Elias

by Amy Aislin

  Ty chuckled quietly at Maddie's fib. He couldn't see his family from where he and Elias stood in front of the basement stairs, but he could hear them plenty well.

  "Good, then maybe he'll think twice about moving all the way out here and come back home where he belongs until he gets married."

  "Your antiquated ways are showing again, Mom," Jenn piped in.

  "Maddie, you should head to Vegas and marry the first man you meet." That was Matt.

  "Yeah, then we'd really see Mom blow a gasket." Jeremy finished Matt's thought, setting them both laughing.

  "Why do my children think they're hilarious? Jeremy, stop pretending to fornicate with the spatula. Matthew, stop laughing. Jennifer, you're putting the mugs in the wrong cupboard."

  "No, I'm not. Ty's got a sticky right here. Says mugs."

  "He's got it all wrong. Plates need to go in there. The mugs are going over here. Maddison. Flower pot. Fridge. Where's your father?"

  Probably staying far away, if he had any sense.

  Half amused, half embarrassed, Ty turned to Elias, ready to make a joke, but Elias looked slightly overwhelmed by the commotion, so Ty led him downstairs instead.

  I know you like things in their proper place, Capricorn, but you can't always get your way.

  Ty crowed when Netflix worked on the Smart TV they mounted onto the wall. Meant the internet was properly hooked up. Out here in Boontown, you never knew.

  Elias sat on the ugly blue and pink couch and watched Ty adjust the screen resolution on his TV. The couch was so old and so low to the ground that it swallowed Elias in despite his five-foot-ten height, cupping around him like a bowl, preventing him from getting up.

  Good thing he had no interest in going anywhere. Sitting here eyeing Ty's perfectly round ass was enough for him.

  Ty's new house was miniature, with narrow hallways and small bedrooms. Granted it was bigger than his own condo downtown, where the cars passing by on the Gardiner Expressway below made it too loud to use the balcony he'd paid extra for. Ty’s house had a cool seventies vibe to it, which somehow suited Ty perfectly.

  To be honest, Elias was a little jealous of this charming house and the land it sat on. It was peaceful and quiet, far from the hype of downtown Toronto, no nearby neighbours, no highway sounds, no smell of cigarette smoke and sewer water. He spent approximately two seconds weighing the pros and cons of moving out here himself, but one con outweighed all the pros: it would take him two and a half hours in rush-hour traffic to drive to and from his office in the downtown core. Each way. Ty was lucky—he worked six to two, so it would take him an hour, hour and a half, tops.

  Half of Ty's basement was finished. The other half was a storage area. The finished area was a cozy den. It was also about ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, but Ty had thought ahead and brought down a half dozen throws.

  Ty finally fixed the resolution on the TV the way he wanted it, and the settings screen disappeared, leaving the Netflix home screen in its stead.

  Continue watching for Ty, Elias read. Curious as to what Ty liked to watch, he glanced at the list. Quantico, Flipped—whatever that was—Star Trek: Voyager, Digimon, Stranger Things, and—

  Elias sat up—or tried to on the stupid couch. "You like Legend of Korra?"

  Ty turned to him, eyebrows raised in surprise. "You like Legend of Korra?"

  Why did he say that like the thought was impossible to grasp?

  "Team Mako or Team Asami?" Ty asked. The look on his face told Elias he didn't expect him to know what he was talking about.

  Elias scoffed. "Asami. Mako's a moron."

  "He has a cool power, though," Ty said. He sat on the couch, getting swallowed up by the monstrosity on his end. Wedged into the corner made by the arm and back, his legs sprawled in front of him, wearing baggy jeans and a loose T-shirt, he didn't look a day over the eighteen years Elias had first thought him to be. Elias looked thirty-two, he knew that, and lusting after an eighteen-year-old lookalike made him feel old and pervy.

  "Korra's is better," he said. "She can do everything."

  "I don't know, man," Ty disagreed. "Mako's lightning, and the way he uses it in the series finale? That was awesome."

  "Yeah, but Korra—"

  "Ty, I put your curtains up," Mr. Green said, coming into the basement.

  "Thanks, Dad. You didn't have to."

