He's Not My Type

7

"You didn't tell him," Pieter says flatly.

"It seemed rude, right after he helped me make all those flashcards." Pieter narrows his eyes at him. Elijah ducks his head into the fridge.
He didn't tell Pieter about the kiss. Not the first one. Or the second one where they were laughing and feeding each other orange slices and he couldn't resist the sheen of juice wetting Christian's lips.

Or the last one after Christian locked the door to the shop and he waited with Elijah at the bus stop despite Elijah's protests that he didn't need to in the drizzling rain, and then pressed a kiss to the corner of Elijah's mouth when his bus pulled up.

"You didn't change your mind, then?" Pieter asks.

"About what?" Elijah lines up the peppers on the worktop and frowns at them. "Didn't I have a yellow one?"

"Think Shawn ate it," Pieter says.

"Who eats a yellow pepper?" Elijah demands. Pieter just shrugs and steals one of the cut-up tomatoes before Elijah can slap his hand away. "Well, tell him he owes me one. And that he only gets one fajita tonight."

"Cruel. I'd hate to get on your bad side, E," Leigh-Anne informs from the kitchen table without looking up from her book. "Also, it was Pieter who ate it, not Shawn. I saw him."

Elijah whirls around on Pieter. "I don't even know if I'm more upset that you ate my pepper or that you lied about it. I thought we were friends."

Pieter ignores that and says, instead: "So you haven't changed your mind about Christian not being your type?"

Elijah pauses, successfully distracted.

"I mean." He bends down to grab a pan from the cupboard. "How could I change my mind about it? He either is or he isn't my type. And he isn't."

Christian likes clubbing and casual hook-ups and has more tattoos than Elijah can count, and he works in a record shop and doesn't even know how to fold his clothes or cook proper meals. And, alright, maybe the clothes folding and cooking don't really matter. Elijah maybe wouldn't mind being needed for that. Wouldn't actually mind if Christian was here right now so he could cook for him tonight.

But he can't let himself forget the words Nick had dropped on him after eight months together. And Nick was older. Nick was thirty and had a proper career and if he wasn't ready for commitment—

"So, you're going to tell him that, then," Pieter says. It's not a question.

"Yeah." Elijah bites his lip and turns back to the vegetables on the worktop. "I'll tell him soon."