Brent, Ilad
It is obvious that Ilad is at home, for there is his motorcycle sitting in its place before the steps that rise to the front porch of the apartment. But the delay stretches, between the knock that comes at the door and his answer to it. Still, he comes eventually, with the rattle of chain and then the swing of the door wide open. His dark collared shirt is crisply cotton, sooty black over the fit of navy jeans. His feet are bare, though the rest of his clothes and the whisper of scent he wears close to his skin suggest that he maybe intended to go out at some point this evening. It does not appear that he has gotten around to it. "Ah," he says, with the arch of his dark brows as he takes in his visitor. "Hello there."
"Hey," Brent says brightly, smile warming at the sight of him. His gaze manages not to wander. "Sorry to come by unannounced. I just didn't know if I'd see you tomorrow, and I was kind've excited about this, so--" He shifts the package that is tucked in one arm, making his reference clear. "It's your birthday present," he explains.
"My birthday present," Ilad repeats, gradation of tone in the echo from puzzled to amused and points warmer; he takes a half-step back into his apartment on one bare heel. With an open gesture of his free hand as he holds loosely to the doorknob with the other, he indicates that Brent should come inside. "Come in and welcome." The apartment looks mostly clean, though there is a half-eaten oven pizza sitting out on the kitchen counter that Ilad has not yet bothered to put the rest of away (perhaps he is planning to continue graze on it). The sabbath candles are, for whatever reason, lit -- out on the table. There is a notebook sitting before them with Ilad's pen across its cover, before his blond-white chair.
Brent notes pizza, candles, notebook -- particularly the last, but only in terms of what it speaks of Ilad's activities for the night, not any attempt to snoop into the actual contents. "I had to get it rushed," he says as he walks in, toeing his shoes off near the door and hanging up his coat, "but I know the right people, and I've just got a face you can't say no to sometimes." His grin comes slightly crooked, and he finally approaches Ilad with the present itself. "Yeah, I know it's not your birthday yet, but I like birthdays, so." So you must accept and open, dammit.
"In Israel," Ilad tells Brent, with the familiar tenderness enfolded into the syllables of home, "it is already tomorrow, nearly daybreak. So in a way, it is my birthday." He takes the package in his hands and looks at it for a moment as though he doesn't really understand, on some level, the present-opening process. He lopes the few paces across the room over to the sofa to take a knee across the cushions and begin to strip off the paper.
"There we go," Brent says, eminently pleased with Ilad's logic. He follows over to the sofa, settling next to Ilad while still giving him room to open the present. The professionally-done print of the Firebird painting is not so large as the original -- thankfully -- but it is still on the large size. It has been framed and matted tastefully. Brent's gaze, being familiar with the contents of the package, is most settled on Ilad as he waits for cues either subtle or blatant from the man's reaction.
Ilad is a subtle man, his reactions subtle by habit; but the extension of his silence and his stillness as he surveys the print does, perhaps, speak volumes. His glance slips sidelong to find Brent upon his sofa, the shadow of a smile curving his mouth and warming his coffee-dark eyes. "And so," he says. "This one will fit in my apartment."
At some point, Brent has ended up with the inside of his bottom lip caught between his teeth, waiting for words. Then his smile breaks out once more, brightening his eyes and crinkling their corners. "That was the idea," he says. "You just seemed to like the original so much, I thought--" A hand gestures down to the frame. This.
"It was well thought." Ilad's voice is low. He spends a moment studying Brent's features, as though marking them with his gaze. He looks away with an arch of his brows. "I believe you saw, it -- it speaks, to me." He lifts a hand, this time not to touch the print itself, but to draw his fingertips along its frame until they reach the corner and his hand falls away again. Voice sanded a little rough, he adds a quiet, "Thank you, my friend."
"I did." Brent's voice goes softer to math Ilad's reaction. "And it -- it touches something very special, seeing my work speak to someone. Especially someone I'm -- close to." The hiccup, the consideration of words, is brief. He lifts a hand to settle light on Ilad's shoulder. "You're welcome," he says, quite sincerely.
