Alexei nodded, eyes clearing. He took a deep breath before he answered.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Actually.” Another swallow. “Turns out I’m not moving at all.”
Ben’s eyebrows rose. Something in his heart rose, too.
“No?”
“No.” Alexei relaxed his back against the bench. “I’m staying in Portland. I finally figured it out when I reached Crater Lake.” He looked down, ran a hand down Ben’s thigh. “Remind me to tell you about it sometime.”
“Can you tell me about it now?” Ben pleaded, overcome with a sudden need to hear Alexei talk. He ran a hand down Alexei’s arm. “I just…I’ve missed you so much, Lex. I want to know how you’re doing. I want to know about Crater Lake.”
Alexei looked at him a moment, that quiet, serious, thoughtful Alexei look. And then he stared at Ben’s shoulder, and started talking.
“It’s in Southern Oregon, not long after the California border. It’s the deepest lake in the US, one of the clearest lakes in the world. As soon as I entered the national park boundary, it felt like—” Alexei pursed his lips, a hand playing with the hem of Ben’s shirt. “Like the woods were trying to tell me something. My heart was pounding the whole way to the rim. That’s the thing about Crater Lake; it’s in a literal crater, so you have to walk all the way to the rim to actually see it. But when you get there, it’s—”
He paused, looking Ben in the eye again.
“It’s incredible. You would love it.”
He dropped his gaze back to Ben’s shoulder and continued.
“I found a quiet spot, past all the crowds, and just…sat there. For a really long time. I’d been there before, was the thing. I remembered the first time we’d visited, when I was twelve years old. I could remember, all of a sudden, these vivid little details. My dad spreading a map across the steering wheel. My mom spraying this awful-smelling mosquito repellent everywhere. How she was always wiping my hair away from my forehead, because I had this awful bowl cut back then, and it was so hot.”
Ben smiled. He wished he could see it. He wondered how many childhood photos Alexei had been able to save. He wished he could break into Alexei’s parents’ house and steal every photo they owned.
“But when I remembered all these things, it didn’t feel like an open wound anymore. It felt like…scar tissue. Because it felt different, being there this time, as the person I am now. The person who had walked hundreds of miles through the desert and survived, who had walked away from my parents and my church and survived, who’d fallen in love with you, who’d let myself be happy, for a while. I was back in this landscape that I loved, that I had never really wanted to leave, not really, and I was okay. It felt okay—it feltgood, being back in Oregon again. Staring at this crater that had been turned into a jewel, feeling like it was welcoming me home. And I suddenly wondered if I had walked almost the entirety of the PCT just to get back here again.”
Finally, Alexei’s eyes met Ben’s once more.
“I’m still not a hundred percent sure if it’s the right thing. Maybe I’ll still move someday. But for now…I don’t want to let them push me out, you know? I’m ready to go home now, in a way that’s just mine. I think it can still be mine.”
Ben waited until he was sure Alexei was done. And then he reached down and drew Alexei in for another kiss. It was slow this time. Quiet. Important.
Fuck, he was in love with this guy.
“Alexei,” he said when he broke away, “that was the best story I’ve ever heard.”
Alexei’s eyes shone. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve had a couple hundred miles to put it into words in my head, so that helped.”
Ben bit his lip, running his knuckles over Alexei’s face.
“I have to tell you, I’m sort of relieved,” he said. “I hated that Alexei 2.0 list.”
Alexei tilted his head. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I never knew what it meant exactly; I just hated the idea of you thinking you needed to change yourself. I like Alexei 1.0, Lex.”
Alexei grinned, running a hand down Ben’s chest. “Well. There are still some things I’d like to change. I just realized I don’t have to move to the other side of the country or become a totally different person to make them happen.”
“Good.” Ben was about to kiss him again when he remembered he still hadn’t gotten to his final questions. “Speaking of running away to the other side of the country, though.” He ran a hand through Alexei’s hair. Alexei’s eyes drifted shut. “I have…a proposition, let’s say.”
“Mmm,” Alexei said.
“How would you feel about me coming to Portland?”
Alexei opened one eye. “Like, to visit?”
Ben’s nerves woke up again, fluttering around in his stomach. “Well. Yes. To start with. But then I was thinking…more permanent-like? If you would be open to that?”
