30. Chapter 30 #2
“—tell him about everything that happens to you. Meetings, what’s going on in your life, all the important shit that you never talked to me about.
You flirt with him, even though he never reciprocated.
You call him your soulmate! And I can’t even get you to take off your fucking shirt?
I read all the fucking messages. All of them.
I wanted— Fuck, I wanted everything with you, Roman.
And… and seeing that shit,“ he says as he shakes his head in disgust. “The things that you would say to another guy, to someone else, that fucking hurts worse than anything else you’ve ever done to me.”
Wait… I grab his chin and force him to look at me. “You wanted everything with me? Together? Going to get coffee? Go to the store? Holding hands? Where everyone could see us?”
He scoffs. “Of course, I did… But it doesn’t matter, because this…” He says as he taps against his chest. “You destroyed it. This is empty now, Roman.”
“Then let me fill it back up, pretty boy.” I beg as my eyes bounce back and forth between his. I’m praying for a fucking miracle here. “Let me show you what you deserve. Let me show up for you, Lance.”
He chuckles weakly as he tries to pull away from me, but I wrap my arm around his back to keep him close. “Are you fucking listening to anything that I’ve been saying? I just said that—”
“I heard you loud and clear, Lance. You read the messages. You’re mad about them, but you shouldn’t be. They don’t matter.”
He glares at me in disbelief, batting his eyelashes accusingly. “Are you seriously trying to gaslight me right now?”
“No,“ I growl as I hold him tighter. “But you’re damn sure trying to gaslight me, aren’t you, pretty boy? You didn’t go through my phone and read all my messages, because the phone I have right now only has my new messages, the ones I sent after I broke my phone.”
His eyes shift from anger to panic before I even have time to blink. He tries to push off of my chest again, but I refuse to let him run from this. We’re here, and we’re facing this. Not later. Right now.
“All you had to do was say that you knew, that you figured it out.” I offer as I raise a brow at him.
“I can’t— I… I… I don’t understand.” He replies as he shakes his head.
“I share everything with him, I give him all my free time, I call him my soulmate and spend every minute thinking about him… and I love him, Lance, because he’s you.”
“Wait…” he says as he pushes against my chest again.
His eyes bounce back and forth as he tries to piece everything together.
I can tell the exact minute it all starts to make sense, because relief floods his face.
His eyes connect with mine, and I smirk at him.
I can see him shining back at me now, my Lance.
“You fucking knew…” he accuses. “How long?”
I shrug my shoulders, “Eh… the whole time? Like a few hours after we started chatting, maybe. I had spent weeks with you at that point, so it wasn’t hard to find the similarities, especially when I was looking for them.”
He sighs, letting his shoulders relax, as he plops his head forward against my chest. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He mumbles. “I was so paranoid. I spent weeks, weeks, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t you. I feel like a fucking idiot.”
“I didn’t make it easy on you. I didn’t want you to know, and I don’t regret it, because it’s the only way I could talk to you the last couple of days.” I admit as I rest my head atop his.
He pulls back and punches me in the shoulder.
“Ow—”
“You dick!” He says as he scowls at me. “You knew, when we were in that fucking pool, that I figured it out. That as soon as I saw that tattoo, I would know who you were. Didn’t you?” He pauses and then gasps in shock. “That’s why you wouldn’t take off your fucking shirt! Jesus!”
I shrug my shoulders. “I wasn’t positive.
When you saw it, I thought for a second that you knew, but I was waiting for you to say something or do something that really proved it, but you were just…
I don’t know. Indifferent. Then you left, and I was more confused than anything.
I wasn’t really sure what happened. You could’ve forgotten about it, too. It was only in one picture.”
“Our first conversation was about that fucking tattoo, Roman. The literal first message I sent you. There was no forgetting it.”
“Mhm,” I hum as I tap my finger against his chest. “You said this was empty, Lance. Are you going to let me fill it back up, because I can.”
He pulls that tongue ring between his teeth, sliding it back and forth as he debates. I know that there’s a lot going on right now, that this is a lot to process at one time, but this is it for us. Lance is it for me. I promised him that I wouldn’t leave him again, and I meant it.
