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As was usually the case, Idriss’ “fantastic plan” had turned out to be a spectacular disaster.
“Oh, come on, Eli,” Idriss had said. “What’s the harm in it? It’s been too long since you’ve been kissed, man.”
He definitely wouldn’t be kissed today, either.
He supposed he only had himself to blame, though. He should know by now that Idriss was… well, he was lovable and generous and really, really wanted to help, but he just was a bit stupid sometimes.
Like how on earth had he ever thought Eliott would have anything in common with a girl who was still in high school and thought TikTok was an art form? If only Hélène hadn’t been the younger sister of Idriss’ girlfriend, he could have ended this farce an hour ago. But as things were, he assumed he had to be at least nice enough to let the girl finish her coffee and cake, drop her off home safely and send her a polite text to let her down gently, or else Idriss and Liliane would have his hide.
He glanced furtively at the clock on the wall. God, the girl certainly knew how to make a piece of cake last. She’d been picking at it for over an hour now, telling Eliott inane stories about her teachers and how she snuck out of class to drink with her friends. Whenever Eliott tried to change the subject to something slightly more substantial, she just flaked out. Her favourite movie was Twilight, she didn’t know the first thing about art – “Oh, I guess I like that dude that does the sunflowers and shit!” “You mean Van Gogh?” “Oh, I don’t know his name, I just follow him on Instagram. My favourite K-band liked one of his posts, so I started following him, you see.” – and wanted to become an accountant, or a fashion stylist. Eliott couldn’t decide which one was worse – although to be a stylist he supposed she’d need some creativity, at least. Accountants were just boring.
The cake didn’t seem to get any smaller. His own coffee was long gone, and he didn’t want to order anything else. He wanted to be able to go as soon as possible.
Maybe he should need to create some reason to go. He could probably shoot a discreet text off to Sofiane and have him call with an imaginary emergency. He fiddled with his phone in his pocket.
At that point there was some commotion behind him.
He almost simultaneously heard a dull thud, the ringing sound of a lot of glass and porcelain shattering, and three male voices. The first one sounded guilty and perplexed, and shouted apologies, the second one cursed in pain, and the third one exclaimed anxiously, “Shit, Lu, that’s bleeding a fucking lot!”
Eliott turned his head. A group of guys seemed to be the center of the attention of all the patrons inside the café. Their table was laying on its side, amid the remnants of their glasses, bottles, cups and plates. One guy, with curly brown hair, kept murmuring apologies, a hand in front of his mouth. A dark-skinned, good-looking guy was fussing over somebody else, obscured from Eliott’s view by a blond with glasses.
Just as he wanted to turn back to his date, one of the voices spoke again.
“Fuck, we need to stop this bleeding, Lucas!”
The hidden person mumbled something that Eliott couldn’t hear, but then the blonde turned around to the rest of the room and asked loudly, “Is there a doctor in here, maybe?”
As he did so, he opened up Eliott’s line of sight to the fourth person.
A boy was sitting there, and for a moment Eliott’s breath caught in his throat. He was attractive, sure. And the light hit him just right, but other than that, Eliott didn’t know why he had reacted so viscerally.
Eliott didn’t know what might be so special about him. He was pale, clutching at his arm, where his friend was pressing a bunch of napkins, which slowly stained a deep crimson as blood seeped through them. The boy’s hair was dark and messy, and he was biting his lip, obviously in pain.
Then the boy looked up at the blonde, but since the latter was still trying frantically to get some help, his eyes landed straight on Eliott.
And Eliott felt it clearly this time. He gasped, and his heart stopped beating.
Those eyes. They were mesmerizing. They were wide open, and so blue Eliott lost himself. He wanted to go home, get all his paint out, and start painting those eyes, even though he knew he could spend years and still not get that shade right.
He couldn’t tear his gaze away, not even as the boy closed his eyes, whimpering.
It was as if somebody had turned off the sun, Eliott thought, feeling his lungs fill up with air once more, slowly shaking his head. He fervently wished the boy would open his eyes again.
Then the blond said, now sounding panicked, “Or maybe a nurse? Anybody who knows first aid?”
And Eliott got up, and before he realized what he was doing he was walking over to the boy.
“Can I see?”, he asked, trying to sound like he knew what he was doing.
“Oh, thank God,” the blond murmured. “Yann, I’m gonna take Baz now, before he faints, okay?”
