GROWING INTO TREES

“If you don’t stop touching me, in a few minutes there will be nothing left of me.”

Timmy hides his face against the curve of Alex’s neck, rubbing his nose against his skin, inhaling his scent. He smells like soap and dirty sex. There’s some trace of Timmy’s own stronger bath foam on him. He sticks out his tongue and licks him right under his ear, forcing a little moan out of his throat. He tastes salty, like sweat, and there’s something else in the background, something like come. How the hell does he taste like come under his ear? How long have they been at it exactly since they started, and how many times have Timmy come all over him already?

“I can’t stop,” he says apologetically, his hand moving up and down on Alex’s crotch as he feels him get hard again for the, what, like, fifth time in two hours? “Today, I just can’t. I wanna make you come.”

“I already came,” Alex smiles a vague, distracted smile, turning his face slightly to look at him and ask for a kiss, which Timmy promptly gives him. “Thrice.”

“I wanna make you come again, then,” he answers, his fingers reaching down between Alex’s buttocks, teasing his already pretty loose opening. Did he fuck him already, today? Timmy can’t even remember. Maybe he just fingered him a lot.

“Haven’t I come enough already?” Alex asks, but he parts his legs and rocks his hips, moving slowly towards Timmy’s hand. His fingers slip in, diving into his body up to the knuckles, and Timmy holds his breath. This feels heavenly.

“Is there such a thing?” he asks, licking his way down Alex’s jaw. His fingers move in and out of Alex’s body, tearing little moans out of him with every thrust. “Come on,” he whispers, “Just once more. You want it.”

Alex doesn’t answer that, turning his head to hide his face against Timmy’s throat, nibbling at it. Timmy looks down at him and he just wants to have him so much, right now. It’s overwhelming. Alex is overwhelming, too beautiful for words.

“Wanna bet I can stop you using less than ten words?” Alex asks, his breath caressing Timmy’s skin.

“No,” Timmy whines, slipping a third finger inside, hoping to shut him up, “I don’t wanna be stopped.”

Alex throws his head back, clutching at the covers, tensing all over. “Jesus Christ, I love it,” he says in a whisper, pulling his hips up from the mattress and swinging them in circles as he moans helplessly. Then he bites at his bottom lip and opens his eyes, searching for Timmy’s.

Timmy’s heart beats faster. He can almost see the words lingering on Alex’s lips. “N—” he tries to say.

“Timmy, we need to tell our parents.”

Not fast enough.

He deflates like an hot air balloon after somebody turned the burner off.

“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?” he asks, disappointed, pulling his fingers out of him.

Alex grimaces, upset by his haste in doing so. “Careful…” he whines, “You almost hurt me.”

“You’re so loose you could easily accommodate my whole arm on arrival and departure without even flinching, shut up.”

Alex turns to stone by his side, and Timmy feels his own heart miss a beat.

“…I’m sorry,” he tries, passing a hand over his face, “Jeez… I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do,” Alex sighs, turning on his side to look at him, “You’re angry. I get it. I’d be flattered if I believed you’re so angry just because you really really wanted to fuck me and couldn’t.”

“Are you kidding me?” Timmy turns to look at him, his eyes completely lost, “I really really wanted to fuck you.”

“I know,” Alex manages a little chuckle, and then sighs, “That’s not why you’re angry, tho. You’re angry because of what I said.”

Timmy sighs, groans and rolls around, getting out of the bed. He must leave too abruptly, because Alex curls into a ball, trying to cover himself from the sudden blow of cold air surrounding him.

“Timmy,” he calls him.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Alex sighs, “I got it three hours ago, when I came in and you started kissing me the moment I tried to talk about it. And the only reason why we’ve been at it for hours, the only reason why you haven’t been able to keep your hands off me up to now, is that you didn’t want to let me speak.”

“I’m going to my room,” Timmy says, finding his pants on the floor and wearing them again.

“Timmy, you can’t fucking keep shutting this out!” Alex suddenly sits up, rage making his voice sharper.

Timmy doesn’t want to listen to him. He can’t deal with Alex speaking about it, especially when Alex starts getting angry at him.

“Watch me,” he says, defiantly and stupidly, as he walks out the room.

*
“Are you still moping about Tana?”

The question takes him by surprise, as if he had just been asked if he felt hot on a snowy day. There’s no correlation between reality and what Leo just said, no correlation at all. In fact, the question is as far from the problem as it can possibly be before turning into something silly, amusing, in a tragic way.

It gives away perfectly how little his parents know about what he’s going through.

“I’m fine,” he says, standing up from the couch and quitting the game he was playing, turning the console off. His siblings instantly start to whine loudly about it, jumping on the couch and pleading for him to come back and start playing again. They’re not allowed to play videogames yet, but they’re allowed to watch Timmy as he does it, and they’re so invested in it that whenever Timmy happens to skip a day, for whatever reason, they always ask him to make up for it playing a little longer on the next session.

The funny thing is, they’re not even interested in bright colors and pretty characters, they’re heavily invested in the plot and character development. Despite their young age, they’re so good at following plotlines and dialogues they sometimes get the story more than Timmy himself does, being him way more interested in shooting big bad guys dead and leveling up. Timmy supposes that’s a sign of changing times, one like the others. He used to fall asleep by hearing Leo or his father retelling stories taken from movies and musicals, then for the longest time he fell asleep only after reading pages and pages of Leo’s books. His siblings fall asleep telling videogames fanfictions one another. That’s evolution too.

“You’re not fine at all,” Leo insists, standing next to the couch, his arms folded over his chest, watching him sternly. “I talked with your father, and—”

“I don’t need to know what you and dad said while discussing about me,” he interrupts him, “I’m fine.”

“He says you’ve been awfully silent, lately,” Leo insists. Then he sighs, sitting down on the couch. “Sit with me, T. T.,” he says, patting on the couch next to him, “Let’s talk about it.”

Timmy shivers wildly, looking away. “You have no idea what you’re even asking me to do!” he complains.

“You mustn’t be embarrassed,” Leo says reassuringly, “I know Tana’s my sister, but if you need to talk about what happened, I can—”

“I said I’m fine!” Timmy turns to face him, yelling in his face. The twins were bouncing around him, tugging at his clothes, begging him to play just a few more minutes, and when he hears him raise his voice they stop instantly, letting him go and moving a couple steps away from him.

“Timmy,” Leo says in a very low voice, while Timmy watches Harper and Logan back off, scared of himself for screaming like that at least as much as they are of him right now, “You’re scaring your siblings. And me,” he adds with a soft sigh. Then he turns towards the twins, his lips curling into a sweet smile as he reaches out to stroke Logan’s hair, “Why don’t you two go to your room?” he suggests, “I’m gonna be there in a minute.”

Harper and Logan were clearly just waiting for an excuse to run away, and so they turn around and run up the stairs, hiding out in their room in but a few seconds. When he sees them disappear on the first floor, Timmy relaxes his shoulders and looks down, sighing. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t wanna scream.”

“You clearly did,” Leo smiles kindly, inviting him to sit down again. This time, Timmy complies. “What’s bothering you, Timmy? You haven’t been yourself, lately.”

What’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is he’s completely crazy. He fell in love with his father’s partner’s son, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that happens to you only once in your lifetime, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that makes you act stupid, the kind of totalizing, desperate love that makes you break a years-long relationship – his, with Tana – to throw yourself blindly and as stupidly as you possibly can into a romance that’s not only forbidden, not only impossible, but also ridiculously hard to bear, because Alex isn’t hard to handle just because he’s his somewhat brother, he’s hard to handle because he’s a fucking nightmare on legs.

What’s bothering him. What’s bothering him is he ought to tell his father and Cody. But he’s scared as hell. He can’t see anything good coming out of this. He doesn’t think it can possibly end well. They’ll tell those two and the best thing that can happen is Blaine suffering a heart failure and ending up in a hospital. The worst case scenario being Cody and Blaine talk it out and just decide to keep them apart.

What’s bothering him is he has no clue what to do. If he talks, there’s a big chance this will simply be over soon. If he doesn’t, Alex will just keep insisting until he insists too much, and something in their delicate balance gets broken for good. They’re already tiptoeing on a tightrope, they’re still trying to heal their fucked up relationship after all those years of messing with each other’s brains. They don’t need this too.

What’s bothering him is he’d like to be able to say all this to Alex, to explain why he’s so afraid, why he never wants to talk about it, why he keeps running off every time they even start walking around the topic. Instead, every time they’re about to talk it out, he chickens out, ups and leaves, following a stupid compulsion born out of the childish belief that if he keeps ignoring this long enough it’ll somehow fix by itself.

How, he does not know. It’s not as if they can un-brother themselves. Not as long as Cody and Blaine are still a thing, anyway.

“I’m just nervous,” he says, sighing deeply and leaning back against the couch, “Or tired, maybe.”

“Of doing what?” Leo chuckles, amused, “You still haven’t decided for college. You don’t go to school anymore. You’re certainly not working. We’re spoiling you as much as we possibly can, what’s wearing you out?”

He doesn’t even know where to start answering that question. So he just shuts up.

*
”Timmy!” Leo yells from downstairs, “Alex is here to see you!”

Timmy tenses all over, clutching his fingers around the book he was reading hard enough to bend the cover. He stops quickly when he remembers he got it from the library two weeks ago and is supposed to return it in five days, and he can’t really afford to return a damaged copy of Pigs: Keeping a Small-Scale Herd for Pleasure and Profit. In the whole of glorious Lima, Ohio, he’s basically the only one taking farming books on loan from the library. They’d know it was him.

He pulls himself up on the bed and sits still for a moment, staring at the void. Having Alex over is always a messy, complicated thing. Not only because he doesn’t trust himself (nor Alex, for that matter) when they’re together, but because it always feels like some sort of intrusion.

For the longest time, Alex has been the thing that only happened at Blaine and Cody’s. He was trapped there, held into some kind of invisible bubble that made Timmy think of him as if he was something that didn’t exist outside those walls. Of course he knew he had a life out of the house, that he went to school, talked to other people, had hobbies, lived a life that didn’t involve Timmy a hundred percent of the time, but it was an obvious knowledge that had no effect of Timmy’s life itself because, as soon as he left Blaine’s house and went back to his own, with Leo, Alex disappeared, he wasn’t a physical thing anymore, just a haunting thought, a persistent memory, a vague obsession he took with him without having to fully deal with it.

Home was a safe space in which Alex and all the scary, overwhelming feelings connected to him weren’t allowed.

That stopped being a thing with last Christmas’ party, when Leo decided he wanted to reunite the countless branches of his broken and battered family tree into one single place, his house, allowing Alex to come be a part of real life out of Blaine’s home and into Timmy’s own too.