Ilad is strong and warm beneath Brent's hand -- yet some of the febrile heat that ordinarily burns in his skin seems to have cooled, somehow. He is warm, but not overwarm. His smile twitches slightly wider with the cock of his eyebrow, and he looks back at Brent for a moment's quiet before looking away to let his gaze stroke the various walls of his apartment instead. "We shall ... have to put this somewhere, I think."
"Your painting now," Brent says, hand sliding down one shoulderblade and then resettling, a little self-conscious of its recent behavior, on the back of the sofa. "Avi here? Or do you not need both roommates for art-hanging decisions?" he asks, tone playful.
"Avi is not involved in these matters," Ilad answers gravely. He looks at the walls again with a thoughtful frown infiltrating his expression as he adds, "Though I suppose I could wait and ask him."
"I haven't had a roommate since I lived in New York," Brent says, amusement curling into his voice, "so I might have forgotten how these matters work."
"He tends to follow my lead." Ilad shifts upon the sofa, re-angling the frame so that it is at a diagonal across the corner of the couch. He sits next to Brent, beside it, upon the middle seat, and slants a sidelong look back at his friend. "Perhaps I am too lax about seeking his opinion."
"He does seem to think very highly of your judgment," Brent says, his body angling more open towards Ilad as he hooks his elbow on the back of the couch and leans his head in his hand. "He, uh--" He tries vainly to suppress a grin. "He kind've drunk dialed me last night." Voice lowering to a whisper, he adds, "I'm not supposed to tell you."
Ilad looks pained. He lifts a hand to draw his thumb along the crumple of his brow, his back straight in its settle against the back of the two-toned sofa. "Oh, no," he says.
With his free hand, Brent waves away worries with the lightest of laughs. "He just -- likes Ari a lot, I guess. And maybe wants advice? But maybe not, because I don't know anything about girls." It is /very/ hard to suppress the smile, now, and it keeps peeking out at the corners of his mouth. "He's all nervous about her. It's a little adorable."
"He has asked me for advice, as well," Ilad intones with the faintest of tremors buried in his low voice for what a terrible idea /that/ is. He lets his hands drop to his lap, and the curve of his lips slips a little wider, Brent's insuppressable smile a contagion between them.
"Apparently I somehow manage to be a better expert on serious matters with women than you," Brent says, a little humorously incredulous at the idea.
"You might well be," Ilad says, gaze narrowing as he cants his head to study him.
"I do have a lot of experience in listening to women talk about their love lives," Brent replies, laughter beginning to bubble in his voice.
"Mm," Ilad hums. There is something obscurely sardonic in the single hummed note.
"And I have a lot of female friends." How many points does Brent need? "Anyways. I don't think I know /nothing/ about women like your brother seems to think."
"He is a good boy," Ilad says, remarkably quick to defend his brother at variance from usual, though there is no real sharpness in his voice; his observation is mild, if firm. "Sometimes obtuse."
"I believe you," Brent assures him, smile warming a little fond at the defense. "I'm not actually bothered by it, Ilad."
"I know," Ilad says. His expression twitches, a rueful edge to his grimace coupled with the slight shake of his head.
Brent's gaze goes thoughtful as it traces brief over the lines of Ilad's expression. "Will you both go back?" he asks, a little suddenly.
Brows arching, Ilad looks back at him with an expression of some surprise. "I do not know," he says. "If he has plans, I do not know what they are."
"But--" Brent hesitates over the words. "If he stays. Will you go back without him?"
Ilad starts to throw off a reply, of something -- who knows what, for he is given pause. He closes his mouth, a troubled cast shadowing his dark eyes. He looks at Brent, almost as though he is hunting for some other question in his expression, and then glances away again. "I -- always thought that one day, eventually, I would go home."
Brent nods, quiet for a moment. He lets his gaze drift away, not purposefully avoiding, but searching for a more neutral place to muse upon. "I'd be sad," he finally says, "to see you go."
At first Ilad only answers this with silence, with a faint crease to his brow and the cant of his head to one side. He glances along the side of the couch to the art that he has propped at a diagonal. He lifts his hand to drop it upon Brent's shoulder beside him, with the pressure of a squeeze while the faint smile tugs at his mouth. He says, "This is a very early counting of our chickens."
