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The first time Lucas sees him, it’s at a party.
Lucas is too young to get into the club, and he looks it. But Yann knows someone who knows someone who knows the security here, so they get in, even though Basile is fidgeting suspiciously and Arthur keeps grinning like a lunatic. One second, Lucas is standing in the cold of the late night, and then he takes a couple of steps and finds himself suddenly surrounded by a mass of bodies, moving like a wave to whatever rhythm is pouring from the speakers and making the floor vibrate.
It quickly becomes too much. Lucas gets one drink, then the next, but they’re just as overpriced as they are over-sweetened. He’s been letting the crowd carry him all evening, and he feels as if the circle of it keeps tightening around him, will keep tightening until he suffocates. Maybe it’s the music, too loud and bordering on obnoxious. Maybe it’s the fact that the guys have gotten lost somewhere where Lucas can’t see them anymore.
Whatever it is, it pushes him out the back door the second he spots it, tucked into the corner of the club, as he leaves whatever’s left of his drink on the counter.
The door opens into a narrow back alley and a staircase leading into the next building. Lucas steps into the night again, and when the door closes behind him, cutting the pounding music and all the noise off, he realises he’s not the only person here.
There’s a guy, smoking, sitting on the stairs, sprawled comfortably like here’s where he belongs.
Lucas nods at him in a greeting, and the stranger smiles around his cigarette. ”Hi.”
His voice is nice. Or maybe it’s just the pounding in Lucas’s head talking right now, turning everything that isn’t some kind of deafening noise into a near-blessing-like phenomenon. Lucas leans against the wall, feeling the chill of it start to seep in immediately where he’s wearing his too-thin jacket over just a t-shirt. But it’s fine. He closes his eyes where the sky he can see between the narrow passage of one roof and the next is dark and starless. If the surroundings spin a little, nobody has to know.
”You okay?”
When he turns his head, the smoking guy is looking at him. The cigarette is dangling from his fingers as if it’s about to fall to the ground any second; the smoke from it is curling around the guy’s face in swirls.
”Yeah, I’m—” Lucas shakes his head a little. ”I don’t feel well, really, but it’ll pass. Thanks.”
A smirk. ”Drank too much?”
As Lucas looks at him, he can’t help but think that he doesn’t belong in the scene after all. He has a sharp jawline and messy hair and kind eyes. The smile curling at his lips seems just as elusive as the cigarette smoke curling up, up from his cigarette, but also just as warm as the heat of a lighter’s flame.
Lucas’s tipsy mind thinks, for no reason at all, easy to get burned by that.
”No, it’s the music,” he says a little belatedly, makes a vague gesture in the direction of the club entrance. ”Too loud in there. I just need a break.”
The guy’s smile turns sympathetic. ”Oh, I get that. They really like their bass loud, huh.”
Lucas snorts. ”Yeah.”
Silence falls over them after that. Lucas stands against the wall, breathing in and out, and as the minutes pass, he can feel the guy’s gaze flicker onto something else, then back to him, then away again, then back. It makes his skin tingle. The buzz in his ears fades, little by little but surely enough. He wonders if the boys noticed he slipped out. Then, he wonders if the smoking guy came here with someone as well, but that’s— just stupid. Irrelevant.
”I haven’t seen you here before.”
The boy has, when Lucas wasn’t paying attention, lit another cigarette. Lucas watches him take a drag, then blow the smoke out into the night. Then he watches him quirk an eyebrow when Lucas takes too long to answer, distracted by the sight in front of him. A flush starts to creep up Lucas’s neck; he hopes it’s too dark here, outside, to see it.
”I’m not much of a party person,” he admits.
The guy grins at that. ”Ah. That’s okay.”
There’s a pull in his gut. A search-for-something feeling. Lucas lets his eyes roam over the stranger’s frame, loose and comfortable, and lets his eyes stumble on the way faint neon lights of the club sign reflect on the boy’s face, colouring it red and blue and purple.
He wants to ask if the guy is a party person or if he’s taking a time-out, too. He wants to ask for a cigarette, just to have an excuse to sit next to him on the stairs. He wants to say, I forgot to introduce myself, I’m Lucas. He wants to say, what about you?
But then there’s a commotion somewhere near that Lucas only hears a couple of shouts from. The guy’s eyes travel somewhere past Lucas and catch on something Lucas doesn’t see, even when he turns in the direction of it, curious.
The boy stands up, then, and it only takes him a couple of steps to sweep by Lucas, brushing past him so close that it makes his head spin just a little bit.
”Sorry, gotta help out a friend,” is everything he says, and then he’s gone.
Lucas goes back inside soon after, but the boy’s nowhere to be seen.
