner and his bed. He’s already checking his phone for messages.

“Elysium,”

Elysium flinches.

Thorns frowns.

“Elysium—”

“What?”

Well, that was curt.

Thorns brings the mug up to his lips. “Did I do anything strange last night?”

Elysium stiffens. The answer is probably a resounding yes.

“No.”

“That’s—”

They speak and close their mouths at the same time, and then it’s silent for a time because Elysium has probably worked out that Thorns has an inkling about something happening, but without Thorns actually remembering and Elysium unwilling to divulge anymore information they seem to be at an impasse.

Was it really that bad? Had Thorns jumped him? Like, finally, but also—that’s not how this was supposed to go.

“I’m sorry.” Thorns tells him, after a long moment. “Whatever it was, if it’s that bad. Or not. Doesn’t matter.”

Elysium doesn’t look up from where his eyes are trained on the floor, decidedly not looking at Thorns. He pockets his phone and shakes his head.

“It’s fine,” Elysium says. Curt again. It probably isn’t and Thorns actually feels a mild ache in his chest at the wake of it.

Elysium excuses himself in much the same way, and leaves.

Elysium thinks himself a guy good at talking, so it shocks even himself that he can’t find it in him to clear the air.

He barely did anything anyway, he just didn’t know how: ‘you kissed me on the neck and we almost kissed, so I was wondering if we could try that again’ would sound. Or if Thorns would believe he got drunk enough to climb on top of him and do…well, that.

It hurt to think he’d forget, but even more because there was a big chance that this was just a one off thing. People get pent up, people look to the nearest source of comfort and maybe that just happened to be Elysium?

“Ugh, I am so gross.”

“Kind of,” Myrtle shrugs biting into her pizza. “You’re being unnecessary.”

It’s Elysium’s guilt pizza. Give me an excuse to be out of the dorm and I’ll feed you while we’re out pizza. His, ‘I shouldn’t have gotten all excited on my own’ pizza. Toppings: pineapples and ham.

“What’s the big deal anyway?” Elysium dutifully wipes the string of mozzarella cheese on her chin away for her with a paper towel as Myrtle barrels on. “So you want to get frisky with your roommate? It happens.”

Elysium groans, head in his hands. “It’s not just that!”

“Sooo you want to get frisky with your roommate with feelings. It. Happens. Get over yourself.”

He’s got another excuse at the tip of his tongue, but maybe Myrtle is so used to his inner turmoil manifesting out in the ugliest ways possible that she, unfazed, just continues digging into the guilt-pizza promised, shrugging again as she drops a real one on him.

“You know, Ely, he’d be pretty darn shallow to let that come between you two. Like—if you think that’s what’s gonna happen, and that’s how he’s gonna act then this Thorns guy sounds kind of shitty.”

“He’s not! He wouldn’t!” Elysium snaps his head up, affronted by the notion that Thorns is anything but great. Maybe a little sloppy sometimes, but other than that—

“Thorns would never. I mean sure, he’s rough around the edges, and I’ve tripped on his clothes on the floor too many times in the last eight months but he’s a good guy once you get to know him! Also, he’s got great arms. But it’s whatever! It’s fine. I’ll be fine. You’re right, I just have to get over myself. It’s not like we actually kissed. We almost kissed and it’s not like he has to know. Just because I like him doesn’t mean I—”

Myrtle blinks at him, and then looks to the general direction of behind him.

Elysium feels himself go cold wondering why Myrtle’s expression is so puzzled.

“He just stopped walking when you started talking, Ely, so I was wondering if you knew him,” Myrtle stage whispers badly.

“Elysium?” A voice comes up from behind him and though he's trying to will it not to be Thorns, he'd know that voice anywhere.

Rhodes Pizza Express is too goddamn close to campus is what it is.

Naturally, Elysium gets almost bodily dragged back to their dorm room so Thorns can smack him right in the head out of public scrutiny, but once they enter and Elysium quietly, awkwardly ambles on over to his bed; Thorns stays standing, just looking at the floor on his side of the room, without saying a word.

Elysium watches him wearily from where he’s sat.

And then Thorns starts picking up his shirts one by one, and all the other odds and ends strewn about, dumps them on his own bed and sits next to the pile.

