Chapter Fourteen

They wake up a couple of times in the middle of the night, bodies that should be fully sated somehow not. Those moments are sleepy ones, slow and lazy and messy, and then they close their eyes again, sure of things that have probably been true for a while now. And when they finally get up to share a shower and a secret or two, it's Thanksgiving.

Everything Alex wants to say about that sticks to the roof of his mouth.

"I honestly can't figure out which one of us should ditch our own family to crash the dinner at the other's," Elijah jokes over a late breakfast at his kitchen counter.

"I mean, my family is still half hysterical about my divorce, though that should be finalized next week, so maybe it's a great time for them to freak out about something new."

Elijah sets down his coffee and tilts his head. "How do you feel about that?"

"My family always needing something to freak out about? I'm pretty used to it by now, though I wouldn't mind if my sister could figure out a way to take the heat off me for a bit."

"Alex."

Alex's eyes fall closed, because he knows what Elijah was really asking, and he's not all that sure he has a good answer, his divorce something that has been a long time coming, even before he knew that was true.

"I think I'm good?"

"Okay," Elijah nods. "And you know you can talk to me if you're not, right? I don't want you to think you have to keep anything to yourself, just because it's about Cassidy."

And yeah, he does know that, and his gratitude is sort of overwhelming, both Elijah and Cassidy somehow wholly accepting of someone they haven't met, even in these early days, when everything could be an uncertain disaster. Alex is sure there will be some problem at some point, somewhere down the road, because even while Elijah and Cassidy insist there are no bad guys, they're all gonna make mistakes, but things are good right now, and he's not about to take it for granted.

"Yeah, I know," he promises, falling into a kiss that might prove he means it.

He packs up his things not long after that, and heads home to get ready to spend the rest of the day at his parents' house with more people than should probably fit into a space like that. Elijah will be at his mom's, with both siblings and their families too, but they've agreed to check in with each other throughout the day, and Elijah's already asked Alex to spend the night again. It will make four nights in a row, and Alex thinks maybe he's supposed to stop and breathe and step aside and let some time pass between them, but there's no part of him that wants anything but exactly this, so he's agreed, his bag packed and in the back of his car when he leaves to see his family. His body is sore, but it feels like a sigh of relief.

The day is exactly what Alex expected, or maybe even a little bit better, when almost every question he's asked is very pointedly about Cassidy and Elena, his family rarely making the effort to ask much about how he's feeling or what he's been up to. He doesn't think he would've been bothered by the slight on any occasion, but Alex definitely doesn't care now, when he can keep his relationship with Elijah tucked away for another time.

Mostly, anyway. His sister has a close eye on him all afternoon, doing her best to insert herself into as many of his conversations as possible, her instinct for a story almost better than Alex's own. Her presence succeeds in making their relatives fawn over her as much as they've already been going on about the other lovely ladies in his life, and Alex assumes that was at least half of Gabriela's plan, but the twinkle in her eye suggests she isn't interested in talking about anyone but him. Still, as much as she might be there to make him squirm, he knows she won't push for more in front of an audience, and it's his saving grace for at least a couple of hours, until they've finished their dinner of turkey, tamales, and mole, and she very literally bumps into him when she lands on the couch next to where he's been sitting.

There's music playing as loudly as it always is when their family gathers, but everyone is quiet as they let their food settle, a drink still in nearly every person's hand, Gabriela taking a slow sip of her own cocktail before she artfully lifts an eyebrow.

"You've been checking your phone a lot today," she says.

"My daughter isn't here," Alex shrugs. "You're surprised I'd want to make sure she's having fun with her mom today?"

It's bullshit and they both know it, Alex absolutely texting Cass earlier to wish them both a happy Thanksgiving, but thoroughly distracted by someone else the rest of the time.

"That excuse might work for mom and dad. Maybe even with abuelita if she's busy enough in the kitchen. But there's no chance that the smile on your face has anything to do with your daughter. Or your ex-wife, for that matter."

