This was supposed to be two thousand words, tops. (Obviously, that didn't work out.) So, um, I saw The Eagle, discovered it was totally a gay love story, and decided it needed fic pronto, so College!AU it is. As for other characters, Jon is Uncle Aquila, Gary is Guern, and Cassie is a combination of the book character (which I haven't read) named Cottia but with my own spin. And seriously, this fic basically ate me alive.

Please read, review, constructively criticize, and love.

the universal law of gravitation

Here's how things go:

Mark Quill is no longer a football player when he trips over the other team's linebacker and the crack of his tibia can be heard throughout the entire stadium.

They tell him that it's just too bad, he'd been doing fantastically, that there's always next year and until then he needs to rest up, let his leg heal. Mark spends the next three days stuck in a tiny dorm room bed, bored enough to shoot either himself or his cousin, who has decided that Taking Care of Mark Quill is the next best thing to saving baby pandas, or whatever crazy cause Jon was up to a week ago, and who will probably drop said cause in three days and go con a freshman or some transfer student into sharing room E9 with a "boring, grumpy, irrational asshat of a cousin".

Jon lasts a week.

"Mark," says Jon's voice from the doorway, "this is Esca; he's a transfer. I found him wandering around downstairs, poor dude. He'll be rooming with you, 'kay?" He looks up from his history textbook, feeling a little bit shocked and betrayed and was I really that bad?, to find that a pair of the biggest blue eyes he's ever seen are narrowed and glaring at him.

The feeling in his stomach tells him that either a) the world has tipped over and shifted on its axis or b) his pain meds are really, really strong. He hopes that it's option B.

Esca hates him; that much is clear. And it's fine, really. Mark can deal. He doesn't like talking very much anyways, all of Jon's pointed hints about being an "anti-social loser of a cousin" besides, and honestly, he didn't even ask for a new roommate, didn't – doesn't – need one, and really, Esca could just leave and he wouldn't care. No one needs to take care of him.

Nothing really changes between them, not the silence or the sheer resentment, until Jon decides to meddle, because if you look up Conniving Bastard in the dictionary, Mark is pretty sure that it's Jon's face that's smiling up at you.

So Jon calls Mark on a Friday night in the middle of September, laughing breathlessly into the cell, and says, "Put Esca on the phone, won't you, my beloved dumbass of a cousin?"

Mark hands the phone to Esca silently; Esca takes it and walks towards the doorway, his voice very quiet and low. He hasn't had the opportunity to listen to Esca talk, considering the unofficial law of silence in their room, but he finds out via eavesdropping on the conversation that Esca has a pretty good voice, even if he won't use it to actually talk to Mark at all or anything and they are kind of the worst roommates ever, really.

Esca hangs up, sliding the phone shut with a little click and throwing it back at Mark. Shrugging on a coat, he says, "Jon's invited us to go to the club for a couple of drinks. We're both supposed to go." He fiddles with the sleeve of one of his many long-sleeved shirts, pulling a thread out here and there.

"All right." At this, Esca turns a bit, and Mark is vaguely aware that he startled him, but more aware of the fact that his leg is trying to collapse on him and his crutch is leaning against the wardrobe. For a moment, he grabs onto the bedpost – his leg is trembling a lot, seriously, that linebacker can go to hell– and then he finds that his crutch is being shoved under his nose, and that Esca still isn't looking at him.

"Here."

Mark takes it, and for just a second, they make eye contact. Now that he has a chance to look at him, he finds that Esca's eyes are ridiculously blue.

"Let's go." And with that, Esca shoves open the door, barely holding it open for Mark to stumble through, and Mark now knows that the Black Eyed Peas always lie, because tonight is not going to be a good night.

