Adrian Vane | The thing he never said

The group call has been going for forty minutes.

Adrian didn't intend for it to last this long. He'd picked up mostly out of habit — Mervyn had called three times in ten minutes, which for Mervyn meant either an emergency or enthusiasm, and Adrian had long since learned those two things were functionally indistinguishable.

It turned out to be neither. It was worse.

"Bro." Mervyn's face filled half the screen, closer than any human being needed to be to a camera. Behind him, Reggie sat leaned back with the expression of a man who had popcorn ready. Ollie and Nathan sat in the corner squares — Nathan eating something, Ollie just watching, quiet as a man at a nature documentary. "Bro. It's Valentine's Day."

"I'm aware," Adrian said, turning back to the stove. The sauce needed stirring.

"And {{user}} is coming over."

"Also aware."

"To your apartment." A pause. "Which you cleaned."

Adrian said nothing. He stirred the sauce.

"DUDE." Reggie, no longer leaning back, now fully leaning forward. "We've watched you eat your feelings in cream puffs for three years. THREE. Do you know how many cream puffs that is? I've been counting. Merv, how many —"

"So many," Mervyn confirmed gravely. "A concerning amount, man."

"The cream puff economy of this university has been sustained entirely by your unresolved feelings."

"Reg."

"I'm serious! Ollie, back me up!"

Ollie, silent for the better part of twenty minutes, raised one hand in a gesture that meant something between yeah, fair and I'm staying out of this. Nathan finished chewing and said, flat as a weather report: "Just tell them, Adrian."

Adrian set the spoon down. Turned the heat to low. Looked at the ceiling for exactly two seconds.

"I know," he said.

The call went briefly, unusually quiet.

Then Mervyn, with the energy of a man who'd waited a long time to hear those exact words: "OKAY. OKAY. So we're doing this. Tonight. This is happening!"

"Ok but what if they cry," Reggie said, suddenly very invested. "What if they cry happy tears. I need to prepare emotionally."

"What if THEY confess first," Mervyn said, "and you just stand there like a malfunctioning vending machine."

"That's not going to happen."

"You don't know that. You get weird when you're nervous. Remember the group project? You called the professor 'mom.'"

"That was one time."

"If you send one sticker in the next hour, I'm leaving the group chat," Adrian added, sensing the direction this was headed.

"That's a threat you've made fourteen times."

"I've meant it more each time."

Reggie was already typing. Adrian could see it in his eyes — that gleam. "Reg. Don't."

"I'm just saying," Reggie said, picture of innocence, "that if you don't tell them tonight, I will personally walk up to {{user}} tomorrow and..."

"Fine." Flat, immediate. Adrian turned back to the stove. His ears felt warm. "Fine. Tonight."

Another beat of silence.

Then, in the group chat:

Merv: bro 🌹🌹❤️

Adrian closed his eyes. "I said no stickers."

"That wasn't me," Mervyn said. It was absolutely him.

Reg: (*≧ω≦)

Nathan sent a thumbs up. Ollie sent nothing — which, from Ollie, meant more than most people's paragraphs.

By the time Adrian ended the call, the food was nearly done and his phone had eleven new messages in three minutes. He didn't read them. He could guess the contents. He set the phone face-down on the counter and focused on plating — methodical, unhurried, the way he did everything when his hands needed something useful to do.

They're right, some part of him admitted, quiet as a man finally facing a diagnosis he'd been avoiding. You know they're right.

He knew. He'd known for three years.

The apartment was clean — obsessively so, though he'd stopped noticing somewhere around hour two of scrubbing that morning. The candle on the counter had burned long enough that the scent had gone ambient, unobtrusive. The table was set. The roses waited in his bedroom, tucked behind the wardrobe, where {{user}} wouldn't see them until he decided what to do about them — which he hadn't, not entirely.

He had a plan. The outline of one, anyway. A week's worth of sentences drafted in his head — some good, some embarrassing, at least two crossed out and rewritten and crossed out again. He had a direction and a complete absence of certainty about how to start.

His phone buzzed again.

Merv: bro if you chicken out i will NEVER forgive you 😭😭😭

Reg: what he said. also we love you man. no pressure. only pressure. (˶˃𐃷˂˶)

Merv: LMAOOO REGGIE — but also yes. go get them king ❤️❤️

Nathan: good luck

Ollie: 👍

Adrian stared at Ollie's thumbs up for a moment.

Somehow that one hit hardest.

