Gandalf's Inhaler 7

I see him shiver and music starts playing loudly in the room next to us. 

Alex’s hands drop and he looks down before standing up and getting beer from the fridge. I feel guilty and I get the beer straight out of his hands and I open it, a bit too bitter for my taste but I still take a good gulp, even if I know I won’t be drunk. 

“If the RAs don’t bunk those, we’re fine. I’d be more worried about teenagers getting high and overdozing than checking on a teacher. I mean teachers do get things on their side even if they’re wrong-” And he realizes what a slap that is and I just drink even more. I’ve drunk half the can and Alex pales, realized what he’s said. He remembers. 

“I’m sorry.” He is fidgeting and looking at his nails, avoiding me. “I haven’t dated in a while and well, Ezra’s not to sensitive and well, we never really got anything on. I’m sorry. I’ve always had some wankers who had everything ok.”

I just look ahead, teachers do get away with things.

He opens a beer can himself. 

“Do you want anything stronger?” Alex asks me and I shake my head. He takes off the red sweater revealing a white plain shirt underneath. 

“No, I’m fine.” I swallow. 

“Ok, maybe we should get this past us.” He lights a cigarette. “I... I want to know what the fuck happened that you transferred. You know biology better than anyone in my class and why are you taking it again. I’ll tell you about Alexa. I’m sure mine isn’t as ugly as your is, but... fuck.”

“I got beaten up by my teacher.” I say that as Alex is taking a big gulp and he spits is out and stares at me wide eyed. I don’t feel as if I said it and my lips moved on their own and I think the only thing I can feel is my whole body shaking, recalling and it’s as if everything which had been hit aches again and I feel numb again, all of it and I feel another hug.

Only it’s different from Breana’s.

I ease in his touch as I want to be naked and lay with him. I nuzzle my nose against his shoulder, still trembling. 

He doesn’t know what to say, I’m guessing. 

I let my eyes wander around the room as I see that radio where The Arctic Monkey had been playing before. I see a calendar which hadn’t been changed to November yet and has bats near the 31st, but it’s only been crossed out until the 29th. I close my eyes, letting it all go and not fixing it with memories of his room. 

“I reported, like you said, teachers get everything easier. He flunked me. I couldn’t prove it, I had to retake Biology. I’ve reported enough. I’m not doing it again. I don’t want to put everything on paper again to be ignored or told to shut the fuck up.” It’s funny how I’m either trembling or floating in his arms. I rest my head on his shoulder as I start playing with his hair which is a bit longer than my own. 

“You... don’t want to talk about it do you?” Alex asks me softly one last time.

“No.” I exhale. “I told you what I wanted to.”

“I’m here.” And it’s funny how I know where he is, so I can really track him when he’s on campus. I even know where the biology teacher’s hangout thing is. 

All of a sudden I wonder if Ezra walks in with his Babar jacket. 

I pull away before realizing that I’d rather be in his arms and he holds me tighter and I ask him about Alexa to which he sighs and strokes my back and I feel his chin digging into my shoulder. 

“Well, I guess we should get rid of what’s on our minds.” He starts playing with a strand of his own hair and I lean back, still a bit shaken by confessing but I want to listen. I do want everything out of the way. Alex lights a different cigarette, looking at the tip burn. “Ok, well, I dated this girl called Alexa. We dated for a few years, after university and she took the job here. I followed her, not really bothering where would my biology degree go to. I didn’t go into Medicine, I just liked... biology. I didn’t want to listen to people and crack their deseases or be a GP. I wanted to learn more and well, by teaching you learn more, so that had seemed fair to me and frankly, I wanted to be with her. We also had a bigger room or apartment, what you call it.

I guess I’ve still got that shiver whenever someone tells me her name, because well, I still see her grinning and twirling in a trench coat. I dunno, it’s a simple image in the spring, but she was there. 

Her parents didn’t really like me and she had told them I had boyfriends before and I had answered about it, which had made them ask me if I had sex with them. That was the most bizarre question I’ve ever been asked and I recall it had been during desert and there was a strawberry cake. I had crushed the strawberry with the fork during the silence, when I had said yes and the parents had looked at each other. 