There's a girl whose trying to flirt with Mark – she would be full out seducing him, if it weren't for the fact that she's had enough to drink to make her fall over if Mark tapped her on the shoulder – and somehow, Mark knows that it's Jon's fault. It has to be, because otherwise Mark wouldn't be here, he'd be home, reading his history textbook and getting a head start on his physics work about Newton's law of gravitation and sure, moping a little, but that is perfectly understandable when your tibia's broken and you won't play football until next year, which will be your last year, and you may not be quarterback, and seriously, that linebacker can go to hell and roast.

Said linebacker is actually over in the corner of the club by the bar. It takes a considerable effort for Mark to not either a) go over there and punch the guy in the face, maybe break his nose and see how he likes it or b) hit his head on the table, because Mark's life: sucks.

The redhead, who is getting closer and closer to actually sitting in Mark's lap, smiles at him. "You're the football player, right? The quarterback?"

"Yeah."

"I heard about your leg. Sucks, don't it?"

Yes, it does. "Yeah."

"Well," she draws the word out, sing-song-like, and now she actually is in his lap, "now you have time for other stuff, you know?" She giggles, as in really, truly giggles, and Mark didn't realize that girls actually did that sort of thing, and she's draping her arm around his shoulder and pulling on his wrist to write her number on his skin with a ballpoint pen. "My name's Cassie. If you need someone to spend that free time with –"

"Right, I don't, actually, but uh –"

"What, got someone else on your mind?" Cassie looks him in the face, examining his eyes and at some point Mark will have to kill Jon, blood relation be damned. "You do, don't you."

"No – I mean yes – wait, no –"

"Oh, it's okay." She grins at him, slow and cheerful, full of drunken innocence and she's got this all wrong, but Mark can't seem to find the words to say so. "We'll just be friends then. I've always wanted a huge, muscular man-friend to carry all my shit around. I'll call you up some time, 'kay?"

With a slide she's out of his lap, swallowed up by other dancers, and after a while, he stops looking for her, and starts looking for Esca.

He sees him over by the bar, with some guy from the team who's only on varsity because of Daddy's money, Paul Something-or-other. Paul is leaning over Esca, who looks like he'd like to take a tire iron to Paul's face in the next twenty seconds, so Mark gets up and starts walking over slowly, leaning on his crutch as he goes and hoping that maybe this'll just be some sort of quiet disagreement, if he's lucky.

Mark's never been all that lucky, but he'd like to think otherwise.

"Look, you think just cause you're some poor scholarship kid that you can get privileges and shit?" Paul is that annoyingly aggressive sort of drunk – Mark remembers that much from post-game parties a year ago – and is sneering away, which just makes him even more pathetic.

Esca still looks like he would grab a bottle and break it on Paul's face if it weren't for the no disciplinary incidents clause in his scholarship, but instead is mumbling something under his breath.

"What's that? Going to run off and tell somebody 'bout this?"

Esca's gaze keeps shifting as he presses back against the wall, mumbling a little more, but Paul just leans in further, slamming one hand on the wall above Esca's head and swirling a beer bottle with the other. "That's right, scholarship boy. Nobody's got your back around here. Now piss off."

"Trouble, boys?"

As soon as he says it, Mark regrets it – he just wants to go home, get off his leg, sleep – but something in Esca's face looks almost relieved and hopeful despite himself, and at least now Paul is focusing his bleary eyes in Mark's direction.

"I was just teaching scholarship boy here a good lesson, Quill. You got some sort of problem with him too?"

"Yeah, well," says Mark, and honestly, why is his mouth suddenly out of control, "my problem is more with you, you cowardly asshole."

Paul is stuttering and swearing and turning bright red and blotchy, and Mark sees the beer bottle come swinging towards his face, but he somehow manages to dodge it and punch Paul square in the jaw.

Of course, there's then the matter of the bouncer coming over towards them and Mark pulling Esca along because they need to leave, as in right now, but when they stumble outside into the cool fall air, Esca gives him the ghost of a grin and a "thank you". For some reason Mark doesn't really bother considering, that makes the whole thing worth it.

"History is such a bitch."

Mark quite possibly has the biggest paper ever in the history of history papers due tomorrow, and there is not enough caffeine in the world capable of helping him stay awake and on task.

