Alexander
“The Eighth Arc was established once banishment became a more mainstream technique for punishment…” Zeno reads from the second row. Their teacher decided that they aren’t engaged enough in class, and has tasked them with reading the textbook out loud for the day.
“Enough, Zeno,” the old professor coughs after several more boring pages. “Kallias, you’re next.”
The teacher watches closely, waiting for him to surrender and pull his textbook out of the bag at his feet. Instead, Kallias stays still.
“Remind me the page, professor?”
“You should be reading along.”
“I got sidetracked, sir. My sincerest apologies.” Alexander stifles a laugh. The sarcasm doesn’t go over the teacher’s head—not if that angry old-man scowl is anything to go by.
“Page four hundred and fifty-three.”
Alexander starts sliding his book to Kallias, but Kallias taps his desk quickly: -. ---
No?
Then the impossible happens. Kallias makes direct eye contact with their teacher and starts reciting the page word for word.
“The Third Arc is known for its colorful hues and happy people. Wealth is not abundant as in the Second and First Arcs, but quality of life is known to be superb. The unique founding of the Third Arc is the most likely culprit for its very individual cultural and architectural makeup…” Kallias drawls.
He ‘reads’ for minutes, eyes never leaving the teacher.
Eventually, the professor admits defeat. “Thank you, Kallias,” he seethes through gritted teeth. “Lazarus. You.”
“Yes, sir,” Lazarus responds.
Kallias goes right back to Copernicus.
“So, class today?” Alexander asks, sitting with Kallias on the beanbags in the Library. The others are already gone, off to sleep or to hang out in Xia’s room.
Kallias seemed to get the hint when he stayed back, dropping into the beanbags with him, without a word.
“What about it?”
“The crazy shit you pulled with the textbook, maybe?”
“We use the same book every year. It’s not a big deal.”
“You recited it word for word with just the page number.”
“And?” Kallias asks, dropping his head back to look at the night-sky fresco on the ceiling.
“You have a photographic memory, don’t you?”
“What does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander says, shrugging. “It’s cool.”
“I guess so.”
This explains all of the random tidbits of information that Kallias remembers here and there. Exact conversations, specific homework problems, names of obscure books.
But when Alexander looks over, Kallias’ face has lost its expression, settling into his usual blank mask. Maybe he has memories he’d prefer to forget.
It’s like a routine at this point. He pushes on a boundary—Kallias doubles up the walls. Alexander doesn’t mind. He loves watching the bricks come tumbling down, watching his Kallias emerge from the rubble.
Alexander props himself up on an elbow and leans over Kallias as much as he can without touching him. Then he taps Kallias’ nose. “Boop.”
His face scrunches up in response, and Alexander can’t help but smile.
“Airhead.”
“Better air than brains,” he says. Then something distracts him. “Whoa, Kallias.”
“Hm?” he responds, eyes absorbing the glow of the moon, like a black hole taking in light.
“Your necklace.”
“Oh,” Kallias says, looking down at his chest.
The pendant on his Forms necklace is captivating, completely different from everyone else’s he’s seen. He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it earlier.
“Is that… a firefly? In the amber?”
Kallias hums in assent.
Alexander pushes himself up to his left elbow and plants his right hand on the other side of Kallias’ head to get a better look. “I wonder how that even happened.”
“No idea.”
It’s rare, he has learned over the weeks, to even get a crack or two in the amber. His own sunburst pattern is the most complicated one he’s seen so far. But this fossilized firefly? It’s striking. Like its owner, he supposes.
“I like it,” Alexander says, an understatement.
Then Kallias catches Alexander’s pendant, which has escaped his shirt and dangles in front of Kallias’ face.
“Yours is better,” he says quietly.
He continues to inspect Kallias’. “Hm.”
“A perfect sunburst,” Kallias says, his dark eyes focused. He pulls the necklace closer, and it yanks Alexander enough to make his arms buckle. He barely stops his entire upper body from falling onto Kallias.
Flirty, fleeting touches are one thing, but this level of closeness might be too far. So Alexander begrudgingly pulls away, falling to lie on his back arm to arm and thigh to thigh with Kallias on the beanbag. Kallias turns over to face him, still holding his pendant.
