Liam was out and they were on his roof having just bought the concert tickets after the Dan Martinez fiasco. The wind whipped viciously. Leo did not have a good excuse for being there bar the fact that the roof was possibly his favourite place on earth. Leo's guitar was slung between his legs.
"Any song requests?"
Xavier gave him a mocking smile. "I'm not into Ed Sheeran."
Leo fought the urge to scream. "God how is it that you're arrogant even about your music taste?"
Xavier gave Leo another mocking grin but something about the moonlight stripped it of its bite.
Leo started strumming a song.
"You know Led Zeppelin?" He asked with barely concealed shock.
"I didn't know you had a monopoly on listening to rock." Leo frowned with concentration but his fingers seemed to know where to go.
"It's just-" Xavier seemed to consider his words for a moment, exposing the column of his throat as he took another gulp of the 1966 Single Malt Scotch Whiskey. "It's just that you're always so happy, even when I piss you off. Happy people don't listen to Led Zeppelin."
"I have more than one setting you know," Leo grit out, hating the assumptions he was making.
Xavier scoffed and took another long gulp. "You're trying to tell me that you're not happy most of the time with your little martyr speeches and your - "
Leo stopped playing abruptly. "Doesn't mean I don't get sad sometimes. Why do you have to be such a dick about everything?"
"I'm not trying to be a dick, just trying to understand what you have to be sad about."
Leo angrily strummed a lone dissonant chord.
Another swig and a knowing smirk. "It's a boy isn't it?"
Leo flushed in humiliation, hating that he was right.
Xavier's eyes glinted as he spotted the truth, reading Leo so easily. "Ah, unrequited love."
Leo chuckled bitterly, desperately hoping he would not press any further. He should have known better.
"What's his name?"
Leo reached out, hoping that Xavier couldn't see the trembling in his hands, and tipped back some whiskey. If he was going to do this then God Damnit he was going to do it drunk. "Maximus."
Xavier snorted. "Well with a name like that you should've seen it coming."
Leo took another long gulp to hide the trembling of his hands.
Xavier eyed him out of the corner of his eye. "So what did he do? Sleep with your best friend? Film you and put it on the internet?"
Leo set the bottle down, harder than he intended to and pressed his hands flat against his thighs. God, why could he still remember what Max had said like it happened yesterday?
"Nothing that bad," Leo mumbled eventually, hoping that his words would get lost in the wind. "It was my fault really. We slept together a couple of times, I caught feelings, he said some shitty things."
Xavier looked at Leo long and hard, searching his eyes for something - what, Leo didn't know, but he must have found it because he eventually looked away and reached for the bottle. "You're an idiot but I'm sorry he said those things, whatever they were."
Leo swallowed, ignoring the itch in his throat. The heaviness in his chest was no longer unbearable but it lingered and he smoothed his hand against his chest. "Yeah, well. He was probably right anyways."
Xavier tipped back some more whiskey. "You're an idiot if you believe that."
Leo's mind betrayed him then and revisited his last time with Max.
Do you want to do something a little different this time? He whispered into Leo's ear, teeth and lips driving him into a frenzy.
Leo grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, coy. God, he'd never felt like this before. Leo wanted him and he wanted Leo and right now Leo felt like he would die from this feeling.
Max smirked and licked up the column of his throat. Come on baby, say yes. You'll love it, I promise.
Leo gasped, back arching as Max delivered a particularly cruel kiss to his neck. I didn't know you were into this sort of thing. Do you want me to be a sexy schoolboy or do you -
His fingers slipped down the front of Leo's jeans. Leo moaned in pleasure and felt his eyes flutter shut.
Blindfold me, Max asked in between kisses, that hand relentless. Leo nodded eager to please.
Leo fumbled with the tie and Max wet his lips with his tongue as Leo placed it over his eyes. Leo slipped onto his lap and Max tipped his head back, hands gripping at Leo's waist. their clothes came off, Leo could feel Max's desire digging into his hip. Leo was breathless with excitement.
Leo let himself sink down onto him.
Max groaned and thrust his hips into him ruthlessly. Oh Lee, he moaned, you're so perfect. I've never felt like this before. You were made for me.
Oh Lee, he kept moaning.