  Mr. Green grunted. "Kept me out of the kitchen." He sat in the huge armchair that matched the couch. If the couch swallowed both Elias and Ty, the armchair looked like it'd suck in any unwilling body like a vacuum and never let them go. "You put the TV up but didn't bother with your bedroom curtains, I see."

  "Thought if I stayed down here, Mom wouldn't find me."

  "Maddison, that box doesn't go in the basement."

  Elias stiffened at what he assumed was Mrs. Green's voice coming from the top of the basement stairs.

  "Yes, it does." The voice belonged to the teenager who'd told Elias to head upstairs when he'd first arrived. "See? Ty wrote it right here on the box."

  "Let me see that." The sound of a box being opened, contents shuffling. "These don't belong in the basement. Put them in the spare bedroom."

  It took everything Elias had not march over to the stairs, take the box from Maddison, and deposit it right here, in the basement, where Ty wanted it. On the other end of the couch, Ty simply rolled his eyes. How could he just sit there and let his mother dictate what should go where in his own house? Elias would be livid. In fact, he was livid on Ty's behalf. He had to force the words that wanted to come out back down his throat so he didn't say anything mean.

  Next to him Ty took a piece of paper and a small pencil out of his pocket and wrote a line at the bottom of what appeared to be a list.

  An avalanche of feet coming down the basement stairs distracted them both. A tall set of blond twins appeared.

  "Dude, one of your boxes marked basement ended up in the second bedroom upstairs," one of them said.

  "Yeah, I know," Ty said. "I heard. I've got it written." He waved the list in his hand.

  "Ty," another blonde said, this one female, but not the teenager he'd met earlier. "I tried to organize as much as I could in the kitchen based on your directions, but—" she plopped down on the couch between them "—Mom caught me a few times, so you'll need to do some reorganizing. Sorry."

  "Hey, Ty, we're leaving soon." There was the blonde teenager. Jesus, how many siblings did Ty have? "Mom's just packing up the rest of the sandwiches for you."

  "Take the tuna with you," Ty instructed. "I don't like tuna."

  "I'll eat them," Elias said, which had every blond head in the room swinging his way as if they'd only now noticed his presence. Given he was the only brown guy in the room, it was slightly hysterical.

  "Hi." The woman next to him held out a hand and shot him a smile identical to Ty's. "I'm Jenn."

  "Guys," Ty said. "This is my friend Elias. Elias, these are my brothers and sisters: the twins, Matt and Jeremy. That's Jenn, and this is Maddie."

  There was that dreaded word again. Friend. Elias had been friend-zoned already. How did he get himself out of it? Hell, how had he gotten himself into it in the first place? He wanted to date Ty, not be his friend. Although he'd take friendship if that was all Ty was willing to give him.

  Fuck, dating was complicated. No wonder he avoided it.

  Everyone acknowledged him briefly...then ignored him, which had the breath Elias was holding whooshing from his nose in one shot. The fact that he didn't have to sit here talking about himself, being scrutinized by all the Green kids, had him relaxing back into his own corner of the couch.

  And since no one was paying attention to him, he took a few minutes to answer a couple of important emails on his phone while everyone else talked around him as if he didn't exist.

  "Ty, give me the keys to the U-Haul," one of the twins said. "Matt and I will drop it off on the way back to the city."

  "It's got to be back by six." Ty fishe
d the keys out of his pocket and handed them to his brother. "Otherwise I'll get charged extra. Is that enough time?"

  "If we leave now."

  "All right, everybody." And there was Major General Mom, casually strolling into the basement as if she owned it, not her son. "Time to head out. Ty, everything in the kitchen's been unpacked. Everything else is up to you."

  "Thanks, Mom," Ty said.

  "I left you a grocery list on your counter. The only things you have right now are the few sandwiches we didn't eat, bottled water, and a box of Shreddies."

  She kept talking, instructing Ty on what he needed to buy to stock his kitchen. Elias tuned her out, and so did the Green siblings, if the way they spoke to each other behind her back using their own made-up version of sign language was any indication.

  "Oh!"

  Elias looked up to find her gaze—sepia-coloured, unlike the ice blue of her husband and kids—on him.