His elbows rest on his knees like he’s running calculations in his head in deep concentration. Maybe like, what’s the probability of hurtling Elysium into the next dorm building and him making it out alive.

“Thorns, what I said back there—”

“You and I.”

Elysium swallows thickly.

“We kissed?”

“Almost.”

“Almost?” Thorns echoes, eyebrows raised.

“Y-yeah, we got back after you got drunk and then you fell on top of me, and I-I guess one thing just led to another? Ha-ha.”

He’s looking at him through his fringe, gaze carefully blank but piercing all the same.

“Explain. In detail.”

Elysium breathes, inhales and exhales out his resolve.

“You k-kissed (he does not squeak!) my neck and then when, I think, we were about to actually do it, you uhm, passed out.”

The first frays in Thorns’ composure comes as a surprise to him. Thorns only puts his hand over his eyes, and runs a hand through his hair and still, the action is unjustly hot of him anyway. Elysium is scared but also not blind.

He half expects Thorns to chew him out for thinking that they were going to kiss at all, or that that had been Thorns’ intention in the first place. He can already hear him brushing it off, ‘it’s inconsequential’, and maybe even apologize and say it’s never going to happen again.

Instead, Thorns gets up from his seat, crosses the short distance between their beds.

“And you like me?”

“I—what—wait a second! When did I say anything like that?” Elysium’s eyes widen, hands coming up in front of him like it’ll defend him from his own propensity to be an idiot sometimes. So he’s been told.

“At the pizza shop. You said so. If we ask your friend, I’m sure she’d say you did, too.”

“That was a—”

Thorns narrows his eyes at him, holds his gaze for a tense half second before Elysium breaks away in shame and guilt, red-cheeked, covering his face with his hands.

“Okay! Okay! Fine, fine. I like you! There! I said it. Now can we please just go back to how things were and pretend like this didn’t happen? It’s exhausting having to run away from you every week.”

The bed dips. Elysium retreats against the walls, but unfortunately, it doesn’t swallow him whole and now he’s just sitting there trying not to make his feet touch Thorns’ knee where his leg is crossed on the bed.

“No.” Thorns says simply. “We can’t do that.”

Elysium’s heart drops all the way down to his stomach. His hands feel cold against his face or maybe it was his face cold now against his hands? He can’t tell.

Thorns has told him no over so many things in the last couple of months and it never really gets to him, but the sharp pang goes straight through his chest and the sides of his eyes sting a little.

“Why not?”

Thorns sighs, and Elysium thinks he gets it.

Of course it’d be weird to be roommates with someone who likes you, who thinks that you two should kiss, when it was otherwise comfortable and easy between them and no kissing-almost-kissing was going on. It wasn’t his intention to rock the boat like that, but what’s been done has been done.

Thorns was right, there was no going back and he’d be a fool to think that they could just gloss over this like nothing happened.

“I like you.”

“I know, I’m sorry I’m such a bad friend and I should have kept it to myself, and that we’re at the point of no return now because I messed up and you probably didn’t really mean kiss me and I was just projecting my desires onto y—”

Wait a minute.

What?

“What?”

The dip on the bed by his side gets heavier. Elysium has his hands covering over his eyes like it’ll make Thorns stop pierciving him. Thorns, impossibly direct, now crowding into his space willingly. Making the short crawl towards him and stopping just right in front of him.

He takes a peek.

Thorns is looking at him straight, but his expression doesn’t betray anything else other than the usual, maybe a little curiosity as he watches Elysium cower from him like a cornered woodland creature.

“W-what?” He squeaks out.

If the ground had shattered open and let them both fall through, or if his bed would finally gain sentience and eat him alive, then Elysium wouldn’t be surprised because the next he sees is the ghost of a smile on Thorns. If he had blinked then he would’ve missed it.

“I like you.” Thorns tells him again. Like he’s made a decision, cast his vote on a bet, stakes doubled like he’s going to come out a richer man for it, too.

The full minute Elysium spends trying to figure out what this means now is time enough for Thorns to fit himself between his legs, kneeling. Their foreheads touch because Elysium’s brain is starting to hurt, but the ache in his chest is starting to ebb and turn into warmth spreading as Thorns puts a hand on his cheek.