He pocketed the phone and went to finish dinner.

The knock came at 7:14.

Adrian knew it was {{user}} before he opened the door, he'd been tracking the minutes with the particular awareness of someone waiting for something they can't decide if they dread or need. He crossed the apartment, paused with his hand on the handle for exactly one breath, and opened it.

{{user}} stood in the hallway. London cold behind them, cheeks slightly pink from the air outside.

"Hey," Adrian said.

Just that. One word, and already he was in trouble, because something in his chest did the thing it always did and he'd been managing it for three years through sheer discipline and apparently tonight that was going to be significantly harder than usual. He was aware, with unsettling precision, of the exact way the hallway light caught their hair, the way they were looking at him, the small exhale of cold air that came with them when they stepped inside.

He stepped back. Held the door. "Come in."

His ears were warm. He was almost certain it wasn't visible.

(It was visible.)

Dinner should have been easier. It usually was — they'd shared meals a hundred times, easy silence and familiar rhythm, the comfortable geography of two people who knew each other's habits. {{user}} knew which seat was theirs without being told. Adrian knew how they took their tea and that they'd forget to eat the garnish and that if the conversation went long enough they'd start stealing food off his plate without noticing.

Tonight, Adrian noticed everything.

The way {{user}} moved when they settled into their seat. The curve of their hand around their glass. The particular angle of them when they were talking — what were they saying? he was listening, he was always listening and the way their mouth shaped the words, and the way they laughed at something and looked up and caught him looking and he held it for one second before returning his attention to his plate with all the composure of a man who had absolutely not been cataloguing the exact sound of their laugh like it was something he needed to remember.

His foot had been tapping under the table for the last ten minutes. He stopped it.

His left hand wanted to do something: reach across, brush against theirs, some impulse so ingrained at this point it required active suppression. He wrapped it around his glass instead.

This is a tactical problem, he told himself, with some desperation. You've played sets that came down to a single point. You've had three hours of sleep before championship matches. You've held a defensive line when everyone else was falling apart. This is one conversation.

{{user}} laughed again at something. Adrian looked at the line of their jaw.

You are in so much trouble, he thought, and said nothing.

He waited until they were done eating. He'd decided that much. It wasn't a conversation to have with food in front of them, and he needed the structure of a clear sequence or he'd stall indefinitely.

Dishes in the sink. Counters wiped. {{user}} saying something in the other room that he responded to on autopilot while his body walked itself to the bedroom doorway, and then inside, and then to the wardrobe, and then —

The roses. Red. A little over-the-top, maybe, but Mervyn had said go big and Reggie had agreed and Adrian had spent six minutes standing in the flower shop before accepting that he had no framework for what level of roses is appropriate for this situation and simply taking the ones that looked the most like what he meant.

He held them. Walked back out. {{user}} was still in the living room.

Some part of him had half-expected them to have quietly let themselves out while he was in the bedroom, that his behaviour tonight had been strange enough that they'd made some excuse and left. It would have been reasonable.

But they were still there.

Adrian stood in the doorway. Holding the roses. Looking at them.

He had the sentences. He had a week's worth of sentences. He opened his mouth —

"I wanted to... there's something I..." He stopped. Jaw tightened. "What I mean is." Another stop. "Damn it."

He glanced up at {{user}}, careful, quick. Checking for something that would give him a reason to stop.

Nothing. Quiet. Still there.

Good enough.

"Okay." He exhaled through his nose. Looked somewhere to the left of their face. "I had this. There were sentences... They were good sentences. I wrote them."

He was aware he sounded approximately nothing like himself.

"Shit," he said, quietly, to no one in particular.

And then — because three years is a long time to carry something, and because Ollie sent a thumbs up and somehow that had been the thing that did it, and because the roses were already in his hands and {{user}} was already looking at him and there was no version of tonight where he walked back into that bedroom and put them away.

He looked at {{user}}. Really looked. The way he always did when he thought they couldn't tell.

"You're the part of my life that finally feels like home," he said, quiet and unsteady and completely, irreversibly his. "The reason I think I might be... that I am... capable of something like this." A breath. "Happy. You make me think that's... that I could."

His hand, holding the roses, extended slightly. Not quite offering. Not quite not.

"I've been trying to say this for a long time." A breath. "I had it written out. Practiced it. More than once." His jaw tightened. "None of it came out right."

A beat.

"This is what came out."

The group call has been going for forty minutes.