Timmy isn’t sad that happened. Last Christmas was the moment he finally understood what he wanted, the moment he accepted he couldn’t keep running to Alex and then hide between Tana’s caramel thighs and into her warm embraces every time Alex became too much to bear. It was an important moment for him and, if Leo hadn’t stubbornly decided to go on with the party despite basically everyone else’s contrary opinion, he’d have never gone through it, and he’d have probably lost Alex altogether as a consequence. So he’s thankful to Leo for making that happen, but at the same time he resents him for unknowingly putting him through it, for unknowingly making Alex a thing of reality he had to deal with whether he wanted or not, whether he was prepared or not.

Basically, for turning home into yet another hunting ground for Alex to chase him.

He walks out of his bedroom and starts climbing down the stairs, but he ends up stopping halfway through, because he can already see the entrance door from there, and seeing Leo and Alex chatting together always gets him.

Leo lives his relationship with Alex in the same troubled way he lives it with Cody. Timmy supposes that’s pretty much inevitable: despite not being able to forgive him for willingly or unwillingly stealing Blaine away from him in the most traumatic possible way, he is completely unable to forget that for almost a year, when he was 22, he barely lived and breathed for the guy.

Of course Timmy wasn’t there to see it. And of course nor Leo nor Cody ever talk about that. Dad told him something about it, let some random detail slip into some conversation every now and then, but of course his accounts on the matter are bound to be partial considering he wasn’t there to witness anything either. The most precise stories come from Adam, really.

Not that he likes to talk about it either. Back then, when everything seemed easier and people didn’t have to walk around Leo wearing gloves, trying not to break the already cracked shell of thin glass he had become over the years, Adam had put so much hope in Leo’s relationship with Cody. He had never liked Blaine that much, which is a way to say he hated him with a fire, and when he saw Leo falling in love with Cody he dared to hope Cody would’ve been enough to tear Leo away from the unhealthy relationship he had been clinging to for years, now. He had really believed, if one could do the miracle, that could be Cody. And it would have probably been proved true, if Blaine hadn’t come back right when Leo was really starting to let go of him.

Timmy has always been interested in the fucked up story of his family. Being a fucked up part of it too, he has always tried to look in the past for all the tiny, messed up details that ultimately ended up shaping the chaos he lives in as of now. And whenever Adam tells him about back then, about college and how Leo used to deal with Cody and the thought of Blaine, he’s always reminded that there was no way he could come out any less fucked in the head than he is, having been raised for the most part by his father and by a person like Leo.

He had kept the thought of Blaine hidden in a trunk inside his head for almost a year, but Cody hadn’t just been a distraction. He had loved him, deeply, for real, he had cared for him in ways he had never cared for anybody else before. Blaine was a part of him he couldn’t get rid of, didn’t want to get rid of, but Cody wasn’t something random he had clung to just because he could.

Much like what happened with him, Tana and Alex, Timmy knows that.

Sharing history makes everything harder for Leo. He hates Cody for what he took from him, and at the same time he simply can’t forget he loved him once, he loves him still, ‘cause love’s a tricky thing with Leo, once he falls for you he doesn’t simply let you go, he never simply lets you go. Whenever they’re together in the same room, which happens very rarely but happens nonetheless, you can see that in his eyes, in the way they linger on Cody, study him from a distance, telling him things despite almost never really speaking to him. The fire in his eyes talks about wanting to be able to erase him from existence, and at the same time being unable to conceive a life in which he isn’t there anymore.

It’s messy and conflictual and a hell of a lot more painful than any human being is supposed to be able to bear. Leo manages, though. Possibly because he went through so much already pain is not even a factor anymore.

Now, the emotional charge surrounding Alex isn’t nearly as intense as the one surrounding Cody, but Alex resembles his father so much that Leo can’t help seeing a little of Cody in him every time he looks at him. So their interaction is always a little bit heavier than it’s supposed to be for two people who basically don’t even know one another. Leo looks at Alex probably remembering very clearly how Cody was when he was more or less his age, and that twists the smile he forces up on his lips into some sort of sad, barely curved line, that makes his expression almost painful.

Despite that, he’s always overly polite around him, and the same can be said for Alex, who rarely smiles if not under compelling circumstances, but always have a very pretty, very sweet smile on his lips whenever he and Leo meet.

It’s like he sensed how hard it was for Leo to look at him, and tried to make it easier by just looking the closest he can possibly look to how his father looked like before Leo lost him.

“Ah, Timmy, you’re there.” Timmy loses the trail of his thoughts as he focuses back on Leo and Alex. “What are you doing there, lurking in the darkness? You’re creepy.”

“Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat, “I got distracted. Hi, Alex.”

“Hi,” Alex waves at him, still standing in front of the door, “Can we talk? It’s about Lissy’s birthday, I thought maybe we could buy her a present together.”

“That’s so sweet,” Leo comments, smiling brightly, “Timmy has no idea how to buy presents for people. He always ends up buying random, impersonal things because he doesn’t know how to choose something personal for everybody.”

“How personal can you possibly get with a twelve months old baby girl?” Timmy groans. Then he gestures towards Alex. “’Kay, come up,” he says.

Alex nods and follows him upstairs.

“Will you want some hot cocoa and cookies? I was about to make it anyway,” Leo says.

“We’ll be fine,” Timmy answers for both of them. Having Leo knocking on the door or even worse barging in bringing cocoa while he’s alone in his room with Alex is exactly the last thing he wants or needs right now.

“I’d have liked some cocoa,” Alex comments upon entering his room and looking around as he always does when he comes in here, as if expecting something to have changed since his last visit and always ending up disappointed that it hasn’t.

“Please,” Timmy groans, closing the door and then locking it discretely, trying not to make any suspicious sounds Leo could – improbably – hear from downstairs, “You barely ever eat anything that’s worth more than fifteen calories.”

“You really don’t know me as well as you think you do, Timmy,” Alex says with a sigh, jumping to sit up on his desk. “Where are your siblings?”

“School.”

“Then why are you even locking the door? It’s not like Leo’s gonna co—”

“So, what about Lissy’s present?” he interrupts him, walking towards the bed and retrieving the book he was reading, to put some bookmark into it and move it on the nightstand.

“Please,” Alex laughs, amused, “You think I’m gonna waste an opportunity to get the perfect gift for my baby sister in order to find something that meets your ugly taste too? I’ll pass, thanks. That was just an excuse.”

Timmy stops halfway through a movement, turning to look at him. Alex seems so perfectly calm, even amused by the whole situation. He doesn’t get it. He has no idea how hard this is for Timmy, or he simply doesn’t care.

“You could’ve spared yourself the lie,” he answers grumpily, folding his arms over his chest.

“Sure,” Alex nods, “I could’ve said the truth. ‘Leo, I’m sorry for intruding, I just wanted to speak to my brother, whom I’ve also been banging for the last few years, and I thought I needed to come seek him out here, since he’s ignoring me.’ How does that sound?”

“Awful,” Timmy grimaces, “And this isn’t a laughing matter.”

“I’m pretty sure it is, because this is ridiculous,” Alex answers, snorting, “What else was I supposed to say?”

“Nothing!” Timmy answers, annoyed, “You were supposed to say nothing! You were supposed to stay home and respect my decision not to talk with you for a fucking while, or do I have to always be by your side, constantly following you everywhere like a dog and listening to your every word like you were spitting out Bible verses every time you opened your fucking mouth?!”

Alex looks at him in silence for the longest time, his endless, thick, curved and pitch black eyelashes casting long shadows over his pale cheeks. “I like it when you’re angry at me,” he says then, his voice lower than it usually is as he reaches out for one of Timmy’s hands and guides it to his own crotch, “Makes me hard.”

“Fuck you, Alex!” Timmy answers.

He knows he’d be more convincing if he managed to pull his hand away. He can’t ask that much from his own willpower, though. There’s a limit to what he can do. Withdraw from physical contact whenever Alex is involved is exactly where he draws the line.

Alex answers with a tiny smirk, opening his hand against Timmy’s to push it harder against himself. “Haven’t you missed me?” he asks, his voice sweet as the nightshade’s fruits, and just as deadly.

“I’m still angry,” Timmy answers, frowning and looking away.

“I missed you,” Alex says.

“You’re not listening to me!” Timmy complains, his eyes back on him.

“Yeah? And how does that feel?” Alex answers, his voice suddenly stern and scolding. Timmy bites at his own tongue, because he knows he doesn’t have any weapon to fight him on this. It’s true. He hasn’t been listening to anything Alex might have had to tell him, lately. “Timmy… listen to me,” Alex says, bringing his other hand on Timmy’s face and making him turn around again, to look at him in his eyes. “We need to talk about this. I like talking even less than you do, believe me, but this, we need to talk it out. We need to. It’s not just something we have to do because it’s only fair, it’s something we have to do because not doing it is… it’s messing us up,” he leans in, brushing his lips against Timmy’s, “And I don’t want that. So, please… let’s talk about it.”

Won over by his lips, as usual, Timmy gives in, leaning into the kiss, touching him better, feeling him hard against his palm, as he runs over his length with his thumb through the thick fabric of his trousers. “…right now?” he asks, resting his forehead against Alex’s.

“No,” Alex hastens to answer, covering his lips in tiny, barely wet kisses, “Not right now. Right now, you need to fuck me, ‘cause we haven’t done shit in two days and I’m losing it.”

Timmy surrenders to his touches with complete abandon, unbuttoning Alex’s pants and slipping a hand inside, palming him skin against skin. He loves to feel him, he loves how sensitive Alex is, and he loves how demanding he gets when he’s teasing him, how sure he is of how he wants to be touched, and where, and for how long, and how strong. “Do you like it?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around his shaft and squeezing it, his thumb passing over the already wet tip, smearing pre-come all over it, making it glisten in the light coming from outside the window.

“Yes,” Alex whispers, parting his legs, inviting him to get closer, nibbling at his lips to ask for kisses, “Suck it?”

“Yes!” Timmy answers, melting in a moan that comes out muffled against Alex’s lips, just as the small chuckle that follows it. Timmy chuckles too, pushing Alex backwards to make him sit better on the desk and only then lowering himself on him, finishing to open up his pants to bare his hard-on. “Don’t mock me,” he says, his tongue already traveling in circles over the head of Alex’s cock.

“Sorry,” Alex says. He’s clearly not sorry at all. “It’s just, you sounded so enthusiastic.”

“Can’t I be happy to blow my boyfriend?”

“That’s what I am, now?” Alex smirks, one of his hands resting on Timmy’s head, his fingertips massaging his scalp.

“Shut up…” Timmy answers, before closing his mouth around Alex’s cock and suck, “And keep it down!” he demands, when this tears a louder moan out of Alex’s throat.