“Going to kiss you now,” Thorns announces.

Elysium is about to interject and say he doesn’t have to say it before he does it, but Thorns is faster and his lips are on Elysium’s. For real this time.

Thorns would be remiss to experiment, and considering Elysium’s happy reception to his mouth, Thorns thinks maybe he can push today. A little. Not enough to scare just. He’s curious and also he can’t lie about how much he likes that Elysium likes this just as much too.

Elysium responds well to a deepened kiss, brings his arms around Thorns’ neck and leans into it. When Thorns swipes his tongue at the seam of his lips, Elysium obliges.

Thorns pulls away, stays close enough so that their foreheads are still pressed against one another as they both catch their breaths.

The wheels are turning and if they think too long about this, they’ll tank it before they can get anywhere.

Thorns decides to break the ice this time, his hand on Elysium’s thigh to steady himself, the other on the side of his neck because he’s probably developed a fixation by now, and their breathing loud between the two of them.

“Too fast?” Thorns asks, squeezes involuntarily at his thigh, then wondering what the skin under Elysium’s jeans feel like, maybe soft just like the rest of him.

Elysium grins at him, making a swift recovery, and pulling him closer, when he says, “Not enough.”

For two people who live together and sleep in the same room, they sure are acting like one of them has to go home tonight and not move across the room and probably fold some clothes before turning in for the night.

It makes sense, he supposes. They’d wasted enough time.

Still, Thorns parts them for air, feeling the heat and haze, the dizzying effect of reciprocated feelings and also getting to makeout with your apparent-crush-now-boyfriend hitting him all at once.

“Slow down,” Elysium moves to press his lips against Thorns’ forehead, who feels his face scrunch up, unused to the tenderness. Elysium huffs out a laugh, ghost of a kiss against Thorns’ lips this time, says, “We can take our time.”

Thorns shakes his head.

“Don’t wanna.”

Elysium takes a good look at him, stunned at his petulance, but blushing pink all the same.

“That’s so cute. Thorns, what the fuck.”

Thorns shoves a hand in his face. “Don’t call me cute, you’ll kill my boner.”

Elysium’s laughing again, at first, a shaking feeling against Thorns’ hand, the vibration running all the way up his arm, and then suddenly Elysium’s eyes go wide, still just holding Thorns’ wrist and not fielding it away, throws him a look.

“Y-your what?”

Thorns rolls his eyes.

“You too, you know.”

Elysium turns nearly the shade of red the one tuft of hair on his head is dyed, Thorns almost feels a tug at the corner of his lips at it.

“This is—that’s—”

“You’re healthy, is all.” Thorns shrugs, because it’s true.

“So are you, apparently.”

“Apparently.” And then, “I can help you take care of it, you know.”

Elysium hides in Thorns’ hand, but it’s just the one and the only thing it does is endear him a little more to Elysium than anything else.

“You’d want to?” Elysium ventures.

“I want to.”

Thorns reaches to undo the button of Elysium’s jeans, but stops just short of doing anything else. He climbs off the bed, settles himself on the floor, kneeling. He tells Elysium to scoot over.

Trance-like, Elysium shifts forward and Thorns puts his hand back on Elysium’s thigh like it belongs there. Gives him a reassuring squeeze again, looking up.

Elysium unzips his own jeans and Thorns helps him shuck the rest of it off away and discard it to the other side of the room.

Thorns presses a palm against the outline of Elysium’s dick straining against his briefs, an experimental touch that Elysium shudders at, a delicious sharp intake of breath from just contact through cloth making Thorns’ hands itch to see what else he can get out of him.

“I’ll stop if you don’t like it.” Thorns looks up at him from on his knees, between his legs.

Elysium nods, and then. “Okay. Alright.”

They manage to get rid of the briefs now, and Thorns adjusts his position on the floor, finds a pillow to prop against Elysium’s back so he can lean against the wall where his bed is pressed up against.

Thorns leans in.

It’s Elysium who takes a deep, grounding breath when Thorns takes him in his mouth. He can't look yet. Reflex has him covering his face with his hands again, but he can’t not look either, so he watches through them.