"Seriously, all the Romans and Celts and leprechauns can go die in a nuclear reactor or something."

At that point, Esca comes over, resting his chin on Mark's shoulder and reading over the words on the screen and muttering a little under his breath. After a moment, he reaches over and pulls the laptop shut, grabbing Mark's arm before he can protest.

"Caffeine break."

"What?"

"You look like you got hit by an eighteen wheeler, you probably will be bitching about this paper less once you've had Starbucks, and –" Esca pulls out a wad of cash from his jacket pocket as if he's presenting Mark's letter to Hogwarts or winning Lotto ticket, "Jon gave me some money. Come on, time's a-wasting. I actually want to get some sort of sleep tonight."

"That is blatant bribery," Mark complains, but he stands up anyways, grabbing onto Esca's shoulder a little for support.

"But it worked, didn't it?" Esca is grinning at him. It's a very nice grin; he's even got dimples and everything, and Mark kind of wants to just stand there and appreciate the fact that Esca doesn't hate him anymore – and yeah, Mark isn't entirely sure when or why Esca decided to be friends with him (it was probably around the point where he punched Paul and got banned from the club for two weeks), but he's feeling pretty grateful for it right now.

"Yeah," Mark says, leaning on Esca, just a little. "Yeah, it worked."

Mark wasn't expecting a visit from Gary Brighton. After he got kicked off the team (well, discharged, but same difference), he wasn't really expecting to see any of his football friends until after the big game against the Seals.

But here Gary is, sitting across from him in a Starbucks close to the campus library while Esca is off ordering drinks, a week before Halloween.

"How's life treating you?" Gary was always the mature person on the team, the guy that everyone went to after Arthur Dillinger had a bad day, because he always told them that no, they weren't actually complete wastes of space, Arthur's just a little bit touchy sometimes and lost the part of his brain that lets him think before he speaks. Really, Mark should've figured that Gary would want to see him, because even though Gary's the replacement QB, he would say something like you can't be replaced, Mark and then they'd have their cheesy after-school special moment and it'd totally make up for the crack in Mark's left tibia.

Mark's saved from answering Gary when Esca comes back with coffee (drip for Gary, latte for Mark, some ridiculous iced thing full of sugar for Esca) and then leaves, holding up his buzzing phone as an explanation. They watch him until he goes out the door, when Gary turns back to his coffee and Mark looks over at the barista, who grins at him and starts tugging her hair behind her ear.

" – it's that Seals game that's going to kill us in December if they don't start working – are you listening to me at all?"

Mark turns back, startled; out of the corner of his eye, he sees Esca outside, pulling on his scarf while muttering into his phone.

"Sorry, I was…"

"Totally out of it. Listen, Mark - if your leg heals up in time, you should try to come to practice. I mean – it might help, if you're there." Gary Looks at him, with his big, dark eyes, and this really is turning into an after-school special.

"Look, I – I'm not going to. Come back, I mean. I think it's better if I just… you know. Don't."

Mark keeps looking out the window as he talks. Esca is still out there, fiddling with his scarf and his sleeves, always talking, but sometimes glancing back inside. At one point he sees Mark, smiles, waves a little.

"I get it," Gary says, and he's still got a Look in his eyes, but he smiles a little. "Don't worry."

Mark doesn't say anything, but looks down at the old wood table, sips his coffee. It burns his tongue.

"I," says Esca, holding his arms out to whoever will listen (which is Mark, stuck on his bed with his history and physics textbooks instead of at the game), "am a god." He grins a little, looking down at Mark, his arms still spread wide.

Mark tries to smile back, stretching his lips and baring teeth. He doesn't quite manage.

Esca sits down heavily on the bed, parking himself next to Mark before he starts bouncing up and down and Mark may have to hit Esca with A History of the Roman People that clocks in at 579 pages, best friends or not.