"Cass and I are getting along really well."

"Not my point and you know it," Gabriela chides.

Alex rolls his eyes. "Okay, but I'm smiling, so that's good, right?"

"Probably extremely good," his sister agrees. "And I look forward to hearing all about this person whenever you're ready to spill."

Her carefully neutral choice of words is hard to miss, and Alex looks away for a minute, wondering just how many people figured out his whole life before he did. And as much as he thinks the fact that everyone else seems to know should make the public confirmation of it less of a disappointment, Alex kind of doubts that will be the case.

"Not sure the rest of the family will be as happy about it."

It's her turn to shrug. "Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's about damn time. Cassidy and Elena know?"

"They do," he says.

"Then everyone else can go through me. I'm happy as hell for you."

His phone chirps with a new text and his sister just laughs.

Call me when you can get away for a min

Alex's quick frown is enough to leave Gabriela quiet.

You okay?

Don't know. It's about the books and stuff. About them

He looks at her, holding up the phone. "I've gotta—it'll just be a quick call."

"Go," she says. "And if you need to bail before dessert, I'll cover for you."

Alex hurries up from the couch and ducks into a bedroom to make the call, and Elijah answers almost immediately, out of breath when his hello follows the sound of a slammed door and a couple of cars whirring past him.

"You didn't wander into traffic, did you?" Alex asks.

"No, I just—I ran outside to talk to you without an audience."

"Okay, what's up? I thought you weren't gonna bring up anything about Peter and Edgar today?"

"Yeah, and I didn't," Elijah says. "My mom did."

Alex nearly gasps, shaking his head like it'll help clear up anything. "Wait, like, just right there at the dinner table? ‘Please pass the turkey and also I have something to tell you about your great grandfather and the man who isn't actually your uncle'?"

"No, Alex. This is—fuck, it's a lot and I—" Elijah pauses, still catching his breath though he's been outside for a minute now. "I'll fill you in on most of it later, but I just had to tell you because I really don't know if I'm okay right now. I can't—I didn't think—"

"Shhhh, okay, Elijah, listen to me," Alex urges. "You sound like you're about to hyperventilate. Just take a couple of deep breaths first. I'm not going anywhere."

There's silence for several seconds, other than another passing car, but then he hears Elijah exhale. "Yeah, I'm—I'll be okay. I will. How much longer do you think you'll be at your parents' house?"

"I can probably get out of here pretty soon, actually. I think my sister knows about us, or at least knows there's something to know, and she'll help me out."

"Sounds like you've got stuff to tell me, too," Elijah huffs. "But yeah, I—shit, okay. If you can meet me at my place in like an hour or so?"

"Sure," Alex agrees. "You wanna give me the bottom line here, or should I just wait for the long version?"

"No, I—you don't have to wait, it's—it's Uncle Edgar. He's still alive."

Alex is at Elijah's front door 57 minutes later, his sister having helped distract from his whirlwind of goodbyes right after she'd pulled him close and whispered in his ear, "I want to meet this guy, so just tell me when we're on for dinner."

Elijah throws the door open and ushers him inside, Alex crouching down to say hello to Poe while Elijah locks up behind him. As soon as he's standing again, he studies Elijah and closes the distance between them, his arms wrapped around him as they hug for a very, very long time. Alex doesn't think Elijah is crying, and maybe he's not even that upset, but he's been thrown off balance again, one surprise after another kicking him sideways over the past couple of months. When Elijah finally starts to back away, they thread their fingers together and crumple onto the sectional, Poe quick to lie down where he can keep an eye on Elijah and whatever might be wrong.

"So," Alex starts.

"So," Elijah echoes. "Your sister knows?"

Alex laughs in spite of the wild day it's been. "Really? You want to do this backwards?"

"Your drama will be much faster to tell than mine."

"Okay, yeah, that's true because there's really almost nothing to tell," Alex says. "I was smiling too much, she saw right through me, and she wants to have dinner with us. Your turn."

