23. Chris
Chris
December, Oxford
Oxford in December looked like a fairy tale that had been painted in frost. Chris had never been before and had always imagined it as this sort of eternal land of tradition and learning, all grand, golden, and self-satisfied.
Instead, the city felt old in a way that was almost shy about it.
It was all icy cobbles, breath fogging in the air, and students in scarves cycling past at breakneck speed, like they were late for something important.
Chris carried his weekend bag, having left his suit in the car. He followed Isaiah, who walked just half a step ahead of him through the narrow streets, hands shoved into the pockets of his oversized coat, a tuft of violet hair escaping from beneath a wool beanie.
They crossed a quad where the grass sparkled silver under the winter sun. The chapel’s windows were dark, but somewhere a bell rang the quarter hour. Chris felt absurdly conspicuous and somehow welcome, because Isaiah moved through it like it belonged to him.
Which, Chris realised, it did.
They entered a building and walked up a stone staircase, then down a corridor. Isaiah stopped outside a scuffed wooden door and produced a key with unnecessary ceremony. “Ready?” he asked.
Chris leaned against the opposite wall. “Go ahead, amaze me.”
Isaiah rolled his eyes and unlocked the door and pushed it open. Chris stepped inside.
It wasn’t what he expected. He’d seen the camera angle hundreds of times. Seen the fairy lights, the bookshelf, the framed print that was always slightly crooked, but the room itself was smaller, warmer, real in a way that made his chest tighten.
A narrow bed was tucked against the wall under the window. There was a battered desk covered in papers and highlighters and a mug that read World’s Okayest Academic. A ring light stood folded in the corner like a sleeping metal insect. Wires coiled along the skirting board.
Isaiah spread his arms. “See?” he said lightly. “This is where the magic happens.”
Chris took another step, slowly taking it all in.
There were two mismatched cushions on the bed that Chris felt both intimately familiar with and as though he were staring at something completely alien.
The fairy lights weren’t plugged in. Half the books on the shelf had sticky notes jutting out of them.
He ran his fingers over them, pausing on a burgundy spine that he recognised as the book from his favourite photo from the early days of watching Quick.
He traced the embossed letters of the title slowly.
It was so real. He had watched Isaiah here for months.
Watched him flirt with the camera in that way that had made Chris feel, stupidly, like it was just for him.
“It’s…smaller than it looks,” Chris said.
Isaiah huffed a laugh. “Are you saying I catfished you with my room proportions?”
“I’m saying,” Chris replied, stepping closer, “it looks different when you’re not performing.”
Isaiah’s smile faltered, just slightly. “Right. Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it.”
“It’s just strange,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen it so many times.”
Isaiah’s expression shifted, the teasing giving way to something softer. “Yeah. Bit weird, letting you behind the curtain.”
Behind the curtain. Chris didn’t know why that phrase stuck. He turned to the shelves, an action figure catching his eye. He moved towards it quickly, and Isaiah let out a strangled sound as he picked it up.
“Is this…?”
“Shut up.”
“Cariad, you have a Flash action figure.”
Isaiah swallowed. “It’s not anything weird, I just…”
Chris grinned. He took one long stride across the room and pulled Isaiah into a deep, tender kiss.
They spent the afternoon walking, somewhat aimlessly.
Isaiah showed him the colleges and the Radcliffe Camera, which he referred to as the Rad Cam, from the outside, narrating the tour with bits of Oxford history and personal anecdotes that made Chris laugh out loud.
They cut through the Covered Market for coffee, and Isaiah tutted at Chris’s order, then took their takeaway cups down to the river, where the water lay flat and metallic under the winter sky.
They carried on, stopping to rest on a bench near the Sheldonian Theatre, shoulders brushing.
The wood was cold even through Chris’s coat.
Students hurried past, but Chris was entranced watching Isaiah talk.
He spoke about the nearly six years he’d spent in this place. About tutors who wore gowns to tutorials like it was normal. About the way the libraries smelled different depending on the century of the books. About the departmental politics he was pretending weren’t eating at him.
“So, the ex’s, what, situationship threatened you?” Chris startled himself with the near growl that came from his throat as Isaiah explained a stairwell encounter with another PhD student.
“I don’t think they’re still a thing. And honestly, it wasn’t much of a threat.” He shrugged. “But I think that’s how he meant it, and it’s been…well, stressful I suppose. The Runner’s Life article didn’t help either.”
“You’re incredible,” Chris whispered.
Isaiah ducked his head, a pink flush covering his cheeks.
Chris took one of his hands and kissed the fingers that stuck out through the fluffy fingerless gloves he wore. “I’m serious,” he said. “You’re so sure of yourself. Nothing gets to you. It’s—you’re just—”
Isaiah ducked in and kissed him, cutting off whatever was coming next.
“I wasn’t always, you know,” he said when they broke apart. “After my parents, after everything…I was really lost for a while. But I know who I am, and I’m damn proud of where I’ve got to. I don’t need anyone.”
“Luctor et emergo,” Chris whispered. Isaiah grinned. “Tell me about your research.”
“Fair warning, you should never ask a DPhil student that. You’ve just signed up for hours of deep philosophy-nerd academia chat.”
“Do your worst.” Chris grinned. He wanted nothing more than to listen to Isaiah at his most passionate.
Isaiah started to explain. His mouth moved quickly when he was animated. His hands too. His love for his work lit him up and had Chris nodding along despite only understanding maybe fifty percent of what he was saying.
“You alright?” Isaiah asked, mid-sentence.