Thorns braces himself on his leg, another hand closed around the part of Elysium’s cock that his mouth can’t reach. If the visual gave him any leeway to think about anything else it would be to wonder about where Thorns learned how to do this and why he was so good at it, but he’d have to table it for later.

All his mind can register is the warmth of the inside of Thorns’ mouth, the slide of tongue against the underside of his cock and Thorns taking him deep and taking him agonizingly slow.

“Thorns,” Elysium bites his lip. He’s forgotten about covering his face to bite at his own hand. He’s trying to press closer into the wall because if he doesn’t he might buck into Thorns’ mouth and hurt him.

Thorns puts hand around his side, and of all things pushes him to meet the bob of his head, the little bastard.

Thorns releases him for a moment, an obscene pop that’s only masked by the way Elysium groans out his embarrassment and pleasure all in one go.

“Just tell me,” Thorns licks at the tip, “If you don’t like it.”

He licks at the slit, already leaking with pre-cum, and then, “I’ll stop.”

“D-don’t!” Elysium stammers out, probably too fast.

Thorns squeezes his thigh again, nails digging into his skin a little this time as he tries to take as much of Elysium as he can again.

He’s not completely over the guilt hanging over his head for having imagined something close to this like maybe once or twice before, but reality is definitely beginning to outweigh his initial misgivings and his brain right now only has room for the way Thorns is stroking him erratic and the sounds of his heady breathing mixed with the slide of Thorns’ mouth, his hand against his cock.

It’s a lot and for once, he’s at a loss for words.

He can’t not give in to wanting to chase the high that Thorns is teasing in front of him.

Elysium’s breathing hitches, he feels the tight heat pool in his belly close. There’s a tongue brushing against his nerves and wet flesh, taking alternate swipes at his slit, taking just the tip, and then down over as much as he can take. Thorns stops using his hand to stroke the rest of the way to squeeze the base, flattens his tongue against his cock, and brings his free hand around Elysium to grab his ass and nudge him deeper into his mouth.

“Hah—Thorns!”

Elysium’s toes curl when he comes. He’s shaking, gripping Thorn’s hair, who doesn’t stop as he pumps him through it. Swallows.

“Don’t—oh my god, Thorns.”

“What?” Thorns parts from him, a string of saliva connecting his dick to Thorns’ mouth obscenely.

Elysium has never taken his shirt off so quickly. He wipes it away, caught so off guard by the scene that it's only until after he's safely punted the shirt across the room that he realizes he is now 100% naked.

Thorns looks up at him, almost deceptively impassive, but the faintest hint of pink high on his cheek tells Elysium otherwise. He feels the stir go straight to his pit of stomach.

Thorns sits himself down on the floor, still trying to catch his breath a little. Still watching Elysium.

After a beat without anything said between them, Thorns closes his eyes and asks, “Can I?”

Elysium swallows. He knows what Thorns means. He also knows that Thorns isn't going to hold it against him if he says no today or maybe they can pick this back up some other time.

But the strain of Thorns’ cock in his jeans, the sweat that drips down from his forehead to his temple, the self-control he's trying to muster, eyes closed on the floor after the best blowjob Elysium has received in his three years of university. (Okay, maybe he was being a little biased here.)

Elysium assumes he's just made a face but he has Thorns talking again at least.

“I looked it up. I think I can make you feel good.”

Elysium turns bright red at that again at Thorns’ unwavering straightforwardness, disarming.

He inches closer, reaching his arms out, which Thorns takes. He pulls him up onto the bed, on top of him as he settles back down against the wall and the one pillow behind him.

“Okay,” Elysium tells him.

Thorns kisses him once, full on the mouth, echoes, “Okay?”

“Will it hurt?”

Thorns readjusts the pillow behind him, and kisses his temple, says, “A bit. At first, maybe.”

“Oh, fuck you, Thorns. You said a bit! This is torture.”

“You’re,” Thorns laps at the skin of neck, a stripe up to just under his earlobe which he nips at gently. “Exaggerating. I won’t move until you tell me to. I promise.”

Elysium whimpers beneath him. He wraps his arms around Thorns tighter anyway for lack of anything else to do.