"Dinner? I'm in."

"Your turn," Alex repeats, squeezing Elijah's hand.

"Yeah, all right. Like you said, I wasn't going to bring anything up, but I guess the few times I called my mom to ask questions was enough for her to know she had to sit me down for a much bigger conversation. She said she was waiting because she knew we'd see each other today, so she didn't bother telling me anything over the phone, even once she realized I must have found the books and the Poe box."

"So, she knows everything."

"Everything," Elijah confirms. "Some first-hand, most of it from my grandpa."

Alex nods. "Okay, go ahead."

"She confirmed the stuff we pieced together about their early years. While my great grandfather was working at the firm, Uncle Edgar was some kind of warehouse worker or stock boy or something, and he picked up a little extra cash for running errands."

"Including deliveries and pickups."

"Yep. They met, and I guess it was a whole big love at first sight kind of thing, but it was about a year or so before Uncle Edgar got the idea to pass the same couple of books back and forth. They were as careful as they could be for the next several years. Gay in the 1940s, from two drastically different social classes, and while Uncle Edgar was an adult, he was actually closer to my grandpa's age than to my great grandfather's, which might've been fine on its own, but probably looked like one more perversion in their case."

"Did she know anything about the attack on Edgar?" Alex asks.

"Nothing that we didn't already know or assume," Elijah says. "He got jumped and beaten and left for dead. A couple of other workers found him and may have saved his life."

"Okay, did she say anything about when your grandpa found out?"

Elijah smiles, a softly sad little thing. "Pretty soon after he left for college. He wasn't really that far away, and he went home unannounced one weekend. Saw them, but they had no idea he was there, so he quietly left again. Then he privately freaked out for a little while before he realized this was the man who had loved him and cared for him and treated him with so much respect, and he made the conscious decision to give nothing less in return. Took him a whole lot longer to actually say anything about it, but they got there eventually."

"And then your grandpa met your grandma, and they had your mom—"

"And my great grandfather and Uncle Edgar became more interested in the growing movement around them, they finally started living together, and they engaged with some of the community, at least having occasional dinners with other gay couples. They were still careful about everything then, but with time, they got more comfortable, too. My mom remembers seeing them pretty regularly when she was little, obviously without understanding their relationship, but still—they were family. Which was wonderful for all of them until my great grandfather and Uncle Edgar started acting as messengers for the movement, something my grandpa didn't actually find out about until the arrest."

They're still holding hands, but Alex pulls away now to turn toward Elijah, fingers brushing against his face until Elijah's fully facing him, their foreheads falling together. He's doing okay, Alex thinks, but it won't hurt to breathe for a minute, patience as important here as it has been anywhere else.

Eventually, he steals a quick kiss and sits back again. "We never got your grandpa's take on that—or your mom's, obviously. Does she remember much of it?"

"Yeah, she was 8, so she remembers that the three of them were having lunch when her grandfather had to go ‘run an errand,' and then he just didn't come back," Elijah explains. "She was nervous, maybe just because Uncle Edgar was visibly worried and hurried them out of there, and she knew something must be wrong because they weren't getting ice cream, but she doesn't think anyone said anything to her after that. She went back home to her parents, and she saw her grandfather and Uncle Edgar one more time after that, and then the visits and lunches and everything just stopped."

"And your grandpa?"

"My mom definitely doesn't remember anything about his reaction at the time. And she was just a kid, so once my great grandfather and Uncle Edgar moved, she kind of didn't worry about them one way or the other. Asked about them a few times, maybe, but then it was just a new reality—they weren't around anymore, and she had other grandparents on my grandma's side to still see often enough," Elijah shrugs. "It wasn't until she was older, in college, that she eventually started asking about them again, and my grandpa told her about everything that had happened. And she never knew whether he'd ever been mad at them for the arrest, or for the fact that she could've been caught up in that mess, because by the time she was hearing about everything, he was just incredibly sad about it, missed them terribly, and certainly wasn't mad at them at all."