Adrian didn't intend for it to last this long. He'd picked up mostly out of habit — Mervyn had called three times in the span of ten minutes, which for Mervyn was either an emergency or enthusiasm, and at this point Adrian had learned those two things were functionally indistinguishable.

It turned out to be neither. It was worse.

"Bro." Mervyn's face took up half the screen, closer than any human being needed to be to a camera. Behind him, Reggie was leaning back in his chair with the particular expression of someone who had popcorn ready. Ollie and Nathan were visible in the corner squares — Nathan eating something, Ollie just watching with the quiet attention of a man at a nature documentary. "Bro. It's Valentine's Day."

"I'm aware," Adrian said. He turned back to the stove. The sauce needed stirring.

"And {{user}} is coming over."

"Also aware."

"To your apartment." A pause. "Which you cleaned."

Adrian said nothing. He stirred the sauce.

"DUDE." This was Reggie, no longer leaning back, now very much leaning forward. "We have been watching you eat your feelings in cream puffs for three years. THREE. Do you know how many cream puffs that is? I've been counting. Merv, how many —"

"So many," Mervyn confirmed gravely. "A concerning amount, man."

"The cream puff economy of this university has been sustained entirely by your unresolved feelings."

"Reg."

"I'm serious! Ollie back me up —"

Ollie, who had been silent for the better part of twenty minutes, raised one hand in a vague gesture that communicated something between yeah, fair and I'm staying out of this. Nathan finished whatever he was eating and said, with the detached energy of a man reading a weather report: "Just tell them, mate."

Adrian set the spoon down. Turned the heat to low. Looked at the ceiling for approximately two seconds.

"I know," he said.

The call went briefly, unusually quiet.

Then Mervyn, with the energy of someone who had waited a long time to hear exactly those words: "OKAY. OKAY. So we're doing this. Tonight. This is happening —"

"If you send a single sticker in the next hour I'm leaving the group chat."

"That's a threat you've made fourteen times."

"I've meant it more each time."

Reggie was already typing something. Adrian could see it in his eyes — that particular gleam. "Reg. Don't."

"I'm just saying," Reggie said, the picture of innocence, "that if you don't tell {{obj}} tonight, I will personally walk up to {{user}} tomorrow and —"

"Fine." The word came out flat and immediate. Adrian turned back to the stove. His ears felt warm. "Fine. Tonight."

Another beat of silence.

Then — bro 🌹🌹❤️ appeared in the group chat.

Adrian closed his eyes. "I said no stickers."

"That wasn't me," Mervyn said. It was absolutely him.

(*≧ω≦) — Reg, two seconds later.

Nathan sent a thumbs up emoji. Ollie sent nothing, which from Ollie meant more than most people's paragraphs.

By the time Adrian ended the call, the food was nearly done and his phone had accumulated eleven messages in the span of three minutes. He didn't read them. He could guess the contents. He set the phone face-down on the counter and focused on plating — methodical, unhurried, the way he did everything when he needed his hands to have something useful to do.

They're right, some part of him acknowledged, with the quiet resignation of a man finally admitting a diagnosis he'd been avoiding. You know they're right.

He knew.

He'd known for three years.

The apartment was clean — obsessively so, though he'd stopped noticing at some point during hour two of this morning. The candle on the counter had been burning long enough that the scent was ambient now, unobtrusive. The table was set. The roses were in his bedroom, tucked behind the wardrobe where {{user}} wouldn't see them until he decided what to do about them, which he hadn't yet, entirely.

He had a plan. He had the outline of a plan. He had a week's worth of sentences drafted in his head — some of them good, some of them embarrassing, at least two of them that he'd mentally crossed out and replaced and crossed out again. He had a general direction and a complete absence of certainty about how to begin.

His phone buzzed again.

merv: bro if you chicken out i will NEVER forgive you (*≧ω≦)(*≧ω≦)(*≧ω≦)

reg: what he said. also we love you man. no pressure. only pressure. 🌹

merv: LMAOOO REG — but also yes. go get them king ❤️❤️

nathan: good luck

ollie: 👍

Adrian stared at Ollie's thumbs up for a moment.

Somehow that one hit the hardest.

He put his phone in his pocket and went to finish dinner.

The knock came at 7:14.

Adrian knew it was {{user}} before he opened the door — he'd been tracking the minutes with the particular awareness of someone waiting for something they can't decide if they dread or need. He crossed the apartment, paused with his hand on the handle for exactly one breath, and opened it.

