He felt profoundly, specifically tired. Not sleepy. Tired of the math he'd been doing for four years, the constant calculus of what to say, what not to say, when to push and when to fold, the vigilance of it. He'd flown back early. He'd bought groceries. He'd done it all without asking for anything in return, without even announcing himself, and somehow he'd still managed to get it wrong.

The door opened.

Adrian stepped outside. He wasn't wearing a jacket and the night was cold, and Elliot's first instinct was to tell him to go back in, get a coat, you'll freeze - he suppressed it.

"Go back inside," Elliot said instead, "it's cold."

"What's your problem." It wasn't a question. Adrian's voice was flat, the specific flatness that meant he was containing something. "You show up without telling me. Now you're standing out here sulking."

"I'm not sulking."

"You walked in and turned around without saying a word to anyone."

"I didn't want to make your guests uncomfortable." Elliot took a drag, exhaled sideways. "I figured it was easier for me to wait out here until things wrapped up."

"That's not -" Adrian stopped. He looked at Elliot with that expression he sometimes had, the one that meant he was about to say something and had decided against it. In the light that leaked from the window, Elliot could see the sharp line of his jaw, the controlled set of his shoulders. He was wearing a shirt Elliot had helped him pick out. Of course he was.

Elliot tucked the cigarette between his lips and reached up with both hands and straightened Adrian's collar, which had been slightly turned under on one side. His hands were red from the cold - he'd been outside long enough for the chill to get into them.

Adrian looked down at his hands. He didn't say anything.

"Go back inside," Elliot said again, gently. "You've got people waiting."

The party broke up early. Elliot wasn't sure whether that was Adrian's decision or the guests', and it didn't matter. He stood at the edge of the driveway and watched people file out, and one of them - a man in his fifties, silver-haired, the kind of person whose handshake probably closed deals - paused beside him on the way to his car.

"Adrian's had a little too much tonight," the man said pleasantly, as if this were ordinary information to share with someone he'd never met. "Would you mind keeping an eye on him?"

"Of course," Elliot said. "Have a good night."

He went inside.

The living room looked the way rooms look after a party - glasses in clusters, a few napkins on the floor, the birthday cake half-eaten on the coffee table. Adrian was on the couch, tie loosened, long legs stretched out, the way he sat when he'd had more to drink than he'd admit to.

Elliot picked up a garbage bag from the kitchen.

He worked methodically. Every glass. Every bottle, including the opened ones. The serving dishes with their remnant canapés. The cake - the whole thing, still on its little cardboard base. He bagged it all up without expression, tied the bags, carried them to the front door, and set them outside. The cake included.

Then he went back to the couch.

"Come on." He crouched in front of Adrian and started on the tie, working the knot loose. "Up to bed."

Adrian's hand came up and closed around his wrist. His palm was warm - he ran hot when he drank. The warmth against Elliot's cold skin was startling.

Elliot went still. He looked up at Adrian's face.

"Am I pathetic?" He said it quietly. He wasn't sure if he was asking Adrian or asking the empty room. "Do you think - no matter what you do to me - I'll never leave?"

Adrian looked back at him. His eyes were half-closed, the amber color of them deepened by drink. He didn't answer. He probably couldn't answer, at this level of drunk. He was operating on something more primitive than thought.

He tipped his chin up and kissed Elliot.

The kiss tasted like good bourbon and birthday cake frosting. Elliot didn't pull away. He sat with it, eyes open, and let it happen - the press of Adrian's mouth, the warmth of him, the familiar weight of his hand migrating from Elliot's wrist to the back of his neck. He'd kissed this man a thousand times. He knew every variation.

He accepted this one the way you accept something you've stopped expecting to be different.

When it ended, Adrian was quiet. His thumb traced slow circles at the base of Elliot's skull, in the place he'd learned Elliot liked. Maybe he knew what he was doing. Maybe he didn't. Elliot couldn't always tell.

Elliot leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. He closed his eyes.

"Happy birthday," he said.

Adrian didn't answer. His breathing had gone slow and even. In another few minutes he'd be asleep.

Elliot stayed where he was, their foreheads together in the dark of the living room, and thought about grocery bags getting warm on the foyer floor, and a birthday cake he'd put outside with the rest of the garbage, and a flight he'd rebooked two hundred dollars to catch a day early.

He stayed there a long time.