  "Hello, there."

  After Ty made quick introductions, Elias held out a hand. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Green," he lied. She was a steamroller, and she had all of his defences up.

  "A friend, Ty said?" Mrs. Green asked. "Are you coming to his birthday party next Saturday?"

  Ty groaned. "Mom, I'm turning twenty-seven not seven. I don't need parties anymore."

  She merely raised a dark eyebrow at her son. "Be there by two." She pointed at everyone except Ty and Elias. "Let's get going." And disappeared upstairs.

  Maddie patted Ty's arm. "Don't worry. I'll make your favourite cake."

  Ty whimpered. "With the triple layer of icing? I love you."

  The Green clan was gone five minutes later. Elias hovered in the entranceway as Ty said goodbye to his family. Was he supposed to leave, too? The only thing he'd done so far was help Ty mount the TV in the basement. He'd offered to help Ty move in—mostly to get out of the blind-date Rachel had set up between him and her cousin—but he hadn't really done anything. It had taken him much longer to get out of the city than he'd thought, and he'd shown up late, after all the hard stuff was already done.

  Ty shut the door on the last of his family and leaned back against it. Smile a mile wide, he looked happy and young and carefree.

  "Finally alone," he said.

  Elias didn't know if he meant “finally alone” like, "I'm finally alone in my own house." Or “finally alone” like, "We're finally alone, just the two of us. Let’s go have sex now!" Either way, it made Elias think of the king-sized bed he'd seen upstairs, and he enjoyed a brief fantasy of christening the new house by fucking Ty blind on it.

  But then he remembered how crappy he'd felt after his last one-night stand. He didn't want Ty to be a one-night stand or a casual fling. So instead he said, "How can I help?"

  Ty pursed his pink, full lips—Elias had to force his eyes up—and seemed to think about it.

  "How do you feel about organizing?"

  Elias, it turned out, loved to organize.

  Problem was, so did Ty. Which meant they disagreed on where everything should go in the kitchen.

  "Why would you put the pans in the cupboard furthest away from the stove?" Elias asked, eyeing the distance between said cupboard and stove. "You use pans on the stove. Thus, the pans should be close to the stove."

  He had a point there. Ty wasn't such a stick-in-the-mud that he couldn't admit to being wrong, and putting the pans closer to the stove was a good idea. So, he took Elias's suggestion and made a few swaps.

  "Your notes say you're planning on putting your spices in the pantry." Elias squinted at the digital notepad on Ty's phone.

  "Yeah, so?"

  "Spices go on a spice rack," Elias instructed. "And the spice rack sits on the counter next to the stove, since that's where the cooking happens."

  Clearly Elias—just like Ty's mom—had ideas about where things should go in a kitchen. But unlike his mom, if Ty explained why he wanted things the way he did, Elias actually listened and even often agreed with Ty's well-thought-out argument.

  "Well, the point is moot right now, anyway," Ty said, addressing Elias's point about the spices. "Because I don't have a spice rack or spices." His mom wasn't kidding when she said all he had to eat was a box of cereal, the leftover sandwiches from the day's lunch, and water. So, they ordered a pizza.

  It arrived forty minutes later, and they pounced on it like starving animals. Instead of working while they ate, they brought the entire pie down to the basement along with some water bottles and watched Legend of Korra on Netflix.

  He still couldn't believe Elias was a fan. He was so straight-laced, he seemed more like a West Wing fan or Law & Order or Suits or How to Get Away With Murder. But Elias laughed at all the good parts, especially at the opening scene where Korra told everyone that she was the avatar and they'd have to deal with it. And in episode five when a lovesick Bolin burst into pathetic tears at the sight of Korra and Mako kissing. And he laughed his ass off at the antics of Tenzin's kids, who, Ty had to admit, stole every scene they were in.

  Turned out, it was way more fun watching Elias watch the show than it was watching the show itself. Ty kept one eye on the TV and one on Elias, so he could watch Elias's reactions while the other man was unaware. Ty had watched Korra enough times that he could repeat entire dialogues verbatim. Elias watched it like it was his first time.

