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brieflygorgeouss · 5 years

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36 and 96! ♥

36. “please don’t be mad at me” & 96. “i think i’m in trouble” (this probably isn’t what you were expecting but i hope you’ll enjoy either way, love!)

”Please don’t be mad at me,” is the first thing Lucas says as he flops down onto the seat opposite from Eliott, ”but I haven’t read a single page of what I was supposed to.”

Eliott looks up from where he’s been sketching an outline of a building while waiting for Lucas to show up. ”Are you serious?”

It’s Monday. Like every Monday, the library is quiet and mostly empty, even though the exam season is about to start. Eliott has chosen a table in the back by the window this time, where he can look out onto the campus, knowing that Lucas would be at least 10 minutes late, as he always is.

Sure enough, Lucas comes in 15 minutes late this time. Eliott barely notices, busy with the drawing, but still.

”Yeah, I know, I suck,” Lucas says, and Eliott wants to protest, don’t say that, but Lucas is already waving a hand, dismissive, and throwing his books from the bag onto the table and saying, ”So. Teach me everything I need to know.”

”Lucas, I told you,” Eliott says, closing his sketchbook and propping his chin on his hand, ”that literature doesn’t work like that. You know that you have to actually read the books first, right?”

He aims for exasperated as he says it, but misses a great deal and it somehow comes out fond. Just a little.

”Yes, I’m aware, technically,” Lucas responds, rolling his eyes, pushing his hair away from his forehead, ”but I also know that you are my tutor for a reason. The reason is — you’ve read the books so I don’t have to.”

Eliott has to hold back a smile.

Between his classes and his job at the art supply store and therapy sessions and working on multiple art projects at once, the tutoring sessions with Lucas are something Eliott, strangely, enjoys. When Idriss had asked him, sly, two months ago, ”Hey, how much do you remember from your literature course from high school?” and Eliott responded, ”I don’t know, why?”, he never expected all of this to come out of it.

Lucas is in his first year, and his major is biochemistry, or microbiology, or something equally insanely difficult, anyway. He has a horrendous sense of time and no interest in literature at all, but, for a reason Eliott doesn’t understand, has to pass a literature class if he wants to continue his college education at all.

Cue Eliott.

”It’s so stupid,” Lucas had told him the very first time they met, frustrated and rolling his eyes and running a hand through his already unruly hair. ”I didn’t decide to study biology only for literature classes to haunt me all the way here.”

It made Eliott laugh, just a little too loud for the library setting. ”Yeah, that sounds unfortunate.”

Lucas lifted his eyes to him, then, wide and blue and pretty, ”You’re laughing,” he’d said, ”but think how you would feel if someone suddenly told you you had to learn maths again, or physics, or whatever you hated the most in high school.”

Oh, hell no. ”Um. If you put it like that.”

”See?” was Lucas’s response. Eliott remembers him leaning back in his chair and biting his lip. He remembers looking at the motion just a second longer than he should have. ”I think I’m in trouble. I’ll have to sit through 2 hours of this hell every week. If I’m still alive by the end of this semester, I’ll give myself a medal.”

And Eliott had smiled, turning his eyes away from Lucas’s face, said, ”I’ll try to make this as painless as possible for you, okay?”

So that’s what he’s been doing.

”I’ve read a summary of this somewhere on the internet, I think,” Lucas tells him now, holding up Antigone and grimacing like it’s causing him in physical pain just to touch it. It’s a very battered copy, falling apart a little, pages curled, ripped in places. Eliott likes those kinds of books best; the ones with history to them. ”You think it’ll do?”

”How much do you remember from it?”

Lucas winces. ”Uhm… I think someone died? At the end?”

And Eliott doesn’t really have much choice but to sigh, pluck the book from Lucas’s willing hands and launch into retelling the story because Lucas’s literature exam is in three weeks and they don’t have much time left. Lucas is supposed to take notes, but he just looks at Eliott instead, resting his chin in his palm. Eliott can feel his gaze on his own face, warm and pleasant like sunlight.

Their knees knock under the table. Lucas shifts his weight on the chair, pressing his leg firmer against Eliott’s, and Eliott doesn’t move away an inch.

His voice doesn’t waver as he speaks, but it’s a near thing.

See, the thing is — Eliott’s not sure what is this game that they’re playing.

He’s missed the moment of transition. Blinked and somehow overlooked the point when Lucas turned from just a friend of a friend into someone else; when the easy banter started, and the feeling of ease, the feeling of familiarity. Lucas has, when Eliott wasn’t paying enough attention, turned from a smart, a little bit grumpy biology kid into all that and beautiful, all that and dazzling, all that and I'll-take-your-breath-away.

He keeps sending Eliott weird literature memes that Eliott doesn’t even want to know where he’d found, and grins at Eliott’s silly jokes and asks if Eliott’s feeling alright when he notices him looking a little pale around the edges.