Mark doesn't hit Esca, however, and Esca is then allowed to look at Mark with a face full of concern, or something else that's able to cause these weird little wrinkles between his (very, very blue) eyes.

"Are you all right? I mean, normally you would be perfectly willing to learn about how I'm a god among men – an ass-kicking one, as it were, considering my perfect scores on my oral exams for the six million languages I'm taking –"

"Congrats," Mark says, and means it, because it is not over-exaggeration when Esca says "six million languages", it really is about six million languages and if it weren't for the fact that Mark's seen Esca soaking wet he would call him a robot that had been bent on conquering the world but got side-tracked by foreign participles and Chinese verb conjugation.

"Don't interrupt," Esca hits him on the nose absent-mindedly, already moving on to his Main Point, "but you're unusually distracted-slash-totally out-of-it today. Explain."

"I… I don't know." Mark looks away, because Esca still has this concern in his face and Mark doesn't want to deal with this, doesn't know how to deal with this, and he can hear the game through the open window and everything just sort of hurts like a bitch right now.

"Cop-out. Try again." This time Esca leans back, bracing his elbows on Mark's chest and apparently unaware that this is Mark's personal space that he's invading. "I'll even start it for you. Mark is not paying attention because…"

When Esca looks over at Mark, grinning (and his eyes are soveryblue), Mark forgets how to breathe. He tells himself it's because Esca's leaning on him and honestly, anyone who was being leaned on by one hundred and thirty pounds of boy would be out of breath.

(Mark was always really, really good at lying to himself.)

"I'm just…tired, I guess." he says finally, not quite meeting Esca's eyes but coming close enough, looking at his wrists where one of his huge long-sleeved shirts is fraying at the hem.

"Oh." For a moment Esca looks a little bit disappointed, but he rallies, finally standing up – which makes Mark feel relieved, because Esca is heavy, but some part of him is missing it, almost, and he looks back at his history textbook a little too quickly. "Well, I'm off to go and celebrate my awesomeness. Are you coming?"

"No," Mark says, "I've got to finish this stuff for history."

"Suit yourself. Just know that when you eventually become one with your bed, I'm going to immediately resort to chainsaws. Feel warned."

"I am warned."

Esca smiles at him again while grabbing a jacket off the chair before turning to leave. Mark watches him until the door is shut.

(In the morning, Mark wakes up to a cup of coffee and a note: Sorry you weren't able to play in that football game of yours. Even if it is totally stupid and pointless and all that. He goes to class smiling.)

Esca gets a boyfriend towards the end of October.

"His name is Andrew," Mark enters the room while carrying the box marked Random Shit; across the room he sees Cassie sitting on her ratty old couch and drinking some tea and making vague encouraging noises while mostly staring at the way Mark's arm muscles flex, "and he's the QB for the goddamn Seals."

"Come again? I didn't catch all your code words."

Mark glares at her half-heartedly, but he can already feel the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth while she sticks her tongue out at him over her mug. "The Seals. You know, that one team that our school is supposed to totally hate and also destroy in the game in December?"

"Oh yeah, those guys. Their QB is hot."

"Yeah, well, he's taken. By my roommate. Don't you see a problem with that?"

"Yeah, well, no, not really. Besides, the fact that he's gay or bi or whatever doesn't exactly negate his hotness." She winks at him, a huge smile spreading across her face as she flicks her fingers at him. Sometimes, Mark sort of doesn't believe Cassie's thought processes. He doesn't exactly smile back, and she stares at him, just a little, and then says: "Holy shit."

"What?" Mark looks around, expecting to see something on fire due to the fact that Cassie and Melanie's dorm suite, which they share with some other juniors he doesn't know, is pretty much a walk-in fire hazard, but when he doesn't see any random sparks, he looks back to find that she's still looking at him, twisting a piece of bright red hair around her finger. "What?"

"I didn't even realize… holy shit, it's so obvious." She's not even paying attention to him now, instead looking at a point about three feet above his head. "How did I not… oh, duh, because you're a little bit emotionally retarded, that's why! That explains the night at the bar, when I was drunk – no wonder my attempts at seduction failed so badly."