"I know," Brent replies, smile tugging faint as he lifts pale eyes back to Ilad's. "I just -- It came up in conversation with your brother the other week. Him going home or not. You wanting to. Just--" His gaze slips away again. "I don't know."
"There are ways that being here is simpler," Ilad says. His thumb strokes over Brent's shoulder in a slow glide, back and forth, and then he withdraws his hand. "There are other ways that it is not. Sometimes I wonder what I have sown for myself, by leaving."
For a moment Brent's hand shifts, almost lifting as if to touch the hand on his shoulder, but then the touch is gone. "I don't quite understand -- I mean. I understand wanting to keep an eye on your brother. But kids go off to college all the time, sometimes across the globe, and how you talk about your home--"
Ilad is still and silent for a moment, weighing, carefully measuring his words. He does not, quite, look back at him. "I needed to leave for a time," he says. Closer to the truth than he has ever walked, he says quietly, "There was a -- bombing. The circumstances did not ... look good. For me, for my career."
Brent takes this in silently, gaze soft and undemanding on his friend. "You mean--" He struggles a bit, working his way through the possible reasoning. "Was it--" Hesitation is extreme now, shaping silence for fear of making accusations. "Were you somehow responsible?" It is entirely supported by worry and concern.
"No," Ilad answers, "not at all. Terrorists were responsible. But the circumstances-- as I said, did not look good. I was on leave at the time. There were questions, as to why I was there, as to how I -- in any event," he wiggles his fingers up and away from his leg, artfully weaving his short series of truths into the protection of a falsehood, "--tongues will wag, and I chose not to be subject to these questions."
His lips part on a further question, but Brent thinks better of it and nods in accepting comprehension instead. "I see," he says simply. "I'm -- sorry. That you felt you had to leave."
"It was better," Ilad says. "It was better that way. Anyway," he adds, lifting his gaze back toward Brent's with the arch of his brows, the shadow of a smile on his lips, "now. Here I am."
"Here you are," Brent echoes, a small smile tucked away in the corners of his mouth. "I don't know if it's selfish to say I'm glad you ended up here, but -- I am. I think that--" The fingers of one hand shift, as if itching for something, and he splays the hand flat on the denim of his jeans. "My life is better for having you in it." He meets Ilad's gaze with a touch of hesitation.
"I do not know from where you get this idea," Ilad tells him solemnly. He does not meet Brent's eyes for long; rather, his gaze falls away, discomfort reflecting a certain diffidence in the twitch of his shoulders. "But thank you for the thought."
"Ilad," Brent says, just the tiniest bit chiding, but the small touch of humor hides a deeper concern. "I don't know where you get the idea that you aren't a worthwhile person for someone to have in their life."
"Well, I would not go so far as to say /that/," Ilad returns, the ghosts of the desert rendering his voice altogether dry. "But this is noticeable improvement, you have found. Well! Who am I to argue with you."
"I think that every time someone new comes into my life for me to care about, it makes my life that much better," Brent says, rather quiet at the admittance.
"I think," Ilad begins to reply, but pauses, because there is nothing flip to say. He smiles, slightly, and watches Brent with narrowed dark eyes for a heartbeat. "I think that your heart must be extraordinarily large," he says instead. After the pause of another heartbeat, he lets his gaze fall and rises from the sofa. "Something to drink?" he asks, as he moves. "I would offer you some of dinner but I am afraid that several dead animals went into its construction."
"Not large enough to keep my blood circulating properly," Brent replies, the tease working to cover some hint of shyness at the compliment. "I already ate," he assures Ilad as the other man rises. "But -- if you're having something, sure."
Ilad paces across the room toward his kitchen. His spine is straight, as it ever is; if there is a higher level of tension than precisely normal, it must be read in subtler signs, the set of his shoulders, the care he takes of his carriage. "I think I need to visit the grocery," he says, upon opening the refrigerator and peeking inside. "Beer or water?"
"Ah -- beer," Brent decides after a moment's consideration. He watches the line of Ilad's body as he moves, though whether it is an examination of those subtler signs or an appreciation of form itself is impossible to determine.
Ilad removes two bottles of beer from the refrigerator door. He kicks it shut with the lift of a bare heel, opens both bottles while still in the kitchen, and then begins his walk back. "I hope you are satisfied with one, because we do not have anymore. I hesitate to actively wonder how much Avraham has consumed."