"And he told her the truth about their relationship?" Alex asks.

"Yeah, he told her, and asked her to keep the family secret out of respect for a decision he hated, but that they had made. My great grandfather and Uncle Edgar refused to risk any more harm to my grandpa, my grandma, or my mom, even once any significant danger was long gone."

Alex nods, his head heavy. "How did you end up at a birthday party in San Diego?"

"Well, we read about my grandpa's annual trips to visit them and Uncle Edgar"s change of heart," Elijah says. "As my great grandfather got older, and he couldn't really argue a reason to keep everyone apart, even if they weren't going to introduce Uncle Edgar as anything other than that, my grandpa pushed for a few family visits. Apparently, the time my great grandfather held me as a baby and the memory I have of the San Diego trip weren"t the only two times my whole family was with them, but more often, it was just my mom and grandparents who went down there."

Elijah gets up then, and heads into the kitchen to make them a couple of drinks, and while Alex thinks he's still full from dinner with his family, he takes the glass when it's handed to him, Elijah taking a long sip of his and ending with some kind of sigh.

"Okay, so there was a little bit of a reunion, some wounds at least slightly patched, and then your great grandfather died," Alex says. "So, what happened then?"

"I remember hearing about it, but my brother, sister, and I were in school, so my mom and my grandparents went to San Diego for the funeral without us. And I don't know—I'm not sure they would've taken us anyway."

"Small service, with just the friends they'd made in the community?"

"Basically, yeah," Elijah confirms.

"And then Uncle Edgar?"

"He stayed in their house alone for a long, long time—probably part sanctuary, part solitary confinement," Elijah says. "My mom and my grandparents continued to visit, maybe even more than they had visited when my great grandfather was still alive, and then eventually my mom and grandpa helped Uncle Edgar move into an assisted living facility about seven years ago."

"In San Diego?"

Elijah snorts. "Yeah. They tried to move him closer again, but he refused and getting him to agree to leave the house at all was damn near impossible, so that was the compromise. They continued to visit there, then my grandpa died, and now it's just my mom."

Alex's eyes go wide. "Wait, what? She still goes?"

"On my grandpa's birthday, my great grandfather's birthday, and on Uncle Edgar's."

"Wow."

"Yep."

They both pause to drink, and Alex gives Elijah a few extra seconds before he goes ahead and pokes at what he assumes is the most tender of all of Elijah's wounds, raw now in a way that it hadn't quite been throughout the rest of his life. It's the obvious question, and Alex thinks he could probably come pretty close to guessing the answer, but he takes a deep breath and keeps his voice as soft as possible.

"So, why didn't she tell you? You said before that your parents didn't say much of anything one way or the other about Peter and Edgar, and that they seemed to outwardly approve more when you liked girls, but if your mom knew everything about them, and she knew about you—that's quite a choice she made."

Elijah's jawline tightens before he seems to become conscious of it, working it free of whatever hold the past, however understandably, has on him. Then he looks skyward, his lip caught between his teeth, and Alex waits him out. He hadn't wanted to be left alone the other night, and Alex won't leave him alone now either, but he can't push too hard when there's a chance of breaking things they've barely built. A minute passes, then another, and maybe even more, but then Elijah leans forward to set his glass on the coffee table and Alex does the same, welcoming Elijah into his arms when they both fall back against the cushions again.

"She said she—it was a mistake—she was—" Elijah's voice cracks fiercely and while he could probably go on, Alex won't make him explain if he doesn't want to.

"Want me to give it a try?" he offers.

"Please."