“You’re asking for something impossible…” Alex mutters, his voice completely void of any playful undertone, at this point. Timmy looks up at him, still playing with his tongue around his cock, and finds him sitting there, his limbs shaking lightly, his eyes closed. He’s biting at his bottom lip and all Timmy can think looking at him is he’d like to have more hands, more mouths, more cocks, he’d like to be more than just one, so Alex could be fucked properly, like he deserves, touched and kisses and stroked everywhere at the same time. “Take it deeper…” he whispers softly, pressing his hand on top of Timmy’s head. Timmy complies, because that’s the kind of life he wants to lead, lame as it is. A life in which Alex can push him and order him around as he likes, and he’d always say yes, because he loves him so much, Christ, he loves him so much he sometimes wishes he could melt all over him, wrap him up in himself, to be glued to him for eternity, to be part of him like a limb, so nothing could ever happen that’d sever them apart. “Yes…” Alex moans, his hips rocking slowly back and forth, “Yes, suck it… God… Timmy…” he swallows, throwing his head back as his eyebrows come together in an intense frown, his lips parting a little more, showing the vague flickering of his tongue piercing, “Make me come… I wanna come in your mouth.”

Timmy complies without saying a word, his hands closing around Alex’s hips as he blows him, until he feels him stiffen under his touch, and then release himself on his tongue. He keeps his lips locked around Alex’s cock, sucking and teasing while Alex shivers and moans, and then swallows, waiting for the last drop and only straightening his back after he tasted it well.

Alex is already waiting for him, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed, his chest heaving. Timmy kisses him wetly, making him taste his own taste on his tongue, playing with his piercing and pressing himself against him, to make him feel how hard he is under his pants.

“Fuck me,” Alex whispers on his lips, rubbing his nose against his first, then pressing them together, his legs already wrapped around Timmy’s waist.

“Yes,” Timmy nods, kissing him again as he hooks his thumbs around the waistband of Alex’s pants, to push them all the way down. He can’t take them off him if Alex doesn’t straighten his legs, but he doesn’t seem to be planning on doing that anytime soon, and Timmy’s content enough with baring only his ass. He doesn’t need much more to fuck him, anyway.

He pushes his own pants down to his ankles because they’re easier to get rid of, and he pushes against Alex’s opening. It’s tight and dry and closed shut, and he rubs his cock insistently against it to make it wet, feeling it start to crave his intrusion, opening and closing slightly whenever the tip of his hard-on threatens to break inside and never really does it, causing a symphony of needy, disappointed moans to come out of Alex’s lips in a low, deep song that vibrates against Timmy’s neck as Alex kisses it.

“Please,” Alex says, “Just put it in.”

He’s not even hard, but it doesn’t matter to him. Sex has never been just a mean to satisfy a craving, for Alex. It’s always been a connection. One Timmy couldn’t run away from. Alex gets off on tying him to himself more than he gets off on his own orgasms. That’s sick, and Timmy knows it. He also knows he doesn’t care for it, though, because whenever he thinks Alex owns him that way, he feels complete, and there’s nothing else he wants.

He thrusts his hips forward, burying himself inside Alex’s body. He can’t help the deep throaty moan that comes out of his mouth as he does, but Alex puts a hand on his nape and brings him closer, making him muffle the sound, and all the sounds that follow, right against his skin. Timmy parts his lips and glues them to Alex’s neck, sucking and nibbling at his skin, his tongue pressing hard on Alex’s Adam’s apple. Alex moans loudly, parting his legs as much as his pants let him, to welcome him deeper.

“God, I missed you,” Timmy almost whines, pushing hard in and out of him, “It’s starting to get too hard.”

“What?” Alex asks, his voice faint as he meets his thrusts with his own.

“Being away from you,” Timmy confesses, clinging to him. Alex’s arms close instantly around him, holding him in a reassuring hug. He keeps him bound to him, their bodies melting into one, as Timmy thrusts and thrusts inside his body, making the desk shake under their weight.

Timmy comes inside him with a desperate moan that he tries and fails to suffocate, and Alex keeps holding him, waiting for him to stop shaking, for him to regain control over himself. And when he does, it’s Timmy that keeps holding onto him, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist, resting his forehead against his shoulder. There’s an hickey already surfacing on Alex’s skin, right where he sucked and bit at it. He touches the light bruise with the tip of his nose, making Alex smile faintly.

“I was thinking about Lissy’s birthday,” Alex says after a while, “That’s why I came up with that excuse. I was thinking that might be a good time to tell everybody. Since everybody’s gonna be there, anyway.”

Timmy whines, hiding his face against the curve of Alex’s neck. He doesn’t wanna talk about it. But he knows he’s got no escape from it, this time. He couldn’t move, not even if he wanted, and he doesn’t want to, anyway.

“Alex, I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” he says.

“Why?” Alex asks, “’Cause I still wanna do it?”

“Exactly,” Timmy nods, “If you had thought this through, you’d know—”

“Telling everybody could mean it’s over.” Alex’s voice sounds deep, controlled, calm. Not as if he didn’t give a shit about it. As if he had counted all his options and understood he’s got but one. “I know. But if they find out on their own, it could be over all the same. And what if we don’t tell anybody? What do we do? We keep doing what we’ve done up to now? Hiding in dark corners? Locking doors and shit? And then what, in a few years, hoping we last that long? Will we get to the point of needing fucking beards to cover up for our lack of relationships? Will we go on our entire life sneaking out for a quickie in a car, hidden in the park, with peeping toms spying on us?” He bites at his bottom lip, taking a few breaths, trying to calm himself down. “Is that the kind of life you want for us? ‘Cause that’s fucking sad, Timmy. It’s not supposed to be so fucking sad, and honestly, I don’t know if I could stand it.”

Timmy wraps his arms more tightly around Alex’s waist, shaking his head, his forehead rubbing against Alex’s shoulder with each movement. “I never think things like this, Alex. I never… I never get that far.”

“Well, I do,” Alex answers, “’Cause I think this through. And thinking it through doesn’t mean thinking about the immediate consequences it’ll have, how our parents are gonna lose their shit about it and so on. It means try and… God,” he sighs, lifting his arms and wrapping them around Timmy’s neck, finally reciprocating his hug, clinging to him, “I want this to be something, Timmy. I want this to be important. As it is, it’s just a dirty secret.”

“But isn’t it enough that we can love each other?” Timmy asks desperately, pressing his whole face against Alex’s skin, inhaling his scent, “No one needs to know.”

“Everybody needs to know,” Alex replies, passing his fingers through Timmy’s hair, “This is running, and it’s not fair. It’s dangerous and sad, and it needs to be over soon.” He backs off a little, holding Timmy’s face in his hands. Timmy’s got to hand it to him, he’s doing great. How much has Alex grown, during these past few months. It’s amazing. He only wishes he was good enough to keep up with him. “Let’s tell everybody. The day of Lissy’s birthday. After the party. When only close family remains. Let’s tell them.”

But he’s not.

He’s not good enough.

He cannot keep up.

He prefers to lie.

“Okay,” he says, “But before we do that, let’s run away. Only for a few days.”

“Run away?” Alex chuckles a little, tilting his head, “Where?”

“The Hamptons’ house,” he says, “I can get the keys.”

“Timmy,” Alex sighs, a small smile still lingering on his lips, “It’s a little too cold for the sea, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care,” Timmy shakes his head. He’s already thinking: if I get you there, if I get you there for a few days, you’ll see what we’d be losing if we spoke, and you’ll change your mind. “I just want one good memory to go by, just in case. Please. Come with me. Only for a few days.”

Alex must think it’s a really small price to pay for honesty, so he easily says yes. Too bad he’s paying up front for a lie he won’t be able to cash in.

*
When he arrives to Blaine’s home, next day, he finds Alex lying down on the couch, singing softly to his sister who’s slowly falling asleep, lying on her stomach on his stomach.

The sight stops him, as always when he happens to catch Alex and Lissy together. He never sees Alex as completely relaxed, as utterly peaceful as he is when he’s spending time with his baby sister. And they’re so beautiful when they’re together, they look like a painting. They’re both Cody’s children, as far as basic genetics go, and they look extremely alike. Lissy’s enormous baby blue eyes match Alex’s perfectly, as well as her straight, dark, long hair and pale skin. Sometimes, when he sees them together, hugging like they are now, for example, Timmy can’t help but think that if Alex had a baby it’d look exactly like that too. The thought never fails to wake something up inside him, feelings he never thought he could have.

He’s never been one for long time planning, but sometimes Alex makes him want to. He makes him want to be the kind of person who plans ahead, who knows when he’s gonna get married, and how, and how many children he’s gonna have. He wishes he was that kind of person so he could have something to offer Alex when he turns to look at him with those eyes, asking for nothing but implicitly expecting everything from him. He could tell him “let’s run away together, let’s just go, forget everything, leave everyone behind, and if we do that, this is what I’m gonna give you”. But he can’t, because he has no idea what he’s gonna give Alex in time. He has no idea if he’s ever gonna be able to give him anything at all.

“Hey,” he says softly, not wanting to wake the baby, “Everything okay?”

Alex looks up to him. He was starting to doze off too, comforted by the sound of his own lullaby and wrapped up in his and his sister’s shared warmth, and that makes him a little unfocused and a lot more mellow than he usually is.

Alex isn’t a soft person. He’s full of spikes and sharp corners, full of that kind of anger that swarms through your body pushed by hormones and hot blood when you’re fourteen.

Christ.

Fourteen.

Almost fifteen at this point, sure, but he’s still so young. And he already knows himself and what he wants way better than Timmy thinks he ever will. And it’s just that, knowing himself so well, that makes him so much harder than all the other kids Timmy ever met in his life, including himself. And that hardness is what makes his smile thrice as precious, every time it shows, curling those cherry lips upwards at the corners.

“Yes,” he says, lifting a hand and nonchalantly brushing the back of it against Timmy’s thumb in a discreet but ridiculously intimate and affectionate greeting, “Lissy was a little colicky, today. Dad asked me to work my magic and help her sleep, before I left.”

Nobody suspected anything, when they announced they were gonna go to the Hamptons’ house for a few days before Lisbeth’s birthday. They’ve always been close and they’ve always spent so much time together, since they first met, at this point nobody is really impressed anymore to find them together at the most absurd times of the day.

Blaine is very proud of them for that. Sure, he wouldn’t if he knew the truth, but what he doesn’t know doesn’t kill him, and all Blaine knows is that, exactly how he had hoped right from the start, Alex loves the twins and gets along very well with them, Timmy has fallen hopelessly in love with baby Lissy and Alex and him are so close they almost look like real brothers, despite being so different from one another. That’s all Blaine ever wanted – something that would somehow keep his family together despite the fact that he himself had torn it to pieces by acting like an idiot. There’s no better glue than kids growing together, loving each other. Seeing all his sons and daughters get along like that gives him hope that someday, when all is said and done, and sadness is something everybody dealt with already, leaving it behind like the distant trace of a bad dream, all there’s gonna be is gonna be love. That’s the legacy he wants to leave after he’s gone. A bunch of kids who call the lot of them family.

