the story of us[ra]

[Admin Nel]

“No tradition overawed the boys. No convention settled what was poetic, what absurd. They were concerned with a passion that few English minds have admitted, and so created untrammelled. Something of exquisite beauty arose in the mind of each at last, something unforgettable and eternal, but built of the humblest scraps of speech and from the simplest emotions.”
- E.M. Forster

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27th January 1995, NYC.

It was long past midnight before they were truly alone - they’d clambered out onto the fire escape in search of fresh air, but with a pack of cigarettes clasped in their hands. A few murmured words later, there were two small orange glowing lights in heavy black that surrounded them, and they let out long smokey breaths together, dangling over the irons and watching the streets below.

“I've been reading muggle books since I was a kid,” Joey admitted with a smile, sometime later. Ezra was watching him with a vivid kind of interest. “Easier to hide the gay ones from your parents when they’re written by folks they’ve never heard of.”

Ezra let out a long drag, and returned the smile. “Which ones?” he asked, happy to listen to Joey properly talk.

“All of ‘em,” Joey shrugged, looking down and letting a few locks fall in front of his eyes. “Wilde, Zola, Capote, Vidal - I used to sneak in and out of the muggle stores in the Village and buy ‘em all.”

“Oh he’s cultured,” Ezra said slowly, amused, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the way Joey’s cheeks seemed to light up and how he studiously avoided his gaze. It was darling.

“It - well, it helped,” he said, as if he had to explain himself, even a little. As if he could say anything that would make Ezra think him silly, or immature.

“Oh yeah.” Ezra nodded. He took another drag of his cigarette, and turned his body to face Joey, his hip resting uncomfortably on the cold metal of the fire escape - and continued. “My grandmother called me ‘an Oscar Wilde type’ when I was twelve,” Ezra said, his hand not holding his fag gesturing wildly. “Well I hadn’t a clue, had I - the name meant nothing to me at that age, but my mum - bless her heart, she’s always been a good one - she went out and bought me The Picture of Dorian Grey when I asked. Can you believe? Well, I ate it up even if I didn’t understand most of it - I guess I just felt it more than anything.”

Ezra took a pause for another drag of his cigarette, but Joey did nothing to interrupt his ramble. He was looking back at Ezra again, watching him intently with those round brown eyes and he spoke. “Completely flamboyant and liked to look at boys - check and check - and to be honest that’s all I needed from that point. It made enough sense to me - I was one of those, and it never even occurred to me not to be.”

Joey was smiling, softly again. “‘I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,’” he said quietly - Ezra raised a questioning brow, and he explained, his eyes dropping to the floor again, nervous. “Forster - it was always my favourite.”

And Ezra wanted to know everything about him.

“Why?”

Joey shrugged a little and looked out to the city again. “It was happy,” he said simply. “And I dunno - Alec and Maurice always made a lot of sense to me.”

Ezra smiled, and turned to look outwards with him, settling a little closer. “Well I always liked a happy ending. I guess I’ll have to read that one on your recommendation. Got a copy?”

There was that gentle smile again. “I might,” he replied.

“I’ll have to pop by and pick it up sometime,” Ezra added, stubbing out his cigarette on the railing and dropping it. When he turned to look back at Joey, the younger man’s eyes were wide, and hopeful - and that little lock of hair was back, drooping over his face.

“Yeah, I…that would be great,” he said slowly, and he abortedly tried to tuck his hair back into place, but it stubbornly fell back down.

Ezra’s whole body felt warm, despite his bare arms outside on this cold New York night - and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching forward to tuck the hair back himself, smiling and murmuring, “You really are incredibly endearing when you do that.”

And there was that round-eyed faint blush look again - it just became more and more lovely every time he saw it. “Come on,” Ezra said, pulling the cigarette out from Joey’s loose lips and stubbing it out too. “The party will be dreadfully boring without us, and I can’t have that happening on my watch. I have a reputation to keep up, you know? Well, less of a reputation than a duty at this point, really - there’s nothing quite as tragic as a boring party, and if it happened on my watch I’d never forgive myself…”

He’d slipped his hand into Joey’s without even thinking about it, leading him back through the window into the busy apartment - and Joey had accepted it without a word, happy to be led by the other man, smiling gently and with rapt eyes all the while.