"Look, Cassie," he says, feeling more than a little bit alarmed, "what are you talking about?"

Her smile shifts into something a little more knowing than Mark is comfortable with. "Well, because you're in love with Esca. Duh. That's why you're acting like a jealous fifteen-year-old girl, you dumbass."

Mark is aware that he's gaping, a lot. Soon enough, his brain starts to kick back in, and his mouth runs at about a million miles per hour. "No, you've got this – I'm not – no, Cassie. I just – it's only because – he's their goddamn quarterback, you can't just – you've got to be kidding me, I –"

"Cool it, Quill. Your secret's safe with me." If anything, her smile just gets bigger and bigger, a grin of Cheshire Cat proportions, and it's kind of the most frightening thing that Mark's ever seen.

"There isn't a secret," he says, still wearing an expression of slowly dawning horror, and all she does is smile back. In response, he chucks a pillow at her; she threatens to "never give you coffee again, Quill" and soon enough both of them are laughing and throwing pillows and he thinks that the whole thing is forgotten.

In hindsight, that was too much to hope for.

It was only a matter of time until Mark snapped, really.

He knows it isn't fair, because honestly, Esca hasn't actually done anything to Mark (except go out with the quarterback from the rival team says the unfair part of him, but he tells it to shut the hell up), but it's three weeks until the big game and his cell phone is full of text messages from Cassie saying are you ever going to say anything Quill? and he just can't deal with this anymore.

So when Esca stumbles in at one in the morning, drunk and with a bruise forming on his neck, Mark looks up from his physics textbook and feels this weird sensation of anger and jealousy and want rising in his stomach. It only gets worse when Esca – who definitely drank a few too many beers with That Asshole – trips and somehow lands on Mark, draping an arm around his neck.

"Hey, stranger," he drawls into Mark's ear, the tiniest bit of an accent coming through, "haven't seen you in a while, have I."

"No, not really," Mark manages, trying very hard to both steady Esca and concentrate on the equations in front of him. The universal law of gravitation states that –

"I think you're avoiding me, Mark," Esca practically sings his name, his breath hot on Mark's neck.

"No," he says again, "not really," and he can feel the flush rising up the back of his neck, his hands starting to tremble just a little, and he puts the textbook down. Of gravitation states that every object –

"Mark," Esca says again, his voice long and loose, and Mark starts to tense up even as he takes more of Esca's weight, "you don't ever talk to me anymore. Why don't you do that?"

And suddenly it's all just way too much – the crack in his tibia and Cassie's texts and Roman history and Esca's eyes that are so, so damn blue that it hurts to look at them – and he just falls apart.

"Because," he says, and his voice is sharp, cracking out in the quiet darkness of their room, "you're with the fucking quarterback for the fucking Seals, Esca, and still you just keep taking me out of here to buy me coffee and it's like you don't notice a damn thing and I don't even know why you a give a shit about me and I can't stop thinking about you, like what you'd say about my stupid football games or what is under those stupid shirts you're always wearing or how goddamn blue your eyes are and –" He falters.

Esca has broken away, staring at him, and the guilt crashes into Mark, makes him stumble back, some phantom pain running down his leg and his heart racing way too fast in his chest, but he still can't look away from him. Esca just keeps looking at him, hurt and confusion written all over his face and a hand clutching the desk, and Newton's law keeps running through his head – every object attracts every other object.

He goes to Jon's single room. His cousin is still awake, listening to some rap music while he writes up a paper for law, and Mark sits down on the couch and faces the wall and tries to quiet the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. At two thirty he finally falls asleep; he dreams of a voice whispering his name in his ear and wakes up over and over again.

"I heard Esca and Andrew broke up," Cassie offers over coffee at the Starbucks down the street. The barista girl from when he met Gary smiles at him over one of the coffee roasters; he looks down at his cup of coffee.