“Are you ready?” Timmy asks sweetly, “We’ve got a flight to catch. We don’t wanna be late.”

“We won’t, don’t worry,” Alex answers with a soft smile as he holds his sister gently and carefully between his arms, to keep her safe as he stands up. Timmy follows him upstairs, and into Lissy’s room. He watches him put the baby girl down in her crib and then, for a couple of minutes, they just look at her, sleeping peacefully with her lips slightly parted and her hair spread around her like the petals of a flower. Timmy moves closer, feeling Alex’s body against himself, and puts a hand on his, entwining their fingers. Alex smiles, amused, turning to look at him. He’s about to say something, but Timmy doesn’t let him.

He leans in, pressing their lips together in a soft, dry, rather innocent kiss, especially considering their standards. “I love you,” he says then, looking straight into his eyes.

Alex blushes, biting at his bottom lip. “You didn’t need to tell me,” he says.

Timmy kisses him again. “I wanted nonetheless.”

*
Timmy loves the Hamptons’ house.

It’s not just because of all the good memories linked to it, memories from back when their parents were still together, the twins weren’t a thing yet and all that took to happiness was him, Leo and Blaine alone somewhere, visiting places, seeing things, having fun, playing the happy family despite the kind of history they had just left behind. No, it’s something simpler than that, the Hamptons’ house makes him happy because it’s untainted.

Nothing bad ever happened here. No fights. He’s never been here with Leo alone or with Blaine alone. Cody’s been here with Blaine, Alex and the twins before Lissy was born, actually, but it was back when Timmy still refused to ever leave Leo’s side for more than just a few hours to go to school, and so Timmy wasn’t there to see it, he wasn’t there to witness the temple of their parents’ love being desecrated by the presence of a different man alongside his father.

This is still the same place, to him. The only place in the world in which, at least in his mind, his parents are still together.

And he can pretend Alex isn’t his brother.

“I keep forgetting how cool this place is,” Alex comments, walking in and dropping his bag on the floor, “And how huge.” He chuckles, turning around in a graceful, almost harmonious movement to look at him, “What are we ever gonna do with all this space, just us?”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Timmy jokes, closing the door and taking off his jacket.

Alex laughs out loud, amused. “Right!” he says, “This is the first time we come here together, and on our own, to boot! We need to christen all the rooms.”

“All of them?” Timmy smirks, “Be careful what you wish for. We’re talking no less than ten rooms and two bathrooms, and I’m not counting the pool as an actual room, but that’d need christening too, if we were to do things methodically.”

“What,” Alex chuckles, walking closer and grinning, “You don’t think you can handle this?” he asks, playfully slapping his own ass.

“Oh, I can handle this,” Timmy answers, suddenly wrapping an arm around his waist and bringing him closer, just to hear him squeal in surprise and then try and wriggle out of his hold when he feels his hand close around one of his buttocks and squeeze, “I was just worrying about you. Ten to thirteen fucks are a lot to take for just one ass.”

“Maybe it won’t be my ass alone taking them,” Alex grins again.

“Ah, sure, I can fuck your mouth too, that’s no biggie,” Timmy smirks.

“I was talking about your ass, idiot!” Alex laughs, hitting his chest with his closed fist, “Maybe I’ll fuck you, that’s what I meant!”

Timmy freezes on the spot, swallowing. “Alex…” he says, but Alex cuts him off, laughing victoriously in his face.

“Look at him getting stiffer than a stick!” he comments, still laughing, “Seriously, you’re the straightest guy to ever have fucked a boy. Ever!”

Timmy frowns and grunts, majorly disappointed in Alex’s mockery. “Are you having fun?” he asks rhetorically, his lips pursing into a childish pout.

“As a matter of fact,” Alex’s smile softens up, as he leans into Timmy’s hug, resting his hand over his chest and lifting himself on his tiptoes to place a small kiss on his lips, “Yes. We never play like this at home. We can never be loud and we can never be dirty, and that’s annoying, ‘cause I’m fifteen and all I want in life is to be loud and dirty.”

“You’re not fifteen,” Timmy smiles against his lips, kissing him back, “Yet.”

“Which makes it even more absurd that we aren’t constantly walking around telling each other bad jokes on the size of our dicks,” Alex insists, tracing the inner line of Timmy’s lips with the tip of his tongue, “I mean, for Christ’s sake, Timmy, I am a kid. Let me be a kid.”

“God…” Timmy chuckles, hiding his face against the curve of Alex’s shoulder, “Don’t remind me. I’m gonna end up in jail.”

“Don’t act like you don’t like me being so young,” Alex smirks, gently biting Timmy’s neck, “You’re a perv.”

“I am,” Timmy admits, looking back up at him from less than an inch distance, “I so am. I’m glad you were so young I was the first to put my hands on you, so whatever happens to us I will always be the first who ever fucked you.”

“That’s fucked up,” Alex says, but the genuine amusement ringing in his laughter makes it sound like he doesn’t think it fucked up at all. Or, if he does, he doesn’t care.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Timmy says, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist and hugging him close, squeezing gently. He’s so soft, and he smells so good. Timmy rubs his nose along Alex’s neck and enjoys the feeling, because Alex rarely lets him stay this close for so long. He is, indeed, a kid, and that makes him restless, needy, always looking for something more, so whenever Timmy manages to break the barrier of his moodiness to get a hug as a prize at the end of the forest of thorns, that never lasts long. Soon enough Alex starts kissing him and rubbing against him, begging him to take him, and Timmy knows that even if he insisted on just hugging for a while that would only make Alex frustrated and angry, prompting him to pull away.

Timmy supposes that’s only natural, truly. When you’re used to keep your romantic relationship a secret, you also grow used to steal bits and pieces of intimacy whenever nobody’s looking, which doesn’t happen often, considering they’re mostly surrounded with children for the majority of the day and when the kids aren’t there it’s usually their parents dancing around them like extremely annoying spinning tops.

That’s why now it’s so different. ‘Cause they’re not hiding, and there’s no one around who could suddenly come out from behind a corner and see them do something they’re not supposed to do. Alex doesn’t feel like he has to grab him and keep him desperately close for as long as he can, since it usually isn’t long at all, and as a consequence of that he’s relaxing, he’s growing less pushy, he’s enjoying himself more.

That’s exactly what Timmy wanted. That’s all he wants Alex to understand: if they tell their parents, they’re gonna lose this chance at something normal. They’re gonna lose their chance at anything at all, really. They will never allow them to stay together. Timmy’s almost an adult, now, while Alex is gonna stay just a kid for at least three more years. If their parents could accept their relationship despite their family tie, which is unthinkable already, they’d still never be able to accept their relationship as it is now. They’d quickly do the math, they’d guess how old they were when this all started, they’d blame Timmy, of course they would, as they should, and it’d all be over.

While it’d be so much easier if they just dealt with it on their own. If Alex just understood that he doesn’t have to keep clutching at him baring his claws and driving them through his flash to try and hold him close. Life could always be like this. They could always run out here, every now and then. No one would know. And the dark corners don’t have to be hiding places. They can just be their own little pocket universe, where rules are different, where they can be together.

They don’t need to tell the truth, they just need to grow stronger into the lie. So they can keep repeating it. And never start to believe it.

But he can’t say this out loud to Alex right now. No, of course not. That’d be stupid. He doesn’t see this truth yet. He firmly believes he’s right, because like all kids he’s completely unprepared to accept a vision of the world that isn’t his own. It’s okay, Timmy doesn’t resent him for that. If anything, this only makes him like him even more.

He’ll come ‘round it, he thinks to himself as he kisses him and slips a hand into his pants, making him melt in a deep, wet moan, he just needs time. Timmy can wait.

*
They have planned to spend three days out here, and they have easily been the happiest of Timmy’s life since his parents got divorced and he understood pain had been, up to that moment, a word he had seriously and gravely misused to indicate a kind of suffering that wasn’t indeed suffering at all.

It sounds overdramatic, and nobody would probably believe him if he said it out loud, but he’s never been happy again, after his parents split. Sure, he felt some happiness, every now and then. With Tana, with Alex, with his siblings, during some sport competition, at school, reading some of his farming books and entertaining himself with the thought of having his own farm someday, but feeling happiness is different than really being happy, and Timmy has never been happy again, after the divorce.

He wonders, does it feel like this for all the broken kids coming out of broken families, no matter how hard their families try to mend themselves not to make the children suffer too much? He doesn’t know. The only child of divorced parents he knows is Alex, and he has never talked about his feelings about the divorce with him. First, because Alex doesn’t really like talking about feelings. And second, because the two divorces that preceded Blaine and Cody going to live together ultimately led to them meeting, and falling in love. He doesn’t want to make Alex think he regrets that, and since he’s almost a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t be able to explain himself, as if often happens, if he tried and talk about this, he prefers not to, and avoid the problem altogether. (Something he’s getting quite used to do. And pretty good at, too.)

Fact is, when his parents split, something got taken away from him. Possibly the certainty that, no matter what you do in your life, where you go, how far you travel, a safe nest will always be home, waiting for you when you return. His nest had stopped being safe the moment both papa birds had decided it wasn’t worth keeping it so anymore. Suddenly, one nest had split into two, and – Timmy had found out with horror – none of them was really safe, ‘cause there was pain in both places, pain waiting around the corner, just waiting for him to relax, to get used to it, to strike him as hard as it possibly could.

Leo’s empty smile, his father’s broken one, they weren’t things Timmy could forget, or avoid, or stop thinking about, because they were there. All the time. And suddenly, the two people who were supposed to shelter him from pain until he grew able to face it on his own were the ones pouring pain all over him, like motherfucking waterfalls of heartache and suffering.

Is it really possible that there are children of divorced parents who can know and experience what happiness is anymore? Timmy doesn’t know, but he doesn’t think so. Parents steal something away from you, when they break up. They take away something you love. Something you cared for.

Losing his family was the first, great loss of his life. He mourned for it as if it had been a dead relative. And that mourning had left a scar inside him. As overly theatrical as it may possibly sound, that scar makes him simply unable to be a happy person anymore. There’s always something lingering in the background, a darker shade in his eyes, in his smile, that’s never going away.

But being far from everything else and in the sole company of Alex in the last three days got him closer to that. Got him closer to happiness. As close as being really happy as he can possibly hope to be, he’d guess if he had to.

They’ve been playing the happy couple, mostly. No one really knows them out here, no one has ever seen them together with their family and the neighborhood is pretty discreet anyway, so no one notices them, and those who do still don’t know they’re brothers. That gives them the chance to do things they’d never be allowed to do back in Lima, from kissing publicly to walk around hand in hand, from going on dates without worrying about looking too romantic for two brothers to joke about what they do and what they don’t and so on.

