The Time Taken to Understand (BoyxBoy)

Chapter Twenty-Eight~ Alec

Alec was lying on the couch, staring at the clock as he often did on Friday afternoons. He would be there for hours, and he knew it, but he couldn't help torture himself by watching as the countless minutes ticked by until Mark returned home. It was already two, which meant that Mark's class had gotten out three hours ago, and he still had yet to return.

This begun three or so weeks ago, and was getting more and more frequent. The first day, Mark had come home five hours late, and when Alec had asked where he had been, he had nervously diverted the question, saying "no where important," before ducking into the bathroom. He had shrugged this off at first, until it happened again. And again. And then he'd be coming home later and later friday nights.

Alec thought he was cheating.

Why else would he be so secretive? Why else would he not be coming home until hours after he was supposed to? Why else would he not be able to meet Alec's eyes half of the time, and when he did he flushed red? It just didn't make sense. Things had been perfect over break, but once they returned, Mark had changed.

Tobias, the orange tabby cat that Mark had gotten him for christmas, jumped up onto the couch, crawling into Alec's lap and curling into a small ball and Alec looked down at him for a moment, resting a hand against the kitten, that purred happily and Alec groaned loudly, giving in and running his fingers through the soft fur, but even that didn't take his mind off of it completely. He thought about when he got the present.

They had...

Just gotten back from home, and Alec was studying for the final exams he had missed. He was overly stressed in not having looked and the books the entire time they were gone, and the only thing that could calm him down, which was Mark, was mysteriously out.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Penny and Adam had come over the apartment that afternoon and kept distracting him from what he was supposed to be doing. "You guys," Alec said, his paintable running very thin. Adam and Penny fell silent, looking at him curiously, "could you-"

The door banged open and they all looked up towards Mark, who was grinning and holding an extremely orange kitten about his head. "Ta-da".

Alec felt his eyes get very wide. "Whose is that?" He asked, and Mark crossed the floor of the apartment and dropped the cat gently on top of all of Alec's books that were on his lap.

"It's yours". Alec made a noise that he really couldn't explain and Mark looked extremely amused. "It's your late Christmas prese- are you okay?"

"Oh my god," Alec began, petting the kitten, his fingers feeling the soft fur and he wondered if now was the time to tell Mark he loved him. With a glance at Adam and Penny, he decided not to.

"Did I do a good job this year?"

The little cat meowed and jumped off of Alec's lap, going to search the apartment for a while, and Alec stood, grabbing the front of Mark's shirt and pulling his lips down against his own. The other didn't hesitate to kiss him back, pushing him back down onto the couch behind him and sliding in between his knees. Mark pulled back an inch, glancing to the side at Penny and Adam.

"I'm going you fuck him now, so you need to leave," he said, and Alec reached up and bit his neck. "Fuck, Alec".

"Yeah, we're going-" and then Mark was kissing him again and the only sound in the apartment was the door slamming behind Adam and Penny, and the pleasing sound of the zipper on the front of Alec's jeans being pulled dow-

When the clock ticked past two thirty, he just couldn't bare to sit anymore.

The cat jumped off of his lap as he stood, scurrying over the floor. Alec paced for what must have been three hours, his eyes looking everywhere but nowhere at the same time. When he looked at the time, he was annoyed to find that it had only been seven minutes and went to go shower.