Chris blinked. “Yeah. Just listening.”
He was.
Listening. Watching. Memorising. He liked watching Isaiah exist in this world. A world where he wasn’t performing or curated. He was so completely…himself.
Isaiah bumped their shoulders together. “You’re very quiet.”
“Cold,” Chris said automatically, taking the easiest excuse for the trance he’d fallen into. It had its benefits. Isaiah shifted closer on the bench, pressing their thighs together.
Chris stared out at the pale sky and let himself feel it. This moment. The stupidly overpriced coffee. The way Isaiah’s knee nudged his when he laughed. It felt like something he wanted to keep.
Back in the room, as dusk settled in thick and early, Isaiah checked the time. “I need to log on in ten.”
Chris nodded. He bit his lip, unsure whether he was meant to stay or go.
Isaiah moved around the room with practised efficiency. Curtains drawn, fairy lights switched on. Ring light unfolded and snapped into place. Laptop open.
The room transformed. It was still the same small space, but the energy shifted. Isaiah shifted. He straightened, rolled his shoulders back, and ran his fingers through his violet strands, checking himself on the screen. “You okay staying?” Isaiah asked, not looking at him.
Chris swallowed whatever strange thing was rising in his throat. “Yeah.”
Isaiah hesitated. “It’s…not like watching a video.”
“I know.”
“Do you…want to be in it?” Isaiah asked hesitantly.
Chris reeled back. “No. God, no.” The words came out too fast, too sharp.
Isaiah blinked.
Chris stood, restless energy crawling under his skin. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Okay. It was just an idea. Not even a serious one. You already said you weren’t up for a collab,” he joked.
Chris opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t understand the reaction himself. The thought of all those people seeing him with Isaiah, of whatever was between them being a gimmick, just a collab, made his pulse spike, and not in a nice way.
“I just…” Chris muttered. “It’s your thing.”
Isaiah studied him, then nodded. “Yeah. It is.”
Chris knew he’d mishandled it.
The clock ticked. When the stream went live, Isaiah’s smile brightened, his voice warmed and dipped lower, taking on that husky quality that sent fire racing through Chris’s body.
“Hi, babes,” he murmured to the camera.
Chris’s stomach flipped.
He sat on the bed, just out of frame, hands clasped between his knees.
Close enough that he could have reached out and touched Isaiah, but completely out of frame.
Watching this in private had always felt illicit in a contained way, the screen between them creating a distance.
Now there was no distance at all. Isaiah shifted on the edge of the bed, crossing one leg slowly over the other.
His gaze held the lens like it was a person. Like it was him.
Chris had always known this was a performance, crafted and intentional, but seeing it from this side—the subtle calculations, the awareness of light, the way Isaiah tracked the scrolling comments with flicks of his eyes—being invited in like this, to Isaiah’s real world, made it feel intimate in a different way.
He felt heat unfurl low in his stomach despite himself.
The slide of Isaiah’s hand down his own chest as he laughed softly at something someone had typed made Chris’s jaw tighten. He hadn’t expected this. Not jealousy exactly. Something more disorienting.
He watched Isaiah tilt his head, exposing the line of his throat in the ring light’s glow.
Watched the slow blink of his lashes. The deliberate way he leaned forward.
And god, he was good at it. Chris felt pride, attraction, and a sharp possessive desire.
He was aching by the time the stream ended, but when his eyes met Isaiah’s as he exhaled, shoulders dropping, shifting immediately from coy to vulnerable, a far more urgent need overcame him. Chris wanted to hold him.
“Well?” Isaiah asked, turning in the chair.
Chris forced his expression into something neutral. “You’re…far too good at that.”
Isaiah’s mouth curved, pleased but a little shy. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Silence stretched. Isaiah’s eyes drifted to the tent in Chris’s joggers. He smirked. “You enjoyed it, then?”
“Of course.”
The fairy lights twinkled, casting shadows around the room now that the bright ring light had been switched off.
The space felt softer like this. Isaiah threw the fluffy pink fleece Chris had gifted him all those months ago on and climbed into bed without ceremony.
They lay facing each other, knees tangled.
Isaiah traced slow, absent shapes on Chris’s wrist.
“Do you want to?”
Chris nuzzled his neck. “Do you? You’re probably exhausted.”
“I am a bit sexed out,” Isaiah replied, his voice raw and honest. “I always am, after.”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to do things for me, like you have to perform,” Chris replied. “But I’d like to hold you, if you’ll let me.”
Isaiah silently moved closer, kissing Chris’s jaw.
“You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to either,” Isaiah said quietly.
Chris frowned. “I know.”
“I like that you said no,” Isaiah added. “When I suggested…”
Chris searched his face in the dim light. “You do?”
“Yeah.” A faint smile. “Means you’re not just agreeing because of me. That you aren’t afraid of boundaries.”
Isaiah shifted closer, pressing his forehead against Chris’s chest. His breath was warm through the fabric of Chris’s shirt. Chris wrapped his arms around him automatically.
In the corner, the ring light stood folded and harmless.
He stared at it in the dark. He didn’t understand what had flared in him earlier, why he’d so adamantly rejected the idea of being on screen.
Maybe it was fear of exposure, fear of not being special, or of wanting too much.
He hoped Isaiah hadn’t read it as disapproval, because it wasn’t—not at all.
Isaiah’s fingers tightened around his arm in his sleep.
Chris pressed a kiss into his hair. He held him closer.
And lay awake far longer than he meant to, wondering whether he’d drawn a line he didn’t actually want there.