They keep toeing the line between friendship and flirting, both aware of it happening but not willing to say it out loud. Eliott feels like Lucas liking him back would be too much of wishful thinking and not enough of reality. There is something in his chest, every time he thinks about the possibility of them, and it keeps curling like smoke trying to escape. But Lucas never asked for anything of that, and Eliott might be reading too much into things like he has in the past already, so he keeps this smokey feeling down, hidden, away where it belongs.

And Lucas keeps brushing their shoulders together whenever they leave the library at the same time, and sometimes buys Eliott coffee, saying it’s an apology for always being late, and keeps looking at him instead of making notes, and even if Eliott does notice, sometimes, how he flushes a pretty pink if Eliott says something even vaguely flirty, that’s the extent of it.

Their scene is this, Eliott tells himself, and this only: a library, a table tucked into a corner by the window. Their voices, hushed but carrying anyway. A pile of books. Sheets of paper strewn between the two of them.

”Can I see some of your drawings?” Lucas asks him, once, bored of the book they’re talking about but curious about Eliott like he always seems to be, something in his eyes sparkling.

Eliott thinks about many, many the pages of his sketchbook filled with the outlines of Lucas’s profile, with how many times Eliott has tried and failed to capture the way Lucas’s hair falls over his forehead, how the shadows under his eyes look when he’s tired, and how it’s all there, in charcoal and ink, a testimony.

In the end, Eliott only shows him a couple of silly things he’s drawn in the back of his art history notebook, little doodles on the margins of the pages — an outline of a building, or some clouds, or a bird he saw out the window.

”I don’t have my sketchbook with me,” he says in a lieu of an apology and sends Lucas a small smile. ”Next time, okay?”

And then, on a Monday again, as he’s about to head into the library, he bumps into someone by the entrance.

It’s Lucas.

”Oh my God,” he says instead of hello when Lucas blinks up at him. He’s automatically reached out to steady him by the shoulders when the impact of them running into one another made Lucas take two steps back. Now, Eliott lets go, although reluctantly. ”Am I seeing things or are you actually here on time, for once?”

Lucas sends him a look. ”That’s very funny,” he says, but then turns a little and points to the door of the library, brushing Eliott’s comment off. ”I was actually looking for you. The library’s closed today.”

Eliott frowns. ”What?”

”Yeah, I know,” Lucas says, shrugging. ”I’ve heard that there’s a broken pipe or something. They’re flooded.”

”Seriously?” Eliott stalks closer to the door. There is a sheet of paper taped to it. It says, due to technical difficulties, closed until further notice.

Eliott only realises that Lucas has come up to stand beside him when he bumps their shoulders together playfully, saying ”Told you, see?” and then, ”Can you believe that the one time I’m not late, the library’s closed?”

Eliott only says, ”So, no Wuthering Heights today, I guess.”

It's what they've moved onto now, the last book on Lucas's "must-read-although-i-hate-it" list. Eliott doesn’t care much about Wuthering Heights, really, but it is a little ridiculous, how disappointed he feels about suddenly not being about to spend the next hour with Lucas, explaining the plot or talking about motifs or whatever they would be doing today. Tutoring is a good excuse for Eliott to look at Lucas from across the table as he reads, point at a sentence in a book and brush their hands together. It’s gonna feel weird, to have the Monday afternoon to himself; Lucas hasn’t skipped or called off a tutoring session even once this whole semester.

Next to him, Lucas rocks on his feet a little. ”I mean…we could just go somewhere else.”

Eliott raises an eyebrow. ”Like where?”

”Um,” Lucas starts, suddenly looking a little fidgety. ”My place, if that’s okay? It's not far. My roommates might be home, but they shouldn’t be a problem, I think.”

”Don’t you hate literature?” Eliott says in reply, aiming for teasing, but it comes out laced with uncertainty instead. ”I thought you’d take whatever chance at not having to study it that you’d get.”

Eliott half-expects him to say something about the impending exam in response, about how there’s not much time left anyway. But that’s not what he gets.

”I do hate literature,” Lucas tells him, and then Eliott watches, a little incredulously, as a blush creeps onto his face, makes his features glow like the dawn. ”But not spending time with you.”

Eliott’s heart does something complicated, then. He licks his lips. The words take two tries before they leave his mouth.

”Okay,” he says at last, and it makes Lucas look up at him. ”Let’s go, then.”

When Lucas smiles, Eliott smiles back.

The apartment, when they come in, is quiet.

They camp out in the living room, spread the books and notebooks and papers on the floor and sit side by side, going over the plot of the book again. Eliott makes Lucas repeat all the recurring themes of it back to him, without looking at the lazily scribbled notes Lucas tried and mostly gave up on making once, and then when that’s done, he listens as Lucas lists all the characters one by one and explains the relationships between them all.

Lucas keeps complaining that it’s all overly complicated and very depressing. Eliott keeps insisting that the atmosphere of the book is what makes it special.