The dark-skinned boy nodded at the blonde, who grabbed the curly-haired one and went over to the counter, presumably to apologize to the staff and offer to pay for the damages. Eliott didn’t know, and he didn’t care.
What mattered was the boy.
“Hi,” he said softly. “I’m Eliott.”
The boy didn’t react, just kept looking at him.
“Are you a doctor?”, the other guy asked, a bit suspiciously.
“Uh, yeah,” Eliott said.
The boy opened his mouth.
“Yann, seriously, I don’t need a doctor! It’s just a flesh wound. Keep pressing on it, it’ll be fine.”
“Lucas, just let him look, okay?”
The boy – Lucas – didn’t look convinced, but he did move his arm, and removed the napkins.
Eliott saw a long scratch which was bleeding quite a lot. He swallowed, almost gagging. He’d never been good with blood. He rapidly placed the napkins back.
Lucas looked at him perceptively.
“So, what do you think, doctor?”
He sounded a bit strange, Eliott considered, emphasizing the last word.
“Eliott, you can call me Eliott…”
Lucas nodded, but didn’t say anything. Eliott couldn’t stop staring at him. His eyes roamed over his face, his body, zoning in on every detail – the mole on his right collarbone, his long and slender fingers, his eyelashes framing those bottomless blues –
Lucas’ friend interrupted Eliott’s internal catalogue of Lucas’ body.
“Does he need to go to the hospital?”
Lucas still gazed at him, a smirk now appearing around his cherry-red lips.
“Yeah, Eliott. Do I?”
He hesitated. He didn’t have a clue what to do. He should probably come clean, and expose himself as a total fraud, and never get another chance to see Lucas again. Damn. Maybe Idriss wasn’t the only one with spectacular bad ideas, he mused, as he tried to summon the courage to fess up.
However, at that point, Hélène decided to do something actually useful.
“Eliott? Can we go now? You are going to walk me home, right?”
Three pairs of eyes turned towards Hélène. Eliott felt the loss of Lucas’ gaze on him keenly.
Hélène on the other seemed to bask in the attention. She almost preened in front of the guys.
“I’m Hélène. Eliott and I are dating. He’s bringing me home now.”
A scoff came from behind Eliott. Was that Lucas? He risked a quick glance over his shoulder, but Lucas had his expression schooled into something neutral.
“Eliott?” Hélène asked again her voice high-pitched, a giggle not far away.
Eliott took another split-second decision that was sure to come back to bite him in the ass.
“Sorry, Hélène. I have to take Lucas here to the hospital.”
The girl whined.
“But you were supposed to walk me home! I don’t like walking alone at night.”
It was barely six-thirty. Eliott was conflicted. He couldn’t send her away like that. Idriss would kill him. But he couldn’t leave Lucas either.
Then, a truly inspired flash of geniality hit him.
“Uh, maybe you could go with her, as I go with him?” he suggested to Yann.
Yann hedged a bit, looking over to Lucas, who shrugged. Yann agreed, and even though Hélène didn’t seem too happy about this new development, she left without making too much of a fuss.
As soon as they left, though, Lucas turned to Eliott with a grin.
“You are so not a doctor.”
Eliott blushed, which he assumed was admission enough, because Lucas started laughing.
“I knew it. I know more about first aid than you do!”
“Sorry. So, do you need an actual doctor?”
“Nah,” Lucas said. “A bandage should be fine. They should have a first aid box here, ask the barista.”
By the time Lucas had wrapped his own arm up, the bleeding had stopped, and the waiter had cleared up most of the mess.
“Thanks, doctor,” Lucas said, and Eliott grimaced.
“Okay, fine. I just wanted to get out of a bad date, okay? And it helped that you are the hottest guy I’ve seen in a long time.”
Lucas’ smirk vanished and his eyes went wide. Shit, maybe he shouldn’t have said that.
But Lucas grinned at him after the first shock had subdued.
“In that case –”
He looked at Eliott.
“Don’t they teach you anything in medical schools these days?”
“Huh?”
Eliott tried to catch up on the conversation as Lucas leaned closer, whispering conspiratorially.
“Doesn’t everybody know that kisses make every boo-boo better?”
Eliott nodded, breathless.
“Well, then,” Lucas said. “I have many, many boo-boos that need to be made better. Doctor.”
And well, Eliott might not deal too well with blood, but this was a way of treating patients he could get fully behind. For certain patients, at least.