Brent leans forward off the back of the couch to help close the distance between his hand and the beer Ilad returns with. "I think I'll manage," he says with warm humor. "You know," he adds, growing exaggeratedly serious, "the legal drinking age in America is twenty-one. I /could/ call the cops on you for supplying alcohol to a minor." Because Brent would never do that. Ever.
Passing the bottle into Brent's hand, Ilad turns to fold himself back onto the sofa. He stretches out his legs, glancing down their length at his bare feet as he props them at a diagonal, toes up. "They will never take me alive," he says, and lifts his own bottle to his lips to hide the fleeting shadow of his smile with a swallow.
Brent is not so good at hiding smiles: this one crinkles his eyes and lightens his countenance. "Then I guess I'll have to not call them," he replies.
"That probably makes you my accomplice," Ilad tells Brent gravely.
"Who would ever call the cops on me?" Brent places a hand over his heart. Really? This face?
"Not I, as you are simply joining me in my life of crime," Ilad replies. He takes a longer swig of beer, and then rests the bottle against his thigh, hands loosely clasped around it. "My last run-in with law enforcement was expensive," he adds, "I'd rather not repeat it."
Brent's eyebrows hitch up, his expression caught between concern and amusement without knowing which side to fall on. "What happened?" he asks.
He also starts drinking his beer, because come on.
"Speeding ticket," Ilad says, with a dismissive gesture.
Brent tsks lightly with his tongue. "You should be more careful," he says. "How fast were you going?"
Ilad lifts a shoulder in a partial shrug. "150 or so," he says, not particularly concerned.
Brent narrows his eyes on him. /Suspiciously/. "Somehow I think you're exaggerating," he says, suppressing a grin with fierce effort.
Ilad looks back at him a little blankly for a heartbeat, and then wakes to the suppressed expression with a slight curve of his own lips. Tipping his head, he appends, "Kilometers."
"/Oh/." Brent looks a little sheepish. He takes another swig of beer and squints a little. "That's -- That's ninety-something miles an hour, Ilad." He frowns at him. "Why were you going that fast?"
"I was wearing a helmet," Ilad answers with dignity. He drinks more of his beer.
"/Ilad/." Brent's gaze lingers, worriedly disapproving of his attitude.
"If I knew it would upset you I would not have said anything," Ilad says, looking at him a little askance.
Brent settles into the couch with a heavier slump of lean body. He looks down at the beer balanced on one drawn-up knee and picks idly at the label. "If you want me to not worry," he says, humor very slight and very self-deprecating, "you have to not do dangerous things."
"Ah," Ilad says with a slow shake of his head, "well." He takes another pull at his beer, something troubled creeping into the cast of his expression as he falls silent.
Not knowing what to do with that, Brent's humor fades. He glances up at Ilad, gaze uncertain, and then looks away once more and takes a quiet sip of his beer.
Ilad taps his thumb against the neck of his bottle, apparently studying its mouth from the slant of his gaze.
"Just what I do," Brent says quietly and with a touch of dryness.
"And I," Ilad answers, tipping his hand in Brent's direction without lifting his eyes. His breath puffs out past his nose, not quite a laugh, nor harsh enough for a true snort.
Brent lifts his gaze back to Ilad, something inscrutable only in its complexity and conflict in his eyes. He swallows, tight. Then he lifts his hand to settle it slowly on Ilad's shoulder, close enough to his neck for one cool thumb to brush along the warmth of exposed skin. He looks like he might say something for a moment, then his expression cinches, holding the words back, and he stays silent.
Ilad holds himself remarkably still, beneath the touch of Brent's hand. Without a trace of the burn of fever to heat his skin, he glances down at his own hands, one on the bottle, the other simply resting now across his lap.
His thumb traces along the curve of Ilad's neck, slow, hesitant, but somehow inexorable. Brent's lips part with a quiet sound as if to speak, but he stops himself again as his thumb drifts to trace the line of Ilad's jaw. His breath comes careful and a little shallow.
From almost perfect stillness comes very swift motion: Ilad lifts his free hand and catches Brent's in his. He still says nothing, but sits there, and tangles their fingers together as he lowers their joined hands.