I really don’t get it.

They said you couldn’t play for two teams. 

I simply replied that I wasn’t playing for two teams, I was playing for all teams. If the person had no gender, both genders, genderqueer, it doesn’t matter to me at all. People are people. 

Like obviously I’ve had my struggles in the past with blokes, specifically Nick, coz he was my first kind of big bloke I dated. It was the first I had introduced my parents too and what was weird was that we were childhood friends. I guess everyone had known that Nick was gay, while I had some struggles, because frankly I don’t see a difference between attractions to genders. I dunno, sometimes I think I’m too shallow, like I really don’t care, I dunno.

The world is so complex with all the hates and definitions, that it made me thought that maybe I was missing something, but I feel the same when I kiss anyone, uplifted, in love. Well, obviously love if you are monogamous will exist to one person, so yeah, that one is supposedly more uplifting.” He stares at the cigarette before glimpsing at me. I can’t help but catch his smile and return it. We untangle and switch to the couch, making ourselves comfortable on each end and giving enough space to observe each other. Alex lights me a cigarette. 

“Anyway, back to Alexa. Her parents saw me as something horribly deviant. God, they were ballistic when we had went to pride. Looking back, Alexa wasn’t too comfortable with my openness and felt as if I could run off with anyone, instead of just being scared of half of the world, looking in the eyes of a cis straight woman, of course. But she knew I loved her or well, what we thought was love, I guess the rose of passion we had shared before chopping it in half or crushing it.” Alex starts playing with the hem of his shirt, looking upwards, biting the cigarette, but it all takes a few seconds before he resumes, eyes now a bit darker. “I had no idea. It was random and still feels like it. She had went for a weekend to her parents and when she came back she had a ring.

I had asked her what was it and she had took it off, telling me to forget.

But I didn’t.

I think I just ate dinner in silence with her, before asking her again.

“Alex, he’s my childhood friend and you know, when people start thinking that you’re dating someone nice, you don’t want to disappoint them. Plus think of my parents. They love him and he just did it randomly, he asked them then me. Mom was crying. Al, it’s wonderful.” She had said, exclaiming, putting the ring back on. 

I had yelled at her to get the hell out.

I didn’t want to see her.

I had taken a break, went back to my parents and it was funny, coz going back to my parents’ meant getting a handful of Nick memories everywhere and now that he’s big, he’s even on bloody city magnets and stuff. Like, this is the cafe Nick used to wank in. It’s hilarious.” Alex gives a dark laugh. 

“She went after me, funny, how my mother had shooed her away, I felt like I was a teenager again only I actually wanted my date to get away from me as soon as possible.” Alex bites his bottom lip. “About Nick, well, I liked him, but that was it. It was literally us hanging around and that was it. Like we’d start getting bored and he was obsessed with being a musician and well, I just wanted to study Biology.

We had talked that well, neither of us want to continue this after we depart, so it was at that. Funny how when you lose it, you realize how you miss it. We kept in touch for a while, but I dunno, it feels funny, because well, his damn face is everywhere and he’s like big now. And I’m well, on a job I had taken just coz well, Alexa had taken it as well. I like it, I didn’t quit it, like she did. So yeah.” End of story and Alex leans his head back on the armrest and closes his eyes, spreading his arms out and opens one eye lightly to look at me with a small smile.

“What about you, love?” He asks and we both tense and redden at his sudden slip, but instead I take a cigarette and light it, ignoring the word slip. Surely not. It’s like darling. But the question still needs an answer.

I blow a smoke ring, also a distraction.

“I’ve never dated, if to be honest. Fuck, it took me fifteen years to properly wank to a bloke, what the fuck do you want?” I smirk and I blow another one, only this one more blurry and ends up being smoke nearly right away. Alex smirks.

“So... you were a virgin and you didn’t tell me to savor the moment?” He puts his tongue out mocking me. 