It’s different in the house too. Since they know nobody except them is walking around, they don’t lock doors. They oversleep. They don’t care if they end up tangled in a messy knot of bodies and sheets when they sleep together. Alex walks around half naked to tease him and Timmy touches him without fear, enjoying it, the playing around, the being together, the sharing, the closeness.

It feels good to be able to act naturally around Alex, as if he was just his boyfriend and not his brother too. It’s one of those too good to last deals, Timmy knows it, but he clings to it, and sometimes, when they’re alone in bed and it’s already dark outside, and Alex’s body searches for his own to share warmth and a few cuddles before sleeping, he has the impression Alex is clinging to it too, and that gives him hope that maybe, just maybe, maybe he’s convincing himself, and they won’t really have to tell.

*
The weather hasn’t been really kind with them on any of those three days. It’s been cold and rather cloudy, making it impossible for them to even think about going for a stroll on the beach, for example, but at least it hasn’t rained yet – yet being the keyword, of course, as it painfully shows when, on their last night in the house, just when they’re about to finish getting ready to go out for dinner, it finally happens.

“Shit,” Alex whines, looking out the window, his nose pressed against the glass as his lips purse in a disappointed pout, “It’s raining so hard.”

“Are you that devastated at the prospect of spending the evening at home with me?” Timmy asks, chuckling softly as he takes off his shirt and puts something more comfortable on.

Alex turns around, one hand on his hip, an amused grin curling his lips at the corners. “Maybe I am, I can’t stand you anymore,” he says, and then laughs. “I don’t know, it’s just… it’s our last night out here, I wanted to go out, have dinner, maybe go dancing.”

“We can dance in here, can’t we?”

“No way,” Alex laughs, amused, “You’re ridiculously bad at dancing, if we have to dance together it must be in a place dark enough that I can’t see how stupid you look, or I will never want to fuck you again.”

“I’m not that bad at it…” Timmy mutters, pouting a little. Alex chuckles, and moves closer to him, standing on his tiptoes to kiss him.

“I’m okay with staying in,” he whispers on his lips, “If you make it worth the while.”

“Don’t I always?” Timmy asks, leaning in and kissing him again, more deeply. Alex parts his lips, giving in to it instantly, his tongue searching for Timmy’s as he lifts his arms and wraps them around Timmy’s neck, clinging to him.

“Seriously…” he exhales in a little moan, as he presses his body against Timmy’s and feels him hard against his thigh, “What is it? Are you always hard or are you just very quick to get there when I touch you?”

“A mix of both,” Timmy answers against his lips, trying to slip a hand inside Alex’s scandalously tight checkered pants and failing, “Can’t you take this shit off?”

Alex laughs, rubbing his nose against Timmy’s. “You wanna fuck?” he asks, moving his leg over Timmy’s crotch.

“Among other things,” he says, letting out an half-annoyed, half-excited groan.

Alex smiles, backing off a little. “Well,” he says, “Since we can’t go out… maybe I can put up a little show, at least.”

Timmy opens his eyes, looking at him. His heart’s already beating faster. He watches Alex as he turns the lights off, and he sits on the bed when Alex comes closer again, keeping himself at a distance only to show off as he undresses. The only lights now are the ones coming from the outside. The distant streetlamps, casting their yellow, warm light over Alex’s white skin, making it glisten golden, and then, every now and then, the sudden blaze of a lightning, washing over him in white flashes that cast his shadow on the opposite wall, making him look like something out of some weird, fucked up wet nightmare.

He bites at his inner cheek while Alex takes off his pants, pulling them down so slowly he almost wants to stomp his feet on the floor in annoyance. Alex sees that, reads it on his face, and smirks lightly as he kicks his pants away and then wraps his fingers around the hem of his black t-shirt, pulling it up.

His navel piercing is of course the first thing Timmy sees, the tiny metal ball shining and casting a long, curved shadow over Alex’s tummy when another lightning sets the night alight for a few seconds. His insides twist into a painful knot, and as always all he wants to do is get on his knees and crawl to him, hold his hips between his hands and just press his face against the gentle curve of his belly, to kiss his navel and play with his piercing.

Everything about Alex is mesmerizing, Timmy is unable to have controlled reactions in front of him. It’s not just that he wants him, it’s that he needs to have him. He needs to surrender to him, to let go of everything else, to just close his eyes and turn the world into a place where only Alex is important, and the rest means nothing.

He was so scared to do so, up to just a few months ago. Alex was something to run away from, because his presence made Timmy want to relinquish control, and he was sure, so damn sure, so stupidly sure that the moment he would do that, lose control, let go, he’d have lost everything.

What everything was, back then, he didn’t know. He knows now, though. It was pain. He was holding onto pain because pain defined him. Pain reminded him who he was, where and what and who was he coming from. Pain. In Leo’s silent house. In Blaine’s evanescent family of people he had loved and loved still. In walking around his parents on his tiptoes all the time, terrified to say and do the wrong thing without even noticing. In holding it together. In wanting to be strong for them, since they couldn’t. In protecting Leo from his own apathy, in sheltering Blaine from that deep, corrosive sadness that was eating him up from the inside.

All that was hard, and painful, and too much for a kid his age, even if he had been doing it for years already. And Alex made him want to let go of all this. Just let go and be alright. Let go and let somebody else take care of the pain, soothe it out.

And now he has that. He has tried what it means to close his eyes and give in, he knows the kind of joy you feel when you’re not just yourself anymore, but yourself in the hands of someone else, and that’s what Alex is asking him to say goodbye to. That’s what he wants to risk losing.

And Timmy just can’t. He can’t. He can’t go back to what life was before, to the pain and the holding himself together by a thread and the pushing everything away, the trying to smile his way through things hoping they’d pass on their own at some point.

He can’t. He knows pain wouldn’t pass. If he lost Alex, pain just wouldn’t be over. Ever.

He closes his arms around Alex’s body, hugging him close, hiding his face in his chest. He kisses him all over, his hands following the slightly curved line of his spine up and down his back, and then he lowers himself, slipping off the bed, falling on his knees on the carpeted floor, locking his lips around Alex’s navel piercing, sucking at it.

Alex moans, passing his fingers through his hair, shivering every time Timmy’s mouth opens and close against his skin, and for a moment or two he gets to feel the edge of his teeth pressing on his tummy in wet half-bites.

“We’re hungry, tonight…” he whispers, his hand moving away from Timmy’s hair and down his face, stroking his jaw, “Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Timmy groans against Alex’s skin, sticking his tongue in his navel, “I wanna eat you out.”

“I like that,” Alex blushes just lightly, out of pure arousal, not an ounce of embarrassment in his glistening eyes, or in the rough sound of his voice, “Do it,” he whispers, moving forward against Timmy, his hard-on, hidden by his underpants, bumping against Timmy’s chin.

Timmy nods, hooking his fingers around the waistband of Alex’s underpants and pulling them down, baring his erection.

He’s on him the second after, parting his lips to welcome him in his mouth and sucking hard, feeling his taste on his own tongue. God, there’s nothing he likes more than Alex’s taste. It’s just as enticing as the rest of him is, just as addictive. The mere idea of losing that, losing the chance to taste him every day, makes him feel hopeless and so beyond simple sadness he doesn’t even know the right word to describe that.

Alex moans, his hands both on Timmy’s head, stroking his scalp, pulling him closer when Timmy backs off, then guiding him to take him deeper, or pushing him away to take a breath when he knows he’s about to choke. They feel each other so perfectly, they’re so ridiculously synchronized, now, everything comes up naturally between them, especially during sex. They never hurt each other. They never do something wrong. It’s all pleasure. All pleasure, all the time.

He won’t be caught dead risking to lose that.

He moves away from him, and when Alex whines in a vague complaint, pushing his hand on top of his head to bring him back to where he was and what he was doing, he reaches back, holding that hand in his own and bringing it closer to his mouth, to leave a small kiss on his palm, to calm him down and make him focus on him. Alex does it, looking down at him, his eyes a little watery, his cheeks flushed.

“You got bored?” he asks him, passing his thumb over Timmy’s swollen lips.

Timmy shakes his head. “Turn around,” he says.

Alex bites at his bottom lip, unable to contain a little smile. “You’re really hungry, aren’t you?”

“I told you,” Timmy answers, sticking out his tongue just enough to lick the tip of Alex’s thumb with it, “I wanna eat you out.”

Alex chuckles, moving away from him to turn around and bend over the bed. He’s about to get on all fours on it, but Timmy stops him, because he can’t wait. He grabs his hips, holding them still between his hands, and dives between his buttocks, his tongue pressing insistently against Alex’s opening, pushing through it, inside his body. Alex lets out a soft whimper, closing his fingers around the sheets, holding onto them. Timmy can already feel him shiver all over, and it feels so good, so good to know for certain what works for him works for Alex too, that it’s not just him getting lost in all this, that it’s them, together, that Alex is putting himself in his hands just as much as he himself is doing with him.

That they’re one and the same, in this. That there’s a bond that cannot be broken, and it’s theirs.

“Timmy…” Alex whispers, his voice weak and needy, one of his hands letting go of the sheets only to reach back for Timmy, to try and get a hold of him, “Enough teasing… come on.”

Timmy nods, climbing on the bed too, right behind him, and lowering himself on him, to leave a trail of soft, wet kisses all over his nape and shoulders. “You taste so good…” he whispers, leaving another kiss right behind his ear, “I’d lick you all day.”

“Put it in,” Alex whines, triggered by the dirty talking even more than he has already been by Timmy’s ministrations.

“I like you so much…” Timmy goes on, his fingers finding their way to Alex’s opening and past it, pushing in, “You’re perfect.”

Alex whines again, so loud it almost sounds like a proper sob. His hips swing and push back, but he’s disappointed Timmy’s just fingering him instead of properly fucking him. “Timmy, please,” he begs, the tight ring of muscles contracting around Timmy’s fingers, squeezing them at their base, “Please, put it in.”

“I love you,” Timmy whispers, his fingers still moving inside Alex’s body as he brings his other hand between his thighs, palming him up and down, “I love you.”

“God…” Alex shivers desperately, stretching his back, resting his elbows on the mattress and crossing his arms only to hide his face between them, “Is this one of those times…?” he asks with a shaky voice, his hips moving twice as fast, now, relentlessly trying to follow the movements of both his hands, trying to set a pace he can go by despite Timmy’s firm refusal to give him one, to bring him to his knees.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Timmy breathes straight into Alex’s ear, nibbling at his earlobe. He says that, but he’s lying. He knows.

“One of those times,” Alex breathes out, his voice weary and whiny, his body being pushed to its limits, “When you can’t just fuck me, you need to break me.”

“I don’t wanna break you,” he answers, licking his way down Alex’s jaw and searching for a kiss.

