CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #4
Lachlan’s not unintelligent, but he’s maybe not the smartest when it comes to stuff like this. He has a blind-spot the size of a tank about people liking him. Lachlan knows Jules has a crush, he’s known that for a while but this… the way he’s talking, it doesn’t seem like a crush.
Not anymore.
‘I know what I said.’ He rests his arm on the side of the tub. ‘I remember.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I called you sweetheart.’ Jules’ cheeks instantly stain rose red. He must hate to have such an obvious tell. ‘And I called you… baby, I think. Right?’
‘Yeah, you did.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want you to be sorry.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Tell me why you said it.’
It’d be so much easier to lie. Lachlan should lie; he knows it.
But he doesn’t. ‘It just felt natural, that’s why I said it.’
‘I’m not your sweetheart or your baby, though.’
‘I don’t know why it happens when I’m stressed, I think it’s…’ Lachlan digs deep, but not too deep because beneath the surface sits a difficult truth he’s terrified to confront. ‘I try really hard to respect your boundaries and when you’re in danger, I mess up sometimes and I’m sorry.’
‘So you’re just treating me like her?’
No. ‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘You don’t love me though. You don’t even like me.’
‘Jules,’ he sighs, shaking his head. ‘That’s fucking crazy to say.’
‘Is it? Is it fucking crazy, really?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re civil with me.’
‘I’m trying to walk the line.’
‘You love her so much and I have to see it every single day and I just…’ Jules gives a tiny sob, knees raised to lean his head as he curls up. ‘I want to know how it feels. I want to know, even if it’s just pretend. I don’t mind if it’s make-believe. Pretending isn’t lying.’
‘Jules…’
‘I wanna know what it feels like to be loved that way.’
Lachlan’s throat is full of thorns. ‘What way?’
‘Unconditionally.’
There’s never any good path with this one.
No matter which way he tries, Lachlan always ends up hurting Jules down the line. Intentional or otherwise, it’s like he’s fated to inflict some kind of pain.
‘I’m sorry.’ Lachlan lightly strokes Jules’ wet hair.
The boy flinches at the unexpected touch but only at first.
He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t snap at him to stop.
Lachlan trusts that he would if he wanted.
‘I never had anything… anyone… that was mine.’
Jules lets out another heart-wrenching little sob and clumsily puts his own hand atop Lachlan’s on the back of his neck like he needs to keep it there.
‘You have your whole life ahead of you.’
Oh, but it sounds hollow even as Lachlan says it.
He scoots closer, rises onto his knees and then steals Jules’ hand to press a single, long kiss to the back of it.
‘You deserve,’ he says, low and fervent, ‘so much better than what you got.’
Jules slowly uncurls from his little ball of despair, eyes wide, like a fearful animal but only for a moment. He throws himself into Lachlan’s arms.
Lachlan holds him tight, despite the awkward angle and the ceramic between them. Jules is wet and sad, crying quietly while Lachlan hugs him for the first time, eyes closed tight as what’s buried in the dark swells.
Against all his instincts, Lachlan drops his guard entirely and reaches for unnecessary honesty to give Jules as a gift on this awful night.
‘I love you,’ he whispers, ‘without condition.’
Jules gasps, clings harder.
Jules clings harder. ‘Say it again.’
He shouldn’t.
Oh God, he shouldn’t.
‘I love you,’ he says, same tone, anchor to safety.
Jules cries in his arms. ‘Again.’
‘I love you,’ Lachlan says, has to swallow thick, sharp things to get the words out, face stoic, tone level, eyes wet, ‘so much.’
‘Please.’
‘I love you, Jules.’
The boy in his arms grips tighter until he unlocks entirely, goes lax, lets out a shaky sigh and finally begins to pull away, slowly at first like he’s worried Lachlan will leave and he couldn’t allow that.
Jules Penhalyx is trembling.
He pulls back but stays close, fingers curled around the fabric of Lachlan’s damp, white shirt. ‘Look at me and say it?’ he asks, unbearably fragile.
Lachlan’s dark grey eyes move between honey brown.
It’s inexorable, this thing between them.
No God, no sky, no magic, no light.