“Well, yes. But you haven’t fucked me yet, you can savor that and everything else we hadn’t done.” And I go on top of him, paralyzing myself with my own slip and even Alex as he takes my hand and threads my fingers with his. He smirks, amused and we look at each other and I can’t help but feel myself lost in the dark brown of his eyes which is luring me in and soon enough we kiss as Alex’s hands go on my waist and he raises my shirt lightly as his tongue slips in my mouth. 

Alex leans back and strokes my bottom lip with his finger, pulling it lightly before pressing a kiss against my mouth again. 

“I...” I start saying and Alex, fuck, I feel his fingers pulsing, or maybe it’s just my body as he takes off my shirt and sweater off. He looks at me scared, faded out traces of hurt and excitement in the kaleidoscope of his eyes. Alex muffles me with his kiss as I pull him up to take off his shirt and it feels different this time, it feels

fuck

he’s sober, well, he knew what he was doing

but fuck

Now Alex is pinning me down and biting my neck, as I feel myself more excited as he starts biting my neck and the skin lower down my chest. He’s ignoring my gaze and I feel ashamed as well, closing my eyes and wondering in what wrong turn of the labyrinth I am. 

“Miles!” And I open my eyes and I see my blurry vision covering everything in a haze. I sit up.

“Look, Al, I’m sorry, I’ve never dated, I don’t know.” I wipe my eyes. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’ve had the thought ever since you kissed me. I dunno, I mean, you’ve said it yourself, mate, fuck, it wouldn’t have fallen all into place. It happened. Fuck.

You’re in my thoughts. Fuck.”

I don’t know how to say it and my mouth feels dry, awfully dry and for some reason my arm is scratching heavily and Al is above me and he’s looking straight at me.

I can’t.

I stroke his underarm. 

He’s scared even more than I ever was. 

I sit up and Al sits besides me and I see our shirts laying together on the floor. I glance at him and he’s staring straight ahead.

“Frankly, maybe I don’t care anymore if you do. All I know is that I do.” Is what I say. 

“Bollocks. I know you care.” Is what Alex replies and his hair is covering his eyes, which I’m sure he’s happy about and frankly I’m already beaming, feeling half of it out already. He’s quiet and keeps the steady pause. 

“Al?” I ask as he leans forwards to put his elbows on his legs. 

“I love you.” And he looks at me with half a smile and I feel like paint had been dropped at me, missing nothing at all and the wall behind me is dyed as well, I’m everything at once. 

I blink.

I feel elevated.

“I love you too.” And that’s when I feel like something hard had knocked me out, all images are heavily blurred and my mind is fuzzy and I -

I know too much.

“I really love you. It sounds fucking absurd because I barely even know you, but I know. I don’t know, Alex, I-”

I stop as Alex takes a cigarette and lights it, getting the hair back in the eyes, but keeping them shut as he smokes his cigarette and I watch him. 

“I love you, Miles and I’m yours and frankly, it scares me. It leaves me vulnerable and open, even if it’s a stick with two ends. Since we’re going on honesty here.” He lights another cigarette, stretching his neck upwards to exhale upper. 

-

I know this is shorter than the usual, but this was hard to write, as in emotionally. Going through all of this with both Miles and Alex.

The fact that Alex and Alexa had both started their jobs as a mutual decision was decided very early on, but the whole backstory what had happened which was so awful was really finally decided today. There's more to the story and originally the whole backstory of Miles' homophobia was supposed to happen by Alex asking him about the bruise, but it had ended up being Matt. 

Funny that after I had written about Alexa and Nick, I really thought I had written my usual 2-3 k and I was like, chapter done and I checked that it's not enough XD so I continued XD 

Let's face it, the confession had been on Miles' lips since the second chapter. It's scary confessing and when it's early on, you can become scared as hell and it happens. 

It's a beautiful confession and I guess this is a point which I hadn't predicted where the story shifts at least for now or what I'm expecting from Miles being scared to Alex himself being scared. 

I hope I won't get murdered for Al's fear XD and I really hope you had enjoyed it and yeah, feel free to request, even if this story had really captured my heart and I have been thinking about it a lot and I love it so much

I hope you do too :3

Feel free to request and thank you for your praises and love

<3

Gandalf's Inhaler 8