“You do,” Alex insists, resisting the urge to kiss him back at first, but ultimately turning around, giving in, locking their lips together, “You need to see me broken and desperate and out of my mind, every now and then.” He moans louder when, as an answer to that, Timmy thrusts his fingers deeper inside him, “You need to… ah… to win me over completely, and…” he holds his breath, biting at his bottom lip, “God, I love it… I love it, Timmy, I love you, just, please, fuck me, please, I can’t take it anymore.”

“I’m sure you can,” Timmy says softly, his whole body on fire. Alex has no idea, he simply has no idea how much Timmy wants to just pull his fingers out of him and slam his cock inside him, but he can’t, not now, it’s too soon, if he did it now then everything would be over already, and what would be left for them except the rest of this rainy night, knowing tomorrow they will have to go back home, that there’s nothing but a handful of hours in between them and Lissy’s birthday, in between them and the end of their story?

“Timmy,” Alex’s voice weakens and he holds his breath again when Timmy closes his hand more firmly around his cock, now jerking him off while he keeps thrusting his fingers inside of him up to their knuckles, “Timmy, please.”

“It’s gonna happen,” Timmy says, rubbing his nose against Alex’s cheek, leaving soft kisses over his hot skin, “I’m gonna put it in when the time is right and you can’t take it anymore, and I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna scream.” He licks his way down Alex’s neck and then briefly closes his lips around his shoulder to suck at it for a second, before speaking on him again, “Don’t you want me to make you scream, sweets? Like you can never do back home.”

“Yes!” Alex shouts, his whole body tensing as he comes suddenly, “Oh, God!” he lets out a half-sob, his hips jerking forward, again and again, Timmy’s hand still wrapped around his cock, which refuses to soften even after his orgasm, “Oh, God, Timmy, stop,” he whines. He’s got tears at the corners of his eyes, like it always happens when they push it a little too far and it starts becoming too overwhelming and hard to bear, “Timmy, I can’t,” he sobs again, his hips still moving as if guided by a will of their own.

“You’re still hard,” Timmy whispers, passing his fingers all over the wet, sticky tip of Alex’s cock. Alex shouts again, his body jerking upwards as if it had been just passed through by an electric jolt. He’s panting and whimpering and his legs are shaking, and his arms are shaking too, and he’s so tense he looks as if he was just about to come undone, and that’s when Timmy moves, when he pulls his fingers out in exchange for his own cock, that he buries deep into Alex’s body in one hard, firm thrust that makes Alex move up on his knees and arch his back in a curve as rounded and perfectly white as the side of the moon.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Timmy!” he yells, reaching behind to put a hand on Timmy’s nape, keeping him close as he feels him pounding inside his body, “God… you’re impossible.”

“Do you like it?” Timmy asks eagerly, his lips glued to Alex’s neck, his hands firmly wrapped around his hips.

“I do…” he says, trying to relax, trying to breathe normally again, despite how hard it is at this point, “Christ, you’re so fucking big.”

“Am I?” Timmy feels a deep shiver run down his spine, pool in his loins, explode through all his body like fire, making his hips move faster, “Does it feel good?”

“Feels great,” Alex moans, reaching back and clutching both hands around the curve of Timmy’s ass, demanding him to thrust harder, “Fuck me,” he moves restlessly, “Fuck me harder, Timmy, please.”

Timmy parts his lips and then closes them again around Alex’s neck, biting and licking and sucking at it as he complies, pounding hard inside him, making the bed shake with every thrust, the headboard banging against the wall, the wooden slats under the mattress creaking under their constantly moving weight. He fucks him as hard and fast and deep as Alex demands, following his every order, making sure he’s always doing the best he possibly can to make him feel good, more than good, great, and when Alex comes again, with an exhausted, hoarse groan that leaves him spent and weak, there Timmy decides he can let go, he had enough, and he comes too, releasing his orgasm inside him up to the last drop, filling him up to the point that when he finally pulls out some of his sperm squirts out of Alex’s still stretched and contracting opening, causing him to shiver again as he curls in a ball on the bed, unable to move, to speak, to even open his eyes.

Timmy looks at him and can’t help but smile a little, lying down next to him, wrapping his arms around him. Alex leans back on him, his back against Timmy’s chest. He’s not overly cuddly, he just needs to touch, so Timmy doesn’t move, he just hugs him, waiting for it to be over.

When he hears him start breathing normally again, he dares to lean in and kiss him on his cheek. “Was it too much?” he asks.

“Nah, it was okay,” Alex answers, his lips curling in a relaxed smile, his eyes still closed, “I wasn’t expecting it, though.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know,” he chuckles, “I was kind of expecting you to be all grumpy and full of resentment, but you’ve been okay. Maybe I misjudged you and you’re not entirely an idiot.”

“Wow,” Timmy smiles, “That’s so kind of you. I’m moved.”

“As you should,” Alex nods. Then he stretches out, and Timmy instantly removes his arm, to let him free to move. Alex doesn’t thank him, but he appreciates, Timmy knows, and stands up from the bed with a pretty smile curling his lips.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m thirsty as hell,” he says, “Screamed too much,” he adds with a smirk. “Water?”

“Sure,” Timmy nods. Then he lies down on the bed, pleasantly naked in the warmth of the bedroom, basking in the smell of them, and when Alex comes back, smirking mischievously and holding two bottles in his hands, he chuckles. “What’s that?”

“Something better than water,” Alex grins, climbing back on the bed and sitting cross-legged next to him. “Here, I already opened yours,” he adds, handing him one of the bottles.

“Ah, so it’s one each?” Timmy laughs, amused. He looks at the bottle and he’s pretty sure he recognizes the label on the front. His father got this wine – a Tuscan Cabernet Sauvignon bottled in 2035 that is, at this point, probably more of an object to proudly display in a glass case than something to drink – a few years before. Timmy remembers he had bought it especially in case something particularly worth celebrating happened. It’s no surprise it survived until now, really. He takes a sip right from the bottle, letting the warm, bitter taste of the red wine flow through him. “God!” he laughs, “It’s strong.”

“Yeah,” Alex chuckles. He’s drinking too, small, little sips that never fail to force a little grimace out of him.

“You’re not used to drink wine, are you?” Timmy chuckles too, amused.

“Nope,” Alex admits with another soft laughter, “But I wanna get drunk.”

“Why?”

Alex shrugs lightly, his long black hair bouncing above his shoulders. “Just because,” he says.

That’s gotta be enough.

They drink together, naked on the bed for hours. Takes them a while to finish both bottles. Timmy finishes his own faster than Alex, and when he realizes it he pouts, disappointed, and Alex laughs and tells him they can share his. They drink from the same bottle, then kiss, then drink from each other’s lips. The bed is warm and they keep cuddling, and it feels amazing.

After a while, they start talking more honestly than they ever did. Alex tells him about school, about friends, about missing Italy, missing his father, who stayed there after the divorce. They barely see each other except on Skype, and going over there two weeks every year for the summer isn’t enough.

Timmy holds him, kisses him on his forehead and tells him he’s sorry, but Alex laughs and pinches him. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he says, “Life isn’t shitty for me alone. We’re all just hanging in there hoping it’s gonna get better, but I’m starting to get it, y’know? It doesn’t get better. You just grow fonder of how shitty it is.”

“Gosh, you’re grim, for a kid.”

“All kids are grim,” Alex chuckles, “Why else do you think Tim Burton is still such a huge deal among teenagers?”

Timmy tells him he’s right, and mocks him for being a cynical drunk, and then asks him to tell him more about his father, about what they used to do together. Alex has to admit they didn’t do much, they weren’t exactly compatible in that sense. “He’s got a farm, you know?” he says.

Timmy’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Seriously?” he says, shocked, “That’s so cool!”

“It wasn’t bad,” Alex chuckles, his eyes shimmering in the lightning still illuminating the night every now and then, “But it certainly wasn’t cool.”

“Are you kidding me?” Timmy insists, “I want a farm too.”

Alex turns to look at him, raising both eyebrows and then bursting into laughing. “Really?” he asks, “How can a spoiled child like you want a farm?”

“I don’t know!” Timmy answers, as if he really was just as surprised as Alex was, “I just do. It’s relatively new, I mean, I haven’t always wanted to have a farm, but recently I ended up reading some good books on the topic. You know. I was searching for something to do with my life.”

“And you happened to find out your way was in the fields, or raising pigs and cows,” Alex laughs.

“Well, yes!” Timmy insists, “Don’t mock me, I’m serious. Leo told me: you need to find your way, and I told him: but I only like sports, and he was like well, then choose one, and I said I didn’t want to, because I want sports to be hobbies, you know, I wouldn’t want to make a profession out of them. So we talked it out and he suggested me to just go read something at the library. And there I stumbled upon ‘You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise’—”

“And it impressed you so much you still remember the entire title!” Alex laughs out loud, twice as amused as he would already normally be because of the wine.

“Sort of, yeah,” Timmy chuckles, “It was interesting. But most of all it was the pictures, you know?”

“I was sure it would come down to the pictures,” Alex giggles, resting his head against Timmy’s shoulder and drinking some more, “I bet you didn’t even read a word.”

“I did,” Timmy pouts, offended, “I read the whole thing. And it was interesting, as I said. But the pictures, those weren’t interesting, those were simply beautiful. All those animals, all that land. Can you imagine it? All that land, all to yourself. All those animals, all yours to tend to. Fruits and vegetables to grow, cheeses to make, cows to milk, and chickens…” he smiles a little, when Alex turns to kiss him on his cheek, “I don’t know. The thought gives me peace. So much peace. So, yeah…” he chuckles, “You’re the first person I talk with about this. The first ever. Feels good.”

Alex smiles again, and nods. “I know, right?” he says, “Feels good to let it out. Can’t wait to do the same, tomorrow.”

There’s a lightning and a thunder right after that, and they wouldn’t even notice if they were still talking. But Timmy has frozen over like blown away by a winter breeze, and in the utter, cold silence that suddenly fills the room the noise is so heavy it’s almost scary.

“About that…” he says. Next to him, Alex stiffens instantly.

“What?” he asks. His voice is firm, stern, but there’s a little bit of anxiety under the surface, telling Timmy he’s got to tread carefully.

“I mean…” he tries, swallowing hard, “We had fun out here, didn’t we?”

“Sure,” Alex says. Timmy doesn’t turn to look at him. Besides, he’s pretty sure Alex wouldn’t look back anyway. “But we can’t stay any longer. Lissy’s birthday—”

“I was just thinking,” Timmy interrupts him, his voice shaking a little, “That maybe we don’t really have to tell everybody.”

It’s silence again for the longest time, after that. Timmy’s scared to call for Alex, scared to break the stillness and set everything in motion. Scared that that’ll push Alex away.

But Alex pushes himself away on his own.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” he says, getting off the bed and quickly retrieving his clothes from the ground, to wear them again, “I can’t fucking— I just can’t.”