Brent's breath catches for a moment at the sudden movement; it brings with it a brief stillness of hesitation before his fingers lace, cool to warm, through Ilad's. His teeth graze lightly along the inside of his bottom lip, and he shifts enough to set his beer down before returning the empty hand to his lap. His gaze steadies on their hands, the twist of their fingers, the play of fair and golden skin.
For a moment longer, Ilad does nothing: he sits there, and only the pressure of the clasp of their hands carries any message for the man beside him. Then he rises, and turns, releasing Brent's hand to stand before him and look down at him. He opens his free hand at his side, still carrying the forgotten bottle in his other, and shows him his empty palm. It is a gesture that speaks of helplessness -- or at very least, of being disarmed.
Gaze following, Brent watches that gesture for a moment, then lifts his eyes to somehow echo that gesture in his gaze alone. He rises slowly to his feet, close to Ilad, with a soft yearning in the quiet lean of his body. One hand rises to trace softly along the line of cheek and jaw, marking the form of his face. He does not speak, nor does he press to insinuate himself any further.
With the half-step back he takes, Ilad lifts his hand to press his palm against Brent's chest, over his heart. The touch is firm, the distance between them enforced by the straightness of his arm.
Hurt is brief and all-too-quickly shuffled away under a comprehension that is there and logical in his head if not his heart. "Ilad--" But Brent falters. What is there for him to say? His hand falls away at the other man's insistence.
Ilad's answer is low and quiet, humor an inward thing, its flavor mild but bitter on his tongue. "We have worked ourselves a pretty tangle, have we not?"
"I--" Forgoing humor for sincerity, Brent replies in quiet tones, "Yeah. I guess we have." Denied touch, his hands smooth subtly over denim at his sides.
"I am sorry, Brent," Ilad says, very softly. He withdraws the rest of the way, glance lifted to his face and held there for a heartbeat, before he turns to walk back across the room and set his beer bottle down on the counter.
Brent runs a nervous hand through his hair when Ilad finally withdraws, restrained energy playing in the shift of muscle and form. "I know you think I don't see you," he says with the lightest stress on the final word, dropping his hand. "That this isn't about us. But I do. And it is."
"All right," Ilad says quietly without looking back at him, as the glass clunks softly against the counter. He stands with back straight and shoulders set.
Helpless, with no further proof to offer, Brent returns with a heavy seat to the sofa. He leans forward, elbows on his knees for a moment, and takes a quick drink from his beer before replacing it immediately after. Then he presses his weight back into the sofa, neck arching against the cushion to look up at the ceiling for a moment as if searching for some answer.
Ilad turns slowly back towards him, reluctance in his motion, in the stillness that follows. His lips part to speak, and then close again on a new clamp, another breath expelled past his nose. He shakes his head.
When Brent speaks, his eyes are not still on the ceiling directly above him, but neither have they returned to Ilad. "I'm sorry," he says. Humor is a tiny, dry thing as he continues. "I'm not built on self-control like you are. I'm making things worse." 'Aren't I?' is a silent addition in his tone.
Bracing his knuckles upon the surface of the counter beside him, Ilad answers with a low, "Perhaps."
"I'm not going to lie and say that loneliness isn't a part of it," Brent says very quietly. His gaze is still averted, resting on some neutral area of the room or other. "But it's not -- /just/ that. It's not just because I'm lonely. It's not just wanting warmth and closeness. It's not just because I'm attracted to you or that when you kiss me it feels like I'm saving you from drowning." His lips hesitate on the edge of admission. "It's more than that. If it wasn't more than that -- it wouldn't be so hard."
"Why are you telling me this, Brent?" Ilad's voice is thin with strain as he turns away, his hands both fists upon the countertop, the set of his shoulders drawn taut with that same strain.
Brent's expression twists with quiet pain at Ilad's reaction, his eyes finding the relative safety of Ilad's back. "I don't want you to think--" He drags his gaze away again and he takes a beat and a breath. "I don't know. I don't want you to think that this you mean less to me than you really do."
Ilad looks off into the middle of his kitchen, seeing nothing, but not looking back. "Thank you," he says, voice thickening, gone rough. "I understand that it is not so simple. I understand."