That night, he gets home with his arms full of a drunk Yann and his head full of cigarette smoke.
*
The next party he goes to is hosted by Manon, full of cheap alcohol and people arguing over what music should be playing. Lucas is having a good time. At one point, Daphné presses a wine bottle into his hand and cheers him on as he drinks.
Here, they meet again.
Lucas steps onto the balcony in search of a chance to sober up a little and finds the smoking stranger from the last party instead, already here, leaning over the balustrade. He’s wearing all black, blending in with the night sky, and the rings on his fingers glimmer, a dull silver. His eyes shine, bright like the stars.
”Not a party person, you’ve said,” he says in place of a hello.
He’s not smoking this time, but it’s no difference, with the way Lucas’s mind is hazy around the edges and soft. Lucas stalks closer, then leans against the railing right next to him. The alcohol makes him a little braver. The guy watches him with a smile, and Lucas thinks, a lighter’s flame.
He says, ”Is your friend okay?”
The boy blinks down at him. He is, Lucas notes, unfairly tall. Very pretty. ”Hm?”
”The one you had to help out,” Lucas provides, the words rounded around the edges with how much he’s drunk. Absently, he wonders if the boy can tell. ”Is he okay now?”
The boy waves a dismissive hand and his smile widens. Lucas keeps looking up, up at it, the curve of his lips intriguing like an art piece.
”Yeah, Idriss is fine,” the boy laughs, and Lucas feels something tip over in his chest, shyly filling him up with warmth that he doesn’t quite recognise. ”We got beat up a little, but it’s all good,” and then some of Lucas’s surprise at the words must show on his face because the boy adds, eyes crinkling, ”Calm down, pretty boy, we’re fine. I promise I don’t usually get into fights.”
Pretty boy, echoes in Lucas’s head. He grips the railing tighter. ”You don’t look like the fighter type, anyway.”
The boy raises an eyebrow, challenging. He looks like he’s having fun. He looks like Lucas is gripping his attention by the throat. ”Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
Lucas thinks, yes, but doesn’t say it. ”The jury’s still out,” he replies instead, and when it earns him another smile, he smiles back.
Later, in Manon’s overcrowded apartment, after the night has grown heavy, Lucas spots him at the other end of the living room, holding a drink in his hand. Over the mass of people, their eyes meet. The boy lifts his glass in mock-cheers, then winks at Lucas, charmingly inept.
Lucas lifts his own glass to his mouth and doesn’t break the eye contact as he drinks, thinking, his heart pounding, look at me.
*
The third time, the boy seeks him out.
Lucas is in some college kid’s kitchen, drinking some kind of nasty whiskey and biting on limes to disperse the taste right after while also trying to stay moderately sober this time. He’s been to a few parties in the past weeks, tagging along with whoever else was going — much to Mika’s and Yann’s delight — hiding behind silly excuses and neglecting the piling up schoolwork and going out every weekend while hoping the beautiful strange boy would show up somewhere.
Today, he’s lucky.
”I wouldn’t guess that you’re a whiskey fan,” he hears at one point, and then there he is — the stranger that seems less and less strange every time Lucas sees him, with his warm smile and silver rings and messy hair. His eyes are dark tonight. ”For someone who claims not to like parties, you’re at them remarkably often.”
It’s as teasing as it gets, really. Lucas turns around to face him, feels the edge of the kitchen counter dig into his lower back.
He says, ”Maybe I’m at them because I’m looking for something.”
It comes out unexpectedly genuine. Lucas was planning to be just slightly flirty, maybe a little sly, was planning to play this game that the boy standing in front of him seems to be so good at playing, but he says what he says and it sounds like the truth.
The boy quirks an eyebrow, then comes closer. Lucas watches him until he stops right next to where Lucas’s cup of nasty whiskey is standing. ”Something?”
”Someone.”
”Oh,” the boy says, then something glints in his eyes. He’s close enough for Lucas to see it, clear and quick. ”Have you found them yet?”
”I think so,” he says, then reaches for his whiskey again. ”Now, I have.”
He throws the whiskey back and it burns on his tongue, but the gaze of the boy next to him fixed on his face burns more. Then, he lowers the cup, and, feeling like this is where he should have started, says helplessly, ”I’m Lucas.”
The boy’s eyes flit all over his face as if he’s trying to memorise it now that he knows the name that matches it. Then, he smiles.
”Eliott Demaury,” he says, and Lucas is, again, suddenly thinking about the warmth of a flame, about pretty boy, about the feeling unfurling in his chest. Their eyes meet.
”Eliott Demaury,” he repeats, and then, feeling brave, says, ”How about you take me away from here?”
Eliott does.