"Oh," he says, still looking down, holding the cup in his hands. It was snowing a few minutes ago outside and he forgot his gloves when he went back to the room to get everything he needed for the afternoon. He and Esca have carefully avoided each other since his outburst, going into their room in shifts; they're only ever around each other when they need to sleep, and sometimes in the middle of the night he shifts over, looks to his left and feels like he just got kicked in the ribs because it's like September all over again.

He sips his coffee.

"Enough." Cassie slams her mug on the counter, glaring at him as he jumps, startled and trying to dodge the coffee slopping out of her cup. "You are going to go back to your room and talk, okay? I am done with this moping. Jon probably is too – hell, I bet everyone we collectively know is tired of your bullshit and middle school drama and general asshattery, and I will not allow you to just sit on your ass and moan about how you fucked up."

"I can't." The words stumble out of his mouth before he's aware that he's saying them as he tries to avoid Cassie's gaze.

"Yes, you damn well can, Quill." She keeps glaring at him, something sharp in her face as she Looks at him. "Go. Fix this." When he doesn't respond, her face softens, just a little. "Or try to, at least."

He bites his lip, frowning down at his coffee.

Then he stands up, grabbing his drink, his feet moving him out of the Starbucks and onto the snowy sidewalk outside. Somewhere behind him, he knows Cassie is smiling to herself, but he doesn't care about that, isn't thinking about that as he sets off down the street. All he can do is let his feet move him back to the dorms and up the stairs and somehow he's ended up in front of his door, his hand just above the wood and he has no idea what he's about to do and he doesn't even care.

On opening the door, he realizes that Esca must have been taking a shower: his hair is wet and he only has on a pair of jeans and it takes a moment for Mark to stop staring. There's a tattoo running up his arm, some sort of ancient design he doesn't recognize drawn on Esca's skin, and some distant part of his brain realizes that he's found the reason for those long-sleeved shirts.

He wrenches himself back, and finds himself facing impassive silence. So he steels himself and begins.

"Look, I – okay, sometimes, people just… they, they… they just fuck up, you know?"

Esca's mouth starts to open at this, but Mark keeps going, because he has to try, at least, "That night, I just… it was terrible, and I never should've said those things, and right now I just wish that I could take them back because I didn't mean them like I said them –"

"Mark," Esca says, long and loose and he realizes that Esca must have said it a couple of times, that Esca has come closer to him and he can see every line etched on his arm, "Mark, it's – I mean, it's okay." Then he laughs, just a little, and it's sort of bitter and tired but mostly just a laugh, just joy and sound and Mark could listen to it again and again – "I broke up with Andrew, you know."

Mark must have made some noise, because then Esca grins, slightly rueful but he looks almost happy in spite of himself. "He was being this gigantic ass about how I should transfer over, how I needed to think about where I wanted to be, how you were some barbaric asshole, and – well, I don't really think those things. About you, I mean. So… I ended it." He chops at the air with his hand, and then meets Mark's gaze.

For a while, they just look at each other, because Mark realizes that he hasn't really seen Esca in two weeks and that was a stupid idea, so he just sort of watches Esca do some sort of smile where he bites his lip and really, Mark could never leave and he'd be all right.

Then they realize that Esca is still shirtless and it's been silent for a while and maybe they should discuss that later, while their friendship-thing is still healing up, and so Esca finds a shirt and Mark sets down his coffee cup on the desk and pulls out his history textbook and starts to read about the five good emperors.

Ten minutes later, Esca says, "That game of yours is next Saturday, right? I think we'd better go," and smiles at him, and Mark smiles back.

