My Love

Please, Please, Please

Their last class let out at four, and Elias was out the door before the professor had even finished the sentence about the reading for next week. He didn't wait to see if Adrian was behind him. He knew he was. Adrian was three steps back and talking, except today Elias wasn't giving him anything to talk to.

"Are you still doing this?" the alpha asked, defeated, his long legs almost closing the distance.

"Doing what?" Elias asked over his shoulder.

"Ignoring me and not even looking at me." Adrian caught up easily, hands in his pockets, matching Elias's pace without trying. "It's been a whole day, Laurent."

"A whole day since you got into a fight over me because of your 'reputation.'" He put exaggerated air quotes around the word.

"I got into a fight because he was being a—"

"I know why you got into a fight." Elias cut across the path toward the footbridge, not checking if Adrian followed. "That's not the part I'm mad about."

Adrian went quiet at that, which almost never happened, and Elias felt a small, mean satisfaction in it before it curdled into something less satisfying. He kept walking.

The snowflake-covered bridge planks crunched under his boots, cold coming up off the water beneath, and he was three steps past the far railing when an arm hooked around his knees and the ground disappeared out from under him entirely.

"ADRIAN!" His stomach flipped, up and over, the whole world tipping sideways as Adrian got him slung over one shoulder like a sack of laundry, easy, like he weighed nothing. "PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW!"

"No," Adrian said, a laugh in his voice.

"I'm gonna hurt you!"

"You can try. From up there." Adrian's voice came out muffled with effort but not strain, one arm locked over the backs of Elias's knees, and he set off down the path at a clip like this was a perfectly reasonable way to travel.

Elias hung there, blood rushing to his head, fisting a handful of Adrian's jacket for balance and refusing, on principle, to enjoy the ride.

"People are staring. Are you happy now?" he asked, defeated.

As they passed, a small crowd of students raised their phones, snapping pictures and recording the two.

"Let them stare."

"Adrian, I swear to God."

"You can swear all you want. It's not working."

Elias heard hushed laughter and giggles and felt his face go hot enough to match the effort of not laughing himself. He settled for pounding a fist once against Adrian's back, which got him nothing but a grunt and a slight adjustment of grip.

"Where are you even taking me?"

"Somewhere to talk. You won't do it walking next to me. You keep avoiding me. This way, you're stuck."

"This is literally kidnapping."

"As long as it gets our problem sorted out, it's not." Adrian sounded far too pleased with himself for a man carrying dead weight downhill, and it took another four minutes of jostling before he finally set Elias down, none too gently, his boots hitting the gravel hard enough to jar up through his knees.

Elias straightened his jacket, mostly to give his hands something to do, and looked around, trying to gauge exactly how humiliated he should be. Then he actually looked.

The lake spread out flat and grey beyond a row of bare willow trees, a wooden dock jutting out over the water, a boathouse shuttered for the season with a chalkboard sign out front that read:

CLOSED FOR WINTER, SEE YOU IN SPRING, LOVERS.

Two thick blankets were spread on the bank a little further down, a couple tangled together on one of them, another pair feeding each other something out of a paper bag on the second. A string of fairy lights, unlit, looped between two posts at the water's edge. Somewhere off to the side, a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree read:LOVERS' LANDING, EST. 1962

An arrow pointed toward the dock.

"Adrian."

"What?" he asked, clapping his hands together to dust them off.

"Do you know where we are?"

"The lake." He said it like the question made no sense, already dropping down onto the end of the cold, damp gravel, legs hanging over the edge.

"My cousin used to bring me down here when I visited before I applied. Quietest spot on campus. Nobody bothers you here." He patted the empty space next to him.

"Nobody bothers you here because everyone assumes you're out on a date." Elias stayed standing, arms crossed, aware suddenly of exactly how visible the two of them were, how the couple on the blanket had glanced over once already with the specific, knowing look of people who assumed they were watching the same thing everyone else on this stretch of grass was doing.

"Adrian, this is where couples come."