"Because you mean a lot." Brent's effort is not the effort of someone unused to or uncomfortable with such admittances. There is a deeper fear behind it that bespeaks cuts that are still deep and unhealed. He is silent for a moment, there on the sofa. "Should I go?"
Ilad shakes his head, slowly. As slowly, he turns back around. "I do not mean to hurt you," he says, "nor do I think you mean to hurt me. But I do not see what you can think to gain by bringing these things forward."
"Isn't it--" Brent bites down hard on his bottom lip and looks down at his hands. "Isn't it better knowing that it's not just--" He takes an unsteady breath; his voice has grown thick and tense. "It's not about me gaining anything. But I would want to know that someone wanted /me/. That even if it was a bad idea, that we said we weren't going to do anything, that at least he wanted me and not someone else or just any warm body or--" He breaks off with a quiet catch of breath.
Ilad is silent for a moment. It is a long, considered pause. Then he walks back across the room to stand by Brent in front of the sofa, though he does so with hands clasped loosely behind his back and gaze tipped down. Softly he says, "I see."
"I would want to know that," Brent reiterates quietly, not looking at Ilad even as he approaches. "I'm -- sorry if you don't." Though by the twist of his expression, he doesn't quite understand why he wouldn't.
"It was easier, to think it was simpler," Ilad answers, his low voice oddly warm for all that the weight of breath it carries is heavy, "and so I should have known that it was not." He circles back behind the sofa, then, and lets both his hands fall lightly on either of Brent's shoulders, what assurance he may give by only simple touch offered there. "If he came back to you tomorrow I would rejoice for you both. I have seen how much hurt you both carry from this. You must know that."
Brent's shoulders tremble lightly under Ilad's touch. "It doesn't matter," he says, fighting emotion back from his voice as if he's so close to tripping from a dangerous edge. "He's not coming back. Please don't talk about it like it's a possibility."
"It does matter," Ilad answers, but he neither withdraws nor explains why. He stands where he is, solid and warm pressure in his touch.
"He's not coming back," Brent repeats, both quieter and firmer. But one one hand lifts to cover one of Ilad's and squeeze tightly and almost a little desperately. He takes a soft, unsteady breath. "I'm sorry it's not simpler. I didn't think you knowing that you're more to me than a warm body would be a bad thing."
"What were you saying just now," Ilad answers, on a breath with something like a laugh in it. "Something about self-control." He tightens the grasp of his hands, and then loosens the squeeze a heartbeat later. "No, my friend, do not apologize. But enough. Enough now, hm?"
Brent lets his hand just sit on Ilad's, fingers tight. "Maybe I should stay away for a while." From the pained reluctance of his whispered tone, it is not an idea he relishes.
Ilad hesitates. He moves, then, sliding away from Brent and slipping loose the clasp of his fingers, to step around to the front of the sofa and sit beside him instead. "Do you think so?"
"If I can't be alone with you without my feelings making me do things that just make this worse," Brent says, the words coming out in a quick tumble, "then maybe it's -- for the best." Ugh. /Maturity/. He looks over at Ilad, expression tight. "If I can't deal enough to just be friends, and it's a bad idea to be anything more--"
"Then," Ilad answers quietly, almost without inflection, and certainly without meeting his gaze, "nothing?"
"Ilad--" Brent takes a breath. "You want to do the smart thing. And you're right. But even now, just being here with you--" He looks down and studies his hands. "Just for a while. Maybe. Or just not -- I don't know." His tone rich with unhappiness, he says, "We don't have a lot of options left for us, Ilad."
"Ah." Ilad falls to silence again, long familiar protection in the lack of speech. He draws his knuckles down the curve of his cheek, looking away. "Before you think by being quiet I am pressuring you," he says after a moment. "I -- do not know what to say."
"But you get it, right? I mean -- you get why I'm saying this?" Brent watches Ilad earnestly, his gaze full of care. "Or -- maybe I can just fix it," he says, swinging quickly back in the wake of Ilad's reaction. "I can stop being such a grabby jerk all the time when I see you."
"Anything I could say. It would be so easy for me to hurt you right now." Ilad laughs, although there is little of humor in it. He rubs at his eyes with both thumbs, the tip of his head forward against his knuckles. "You would choose to be alone, really? Now of all times?"