It's the last minute of the game; Mark is leaning on Esca for support while he hollers and cheers until his throat is hoarse and he can barely explain to Esca what exactly the players on the field are doing. Mostly, Esca has just sort of been smiling in a this-is-boring-but-I-will-pretend-to-be-interested sort of way, but at some point in this last quarter he's started cheering too as Gary leads the Eagles to touchdowns and field goals and quite sincerely kicks the Seal's collective ass. They both shout out the numbers on the scoreboard as they tick down – ten nine eight seven – and at some point Esca just starts leaning into Mark and rests his head against Mark's shoulder – six five four – and Mark can feel the heat against his side – three – and Esca is grinning up at him with his blueblueblue eyes – two – and as Gary is lifted up by the team and he feels Esca against him – one – the whole team looks to him, up in the stands, and this is where Mark wants to stay – time.

The sky is dark when they stumble back into the dorm room, voices hoarse and laughter ricocheting off the walls, and he fumbles for the light switch but doesn't quite make it. "Leave it," Esca laughs in the semi-dark, peeling off his jacket and scarf and tossing them at the heater, so Mark does, balling up his own coat and throwing it next to Esca's. He checks his phone to find six new messages from Cassie (so have you dealt with that thing we talked about yet? and get on it or I'll kill you because Esca's prettier and hurry up, you moron) which he promptly ignores in favor of leaving his phone on the desk.

In a moment, the glory of the game wears off, leaving him bone-tired and barely standing, so Esca helps him down onto the bed, still grinning madly with eyes glinting in the shadows by the wardrobe. He's still holding onto Mark's shoulder as he sits down next to him, cheerfully exclaiming over how they've won, and beaten Andrew at that, and Mark doesn't shift away.

It's on the spur of the moment, what he does next (but really, no, it isn't at all).

Esca's one hand is still on his shoulder, but the other is in the air, so he reaches out for it, lightly closing his fingers over Esca's wrist. That's when Esca turns to him, the laugh dying on his lips. Mark slowly pulls Esca around to face him, his fingers still clasped, and Esca's breath stops for a beat before coming back, a little louder and harsher in Mark's ears.

When their faces are only a foot away, Esca whispers, "Are you sure," to him; Mark can't trust himself to use words, so all he does is nod. At that, Esca's eyes brighten and he leans in and Mark doesn't look away.

Esca's mouth is hot on his, his breath short and raspy as he scrambles over Mark, using the hand on Mark's shoulder to push Mark's back up against the wall. His other hand is finding places to twist and grasp on Mark's neck, fingernails digging into skin and curling around hair. Mark himself shifts a little to accommodate the fact that suddenly there's a boy leaning on his chest and draping across him while his own arms wrap around and feel the planes of Esca's back. He drags his fingers over vertebrae and curls his hands into Esca's shirt because this is what he's wanted for who knows how long, and it seems that Esca feels the same way, because his lips are bruising Mark's and his teeth are catching on Mark's bottom lip and sometimes he hears his name, long and loose until it's lost as the mouth that said it goes back to Mark's skin.

He doesn't know how long it goes. He's aware of time passing as he maps Esca's mouth, looking for all the words he's collected, aware of the dark falling as Esca leaves bruises and words on his skin, but it feels like the end of a game when each second extends into hours. Even when Esca stops moving against him, just folds around him and breathes, even and slow and warm against Mark's skin, it feels longer, extended, the minutes stretching out to accommodate them.

At some point in the darkness they shift and turn, lying on their sides on Mark's bed, curled up and legs tangling together. Esca tucks his face against Mark's neck and his arms against Mark's chest and they fall asleep like that, contained, close.

Hours later in the darkness, Mark wakes up, his hands around Esca's shoulders. For a time, he watches Esca as the other boy's eyelids flutter and chest rises and falls.

He is still sleeping. He is still.

Here's how things go:

In the morning, (Mark tries to get out of bed without waking Esca but his left arm is trapped, so he pushes Esca a little and gets even more tangled up in response, and later they will go out for coffee and Mark will talk about the five good emperors and Esca will swear at him in Italian when he gets bored and Cassie and Jon will text him with what were you doing last night and when Mark gets tired Esca will sling an arm around his shoulders and help him walk home), everything – but nothing, really – has changed.