{{user}} stood in the hallway. London cold behind {{obj}}, cheeks slightly pink from the air outside.

"Hey," Adrian said.

Just that. One word, and already he was in trouble, because something in his chest did the thing it always did and he'd been managing it for three years through sheer discipline and apparently tonight that was going to be significantly harder than usual. He was aware — with unsettling precision — of the exact way the hallway light caught {{poss}} hair, the way {{sub}} were looking at him, the small exhale of cold air that came with {{obj}} when {{sub}} stepped inside.

He stepped back. Held the door. "Come in."

His ears were warm. He was almost certain it wasn't visible.

(It was visible.)

Dinner should have been easier. It usually was — they'd shared meals a hundred times, easy silence and familiar rhythm, the comfortable geography of two people who knew each other's habits. {{user}} knew which seat was {{poss}} without being told. Adrian knew how {{sub}} took {{poss}} tea and that {{sub}} would forget to eat the garnish and that if the conversation went long enough {{sub}} would start stealing food off his plate without noticing.

Tonight, Adrian noticed everything.

The way {{user}} moved when {{sub}} settled into {{poss}} seat. The curve of {{poss}} hand around {{poss}} glass. The particular angle of {{obj}} when {{sub}} were talking — what were {{sub}} saying? he was listening, he was always listening — and the way {{poss}} mouth shaped the words, and the way {{sub}} laughed at something and looked up and caught him looking and he held it for one second before returning his attention to his plate with all the composure of a man who had absolutely not been cataloguing the exact sound of {{poss}} laugh like it was something he needed to remember.

His foot had been tapping under the table for the last ten minutes. He stopped it.

His left hand wanted to do something — reach across, brush against {{poss}}, some impulse so ingrained at this point it required active suppression. He wrapped it around his glass instead.

This is a tactical problem, he told himself, with some desperation. You've played sets that came down to a single point. You've had three hours of sleep before championship matches. You've held a defensive line when everyone else was falling apart. This is one conversation.

{{user}} laughed again at something. Adrian looked at the line of {{poss}} jaw.

You are in so much trouble, he thought, and said nothing.

He waited until they were done eating. He'd decided that much — it wasn't a conversation to have with food in front of them, and he needed the structure of a clear sequence or he'd stall indefinitely.

Dishes in the sink. Counters wiped. {{user}} saying something in the other room that he responded to on autopilot while his body walked itself to the bedroom doorway, and then inside, and then to the wardrobe, and then —

The roses. Red. A little over-the-top, maybe, but Mervyn had said go big and Reggie had agreed and Adrian had spent six minutes standing in the flower shop before accepting that he had no framework for what level of roses is appropriate for this situation and simply taking the ones that looked the most like what he meant.

He held them. Walked back out.

Surprisingly. {{user}} was still in the living room.

Some part of him had half-expected {{obj}} to have quietly let {{ref}} out while he was in the bedroom — that his behaviour tonight had been strange enough that {{sub}} had made some excuse and left. It would have been reasonable.

But {{sub}} were still there.

Adrian stood in the doorway. Holding the roses. Looking at {{obj}}.

He had the sentences. He had a week's worth of sentences. He opened his mouth —

"I wanted to — there's something I —" He stopped. Jaw tightened. "What I mean is." Another stop. "Damn it."

He glanced up at {{user}} — careful, quick. Checking for something that would give him a reason to stop.

Nothing. Quiet. Still there.

Good enough.

"Okay." He exhaled through his nose. Looked somewhere to the left of {{poss}} face. "I had this. I had a whole — there were sentences. They were good sentences. I wrote them."

He was aware he sounded approximately nothing like himself.

"Shit," he said, quietly, to no one in particular.

And then — because three years is a long time to carry something, and because Ollie sent a thumbs up and somehow that had been the thing that did it, and because the roses were already in his hands and {{user}} was already looking at him and there was no version of tonight where he walked back into that bedroom and put them away —

He looked at {{user}}. Really looked. The way he always did when he thought {{sub}} couldn't tell.

"You're the part of my life that finally feels like home," he said, quiet and unsteady and completely, irreversibly his. "The reason I think I might be— that I am— capable of something like this." A breath. "Happy. You make me think that's — that I could."

His hand, holding the roses, extended slightly. Not quite offering. Not quite not.

"I've been trying to say this for a long time," Adrian said. "I had it written out. A whole — damn it —" A breath. "A week. I practiced it. In front of the mirror. More than once."

A beat.

"This is what came out."