“Alex.”

“I need to get out of here.”

“Alex!” Timmy calls out for him, jumping off the bed too, tidying up his clothes, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?! Me?!” Alex screams, turning to look at him with real fire in his light blue eyes, “You dragged me here promising me it was only gonna be for three days, and then we’d be back and we’d tell our parents! And now, after three days, you just come out and say ‘you know what, let’s not’, and I’m ridiculous?!”

“You know I didn’t mean it in that way.”

“I don’t fucking know how you mean anything anymore!” Alex lifts both his arms, and then turns around, “Fuck it. Fuck you!”

“Alex, please,” Timmy insists, running after him and putting his hands on his shoulders, keeping him inside the bedroom before he had a chance to really walk out, “At least hear me out! Let’s talk about this! If I just could be able to make you understand—”

“What?!” Alex interrupts him, freeing himself from his hold, “Make me understand what, Timmy? That you’re a coward? That you don’t even care for me?”

“That’s not even true!”

“It is!” Alex yells, tears of rage in his eyes, “I told you I don’t like things as they are now! I don’t like hiding! I don’t like feeling dirty for wanting to be with you! I don’t want to be your dirty little secret, Timmy! But I guess that’s all I am to you, aren’t I? The dirty slut you like to fuck, but only if no one knows! So, next time you turn back straight again, you can run back to your auntie whore and—”

Timmy slaps him so hard that, for a second, the sound echoes louder than the sound of the rain. Then he stops and looks at Alex, his head turned to the side, his cheek quickly turning red.

He should apologize. He doesn’t.

“You pathetic piece of shit!” Alex yells at him, turning around and launching himself towards him, slapping him first, then trying to scratch him.

“Alex—”

“How dare you touch me?!” Alex isn’t even listening to him, he doesn’t care. Right now he just hates him so much if hate alone could kill Timmy would be already dead.

“Alex, please.”

“No!” he screams, “I don’t wanna listen to you!” he comes closer, grabbing Timmy by the collar of his hoodie, “I don’t wanna fucking hear a single word coming from your mouth ever again in my life!”, and he slaps him again, only this time he does it by making sure his nails are bare like claws, and when he takes his hand away there are three scratches cutting Timmy’s face in three parts, and there’s blood coming out of them, and it’s a lot.

“Shit,” Timmy mutters when the blood starts dripping on the floor.

Alex stops, looking at him. There’s blood on his fingers, and some of Timmy’s skin under his nails. He grimaces and presses a hand over his stomach, as if the sight made him want to puke.

“…fuck,” he says. He’s crying.

“Alex,” Timmy whispers, walking closer but scared to touch him, “Alex, don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Alex sobs, looking away, “You are? Good for you. We’re not.”

*
When Alex walks into the room again, Timmy straightens himself up, throwing his legs off the bed, tensing all over. For a moment, through the open doors, all the sounds of the ER flood the room, and it’s like being thrown back in time, to half an hour before, when they were still waiting for somebody to take care of Timmy’s wounds, and Timmy had to press a towel hard against his face not to make a pool of his own blood on the floor, and they couldn’t speak to one another, not a single word, while all around them people cried and whined and nurses called numbers and everything seemed to move in slow motion, and both of them clearly thought if there was such a thing as purgatory, in the afterlife, it had to look a lot like that.

Then Alex closes the door and silence falls upon them again, and they’re out of purgatory, and probably hellbound.

“They say—”

“Can I have a hug?” Timmy hastens to say, already opening his arms and reaching out to Alex, despite being as far from him as he possibly can in such a small room. He didn’t mean for it to sound so needy, but after all that’s exactly how he feels right now. He’s desperate and needy and he wants his boyfriend back, stat. He can’t even think if they can’t be back together.

Alex, leaning against the closed door, looks up to him, his eyes unfocused and still red-stained from tears. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Please,” Timmy wheezes, stretching his arms even more, as if he could reach him if he only stretched them long enough, “Please, don’t do that. You’re killing me.”

Alex’s bottom lip trembles, and in a few second they’re close together, and Timmy can wrap his arms around Alex’s body, and he can inhale his scent, and feel his warmth, and stroke his hair, and everything’s alright again, he can function, he can breathe, nothing hurts anymore.

“Timmy, I—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts him, hiding his face against his neck, “I didn’t wanna hurt you. I’m serious. I’m an idiot, but I’m not cruel, and I love you. I didn’t wanna hurt you. I’m just fucking scared. You have no idea. I’m so fucking scared.”

Alex passes his fingers through Timmy’s hair slowly. Timmy can’t see his expression, but he can picture it perfectly in his mind. Those sad, red eyes, those beautiful lips curled downwards, maybe he’s crying without making a sound, maybe he’s crying without tears, like sometimes Alex does, crying inside, so nobody can see it. “You think I’m not?” he asks softly, his warm breath caressing Timmy’s skin.

“I don’t know,” Timmy answers, “I don’t know anything anymore. Except that I don’t wanna lose you.”

“You won’t,” Alex hugs him tighter, pressing himself against him for comfort, “Timmy, no matter what happens, I’m yours forever.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Timmy’s arms close strongly around Alex’s waist, squeezing him, “That’s not enough. It’s not enough to know that even if they break us up, you’ll keep loving me, and we’ll belong to one another in our hearts or whatever lame bullshit people are ready to believe in when they’re about to lose somebody they love and they don’t wanna face the pain. There is no such thing as being somebody else’s in one’s own heart. That’s worth nothing. It’s not real. When people break up, they break up. They’re alone. They’re not together anymore. And I can’t stand the thought— I need to be with you, not just to know we belong to one another. I can’t lose you.”

Alex shivers a little against him, holding onto his shoulders for a little while, before pulling back. He stays close, passing his fingers over Timmy’s face, over the bandage that covers half of it, leaving bare only his mouth, his eyes and his forehead. “I fucked you up pretty good,” he says, leaving a small kiss on Timmy’s nose, “They say it’s unlikely there’s gonna be any scar. But the wounds will take a little time to heal.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Timmy shakes his head and then presses his lips against Alex’s, “I’m alright. It doesn’t even hurt.”

“It will,” Alex sighs, resting his forehead against Timmy’s. “We have another problem, though. They don’t wanna let us go.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Alex lets out another sigh, hugging Timmy again and resting his head above his shoulder. “When we arrived we were drunk, you were bleeding and I’ve got a bruise on my cheek that’s starting to show. I talked with the nurse at the reception ‘cause she wanted our info, and when she saw I’m a minor she told me that, given the situation, they won’t release us if not with a parent.”

“…fuck,” Timmy groans, closing his eyes, “Shit.”

“Yeah…” Alex smiles faintly, “My thoughts exactly.” Then he pulls away, resting his hands on Timmy’s shoulders and looking straight into his eyes. “What do we do?” he asks.

Timmy knows he’s not asking because he doesn’t know. Of course he knows. He’s asking because he wants to be on the same page again. Because he’s tired of fighting, and he’s tired of everything else too.

Honestly, Timmy’s just as tired as he is.

He sighs, closing his eyes and pressing a small kiss on Alex’s forehead. “Tell my dad,” he says.

Alex nods and retrieves his phone to text Blaine. Timmy looks at the screen as he does that, reading the text. “Could you come over?” it says, “We’re at Southampton Hospital. They won’t let us leave. Please, come ASAP.”

He sighs heavily, lying back down on the bed as he covers his eyes with his forearm. “My poor old dad,” he whispers softly. Alex chuckles sweetly, holding his hand.

*
Blaine called them on his way to the airport, but he didn’t ask many questions. He was clearly worried, that much was obvious in his voice, but he didn’t sound like he was freaking out, which was cool. He only asked if they were fine, if something serious had happened, and when Timmy answered “just a few scratches” in his own voice he grew a lot calmer, and told them he was about to jump on the first flight to New York, and he’d be there in a matter of hours.

He doesn’t ask many questions when he arrives either. He joins them in the room and the first thing he does is hug Timmy. He hasn’t been hugged by his father in years, and not because Blaine didn’t want to, of course. Somehow, for just too many reasons to count them, asking for a hug in the last couple years seemed ridiculous, and Timmy never did it. He learned to live without, he learned so well at some point he was convinced he just didn’t need them anymore, that he had grown out of the hugging phase.

But now that Blaine’s holding him, he melts between his arms. He closes his eyes and clings to his daddy and inhales the strong, masculine scent of his aftershave, sticking to his skin, sticking to his clothes, and his memory brings him back to when Leo wasn’t even in the picture, to when everything Timmy knew was Blaine, Blaine and love, love, love, all the love in the world.

He feels like crying, and he does. He cries like an idiot, sobbing lightly, and Blaine gets worried. “Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks, cupping Timmy’s face in his hands and looking at him closely, and Timmy needs to assure him that he is a thousand times, before Blaine finally accepts it.

He hugs Alex, too. He hugs him and kisses him on top of his head, and then tells him to call Cody the moment they let them go, ‘cause he was worried sick. “I’m sorry for making you worry,” Alex says, “And for scratching Timmy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Blaine tells him, gently stroking his cheekbone, “I’m sure he deserved it.”

“Hey,” Timmy growls. Blaine silences him with another hug, that pacifies him completely.

Soon enough, one of the nurses comes knocking at the door. Blaine asks why they wouldn’t release the kids, and the nurse tells him they were worried, since one of them was a minor and they both were in pretty bad shape, not to mention drunk, when they checked in. “They kept saying they were brothers, but we couldn’t find any evidence,” she says, “Their surnames are different. The whole story sounded a little fishy. So it was either they called for a parent, or we would’ve called the police and let them take care of it.”

Blaine apologizes for the situation and explains things as they are. He confirms he’s the father, that one of the kids isn’t his own but he’s got custody anyway. He shows the nurse a couple of papers signed by both him and Cody. She seems satisfied, and invites him to follow her to the reception to straighten everything out and proceed to release the boys.

They all move. Timmy’s sick of this place, anyway. He just wants to be home.

He was sure they’d have gone straight for the airport, once out of the hospital, but Blaine rented a car and he’s driving back to the Hamptons’ house, now. “We’re going to stay the night,” he explains tiredly, “I couldn’t find three seats on any flight for today’s flight back on such a short notice. Besides, you still have all your things to collect. And maybe we should talk.”

The mere thought makes Timmy shiver.

At least it’s not raining anymore.

*
The first thing Blaine asks upon entering the house is if Timmy bled. They’re both surprised by it – probably because they weren’t expecting him to be so practical about it. They were kinda picturing him enter the house, turn the lights on and order them to sit on the couch for a little heart to heart.

Instead, Blaine doesn’t seem interested in sitting them anywhere. In fact, he seems quite pleased when they start following him around suspiciously. Or maybe he’s not pleased, maybe he’s just not bothered by it, used as he is to being chased around by children at all times of the day already.

