Page 25 of Cross the Line

“I know I’m beautiful, it’s okay to look,” Alec says, hoping he doesn’t sound as off-kilter as he feels.

“So humble, too,” Theo snorts.

Alec turns his back on Theo, not trusting himself to stare at him head-on. He’s like looking at the sun. You crave the warmth, the light, but when you look too long, you get burned. He busies himself with moving boxes from one stack to another, hoping Theo doesn’t ask what the fuck he’s doing since he really doesn’t know.

“Being humble is overrated. Like okay, no one wants you to be an asshole, and trust me, we’ve got a few grade-A dicks on the team. And I don’t mean that in a good way, either,” Alec mumbles, well aware of how Grady and Dwight seem absolutely positive that Alec has a crush on them just because he’s into guys. They’re not outwardly homophobic or anything, there’s a zero tolerance policy for that on the team, but they’re fucking obnoxious and make comments about their dicks. They get away with it by doing it to everyone under the guise of locker room talk, but it doesn’t escape Alec’s notice that when no one is paying attention, it’s directed towards him. They’re either heavily closeted or fucking assholes, or both. Either way, they annoy the shit out of him. Alec’s not cocky, he’s confident, and there’s a difference.

“Is someone on the team making you uncomfortable?” Theo asks.

Red warning lights go off in Alec’s head. The last thing he needs is Theo talking to Jason, who would likely storm into the fucking Dean’s office if he thought something was wrong, or talk to their parents and try and bring a fucking lawsuit or something. Alec appreciates his brothers, he really does. He knows how fucking lucky he is to be so accepted and loved when so many other queer kids aren’t, but that doesn’t mean he wants his big brother solving all his problems. The world is full of dick bags and Alec can handle himself. He has been for three years.

“Aw, are you worried about me, Theodore?” Alec tips his head back and smiles. If he’s hoping Theo will shake his head in exasperation and then move on, he’s sorely mistaken.

“You know no one is allowed to make you uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong with virginity if that’s what it’s about and?—”

The box currently poised in Alec’s hand falls hard and heavy on his foot, and Alec lets out a string of expletives that would make his abuelita roll in her grave. Worse than the stinging pain is the way the packing tape on the top of the box pops when it crashes to the cement floor, sending measuring cups and utensils rolling across. Nursing a sore toe and an even more sore ego, Alec drops to the ground to make a grab for the contents.

“I thought we agreed to never speak of that again,” Alec hisses, fingers curling around the end of a spatula. He throws it in the now upturned box, eying the rest of the contents with a sigh. There’s something poetic about Alec’s perfectly packed box crashing to the floor to create a mess that mirrors this conversation. Alec fucking hates poetry.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed about,” Theo tries, apparently still very much speaking about it.

“I know there isn’t,” Alec snaps, crawling on his hands and knees after the little frog-shaped kitchen timer he bought. It seemed cute at the time, but now every time Alec sets a timer while cooking, the little frog is going to serve as a reminder of this mortifying moment.

It’s not like he’s actually embarrassed about his virginity. Mostly. He knows it’s a social construct. He knows there’s no magic age or that being a virgin forever is even a bad thing. The problem is that Alec isn’t a virgin by choice. Not exactly. He’s been propositioned more times than he will ever tell anyone and every time they’d gotten even close, dread had swirled in the pit of Alec’s stomach at the idea of being intimate with someone he didn’t love. Maybe he’s a romantic, or maybe he’s fucking pathetic pining away for the same guy for six years, a guy who will never want him the same way. All he knows is there is one reason and one reason only that Alec is still a virgin at twenty-one and that reason is currently standing behind him.

“Alec.”

With that one word, the fight goes out of Alec. He wants to be snarky and cranky, and if it were one of his brothers talking to him right now he would be, but this is Theo. Theo, who has the most unselfish heart of anyone Alec’s ever met. Theo, who has no idea that he’s the reason no one else has ever been able to get in Alec’s pants. Because despite all the evidence to suggest his feelings will never be returned, Alec doesn’t know how to switch off his stupid fucking feelings and his stupid fucking heart. None of which is Theo’s fault or his responsibility to fix. Alec is the one who needs to get his shit together and handle this.