  It was nice to see Elias relaxed for the first time all day. He'd been tense since he arrived, whether because he didn't like large crowds, or because he was uncomfortable around people he didn’t know, or because he regretted his offer to help, it was hard to tell. He'd looked both a little irritated and a lot relieved when Ty's family hadn't spent more than four seconds acknowledging his presence earlier. The best Ty could figure was that Elias was like him—he liked to be acknowledged, but he didn't want to be the centre of attention.

  Elias grinned when the Fire Ferrets won the pro-bending championship on Korra. That killer smile of his was a kick to Ty's solar plexus. Normally Ty had no idea what Elias was thinking at any given moment. He was so serious, rarely smiled. But unguarded like this, he was much easier to read. Ty had found Elias staring at him off and on—mostly on—all day. Sometimes as if Ty was a complicated puzzle he was trying to solve. Other times as if he wanted to pet him.

  Ty would be so, so good with the petting, but oftentimes he thought he might be imagining that look on Elias's face. And because he was so hard to read, Ty had no idea if the man was actually interested in him or not.

  They ended up watching the first ten episodes of season one. At twenty-three minutes per episode, it meant he lost almost four hours of unpacking, but whatever. He had the next week off to do exactly that. For now, he enjoyed sitting next to and getting to know Elias. How often did he have a chance to sit companionably beside a hot guy he was into without his parents or one of his siblings hanging around?

  God, it was good to be out of his parents' house. He still couldn't believe this house was all his.

  It was after ten by the time Elias started making noises about heading home.

  "How long do you think it'll take me to get home at this time of night?" Elias asked as he crouched to tie his boot laces in Ty's front entranceway.

  "Probably only an hour or so, if you don't hit any traffic." One would think there'd be no traffic at ten o'clock on a Saturday evening, but in the GTA, you never knew. Given that the clubs were just staring to get going downtown Toronto, he might run into a whole bunch of suburbanites heading into the city to party.

  "That'd be a nice change." Elias stood and took his coat out of the front hall closet. "Took me two and a half hours to get here."

  Ty winced. He felt bad for not telling Elias how far out of the city he'd moved, so he made an offer that was probably not the wisest but would hopefully tell him where he stood.

  "You could, uh..." He faltered briefly under Elias's liquid brown gaze. "You could stay the night? Head home in the morning?"

  Those eyes went molten in an instant, leaving no guesses as
to how Elias felt about Ty. It made Ty's breath catch and his mouth went dry. He took an instinctive step forward into Elias's personal space. From what Ty had been able to tell over the past few days, the man had a pretty big personal space bubble; Ty fully expected him to pull back. Instead, Elias met him halfway, settling his hands on Ty's waist.

  "I don't think that's a good idea," Elias said, so softly it was almost a whisper. "Not yet anyway."

  Ty's breath left him in a disappointed whoosh. "Yeah, you're probably right."

  Heart kicking his ribs, he stared into Elias's eyes, only an inch or so above his own. Elias looked as unwilling to leave as Ty was unwilling to let him go.

  Elias licked his lips—Ty watched that tongue, dying for a taste—squeezed Ty's waist, and took a step back. "I'll see you on Monday morning?" he asked, voice gone deeper than normal.

  "Actually…" Ty had to swallow past the want in his throat. "I took the week off, so I could get settled here."

  "Oh."

  Elias looked as disappointed as Ty felt.

  "So, I'll see you...next Monday, then?" Elias asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Elias brushed his thumb against Ty's cheek, and Ty had to hold in a whimper of need at that one brief contact that left him wanting so much more.

  Elias was out the door a second later.

  Ty groaned and rested his forehead against the door's frosted glass window. He didn't want to wait until next Monday to see Elias. He wanted to see him again right now.

  A knock on the door. He opened it to reveal a scowling Elias.

  Wow. Wishes really did come true.

  "It's not because I don't want to," Elias growled, looking both turned on and sexily annoyed. "I just don't think we should rush things."

  Ty nodded. He wasn't a jump-into-bed type of guy either. But he didn't have to like it. "I get it," he whispered.

  Elias let out a purring growl, and before Ty had finished shivering at the sound, Elias was once again in the house, pressing Ty's back up against the wall next to the closet door, mouth on his.