“You know what sunbursts stand for, right?” Kallias asks.
“Tell me.”
“In Plato’s allegory, the sun is the perfect representation of Good.
Illuminating the world with the brightest kind of energy.
And in ancient Egypt it was a sign of divine intervention, the hand of Ra the sun god.
In Tagalog mythology, the sun is a fierce ruler; his desire for power is what dimmed the moon and created the stars.
And right before the Fall it stood for hope, energy, and new beginnings.
Bodes well for your escape, doesn’t it?”
“Our escape, you mean. And, yes, I guess it does.” Having Kallias this close to him makes it kind of hard to breathe. “Does that mean I represent hope to you, gorgeous?”
“Is hope synonymous with a pain in my ass?”
“Well, that would depend on what kind of pain in the ass we mean, here,” he flirts.
“Meaning that I find you insufferable,” Kallias says, squinting in annoyance that’s far fonder than Alexander suspects he means it to be. They’re so close now, noses practically touching.
“Right,” he sighs, close to either hyperventilating or grabbing Kallias’ face and kissing him senseless.
Before he does anything stupid, he jolts back and puts several inches between them like a flustered idiot. He has never been a flustered idiot in his life. He turns other people into flustered idiots with his smoldery charm—what the Hell is Kallias doing to him?
Kallias’ scowl melts into a subtle smile, just the tilt of his lips.
“What about yours then?” Alexander asks, dangling Kallias’ pendant in front of him. “Fireflies have a meaning too. Like, for finding hope in the darkness and all that.”
“This guy’s not finding hope in any darkness,” Kallias laughs bitterly. “Just because he’s fossilized doesn’t mean he’s not dead.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works. Yeah, he’s stuck—preserved—but that doesn’t take back all the times he’s already shone.”
“Wishful thinking,” Kallias says, and Alexander feels like they’re not just talking about the firefly anymore.
“No. It’s not.”
“How would you know?”
“Because if these necklaces represent their owners, then yours must stand for hope and light rather than death and struggle, don’t you think?”
Kallias’ eyes pierce through him when their gazes meet again.
“You don’t know me, Alexander. And I don’t know you.
What I do know, though, is whatever you think you see in me?
Whatever good, whatever hope, whatever joy.
It’s not really there. Just a trick of your sunburst’s light. ” He flicks Alexander’s pendant.
“I do know you,” Alexander insists.
Kallias laughs sharply. “No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do,” he argues. “How else would I know that I—”
Oh.
He stops himself.
Oh, God.
Kallias squints at him. “Know what?” he asks, his voice hollow.
That I love you.
That’s what he was going to say, wasn’t it?
He turns his head to Kallias, and it strikes him, for the millionth time, how beautiful he is.
I love him.
Alexander has never known anyone like this. His breath speeds, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Know what?” Kallias whispers. Not hollow now. No. Filled with… something. Alexander can’t name what it is.
“I— I forgot.”
Not true.
Kallias releases a breath either in relief or disappointment, Alexander isn’t sure.
He feels his anxiety fading, but whatever just shifted in him—that won’t ever fade.
“I don’t need to know you, Kallias. Anyone can see how brightly you shine.”
Kallias lightly shakes his head. “You don’t have to take my word for it. You’ll realize soon enough.”
The words sound like a threat, but the way Kallias says them isn’t scary. It’s just sad.
They both turn back to the ceiling and Alexander sighs. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but it still makes him restless.
Kallias breaks it. “That star up there has been around since the universe was formed. Some even say before,” he says, pointing up at the fresco. It’s an apology, Alexander thinks. An olive branch.
Alexander smiles, shaking off the sadness. “Oh, yeah?”
“Mhm.”
“Tell me more, starboy,” he jokes, expecting a scowl in return, but Kallias just smiles softly and continues on, pointing out stars and constellations and rattling off fun facts like they’re all he’s ever known. He talks for hours, and Alexander hangs on every word.
The more Kallias talks, the further he falls, and the more he realizes how deep he was already.
When they start to nod off in the Library, Alexander forces Kallias to stand and they drag each other up the stairs. He falls asleep almost instantly when his head hits his pillow.
But before he’s all the way under, one thought consumes him.
I love him.