Inexorable.
Lachlan strokes Jules’ face with his fingers, thumb caressing his jaw, feels the rough grain of incoming stubble. Desire twists his interior, bittersweet and sharp, and the lure of setting down the weight of his restraint is so tempting it’s briefly overwhelming. There’s still discord between them.
But he thinks now that Jules is in love with him.
And that’s terrifying.
Lachlan doesn’t know if he feels the same, or if he does, he can’t admit it. He loves him wholeheartedly. He’d die for him without hesitation and the thought of losing Jules is unthinkable. But Lachlan Tanner doesn’t know how it feels to be in love. He’s sure it can’t be this.
Because this…
This is gravity and pain and guilt and sickness and sadness and obsession and devotion and anger and love, love, love running through it all like metal veins through heavy stones, glinting and warm. They carry the lightning.
Lachlan can’t offer romance, only caveman devotion through violence and basic decency where it’s been absent Jules’ whole life. He’s not romantic, he’s not charming. He can’t be like Jules is, has no magnetism or allure.
He’s the bodyguard. The soldier. Killer.
And how he might love is far less than what Jules deserves.
‘I…’
Jules’ nose brushes his own. His fingers slip around to grip the nape of Lachlan’s neck. ‘Please?’
Lachlan keeps his eyes open, looks at him while he says it. ‘I love you.’
He knew it was going to happen. He’s known for a while.
Has made peace with his failure, cascading as it is.
Even so, nothing could prepare him for it.
Jules’ lips touch Lachlan’s own, light and unsure, just a brush at first, warm breath ghosting over Lachlan’s mouth in ragged, uneven bursts. The metal veins in backbreaking stones gleam bright, beckoning the skies to open up and do their worst, worst, he can take it, he can do anything.
His body forgets how to be, love disrupts the automatic flow of flawless existence, infects and changes without permission.
This can’t be what love is, can it?
It’s too good, far too fucking beautiful to be stopped.
Lachlan kisses Jules, thrilled by his own bravery and stupidity and recklessness, all of which will plague him later but, in the moment, it’s perfect.
It’s fucking perfect.
Life is short and love is rare.
Lachlan tips his head to make the kiss something new, something better than a hesitant press. He wants him closer, wants to hold him.
‘Oh God.’ Jules sounds dazed. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Are you OK?’ He strokes Jules’ face, pulls back just enough to see him, to get eyes on because that’s his job, isn’t it? ‘Are you—?’
Jules kisses him harder, no hesitation that time.
It’s a warm, wet crush of lips and love is in the taste of his spit.
‘I love you,’ he murmurs. Jules whines and curls his damp arms tighter around Lachlan’s neck, but doesn’t push for more, he just keeps him there, kissing. Slow, desperate, shallow.
Lachlan wants to deepen it, wants to show Jules how good it can feel.
He wants to love Jules until it’s strong enough to break every bad feeling like a bone, love him like it’s training, love him from the inside out and it’d be the best fucking thing he’s ever felt and then… then he would truly be lost to it.
He tips his head just enough to better the angle without losing himself to it, and with the makings of this new kiss, Lachlan’s tongue lightly brushes over Jules’ lips, and it makes the younger boy shudder. Jules moans a low, needy noise and Lachlan swallows it to keep, greedy.
‘I love you,’ Lachlan says again, head light, heart heavy.
Jules doesn’t say it in turn and Lachlan is grateful because that’s all that holds him back from lifting Jules out of the tub and letting this go wherever Jules wants, doing whatever Jules wants.
Lachlan tastes the salt of tears, and he knows he is forever changed, marked, newly owned. He’ll regret it later, he truly will, but in this moment with Jules, he knows he did the right thing for once.
It’s so beautiful he can’t help but smile as the kiss breaks.
Jules grips hair at the nape, lips dark pink and shiny. He’s reading Lachlan so hard he may as well break his spine, crack it wide and spread him open like a book to devour the stories inside.
Lachlan would let him.
But for now, he gifts a smaller, more chaste kiss to signal the end of it and Jules leans back, lets out a long, shuddery sigh before he sinks all the way down into the tub and then hides underwater.