Chapter 11 #4
Leo lifted his head and worked up the courage to meet Joshua’s gaze.
For a long beat they stared at each other across the expanse of carpeted floor.
With the way Joshua was standing near the open terrace doors, light streamed in behind him and smoothed out the details of his features, caught halfway between a cut-out and a real person.
Jesus, okay. Leo needed to get a grip.
“I should warn you,” he said, a little unfocused, “that I’ve barely slept since… before the last time we saw each other. So if I maybe don’t make perfect sense… Sorry.”
“Do you want coffee?” Joshua asked. “Or English breakfast?”
“I just want you,” Leo told him, completely honest. It was out before he could think better of it, but he didn’t want to take it back. For fuck’s sake, he had not flown twelve bloody hours to chicken out. “I want you, and also maybe some sleep in the near future. But mostly you.”
Something unbearably bright skittered over Joshua’s face, and Leo had to look away. No. He didn’t get to keep that, not yet. Not until he’d put himself out there.
After a dragging second, Joshua moved away from the terrace doors, turned his back to Leo as he fiddled with the kettle that sat in a corner of the suite, next to a coffee maker and a selection of tea. Leo didn’t think he could stomach even water right now.
“You said…” Joshua glanced over his shoulder, voice careful. “In your flat, you said it didn’t matter what you want. Or what I want. Because it couldn’t be.”
“I was—fuck.” Leo wiped a hand over his eyes.
Everything felt hazy, and the only thing he could focus on was the dip between Joshua’s shoulder blades, the curls at the nape of his neck, and how much Leo wanted to kiss the exposed skin above the collar of his shirt.
“I wasn’t wrong,” Leo said slowly. “Except I was. But… Just, before we can be—if you still even maybe want to, there are things you should know. About me.”
“Things?” Joshua repeated. Flicking the kettle on, he kept his hands busy by readying two cups, selecting tea bags. He’d have seemed thoroughly distracted, unresponsive, if it weren’t for the tiny glances he kept shooting at Leo.
“Things.” Leo fought against the bile rising to the back of his throat. He could do this. “Things that I should have told you sooner. But I was…”
“Scared?” Now Joshua had turned around, studying Leo.
It wasn’t with anger or reproach, rather with something cautious, the way one would hold perfectly still to watch a flock of wild birds just a little longer before they took flight.
Leo was momentarily unsettled, confusion tangling with the bright sunshine that slanted into the room.
“Scared,” he confirmed, slightly delayed. “Because I thought you wouldn’t like it, and you won’t. But I also thought… I told myself I was protecting you. Took Nate to make me realise that maybe you don’t even want that. That I had no right to take the decision from you.”
“So you’re ready to tell me now?” Joshua asked, so quiet it nearly got lost in the distance between them.
“I’m… Yes.” Leo sucked in a breath. “I’m ready to tell you…
”—everything—“everything. Starting with—” No.
He couldn’t just drop that bomb without preparing the ground first, giving Joshua a chance to adjust. “Starting with how you already know I had a crush on you, at Eton. But I didn’t tell you that you made me realise I was gay. ”
Surprise widened Joshua’s eyes. God, they were lovely; he was lovely. “I did?”
“Bit creepy, maybe.” Leo pursed his lips and gave a little shrug, not quite able to hold Joshua’s gaze.
His cheeks felt hot. “I mean, you were fourteen, and we were, like—in the Wall Game. We ended up shoved close, and that rather… I liked that rather more than I should. Which was how I realised that yeah, definitely more interested in that cherubic little thing with the curls and the ‘look at me, I’m a prince’ swagger than I’d ever been interested in a girl. ”
Joshua made a soft noise, a half-formed chuckle. He messed up his curls with one hand and seemed to search for an appropriate response, but was saved by the kettle announcing it was done.
Leo waited until Joshua had turned away to pour water into the cups before he continued. “Sometimes I wondered whether perhaps, if it hadn’t been for you, it would have taken me longer to figure things out.”
Some water spilled when Joshua’s hand jerked. He stilled for a moment, then resumed preparing the tea, his voice heavy. “Long enough that things could have been—with your parents…” He trailed off, and Leo finished for him.
