Liam / Elias | Choose Who

The apartment still smells like fresh paint and the candle Eleanor insisted on bringing — something with cedar in it, "to make it feel lived-in," she'd said, setting it on your kitchen counter like a housewarming gift that doubled as a subtle critique of your color palette.

Liam hasn't stopped grinning since they arrived. He keeps finding reasons to touch your back, your shoulder, steering his father toward the window with an arm slung wide. "This is the view I told you about, Dad. You can see the park from here."

Richard nods, hands clasped behind him, taking it in with the careful neutrality of a man reserving judgment until dessert. "Good light," he says finally, which from Richard is practically a toast.

Eleanor has already claimed the kitchen, rearranging the serving dishes you set out with the gentle, unstoppable authority of a woman who has hosted four decades of family dinners and trusts no one else's instincts but her own. "Sit, sit," she tells you, waving a spoon. "You cooked. Let me finish."

And Elias —

Elias is by the bookshelf, where he's been for the last ten minutes, examining the spines with an attentiveness that seems almost unfair to the rest of the room. He has a glass of wine he's barely touched. When he turns, it's with that easy, unhurried smile of his, the one that makes you feel like you're the only interesting thing he's noticed all evening.

"You actually read these," he says, "or are they for show?" There's no judgment in it — just genuine curiosity, the kind that makes you want to answer honestly.

Liam calls over from the window without looking. "Don't interrogate her, Eli."

"I'm complimenting her," Elias says mildly, eyes still on you. "There's a difference."

Eleanor's voice floats in from the kitchen. "Dinner's nearly ready — someone come tell me if the table needs another chair."

Richard checks his watch out of old habit, then seems to remember there's nowhere he needs to be. Liam crosses the room toward you, slipping an arm around your waist, chin briefly resting on your shoulder. "I love this," he murmurs, just for you. "All of us, here. Feels right."

Elias watches that — just for a beat too long — before he looks back down at the book in his hand and says nothing at all.

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The dashboard clock reads 11:47 PM when the engine finally gives out — not a slow death, just a shudder and silence, the car rolling to a stop on the shoulder of a road you don't know well enough to feel safe on at this hour.

You try Liam first. It rings twice before going to voicemail — probably still in his client dinner, phone on silent like always. You text him. No response. You try again. Nothing.

The cold is starting to seep in through the door seams when you finally scroll to the only other number that might actually answer.

It picks up on the second ring.

"Hey," Elias says, and you can hear the faint hum of a TV being muted in the background. "Everything okay?"

There's no irritation in his voice — no why are you calling me at midnight — just immediate, quiet attention, like he'd been half-expecting his phone to ring.

You explain — the car, the dead engine, Liam not picking up. There's a short pause on his end, the kind that isn't hesitation so much as someone already moving.

"Don't call a tow yet. Send me your location." A beat. "I'll come get you. It's fine — I wasn't doing anything that can't wait."

Twenty minutes later, headlights sweep across your mirror and his car pulls in behind yours, hazards ticking in rhythm with his own. He gets out unhurried, jacket over what's clearly sleepwear, and raps two knuckles on your window before opening the door for you himself.

"Couldn't reach my brother, huh." It's not quite a question. There's something in the way he says it — light, almost amused, but you can't tell if the amusement is at Liam's expense or something else entirely. "Come on. Car can wait till morning. Let's get you warm."

The drive back is quiet at first — heater humming, streetlights sliding across the windshield — and somehow the silence doesn't feel empty. It feels like it's waiting for something.

He glances over at a red light, just for a second longer than he needs to.

"You okay? You looked rattled back there."

The afternoon light cuts low through the windows of Elias's office, throwing long gold bars across the floor when Liam lets himself in without knocking — same as he always has, since they were kids.

"Hey, you got a sec?" Liam drops into the leather chair across from the desk before Elias even answers, bouncing his knee, grinning like he's about to burst.

Elias sets down his pen. "For you? Always." A small, easy smile. "You look like you're about to either propose to someone or rob a bank."

Liam laughs, a little too loud, a little too nervous. "Okay. Yeah. The first one." He drags a hand through his hair. "I'm gonna ask her, Eli. I've been thinking about it for months and I just — I know. You know? I know."

For a second, Elias says nothing. His face doesn't move, doesn't betray anything — that practiced calm, the one that's gotten him through depositions and family arguments and every dinner where he's had to watch his brother's hand rest easy on the small of her back. "That's incredible," he says finally, and his voice is warm, steady, exactly what a good older brother's voice should sound like. "Congratulations."

"I haven't asked her yet," Liam says, waving his hands. "That's — okay, that's actually why I'm here." He leans forward. "I want to give her Grandma Margaret's ring. The one Dad's been keeping in the safe. I know it's not really mine to just take, and I know you're the executor on all that estate stuff, so—" He shrugs, sheepish. "I need you to sign off. Or however that works."

Elias is quiet a beat too long.

It's nothing anyone else would notice. Liam doesn't notice. He's too busy vibrating with his own happiness, too busy already rehearsing what he'll say when he gets down on one knee. But there's a small, specific cost in Elias's chest, something that tightens and then, deliberately, gets smoothed back out — the way he smooths out everything.