“It’s nothing, okay? Just drop it. Please.”

A hand appears in his line of vision. Theo’s hand, with his massive, thick fingers wrapped around the little frog timer, which he holds out to Alec like a peace offering.

“Thanks,” Alec mumbles, letting his own fingers brush over Theo’s for a second longer than necessary.

When he lifts his gaze, he finds Theo smiling at him. A real smile, the kind usually reserved for Jason, and something in Alec heals and breaks all at once. With that radiant smile still in place, Theo reaches out to ruffle Alec’s hair before moving on to help collect the rest of the utensils. Alec holds his breath until Theo’s back is turned on him before letting out a shuddering breath. He squeezes his eyes shut. Alec has done a lot of hard things in his life, but this might be the hardest.

CHAPTER 6

Theo

Theo would very much love to say he spends the next few days not thinking about Alec, but unfortunately that would be a lie. He’s got a job he can’t neglect and a huge report due soon, but in between working and drinking more coffee than is probably smart for someone with a brain like his, he thinks about Alec. About his smile and the sound of his laugh, and the way Alec can get Theo out of his head like no one else.

Every time he stops thinking about Alec, only a few seconds pass before he starts again, as if his brain refuses to move on. He replays the night of the party over and over in his mind like a goddamn movie, unable to forget the way Alec looked dancing. He thinks about helping Alec move in over the weekend a lot too, about what it’d been like to see Alec in a situation entirely outside the King family. And how much seeing him in his own element with his friends had shaken up the little box in his brain where Alec had always firmly been.

That box where his brain put Alec when he was little used to have facts about Alec like ‘plays soccer, scared of the dark, sucked his thumb, little kid.’ Now the box includes things like ‘not a kid anymore, cooks killer breakfast burritos, makes Theo laugh, is beautiful.’ Who knew all it would take was a few tacos, getting drunk off his ass, and a college move-in day to shake up everything Theo thought he knew about Alexander King?

After three days of letting his imagination run wild, he does more than just think about Alec. He puts his internet savvy to good use and starts looking up Alec’s various social media accounts. Doing this makes Theo feel a little weird, like he’s spying, yet that feeling is apparently not enough to deter him from doing it.

Theo tries to tell himself that the only reason he’s doing it is because Alec is gorgeous, but there’s a very large part of him that knows this isn’t the full truth. When Theo looks at Alec’s smile, there’s a pang of regret at missing out on the man he’s become, but more than that is a feeling he isn’t used to: longing.

Looking at Alec’s Instagram doesn’t feel like crossing the line because he and Theo are technically mutuals, even if prior to this moment Theo hadn’t logged into his own account in over six months and didn’t know how active Alec was.

Alec’s account is a treasure trove of photos and witty tags that leave Theo smiling, easily able to imagine the one-liners falling from Alec’s sarcastic, pretty mouth. He spends so long scrolling he falls asleep with his phone in his hand, embarrassed to wake up the next morning to a blaring alarm and the dirty reminder of what he’d done when he unlocks it and sees Alec’s face staring back at him.

Despite promising himself not to be a creep and do the same thing twice, he does it anyway. That night after he finishes cleaning up from dinner and showers, he finds himself once again scrolling social media, only this time he ventures outside of Alec’s account. It’s not long before he finds a photo of Antonio and Alec together and ends up clicking on Antonio’s profile to find new photos of Alec. He’s pretty sure resorting to looking for photos of Alec on his best friend’s account, a guy who Theo is definitely not friends with, is crossing a line but there’s no one to bear witness to Theo’s treachery. Especially not Alec or Jason.

Embarrassed by his own actions but unable to stop, Theo turns the lights down low before flipping off the television in his room and ignoring the weird feeling in his chest as he sits on his bed. Surrounded by quiet and dark, Theo retrieves his phone and once again opens the app. Despite his slight misgivings about what the hell he’s doing, he spends a good hour scrolling through Antonio’s account in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Alec. He’s not disappointed, finding almost more photos of Alec’s face than there was on his own account.

---