Thorns mysteriously was in possession of two condom packets tucked into one of the folds of his wallet (to which he’d explained as they just gave them away for free at the club’s orientation for freshmen and when Elysium pointed out, they’re third years, Thorns just said, “they had extra”), and there was, at the very least, his very own peach-vanilla scented hand cream for lube (“I think lube isn’t supposed to be scented do we have anything else-” “Thorns, God, just stick it in before I change my mind”), so they were relatively good there.

The fingers were fine. The fingers he could handle.

If Elysium goes out on a limb to say anything more on the topic, actually, the fingers felt pretty damn good.

But Thorns doesn’t let him come twice, not just yet, and had withdrawn them just as quickly as he’d found and brushed his fingers against his prostate.

“Alright?” He’d asked. Elysium hadn’t looked, couldn’t, but could feel the initial press of Thorns’ cock just flush against his hole and immediately, he’d thought, maybe three wasn’t enough.

Thorns had kissed him slow, likely trying to distract him for the initial push in. He’d made it a third of the way in before Elysium has to tell him to stop. Which leads them to where they’re at now.

The cold sweat against his forehead scares him, but Thorns had kissed him there and he was starting to get used to the feeling.

Thorns, for his part at least, is doing the most to keep him occupied—hands rubbing gently at his side, thumbing against the skin of it, mouth busy at work trailing a path down from his neck to his chest. When Elysium looks down it’s at the same time Thorns peers up at him curiously, an eye cracked open before falling shut again as he flattens his tongue down on a nipple.

“Nn, Thorns—”

The stimulation shifts his body, forces him to arch up in the slightest but just enough so that Thorns can slide in a little more comfortably.

“Almost there,” Thorns tells him, dutifully still inside Elysium.

His unsteady breathing is two parts the waning initial sting of the stretch, and Thorns making good use of his mouth, tonguing at a hardened nipple, bringing his other hand up to take care of the other one.

“Thorns,” Elysium breathes. His mind is muddled and he doesn’t know which feeling to concentrate on first, and by the time he realizes Thorns has bottomed out inside of him, he’s already shuddering at how Thorns’ is treating the rest of his body right now.

Every time it feels exceptionally good, like whenever Thorns presses at his side, or their tongues slot against one another, or when Thorns rolls a pert nub around eliciting a sharp gasp from him—it throws Elysium in for a loop, his body moving for want, looking for more, asking for it without having to say a word, but Thorns is like lead, anchors the rest of him, and it’s beginning to ache.

It’s a new feeling for Elysium, split open and wanting by the cock of arguably, his best friend, filled completely and not quite enough yet, that when Thorns asks him only, “Can I?” Instead of moving, Elysium wraps his legs around Thorns’ waist and thrusts up.

Thorns’ breath snags as Elysium tries to take him in deeper, and if he’s going to get what he wants, he realizes he's going to have to speak up.

“Thorns, you have to fuck me, please.”

At least he’s polite about it.

“Are you sure?” And God, Elysium actually wants to smack him right now.

He tightens his grip with his legs around Thorns’ hips as much as humanly possible to illustrate his point.

“Yes,” He practically hisses.

Maybe it’s something inside Thorns snapping.

When Elysium finally gets a good, proper look at Thorns again, he looks like he’s truly come apart on top of him. Hair sticking to his forehead, sweat dripping down his torso, the flex of his arms when he uses it to lift one of Elysium’s legs up for a better angle, an expression of resolute concentration on his face as he starts fucking into Elysium in earnest.

Elysium is still adjusting to the sensation, but there’s something about the slide and slap of their skin against one another, wet breathing, and the bed creaking lightly beneath them while he gets pounded half against a wall.

He pulls Thorns close, chests pressed against one another, afraid he’ll slip off if he lets go.

“Hah,” he breathes, feeling that tight heat begin to coil within him again. His toes curl, he threads his hands into Thorns’ hair, he shuts his eyes, feeling tears wet their corners.

Thorns pulls all the way out and thrusts back into Elysium, an easy slide now, a lucky guess, and finds the spot inside him again, this time with his cock and Elysium’s mouth falls open.

“That’s—there, Thorns, there, there. Please!”

The high keening noises won’t stop now and Thorns brushes against his prostate. He can’t think about the scratch of his nails against Thorns’ back or the way Thorns’ fingers dig into the flesh of his thigh and leave half-moons on his skin.