As it often happens with Lucas, Eliott quickly loses track of time. It gets blurry. One moment, they’re arguing over the ending of the book — Lucas, shockingly, does not like it — and the next they’re lying next to each other on their backs, staring up at the ceiling. It’s very quiet; apart from the sound of cars outside, there’s nothing. Eliott feels a little drowsy in the best way possible, feeling Lucas’s frame inches away from his, aware of it like he’s aware of his own heartbeat, continuous but under the surface of his mind.

Then, Lucas says, ”I’m gonna miss this.”

He sounds like Eliott feels. Eliott imagines his words like bubbles, dissolving into the air once they’re out. He feels himself chuckle. ”I knew you secretly liked Wuthering Heights.”

”Not the book,” Lucas scoffs, sounding almost offended for a second, but then Eliott turns his head and when his gaze land on Lucas, it’s impossible to look away. His eyes are very blue. Eliott’s mind goes back to every description of beauty he remembers ever reading, and he understands, anew, what they all meant to convey.

”Then what?”

A breath. Then, Lucas says, ”This. You,” with a lilt to his voice Eliott doesn’t recognise, and within the next second, something in his face shifts before Eliott can properly react. He watches as Lucas pushes a hand through his hair, licks at his lips. Something hot surges through his veins. ”I mean—you’re a good tutor. And we had fun, right? It was— it’s nice. That’s all.”

Eliott blinks, then turns a bit so he’s lying on his side, carefully, like the motion could disperse the moment they're caught in. Lucas keeps looking at the ceiling. ”Are you saying I made literature fun?”

It’s supposed to sound like Eliott’s joking but comes out fond. A little astounded. It’s difficult to keep the feelings out of his voice now, after all those times of making Lucas laugh and after all those hours spent talking, heads bent together, knees knocking under the table, more on purpose than not.

”For the most part,” Lucas admits. ”I still don’t like it, but you— made it better.”

Something in Eliott’s chest ties itself in knots.

They have one more tutoring session left. They’ll go over anything that Lucas still feels unsure about, and then Lucas will write his literature exam and probably text Eliott how it went and that will be that. End of the semester. Eliott will have no reason to wait for him in the library anymore, or lie on the floor next to him and marvel at the arch of his bottom lip, or at his eyelashes. They’ll go back to the frames of their separate lifestyles, easy and bland.

He doesn’t fucking want that.

”Hey,” he says, propping himself up on his elbow, leaning over Lucas a little. The knot in his chest tightens, but he just thinks, screw that. Screw that. ”I’m gonna do something, okay?”

And when Lucas just blinks at him in response, confused, he leans down and kisses him.

It’s—supposed to be short. It’s supposed to be touch-and-go, a barely-there press of lips, shy and fleeting and light enough to give Lucas room to back out.

Instead, when Eliott kisses him, it’s shivers down his spine and feelings spilling in his chest. Lucas freezes for a beat, and Eliott curses in the back of his head, but then there's a hand settling shyly on his waist and an answering press of lips, then again, and it all slides, impossibly, into place. Everything narrows down to this — Lucas sighing against his mouth, then fully kissing him back, tilting his head like he’s been ready, or like he’s been waiting. His hands feel heavy and warm when he cups Eliott’s face. When Eliott moves away, just for a breath, Lucas chases him up, drags him back down.

Eliott licks into his mouth, feeling warm all over with relief, and with something else.

It’s supposed to be short. Instead, they kiss for a long time.

”God,” Lucas gasps against his mouth when they part, eventually, minutes or hours or days later. Eliott doesn't know. ”God, Eliott.”

”I know,” he says, giddy and probably flushed. His arm hurts a little with the strain of holding him up, so he untangles his fingers from where they’re buried in Lucas’s hair and sits up, tugging Lucas with him. Lucas is blushing all the way down his neck, eyes big and lips red, and Eliott looks and looks. ”I'm—I’m gonna miss this, too. But we can turn the tutoring sessions into something else, if you’d like.”

Lucas’s gaze flits over Eliott’s face, then seems to stumble once their eyes meet. ”Into something else,” he repeats, "like a date?"

”Yes,” Eliott says. His grin is wide. ”Like a date.”

Lucas kisses him again, then, muttering a quiet, ”Okay,” against his lips, and when Eliott presses their foreheads together, he says, ”I take back everything I said. Literature is my favourite subject now," and then, before Eliott can react to that, adds, "Jesus, do you have any idea how difficult it was to focus on fucking Wuthering Heights with you sitting across from me?"

And Eliott laughs, charmed, and a little bit enamoured, and happy.

#elu fic #elu #skam france #skamfr #my writing #tutor!eliott won this round ehh #i wrote the beginning like 3 weeks abo and then agonized over it and wrote the rest today.....i love inspiration #thank u so much for the prompt kate ily

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