Adrian looked around properly this time, actually took in the fairy lights and the sign and the blanket people, and something clicked slow and visible across his face.

"Oh."

"Yeah." Elias gave him a knowing look.

"I didn't know that." He didn't look embarrassed exactly, more thrown, turning back to Elias like he was reassessing the whole plan.

"I just remembered it was quiet."

"It's very quiet." Elias sat down anyway, a careful foot of space between them, gravel biting through his jeans. The half-frozen water lapped softly against the dock posts. Somewhere behind them, the fairy lights clicked once, some automatic timer, and didn't turn on.

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Elias watched a duck cut a slow line across the cold, flat, grey water, trying to ignore the way his chest tightened at the simple fact that he was sitting here, of all places, beside him.

"I meant what I said." Adrian said it to the water, elbows braced on his knees. "At the grill. I know it came out wrong. The reflecting on me thing."

"You don't need to apologize again. You already did." Elias turned to look at him.

"I didn't actually. Not really. I said sorry it came out wrong. That's not the same as saying sorry for the actual thing." He picked at a pebble, not looking up. "I don't want you thinking you're something I own. That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

Elias waited with bated breath. Deep down, he loved how protective Adrian was of him. He had loved the other man ever since the alpha had fought his bullies during their freshman year, and somewhere along the way, that affection had grown into a one-sided love he had never dared to confess.

Adrian, of course, remained completely oblivious.

But something had changed last night. Adrian's words had left Elias with mixed signals, and now his heart was caught between hope and doubt, desperately trying to make sense of what they could possibly mean.

He was quiet long enough that Elias thought he might not answer at all, and when he did, his voice had dropped out of its usual register, gone low and rough in the way Elias only ever heard it behind closed doors, or apparently, dockside, in front of a closed boathouse.

"I meant I'm not going to stand in a room and watch someone treat you like that again." He finally looked over, something raw in it that Elias wasn't prepared for, no performance in it at all. "I've watched other alphas do it before, to some omegas. I saw them do it to you at orientation, that first week. You never told anyone how bad it actually was, but I knew it got to you."

Elias's heart clenched.

"You don't have to fight everyone who looks at me the wrong way or says something you don't like," he said, trying to keep his tone positive.

"I know. I'm going to anyway." Adrian said it without hesitation. "I'm not good at halfway things, Laurent. You know that about me by now."

Elias looked down at his own gloved hands, turned them over once, buying himself a second before he had to say anything back.

The couple further down the bank laughed at something, low and easy, and the sound carried strange and clear across the water.

"You scared me a little," he said, his voice quieter now. "The way you just went off on that guy."

"I know," Adrian said, holding back a smile.

"I don't need a bodyguard," Elias continued.

"You've got one anyway." Adrian bumped his shoulder against the younger man, gentler than the usual shove, barely a touch at all.

"I'm not going anywhere. Whatever that guy said, whatever anyone says. I'll be an i***t about it every single time, probably. But I'm not going anywhere."

Elias didn't trust his voice for a second, so he didn't use it. He just sat there with the cold coming up through the gravel and Adrian's shoulder warm against his, watching the duck complete its slow circuit of the water before beginning another.

It should have felt like enough. The promise was plain and unpolished, but it was still a promise. Still, it wasn't. Not entirely. It was close enough to what he wanted to keep him hoping, but never quite enough to give him what he needed. He'd gotten good at living in that space between the two, so good he barely noticed the ache anymore.

"This is still a couples' spot," he said instead, because it was easier than the alternative.

"Everyone will think we're together right now."

"Let them," Adrian said easily, already looking back out at the water like the thought cost him nothing at all to say out loud. "Doesn't bother me. I mean, you're not exactly bad-looking." He winked.

A furious blush crept up Elias's neck. Thank God he was wearing a hoodie; otherwise, Adrian would have noticed.

They sat there until the cold got serious, the couple on the blanket packed up and left, and the fairy lights finally clicked on against a sky gone the color of a bruise. Neither of them moved to be the one who ended it first.