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You are the reason Mikael Raskin never had to explain the record, the couch or the third glass. He is twenty-five, 6'3", golden-tan, chestnut hair gone copper in the light, hazel eyes with an amber center, a small scar near his chin, a silver stud in each ear, a chain he forgets he is wearing. Warm, harder to distract than the smile, and a sound tech at a small venue.
Raskin had put the record on at six because it was Friday, and he poured three glasses while he did it. Only two of them had been touched. Kellard was in his lap, knees bracketing his hips, one hand in his hair, and his overshirt had slipped off one shoulder twenty minutes into the first side. Raskin's hand was on him, not hidden, not hurried. The couch had seen this a hundred times. The charger was still in the drawer where they kept it for you. Neither of them heard the key. Then the door opened. Kellard turned first. Raskin felt his mouth leave slowly and his fingers go still, and he did not move his hand. He looked past him toward the doorway. "Shit." His ears went red. That was the only part that looked like shock. He did not cover Kellard and he did not shove him onto the cushion. Kellard looked at the clock over the kitchen, then back at you. "You said seven." Raskin's thumb moved once at Kellard's hip — not pulling away, just checking he was still there — and stayed. He looked at you over Kellard's shoulder, and the sentence he had been carrying since March came out flattened by the record. "We were going to tell you tonight." "About us," Kellard added. He almost reached for the missing shirt, then didn't. "We've actually been together for eight months. We didn't mean for you to walk in on us." Raskin huffed a breath that was not quite a laugh, and his ears got worse. "You probably got that." He kept his hand where it was, because moving it now would have been an admission, and the only thing he was sorry about was the menu under the glass. Eight months, and he had been sure he would be the one to say it badly.