“Let me prove it to you. Please.“ I beg.
He lays his hands flat against my chest as he stares into my eyes. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that?”
“Hmm,” I hum with a playful smirk. “Do you remember what you told me about kissing? The reason why you don’t kiss people?”
“Yeah?”
“You said that you never kissed people because you wanted it to be special, to mean something.”
“Mhmm,“ He hums with a quick nod.
“I told you that kissing someone was only special if you wanted it to be, but… I didn’t tell you that I never kiss people either.“ I admit as I reach out and push a stray hair away from his face.
“Why?” He asks curiously as he stares up at me.
“The same reason. Well, kind of. It’s intimate.
It’s a promise. It’s a vulnerability. It requires commitment and justification.
There are good times to do it, and there are bad times.
There are right places, and wrong places.
Most importantly, I think there’s the right people to do it with, and there’s definitely wrong people. ”
“Are you going somewhere with this, Roman?”
I smirk at him before I pull him closer by the nape of his neck.
His eyes flutter closed as I brush my lips against his tenderly, tilting my head as I run my tongue across his lips.
A quiet groan slips from him as he parts them, opening up for me in more ways than he realizes.
Kissing Lance is nothing like I expected and somehow still exactly what I expected.
It’s almost an out-of-body experience. Every place his fingers wander, every point of contact between us is being bookmarked by my brain with uncanny precision.
He’s tattooing constellations across my body, coordinates of a place that’s only ever belonged to him.
I move my hand up the back of his neck, my fingers inching between the strands of his hair. With my other hand, I tug his body closer to mine, until we’re both depending on the wall to hold us up. His hands sneak below my shirt, causing my lips to curve up into a smile as I continue kissing him.
It feels like I’ve waited my entire life for this moment.
Every sleepless night, every single time I turned on those monitors and searched for his face, every shitty training regime I went through, every bruise, every scar, every tattoo on my skin, all those things, all those memories happened to get me here. This exact moment.
I don’t want it to end. I want to stay here until my lips can convince him of everything that my words haven’t been able to.
That what we had was worth giving each other a shot.
That everything between us, the way he makes me feel, it’s not normal.
The stillness he gives my brain, the laughter that sparks from mundane tasks, the yearning we have for one another, the desire to be near him at all times.
Those aren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill feelings.
You don’t just have those for anybody. This isn’t some mediocre romance bullshit.
What I feel for him is a desperate, needy, burn-the-world-to-the-ground kind of ordeal.
It consumes every part of me. He is the world that I revolve around.
I know that this isn’t the time to get carried away though, so I pull away first, leaning my forehead against his as I stare down at him.
“I think this was the right time.” I whisper. “I think this was the right place, and I think you’re the right person, Lance.”
He pushes against my chest, putting more space between us. I’ve laid everything on the line. My thoughts, my feelings, where I want this to go. Now, it’s his move. I can’t force him to accept my apology, or to trust me, not after everything that’s happened between us.
All I can do is hope.
He reaches down and brushes off his shirt as he clears his throat. “That was the most romantic bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’m having a hard time believing it came out of your mouth.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not sure that anyone else would believe it either.” I lightly joke with a shrug.
“Oh no, definitely not.“ He chuckles awkwardly as he looks around the room. “So… um…what now?”
“The ball is in your court. Tell me what you’re thinking, what you need. We can take this slow. I can give you some space for a few days to let you process everything or—”
“Uh, no.” He interrupts as he turns to scowl at me. “I’ve had plenty of space. I’m so fucking tired of space, Roman.”
“Or…” I continue. “We can just keep moving forward. Do what feels good, whatever we’re comfortable with, and just communicate with each other if things start to get overwhelm—”
“That one,” he says as he points a finger at me. “I pick that one.”
I can’t help but chuckle as I shake my head at him. “Forward it is, pretty boy.”
He crosses his arms across his chest and watches me as I lean back against the wall and tuck my hands in my pockets. His eyes trail along my body reverently before meeting mine as a smile pulls up the corner of his lips.
“I feel it too, you know?”
I tilt my head in confusion. “Feel what?”
“Love.”