Brent's jaw goes a little tight at Ilad's humor. "It's always easy to hurt me," he says in a very quiet voice. He looks away, his fingers lacing and twisting tightly in his lap. "No. I wouldn't."
"Then do not," Ilad says. He turns his head, watching Brent sidelong for a long moment. "If you do not have the self-control you feel you need, then I will simply have to have it for us both."
His narrow chest rises with a careful, trembling breath. "That's not fair to you, Ilad," Brent says, voice still low.
"And yet," Ilad says. His smile is there again, small and crooked.
"And yet." Something almost but doesn't quite ache is his pale gaze when it turns back to Ilad. Gratitude touches very deep to the foundation of caring and affection. "God, Ilad," he breathes out, a little disbelieving. "It's not just loneliness and warmth and drowning. It's /you/."
"Come now. You do not get to be the tzaddik all the time," Ilad says. His eyes glint, a dry humor reflected both in coffee-dark gaze and in his roughened voice. "That is what friendship is, is it not?"
"As beautiful as the language is," Brent says, humor hesitant but attempted, "I don't actually know what you mean when you use it."
"The tzaddik, the tzaddik," Ilad says, as though repeating the word will be in some way helpful. "The one who gives charity when it is righteous, whether he feels charitable or no." He runs his fingers along the line of his jaw, following the dip of his chin through scruff as he shakes his head.
"Ah." Brent takes this concept in, examines it. A puff of breath, almost unvoiced laughter, puffs through his nose. "I guess that's me. Or at least the me I try to be."
"It is a mitzvah, tzedukeh," Ilad tells Brent firmly, "but as I said. You cannot be the tzaddik all of the time." He smiles, bright and swift and sudden: "Even a Jew cannot be the tzaddik all of the time."
"You realize the other Hebrew words don't actually help clarify for me, right?" Ilad's smile helps coax Brent's to life, though it carries a wryer cast. "So -- what. We just go on as normal, and any time I slip up and get grabby, you get the thankless job of saying no to /both/ our libidos? This sounds like a bad movie."
"Not one that I have seen," Ilad answers, with an arch to his brows. He shifts, resettling his legs and angling toward Brent where he sits on the sofa, with his elbow propped against its back. "But I suspect, knowing you as I do, that you will try to protect me from this unfairness. Further, I believe it is already inaccurate, to say thankless."
"Me, either." Brent watches the shift of Ilad's body before his eyes return to his face. "I don't really think 'thankful' is a word to describe how I've acted."
"Mm." Ilad shakes his head slightly. "You have already thanked me," he says, tone mild.
"When?" Brent asks, mildly dubious.
"Just now. Right now." Ilad drops his hand briefly to Brent's leg, squeezes once, and then launches himself standing again. "I am going to put this food away before it begins to evolve."
"Sure." Brent stands a few moments after Ilad, grabbing his beer and finding a spot of wall to lean up against nearby. "You should come over for dinner sometime," he suggests. "I'll cook." That's what friends do, right? "I mean -- both of you." Obviously.
"What, an entire meal without anything dead in it?" Ilad cocks an eyebrow over his shoulder at Brent, eyes glinting.
"I'm a very good cook," Brent says with easy confidence. "However, I have been known to cook meat on occasion. When I'm feeling particularly generous." He lifts his beer and takes a quick swig.
"Really," Ilad returns, voice light as he begins to gather slices of pizza together into a large freezer bag. "I am sure we would like that. I will consult Avraham's social calendar."
"Did it for Jean-Paul all the time." If Brent's smile gets a little tight for just a breath after that slips out, it's a small reaction for a small breath of time. "But yeah. Warn me ahead of time if there's anything you don't like."
Glancing over his shoulder to look at Brent for a moment's pause, Ilad then turns back to his task. He says, "Canned tuna fish," as though this is something likely to come up. He shakes his ziplock bag slightly, watching pizza slices settle within it.
"Oh jeez." Brent almost wrinkles his nose, but he's really not the type, so it's more the suggestion of the expression. "If I'm going to dirty my hands with the blood of innocent animals, I'm at least going to cook it well."