"She was scared," Alex starts. And honestly, he probably doesn't need to finish when that's the beginning and end of it all, but his arms are around Elijah and neither one of them seems eager to be anywhere else, so he goes on. "For years, she'd kept Peter and Edgar's secret because your grandpa asked her to—because years before that, your grandpa had sworn he was going to treat his father with nothing but the love and respect that had been shown to him—but that's a hell of confusing thing to do when the secret itself is a whole lot of love tied up in guilt and fear and shame. Then when you were little, she was making trips to see Peter and Edgar in San Diego after they'd basically exiled themselves there on her account, which gave her a chance to witness the love and guilt and fear and shame, and a lonely life she would have never wished on her own kid. And maybe she always knew you weren't straight, or maybe your grandpa said something to her, but you were just a little kid when Matthew Shepard was murdered, and that's just one story that had to have hit her hard. It would've been so nice to believe that the world had changed from when Edgar was nearly beaten to death, but what was she going to think, watching the news, and then looking at you? So, she was scared, maybe sometimes selfishly so, and she let your grandpa keep you close because she didn't know how to, and he'd already devoted his entire damn life to loving two men the world wanted to hate."

"Alex," Elijah breathes.

"Mmmm, I'm still right here. Not going anywhere."

He means for it to reassure Elijah, but Alex thinks maybe he needs to remember it too. That while their time together has been driven, and occasionally even halted, by somebody else's love story, they aren't inextricably tied to faded ink and tear-stained pages.

"Things have changed, though," Elijah argues. "And she's had so much time to tell me, but instead I got loved under unspoken conditions that I only occasionally met. Even in the last two years, after my grandpa died, she could've told me."

"Look, I don't know her at all. Maybe we've finally stumbled upon the one bad guy in all of this," Alex says, his mouth warm where he brushes a kiss against the top of Elijah's head. "Or maybe she's one more person who made wrong decisions for what might have been all the right reasons. And I know I just said she might've been selfishly scared, but we all have been—Peter and Edgar and Cassidy and me and your grandpa who stayed quiet out of respect and you who walked away from me because you needed to make sure I was sure—we all hurt somebody somewhere." Alex feels Elijah start to growl, but he goes on. "I'm not really a betting man, but if I was forced to put some money down, I'd guess she's thought about telling you many, many times. Each time she considered it, she probably came up with some good enough reason to wait, and I'm sure that became an easy pattern to fall into. But then your grandpa died, and she put you in charge of cleaning out the house, knowing full well that those books were still there, so I'm pretty sure she was ready to tempt fate after a lifetime of dodging it."

"Guess I got lucky it was you who stopped by my garage sale that morning," Elijah murmurs.

"See? Fate."

Elijah finally turns in Alex's arms, stuck somewhere between a laugh and a frown. "You're not a betting man, but you really believe in fate?"

"How else am I supposed to explain how I was lucky enough to land in your driveway before all the other good-looking single guys in the neighborhood?"

Alex is on his back before he can really figure out how he got there, but he can't possibly care long enough to try, Elijah's body so strong and sure on top of his. And maybe the abrupt shift from where they were just a minute ago should feel stranger than it does, but the way Elijah is kissing him now makes Alex think there's some kind of catharsis coming, a way to wrest back control when it's felt like so much of it might have been stolen from him years ago. Their hands end up everywhere somehow, pushing and pulling without getting anywhere at all, and neither of them seems worried about just how desperate they sound, both left breathless when Elijah finally braces himself over where Alex lies.

"This—is this okay?" Elijah gasps. "It's—I'm sorry."

"No, don't—it's perfect," Alex answers, rising onto his elbows to chase another kiss. "You gonna take me to bed again?"

Elijah slips away, very, very, very slowly crawling down Alex's body. "Soon. Just give me a few minutes here first."

It's a lot later when they're half-asleep and curled around each other in Elijah's bed, a sliver of moonlight cutting across the duvet they're buried beneath, Elijah's hand combing through Alex's hair and bringing him so close to the edge of something.

Somehow, Alex still finds the strength to ask the question that has felt inevitable since he'd called Elijah sometime between Thanksgiving dinner and dessert.

"When are we going to San Diego?"