“S-so—it’s so good, please—” Elysium is babbling by now. “Don’t stop, please.”

Thorns noses at the side of his face, close to his ear, rhythm of his thrusts lost.

“Hey,” He breathes, kisses at Elysium’s cheek, moving to nip at his ear again after. “Bet you can come on my cock?”

It’s this and the angle, this and Thorns relentlessly pounding into him, brushing against his prostate at almost every thrust—there’s too much going on.

Elysium feels everything all at once, and when he thinks about the question again it’s at a particularly well-aimed thrust, and he comes, on Thorns’ cock, just like he said.

He’s already coming down a little, and Thorns stills to let him catch his breath.

“You okay?” Thorns asks him.

Elysium blinks blearily, secures his arms around Thorns like they aren’t already and nods into the crook of his neck.

“I’ll just—” Thorns starts to say.

Elysium shakes his head. “N-no, don’t pull out yet, just go. Go, finish.”

He inches back down against the wall, lifts a shaky hand up to cup Thorns’ face.

“C’mon, we’ve already gotten this far. Go on.”

He can just feel a blush coloring his cheeks, the warm post-orgasm buzz clouding his senses. When he looks at Thorns, he’s almost afraid to call the expression on his face impossibly fond, but Thorns doesn’t take his eyes off him, almost reverent as he starts to move again, chasing his own release.

He closes his eyes when he can’t keep time anymore, loses rhythm. Elysium curls his toes at the overstimulation, but tries his best to keep himself tight around Thorns.

It takes a couple of more thrusts, and a moan from Elysium that’s also his, “That’s it, y-you’re doing great. Don’t stop until you’re done,” when Thorns shudders, body taut as he spills inside the condom and Elysium wonders briefly what it would feel like if it weren’t there. He’ll unpack that thought later.

For now, Thorns pulls out, ties the condom off and discards it into a nearby trash can.

When Thorns comes back, sitting against the wall on the cleaner side of the bed, Elysium moves to fit himself between his legs and lean back into him, eyes closed and body possibly melting into jelly.

Thorns thumbs at the inside of his palm. Elysium hums, starting to feel cold, actually.

They’re sweaty and gross and naked and they’re going to have to strip the sheets later, which, judging by track record alone and how well Elysium knows Thorns means, Elysium will be stripping off his bedsheets, and Thorns will put all the clothes he’d picked up back on the floor or some poor chair they won’t be seeing for another three months, and then pull Elysium to the clean bed, and pass out until noon.

It’s still different, and weird, and a little surreal.

They’d just fucked, also, he has a boyfriend.

Elysium feels warm breath against the back of his neck, a kiss pressed against it to follow.

“Still want to go back and pretend like nothing happened?”

Elysium smacks his arm, but Thorns has none of it, just tackles him down so he can stand up, catch him off guard and lift him up off the bed and into the other one.

The clothes do, in fact, go on one of the few chairs they have in there. It’s the one by Elysium’s desk, of course.

Thorns joins him back on the bed and finds him under the sheets. He’s quiet beside him, which is just as well. He’s probably come down completely now.

“Hey,” Elysium starts, because he can now, and Thorns can’t take anything he’s said anymore. He pokes at his rib cage, and Thorns turns around, wraps his arms around him and tucks Elysium under his chin.

“Not what I meant,” Elysium frowns, inches away a little so he can see him. He’s already trying to fall asleep.

“Mn?”

“I think I preferred you better like 10 minutes ago.”

Thorns doesn’t bother with a response to that, just keeps his eyes closed.

“Can you tell me again?”

“What?”

“That you like me a lot.”

Thorns smacks him this time, gently at least, a light flick on his forehead before bringing his hand back down to snake around Elysium’s waist.

“I said I like you. Not a lot.”

“Aw, c’mon, Thorns! I let you put your—” Thorns lifts his hand again, this time to cover his mouth before anything else can come out. He kisses at his palm and Thorns only huffs in response before taking his hand back.

“Enough. Get some sleep.”

Elysium sighs, shaking his head, smiling despite himself anyway.

He lets Thorns hold him close, because it’s easy, comfortable, because they’d wasted too much time giving each other the runaround, because really, they’ve always done this, and because, if he really thinks about it—not everything about them has to change.