Through the surprise and the confusion, Alex gathers enough straightness of mind to come up with an answer to his question. “Yes,” he says. And, when Blaine asks where, “In the bedroom.”

None of them is thinking about the conditions they left said bedroom in when they fled for the hospital in the only taxi that would take them with such bad weather. They don’t even realize how that could be a problem until Blaine walks in and obviously stops on the doorstep.

Their hearts miss a beat.

The bed is messed up. Messed up and dirty. They didn’t even open the window, and the room smells of sex and sweat. Sex and sweat and them. The two wine bottles are lying empty on the floor. Blaine isn’t pleased to see them. “My wine…” he says. He’s more sad than he’s upset, though. Timmy doesn’t know what to think of that.

He locates the bloodstains pretty quickly, once he turns the bedroom lights on. They’re just a few drops, luckily, but the light gray carpet covering the floor will hardly recover completely anyway. Nonetheless, he drops on his knees and starts cleaning it out, hot water and soap, hoping that’ll be enough.

“Either of you want to tell me what happened?”

He doesn’t seem angry. Not even annoyed. Just… ready, Timmy reckons. Ready. For whatever they might throw his way.

“We fought,” Alex answers for both of them.

“About what?”

“We had a disagreement.”

Blaine doesn’t answer. He keeps quiet, rubbing the carpet with the wet cloth. Rubbing and rubbing. Timmy’s blood’s starting to fade, already, nothing but a weirdly shaped orange-y shadow left behind.

He’s about to ask what about. He will in but a few seconds. Timmy can read it in his eyes with the same clarity he used to read a scolding when he was a child and he did something wrong. The question’s gonna come and Alex is terrified about it, because he’s not sure he can tell the truth after how things were left with Timmy, but he doesn’t wanna lie either.

Timmy can’t see him like that. With such fear in his eyes, such tension collecting in his beautiful features.

He holds Alex’s hand in his own and squeezes it.

“We fought about whether we should tell you or not that we’re together,” Timmy says, “As boyfriends.”

Blaine doesn’t even stop rubbing the carpet. In fact, he goes on without saying a word until he’s satisfied with the final result. The stain can barely even be seen, at this point, and only if you know where to look. He smiles, happy with himself, and then stands up, drying his hands on his pants.

“When were you planning on telling me?” he asks, looking at Timmy with indulgent eyes.

Timmy widens his own, parting his lips in disbelief. “You knew…?”

“No,” Blaine answers in a short chuckle, “Or, well, I didn’t know before today. I knew when I walked in here. The bed was a huge giveaway.”

They both blush wildly, looking down.

“I’m sorry,” Timmy says, “We should’ve tidied up. We shouldn’t have drank your wine either.”

“I suppose there was something worth celebrating?” he asks.

Alex shrugs. “Sort of,” he says, “I thought so. Then I changed my mind.” He casts a little look at Timmy, his eyes so shiny he almost looks like he’s gonna cry. “Now I changed my mind back.”

“So there was,” Blaine smiles, “That’s what matters.” Then he turns to Timmy again. “Do I want to know when this whole thing started?”

“I started it,” Alex answers before he can.

“Baby boy,” Blaine smiles kindly, “I’ve bedded an underage kid. I know what underage kids say when an adult questions them about who started it, especially if they wanted it. And who started it is completely irrelevant. Believe me,” he smiles again, “You don’t have to defend Timmy. Nobody’s accusing him.”

Alex lowers his eyes again, blushing some more. He’s a little restless, but he calms down when Timmy squeezes his hand.

“Let’s say I don’t care about when it started,” Blaine turns to Timmy again, “I guess what I really want to know is— Was it this?” Timmy looks up to his father, frowning a little. “Was this the reason?” Blaine goes on. His voice breaks in the most delicate way. “Why you wouldn’t be with me?”

And it’s like being filled to the brim with water. For a moment, Timmy’s scared he’s gonna choke on it. It feels like spitting and spitting and there’s always more water bubbling in his throat, threatening to cut the air out of his organism entirely, making him drown.

He can’t even breathe. His eyes fills with tears, he parts his lips to say something but he can’t, he just can’t.

“Dad—” he whimpers, but then Alex lets his hand go and he realizes that’s what he was waiting for, because when he’s left free to move he moves, and he throws himself at his father, hugging him, clinging to him like a child despite being taller than him now, and the water swells one last time inside him and then it overflows, and Timmy pours it all over Blaine, thinking dad, dad, please, hold the banks, hold them, ‘cause if you don’t I’ll be coming apart, I’ll disperse, and that’s what you’re here to do, dad, daddy, please, hold me together, hold me together like the river banks.

And Blaine wraps his arms around him and squeezes him, and his embrace is warm, warm and pleasant, and his voice is soft and soothing as he whispers, “It’s alright, powder puff, it’s alright. You couldn’t talk about it, could you? No, you couldn’t. My baby boy. Daddy’s here. It’s going to be alright, love, it’s going to be just fine.”

Timmy doesn’t realize it right away, but Alex is crying too. Crying like a baby, loud and messy, with his lips parted, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clutched down his sides. Blaine welcomes him in his arms too and for the longest moment he just hugs them both, and nothing could possibly go wrong. Nothing.

“I never wanted to be away from you,” Timmy says, once he calms down, “Dad, I love you. I know it didn’t always feel like that. I know it hurt you when I stayed with Leo. But I had to, do you understand? One of us had to.”

Blaine strokes his cheek with his thumb, and Timmy notices he’s crying too. Very discreetly, as if he didn’t want to disturb Timmy and Alex’s personal tragedy with his own, but he is nonetheless. But he’s pushing through with a brave smile, his daddy. His brave, old daddy. Timmy hugs him again. He just loves him so much. He loves him so much for a moment there’s only love. In this room, in this city, all over this planet. As long as daddy’s by his side, there’s nothing he can’t face. Just like when he was a child. It never really changed. He just forgot for a brief moment.

“What are we gonna do?” Alex asks, drying his eyes and backing off a little. Timmy looks at him and can’t help but smile. He knows he’s feeling awkward, now, as he always does when he lets his guard down unexpectedly. He holds his hand again. Alex offers him a small smile as a thank you, and it’s a thanks enough.

Blaine sighs deeply, keeping quiet for a while as he thinks about it. “Well, technically this isn’t as bad as you probably think it is,” he says, trying to look at things with impartial eyes, “I mean, it feels weird. I’m not going to lie about it. To me, especially, because I consider you both my sons. But the fact is, though I got custody, I never properly adopted Alex, just like Cody never properly adopted you, Timmy. Speaking from a solely legal point of view, I’d say you managed to finally date somebody in your family that you wouldn’t be legally prosecuted for. I’d say, from your father’s sister, this is a good step in the right direction. Now, if you could possibly move on to cousins, I think we’d have better chances there.”

“Dad!” Timmy groans loudly, annoyed and shocked, “Shut up!”

But Blaine’s laughing and, surprisingly, Alex is laughing too, so Timmy decides this is not worth getting angry over.

“I’m just saying,” Blaine goes on, “You’re not legally brothers. And Cody and I aren’t planning on getting married anytime soon – or at all, to be totally frank. So, I’m not saying this isn’t going to be messy, and a hell of a lot to explain to your siblings,” he adds with a heavy sigh, “But we can find a way out. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world. And it certainly isn’t reason enough to scratch your faces off,” he finishes with a soft chuckle, “Or to hide out here. So, let’s go back home. The three of us, together. And then we’ll tell the others. And I promise it’s going to be alright.”

Timmy honestly couldn’t ask for a safety net any stronger than those words.

*
Alex’s present for Lisbeth is a doll. She’s more or less the size of Lisbeth herself, and wearing a huge golden gown that looks like Belle’s dress in Beauty and the Beast. Apparently, it’s a doll Lissy freaked out about months before, while she was watching cartoons on tv with her brother. She had seen her in a commercial and she had kept babbling about it for hours, alternating a thousand “beautiful!” with a million thousand gargled, meaningless words. She still speaks a language only a few people can understand, Timmy obviously not being part of the club yet. But it doesn’t matter, ‘cause she knows how to make him understand things with those huge baby blue eyes and her hand pressed over his nose, when she wants.

Anyway, of course Lissy had completely forgotten about the doll altogether the next day, as children often do, but that was clearly only temporary, because when she sees the doll emerge from the box the long lost memory suddenly comes back at her, and first she stares at her in awe, completely dumbstruck, then she touches her and starts screaming and jumping all around her, then she dances with her and finally she has a complete meltdown and starts crying while still hugging the doll so tight everybody start worrying she may fear somebody’s gonna take her away.

Only Alex understands, as always. He laughs and picks his sisters up from the floor, together with the doll, holding them against his chest. “You liked the present a lot, didn’t you, Lissy?” he asks, both amused and proud of himself.

She just nods, sobbing loudly. And then hugs him tight.

That’s clearly the peak of the night. As he watches Cody melt into a soundless cry, Blaine squeezing one of his hands, Leo discretely rubbing his back quickly, while no one notices, Timmy thinks that there’s nothing Alex and him could say to this crowd that could erase the memory of this moment. So it’s okay. They can talk.

They wait for everybody to go away first, though. As they planned right from the start. It was a huge party and even though it was being held at Blaine and Cody’s Leo demanded to take the whole thing into his hands. He cooked for an army, then brought everything over in two trips, then helped out decorating the whole room, supervising the whole thing like a professional party planner, and of course took care of the invitations as well, so basically all his friends came over. Luckily enough, having common history makes his friends more or less the same as Blaine’s friends, or Cody’s friends. So, in the end, everybody was happy, everybody had fun, everybody brought a little, thoughtful gift for little Lissy and the party was, as expected, a complete success.

All three – how fucked up is that? How amazing, too – of their parents are completely spent when the last of the guests show themselves out. They fall on the first sitting spots they can find – Blaine on the couch, Leo on the table still crowded by colorful wrapping, Cody straight on the floor – and exhale a weary sigh, closing their eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I’m too old for this shit,” Blaine comments, whining a little.

“You’ve been literally repeating that sentence since you were 35,” Leo points out, arching an eyebrow, “It’s time you stop, already. It’s getting boring.”

“Why, kid, thank you very much,” Blaine groans, only playfully annoyed.

Cody chuckles lightly, and doesn’t say a word. Alex and Timmy cast a quick look to one another and decide nothing they could say could ever make this any weirder.

Baby Lissy’s sleeping peacefully in her crib, upstairs. The twins are with her, probably staring at her in awe as they often do when somebody tells them they have to keep an eye on their baby sister, making them feel responsible.

It’s time.

Timmy stands up, holding Alex’s hand. Blaine, Leo and Cody instantly turn to look at them both.

“We’ve got something to tell you,” he says, with a smile on his face.