"Field rations," Ilad explains, opening his freezer door to tuck the bag away inside. "Four little cans of tuna fish. High in protein, low in sodium. These things I do not miss."
"Ah." Brent finishes off his beer. "No canned tuna. I promise. Do I need to worry about--" He cants his head. "No. I have cooked bacon for you. Nevermind."
"We do not keep kosher," Ilad confirms with the curl of a grin over his shoulder. He shuts the freezer. There was pepperoni and sausage and beef on that pizza. He is going to hell.
"Right." Brent taps the glass bottle lightly against his leg. "I'll have to think about it. I mean, I /have/ cooked many a vegetarian meal that meat-lovers have ended up loving. But I'll consider."
But if there's no meat in it, it can't be trafe, and Brent will spoil the track record! Heedless of the danger his track record is in, Ilad emerges from the kitchen, scrubbing his hands loosely together and then collecting his half-finished beer from the counter as he passes. "Joking aside, I am sure whatever you prepare will be fine."
Brent shifts the lean of his shoulder against the wall, long body stretched in a lean settle. "Hopefully," he agrees, grin coming a little easier, a little more relaxed.
"Even if you burn whatever it is horribly I have probably consumed far worse in any event," Ilad adds thoughtfully, reassuringly, as he lifts his beer for a swallow.
"Very rarely do I burn my food," Brent claims firmly. "/Very/ rarely. You have to distract me pretty hard."
Ilad starts to reply to that, but thinks better of it and takes a longer swallow of beer, draining his bottle to the dregs.
Perhaps belatedly realizing what he just said, Brent looks down at his empty beer as if wishing very much it had more beer in it once more. Sigh.
Too bad Avi drank all the beer. Ilad tosses and catches his bottle once, and then turns back to set it on the counter again. "I am sure nothing will burn," he says, with the shadow of an odd smile on his lips.
"Right." Brent moves into the kitchen to dispose of his empty bottle. Do they have recycling? "I guess I should get going," he says. "Don't need to take up your whole Friday night."
Surely they do. They are socially responsible. Ilad tips his head, and glances back across the room to the slow burn of the sabbath candles, wax dribbling down their clean white sides where they light the night above his notebook. "Shabbat shalom," he says lightly. More Hebrew. Possibly more explicable.
Emerging from the kitchen, Brent smiles a small, genuine smile. "You, too," he says, a little hesitant about mangling the words with his own unpracticed tongue. "Happy birthday."
"Thank you," Ilad says, not without warmth to his solemnity, with the inclination of his head. He will put up the painting later, when Avi is here to probably not give any actual input; for now, he paces back toward his table.
After a brief hesitation, Brent approaches Ilad to take him into a warm clasp that manages to stay on the correct line of friendship. And, perhaps to prove that Ilad's new role is not thankless after all, he murmurs with quiet sincerity, "Thank you."
Ilad answers him, infuriatingly enough, in Hebrew; a few scattered words, rough and warm, without translation. There is a quiet laugh buried in his voice, and he follows the embrace with a totally manly clap to the shoulderblade.
After allowing for a totally platonic squeeze, Brent withdraws from the hug. "That's really unfair," he tells him without any heat behind the words. He begins the process of showing himself out: slipping on his shoes, getting on his coat, etc. "I'm going to make you start translating everything one of these days."
Ilad steps back and away. He folds his hands over the top of his blond-white chair and watches Brent get ready to leave with humor in his narrowed gaze. "I did not say anything that needed translation," he answers.
"I don't like not knowing what people are saying to me," Brent complains lightly. "It makes me anxious. I always think it's either something really important or particularly mean." But his light smile bespeaks how likely he thinks the latter is, at least. He fixes the collar of his jacket, which has turned under against his neck.
"Neither," Ilad assures him quietly. "Don't get pulled over," he suggests after a heartbeat's pause.
"I am not a thrill-seeking speed demon. Like some people." Brent gives Ilad a pointed look. It is a Be Careful kind of look. But he follows it up easily enough with a smile. "Night, Israel." He tips his chin and heads out.
"Good night, Homegrown," reflects after him, before the door shuts all the way. Then Ilad turns and sits back down at his table. After a moment, he lifts his pen.
Birthday present.