“He’s a vicious moron,” said Elliot.
“Who cares when someone looks like that?”
“I do,” said Elliot.
Jase made a dismissive sound, but looked pleased too: it reflected well on Jase himself if Elliot was choosy, Elliot supposed. They had chosen each other. Elliot attempted to catch Jase’s eye, but Jase was still looking at the photograph.
“I guess he’s straight? Luke, I mean.”
Elliot tasted something bitter in his mouth. “No,” he said at last, feeling prickly all over. “No, he’s not straight.”
“Ohhhh. Well. Does he, ah, ‘like girls as well’?” Jase repeated what Elliot had said in a voice with just an edge of a sing-song lilt, a savor of mockery that Elliot could not quite pin down and be mad about.
“No,” said Elliot shortly.
“Sounds like quite a guy. He coming to visit?”
“No,” Elliot snapped. “Why, you want to dump me for him?”
It felt like Jase would. Of course, Elliot had never met anyone who wouldn’t, who didn’t instantly and instinctively value Luke higher. That included Serene. Jase wasn’t going to be any different.
Jase laughed, light and pleased, and came over and tipped Elliot’s chin up, kissed him with a kiss light as his laugh. “Nah. But I thought Marty might like him. I mean, who wouldn’t?”
Elliot let that last bit go in favor of laughing at the rest. “Marty has a lip ring, and Luke would have a heart attack. This is someone who finds jeans scandalous and distressing. He has a crush on this guy back at school called Dale. They both want to play sports and fight stuff all day every day.”
“Oh, right, boring and mainstream,” said Jase. Elliot was pleased enough by Jase’s dismissive tone to let the fact that “mainstream” was a pretentious label for human beings go. “Shame.”
“Luke’s not boring,” said Elliot. “Dale kind of is. But he’s a nice person or something, I guess.”
“He sure doesn’t look boring, I’ll give you that.”
“I’ve had enough of talking about Luke,” Elliot announced. He got up and whisked the photo out of Jase’s hand, tucking it back into the mirror frame. “I get it, you think he’s hot. But you’re wrong.”
Jase tilted his head quizzically. “He’s not hot?”
Elliot moved toward him, close so Jase reached out and grabbed his wrist. Then Elliot hooked an ankle behind Jase’s foot and sent him flying backward onto the bed. He kept his own balance, and smirked down at Jase.
“I’m your boyfriend,” he said. “Only I am hot.”
“That was hot,” said Jase, wide-eyed and leaning against Elliot’s pillows.
“Just a little trick I picked up in the, ah, military academy,” Elliot told him smugly, put a knee down on the bed and then crawled over Jase.
Jase tried to lift up to kiss him, but Elliot held his shoulders down against the mattress easily and shook his head. Jase raised a hand, Elliot thought to touch. He grabbed the back of Elliot’s shirt and tried to flip him over. Elliot pulled his hand off, though Jase tried to hang on, and held both of Jase’s wrists over his head with one hand.
“I really didn’t think you’d be like this,” Jase said, a little breathless and a little critical. “You seemed so sweet that first day. I thought you would be shy and kind of hesitant and in need of guidance.”
“My best friends are war leaders,” Elliot pointed out. “Good luck with your thing.”
“War leaders?”
“Uh, classic military academy humor!” said Elliot hastily. “Besides,” he added, and cast a look down Jase’s body and back up to his face, his dilated pupils. Elliot’s grasp on his wrists tightened. “You may not have been expecting this, but . . .” Elliot leaned down and brushed his mouth against the edge of Jase’s, smiled, leaned a crucial fraction away when Jase tried to chase his mouth, and spoke softly. “You like it.”
Jase’s whole body had come to attention: he kept surging up and straining against Elliot’s hold, trying to get closer. Elliot smiled, leaned down, and kissed him, catching the small desperate breath Jase let out against his smile.
“C’mon!” Jase exclaimed, his voice on a high hoarse edge.
“What,” Elliot asked, stroking the inside of Jase’s wrist with his thumb. “You don’t like it? Oh dear.”
“Yes, I like it!” Jase said. “Goddamn it, come here.”
Elliot laughed, delighted, and let Jase go. He gave him a long hot kiss with his fingers tangled in Jase’s hair.
Later that night, with Jase sleeping in his bed, Elliot went and sat on the window seat, looked out at the streetlights dyeing patches of night orange, and thought again about staying. The moon caught his mirror and made it into a well of light, the photo a small dark square drowning in the silver shine.
He wouldn’t see them again, and he wouldn’t see mermaids, but Alice said he was getting really good with computers and he was starting to believe he and Jase could make this work. Jase might say ridiculous things sometimes, but Elliot thought it was because he was insecure. Elliot could understand that. He did it often enough himself.
He thought of Jase, thinking that Elliot would be different. He couldn’t quite figure out how to say: You met me when I was sad, but I’m not a sad person, and I don’t want you to like that sad person who wasn’t me better than you like me. Maybe if he stayed, he could figure it out.
He climbed back into bed, kissed the dragon tattoo on Jase’s shoulderblade, and said: “Wake up.”
Nights with company were awesome, but Elliot might have liked the mornings best. He woke up in his room with light streaming through the windows, and Jase awake and looking down at him.
“Hey,” said Jase, and kissed him. “Is there any food? I’m starving.”
“Are you in luck,” Elliot told him. “Because I can make truly terrible pancakes.”
He made the first pancake as Jase fiddled with the radio and turned it to a station that met with his approval. Then he gave Jase the first pancake, and Jase’s eyes widened and he went on the hunt for strawberry jam to disguise the taste.
“I know, I’m really not used to electricity when cooking,” Elliot said apologetically.
“Jesus, military academy is hardcore,” said Jase.
“Heh-heh, uh,” said Elliot. “I know, right?”
Jase ate his pancake. Elliot sang along to the radio, using his wooden spoon as a microphone, and Jase beat time on the table with his fork.
“Maybe you should be our lead singer,” he said.
“You do need a new one,” Elliot said. “Marty is terrible and the band is not going to succeed.”
Jase laughed.
“No, I’m serious,” said Elliot. “Dropping out of college for the band was a terrible idea.”
“Yes, yes, I get it, you love school,” said Jase, kissing Elliot’s neck. “Sing again.”
Elliot swung around and sang, Jase laughing at him as he did so. Elliot pushed Jase, who slid in his socked feet until his back hit the oven, and Elliot pushed the bowl of pancake batter onto the counter and moved in, still singing.