“Long enough that things might have gone differently, yes. If I’d been a little older, a bit more mature, already at uni or something…”
“Oh.” Setting the kettle down, Joshua leaned against the cabinet, his head bent as he exhaled. “I’m sorry?”
Distant amusement tugged at Leo’s mouth, made the corners curve up. “Did you really just apologise for being too cute for your own good at age fourteen? That’s ridiculous.”
“No, I just…” Joshua glanced up before Leo had a chance to control his expression, and there was a beat when they simply looked at each other, miles of space between them.
Leo steadied himself with one hand on the back of an armchair, but he still felt completely out of his depth.
He didn’t look away though, and neither did Joshua.
“You just…?” Leo prompted.
“I just wish things had gone differently for you.” Joshua swallowed.
“I wish your parents had been understanding, wish that you hadn’t gone through living on the street and…
You know, the things that entailed.” With a helpless shrug, he focused on the steeping tea, set one of the cups on a saucer and carefully placed a teaspoon on it.
His hands shook just enough for Leo to notice.
Joshua’s voice hadn’t carried pity. Sadness, yes, but no pity.
Leo felt his breathing ease. “No use in crying over spilt milk, is there? C’est la vie.”
He fell silent as Joshua drew near to hand over the saucer, and he still didn’t think he could stomach anything, but—the simple act of Joshua offering Leo tea, even after everything…
Their fingers brushed over the porcelain, and Leo fought the impulse to wrap his fingers around Joshua’s wrist and hold on.
Perhaps Joshua would let him. But until Leo had come clean, it wouldn’t feel right, wouldn’t feel like something he deserved.
Accepting the tea, Leo withdrew by half a step and stared into the steaming water, clouded with murky brown that seeped from the tea bag.
The sharp, bitter scent distracted him from a whiff of Joshua’s cologne, mixed with soap and a hint of sleep-sweat.
So close, so close. Leo wanted to tumble him onto the bed and learn every inch of Joshua’s body with his fingertips and his mouth, to the point where he’d never be able to forget.
To the point where Joshua wouldn’t ever forget either.
When Leo looked up through his lashes, Joshua was entirely focused on him, eyes dark. Leo lowered his gaze.
It took him a second to remember what they’d been talking about.
“I guess,” he picked the thread back up, a slight rasp to his voice, “there are some life lessons in there as well. Things I learned out there. Of course there are things I’d change if I could, if I’d known better…
” He paused, then made himself continue.
“But in the end, it’s made me grow, I suppose.
I was a self-centred little twat at Eton.
More than just a tad obnoxious, convinced that the world was my playground.
I had no idea what real life was like.” With a snort, he shook his head.
“You probably wouldn’t have liked me very much back then.
Honestly, I don’t think I’d have liked myself. ”
A light touch to his waist made Leo still entirely. He hadn’t realised Joshua was still close enough to reach for him and he didn’t dare glance up, didn’t dare move.
After a quiet second, Joshua’s hand fell away. “I think you’re too harsh on yourself.”
Leo’s mind was a mess of tangled thoughts and hopes, of touch and hold and keep and Joshua. “Maybe,” he managed.
The silence that followed was loaded, heavy with all the words Leo should say.
He didn’t know how to begin, tried to ground himself in the act of fishing the tea bag out of the water, squeezing out the last dregs of taste by winding the thread tightly around the bag and tugging on the end.
Jesus fucking Christ, why was this so bloody hard?
It was Joshua who broke the silence. “Is there more? You said you had things to tell me.”
Okay. So this was it. This was it, and if Leo didn’t do this now—then he might as well give up, because he’d never be what Joshua deserved.
He made himself look up and hold Joshua’s gaze. “There is more, yes. There is a very good, very concrete reason why I think—why I thought that as much as I wanted it, as much as I wanted you, it couldn’t work. Even though I was in love with you.” He paused. “Am in love with you.”
The bright, gentle warmth in Joshua’s eyes sent a shiver down Leo’s spine. While Joshua stayed quiet, he was smiling, so faintly it seemed like a distant idea.