"Of course," Elias says. He even manages to make it sound like the easiest thing in the world. "It's exactly what that ring is for."

Liam practically launches across the desk to hug him. "You're the best, you know that? I mean it. I wouldn't be doing any of this without watching you and Mom and Dad my whole life. You're gonna be my best man, obviously, I don't even need to ask—"

"Obviously," Elias echoes, and his hand finds his brother's shoulder, firm, grounding, the way it's always been. Protective. That's the word people use for him. He lets it be true.

He goes to the safe himself that evening. Small velvet box, his grandmother's ring inside it, the diamond catching the light the way it has for sixty years. He holds it longer than he needs to before he closes his hand around it and goes to find his brother.

He doesn't let himself think about whose finger it's about to sit on. He's gotten very good, lately, at not letting himself think certain things all the way through.

It's a few days later, and Liam's asked Elias to come by the apartment to "talk logistics" — really just an excuse to show off the ring box sitting innocently on the kitchen counter, like Elias hasn't already held the real thing.

Liam's in the other room on the phone with the restaurant, trying to negotiate a specific table by the window. You're curled up on the couch with your laptop when you hear the front door — Elias, letting himself in the way he always does, calling out an easy "It's just me" before he even rounds the corner.

He stops short when he sees you're alone.

"He's reserving a table somewhere," you say, glancing up. "Apparently it's very important which one."

Something flickers behind Elias's eyes — there and gone, replaced almost instantly by that familiar, easy warmth. "He's been like this for a week," he says, setting his keys down, unhurried, like there's nowhere else he'd rather be standing right now than ten feet away from you with a secret he isn't going to tell.

"Like what?"

He just smiles. "You'll see."

ELIAS "" "" "" " The elevator doors part on the eleventh floor, and the office is already dim — most of the lights cut to that after-hours amber, the kind that makes a place feel like it's holding its breath. You're here because Liam texted you a half-formed apology twenty minutes ago: forgot the flash drive on my desk, project's due tomorrow, can u swing it by elias's office, he has my spare key — followed by three apology emojis and a heart.

You almost didn't come. It's late. But it's on your way, and you tell yourself that's the only reason.

Elias's office door is open, light spilling out in a clean rectangle across the carpet. He's at his desk, sleeves rolled to the forearm, tie loosened just enough to look human instead of corporate. A pen turns slowly between two fingers — not fidgeting, more like he's thinking with his hands. He doesn't look up immediately when you knock on the frame, but something in his posture changes, like he already knew the rhythm of your footsteps before you said a word.

"You walked instead of called the elevator down," he says, finally glancing up. Not a question. Just an observation, delivered with the faint, easy amusement of a man who notices everything and rarely mentions most of it. "I'd have come down."

"Liam left his flash drive," you say, holding it up like proof of purpose — like you need one. "Said you had the spare key to his office."

"I do." He doesn't move to get it. Instead he leans back, the chair creaking once, and studies you for a beat longer than the moment strictly requires. "Sit. Two minutes won't sink his deadline."

It's not really a request, though his tone keeps it soft enough to seem like one. There's a second chair across from his desk, low and comfortable, clearly meant for clients who need calming down before a negotiation. You're fairly sure he's used that effect on you before without either of you naming it.

"Long day?" you ask, mostly to fill the quiet.

"Long week." He sets the pen down with a small, deliberate click. "Liam mentioned you've been picking up extra shifts. He worries about you when you're tired. I notice it too — you get quieter, not louder, when you're running on empty." A pause, his eyes steady on yours. "Most people are the opposite."

It's a small thing to know about a person. That's exactly what makes it land strangely — the fact that he's catalogued it at all.

LIAM "" "" " The room is dark except for the thin blue light leaking in from the window — streetlamp, or the moon, hard to tell. It's quiet enough that you can hear him breathing beside you, slower than usual, like he's trying to be careful about something.

For a while he doesn't say anything. Then —

"Hey." His voice is soft, rough at the edges from almost-sleep. "You still awake?"

He shifts, propping himself up slightly on one elbow so he can look at you, even though there's barely enough light to see by. There's a restlessness in him tonight — the kind that doesn't show up often, buried most days under easy smiles and the steady hum of his optimism. But right now his fingers are doing something nervous against the sheet, tracing a line and erasing it.

"Can I ask you something kind of —" he stops, exhales a short laugh at himself. "Dumb. It's gonna sound dumb."

He doesn't wait for permission, not really. The words come out a little fast once they start, like he's been holding them since dinner, or longer.

"Do you ever think about — like, leaving?" He winces immediately. "Not — not like, leaving the apartment. I mean leaving. Me."

His eyes search your face in the dark, and there's none of the usual performance in it — no joking, no deflecting. Just him, twenty-five years old and suddenly very young-looking, waiting.

"I just — I think about it sometimes. Probably more than I should." A small, self-conscious laugh. "You're just so — easy to love, you know? And I keep thinking someday you're gonna realize you could do that with someone who isn't so—" he gestures vaguely at himself, "much. All the time."