He's Not My Type

8

Elijah doesn't tell him.

What he does do is keep going to the shop every day that Christian has a shift. Sometimes he spreads out his readings on the Chesterfield sofa in the basement, sometimes he takes a seat next to Christian at the counter. Sometimes Christian quizzes him on developmental milestones in under-fives as he reorganizes the Post-Punk shelves.

Nick, despite being an actual lecturer, had tended to complain when Elijah insisted on spending time revising when he could be going out with him.

Christian, for all that he never passed his A levels and has never been to uni, takes revision week quite seriously.

Just like Nick, he teases Elijah for the way there are more highlighted than unhighlighted words in his copy of The Developing Child. But, unlike Nick, he doesn't try to explain to Elijah that it defeats the whole purpose. Instead, when Elijah's highlighter runs out of ink, he goes through all the drawers until he finds an old yellow one under a pile of receipts to replace it with.

And Christian might steal Elijah's daily study schedules and decorate them with doodles of skateboards and penises and stick figures with curly hair.

But he also refuses to let Elijah get distracted when he's supposed to be reading — one afternoon even goes to the lengths of replacing The Buzzcocks on the record player with a selection from their small Classical section — but is more than happy to reward him with kisses when he gets to the end of a chapter.

Because, yes. They do keep kissing.

But it's not Elijah's fault that Christian is a such a good kisser.