Lee. Lee. Lee.
You feel so good Lee.
I've imagined doing this so many times, Lee.
You have no idea how much I want you, Lee.
Then as he neared the edge, Liam, he said once, twice. Liam.
Liam.
Leo froze. His entire world seemed to tilt and spin and come crashing down. Some horrible, twisting, writhing thing crawled through his chest and left something burning there in its wake. There was a stinging in the back of Leo's eyes. He stopped moving. It was like there were a million ants crawling over his skin, a million ants and bugs and insects pouring over his skin. He was going to be sick. He was going to be sick all over himself. W-what? Leo managed to stumble out.
Max didn't reply, gasping with pleasure. But Leo knew what he had heard. He couldn't stop hearing it. Liam. Leo tried to get up and off. He needed to get off, off off. He was going to be sick. He was going to be sick all over them. But Max gripped harder at his hips and thrust ruthlessly into him. Twice. Thrice. And then he finished.
Leo stood swaying a little, cum dripping out of his ass, he had never felt so raw. He had the urge to cover himself with his hands but it was too late. He had seen it all.
Leo cleared his throat and grabbed the bottle from Xavier. "So what's your sob story then? Parents died in a car crash? Sister diagnosed with cancer?"
"Brother who committed suicide actually", Xavier commented drily.
"Shit." He had been a little harsh. "I'm sorry. You probably hear that a lot, but still."
"S'fine." Xavier looked oddly vulnerable in the moonlight, an unguarded look in his eyes that made him look young. "Play the song again?"
So Leo did. And then he played another, and another. Xavier tipped his head back against the roof and Leo had the strange feeling that he was dedicating each song to his brother.
___
The next day Leo was stranded at Liam's yet again, whiling away the time in the hopes that in the near future his dearest brother could drive him to the library.
"Arghhh", Leo appealed to the Gods Above in frustration. "Iwndhiekwidghrjwjo!"
"Oh. It's you," a voice answered, but it was not God responding to his prayers. It was a dark haired twat who got on his nerves.
Leo spun on his wheely chair and saw Xavier in the doorway, face etched with that permanent look of disappointment and irritation he wore whenever he saw him.
"Surprise?" Leo tried, his faux smile a twisted grimace.
"I heard disturbing sounds and I wouldn't put it past you to personally flog people who buy fast fashion."
Leo rolled his eyes. "Can I help you? Or are you just here to annoy me?"
"Why were you making those deranged noises?" Xavier drawled, scrolling through his phone in boredom.
"Sex," Leo deadpanned.
Xavier's jaw twitched with irritation but he kept scrolling. "Don't remind me."
Leo rolled his eyes and gave him the real reason just as Xavier turned away in the doorway. "I went through a phase when I was younger where I listened to this one German singer and now I've completely forgotten his name and the names of his songs and it's driving me crazy."
Xavier paused, half turned in the doorway and ambled up to Leo's chair. He pressed up behind him for a brief moment and squinted at the screen. "Girl dancing in gas mask German", he read. "Interesting kink. You almost had me with your story there, it was almost boring enough to be believable."
"That's all I can remember from the music video!" Leo defended, wishing desperately that he would take a step back. Why did he smell so good? Leo shook his head clear of the thought.
"See now you're just adding too much detail. Makes it a little too thought out to be the truth."
"Xavier, I don't watch Holocaust porn," Leo whined.
Xavier chuckled and Leo felt his breath blow across the back of his neck. He suppressed a shiver.
"Pretty sure they didn't have gas masks in the Holocaust," Xavier noted.
Leo felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Was I being insensitive? That wasn't anti-Semitic right? I mean I wasn't making a joke about the Holocaust right?" Leo cut himself off, clamping his lips tightly together.
Xavier raised an eyebrow and looked rather amused. "Why are you asking me?"
"Well because you're ... you know."
Xavier raised his second eyebrow in question.
"Because you're ..." Leo gestured into the air as though that made his sentence more coherent.
"I'm what?" Xavier was biting his lip to hold in his laughter.
Leo sighed in defeat. "Never mind."
Xavier laughed and walked away.
Asshole, Leo thought before anxiously typing in am I being anti-Semitic just to make sure he hadn't crossed any lines.