The glass of water is going down like a shot of tequila. And if they don’t leave, right now, all his careful years of subterfuge will go down like theTitanic. Oliver puts out a distress signal:
I’m changing them. consider yourself irresistible and get out of here
Leo responds with a single smirking emoji, which hasn’t always seemed so coquettish to Oliver as it does now. When he looks up, Oliver can see the live Leo making a big show of begging off, suddenly knackered while he shrugs into his denim jacket. Maybe he’s more like DiCaprio than Messi after all. Oliver forces himself to wait six whole minutes before he follows him.
He must have misread the room somehow; Oliver’s front steps are markedly empty when he comes jogging up the lane, ready to carry Leo over the threshold like a blushing bride and then follow said blush all the way down his body. They’re supposed to be careful, yes, on account of the neighbors, but he didn’t quite intend for Leo to hide in the shrubbery.
???Oliver texts, only slightly miffed that his grand entrance has gone awry.
His phone rings immediately.
“Where are you?” Leo asks.
“Standing in front of my front door, actually. Where are you?”
“Yourdoor? Oliver!”
“Don’t ‘Oliver’ me! I live around the corner from the pub!” he objects.
“Exactly. Where it would be very easy to be seen,” Leo says, like he’s talking to someone incredibly slow. “I told the front desk my teammate would be coming by to drop off scouting reports and everything.”
Well, he’s got him there.
“Ten minutes, all right? I’m getting in the car right now.”
“I’ll give you eight,” Leo tells him archly as he hangs up on Oliver.
It takes him closer to fifteen, what with the parking and hoping the doorman doesn’t clock the fact that he’s showing up without any trace of a scouting tape. In the mirrored doors of the elevator, Oliver’s fringe is askew like an old paintbrush, the green in his eyes almost entirely overtaken by black. He looks rabid, starving. Thinking about what’s going to happen, what’s waiting for him upstairs, turns the whole metal box on its axis until his feet are resting comfortably on the ceiling. There are still parts of Leo’s body he’s never touched, like the crevices behind his knees and the hollow of his belly button. Oliver wants it all—consumingly, dangerously so.
Maybe that’s why he goes for the front door assuming it’ll be unlocked, like Leo will have read his thoughts and expedited the process for him, bringing them closer to the moment where they’ll get to have each other. Maybe that’s also why Leo was waiting in the foyer, eyes up to the peephole, to pull it open for him. Whatever it is, they go for the knob simultaneously and the door swings inward with full force, right into Leo’s face.
Leo makes a noise like a basset hound, between anarghand a howl, somewhat muffled by an ominouscrack. Oliver was already seeing red with sheer desire, but now his vision is crimson from the steady stream of blood coming from Leo’s nose.
“Fuck!” Oliver shrieks, reaching instinctively for Leo’s chin, trying to get him upright so the bleeding will slow.
“Ow!” Leo yelps back. “Don’t touch it!”
“Sorry, sorry. We’ve just got to get your head up, to help with the bleeding.”
“You’re supposed to knock,” Leo says thickly, thep’s turning tob’s like he’s underwater.
“I didn’t know you were standing right there,” Oliver says,carefully groping across Leo’s cheek to feel for his nose as lightly as he can.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did that and then some. Well done.” Leo hisses when Oliver makes contact but doesn’t push him away, screwing his eyes shut and breathing heavily out of his mouth. “Not broken, I don’t think,” Oliver concludes, gently twisting his nose ring back into place.
“How can you tell?” Leo asks.
“Mum’s a nurse. But I’m not, to be fair. I think you’ve got to go to the hospital and make sure I’m right.”
“Will you come with me?”
“I better not,” Oliver says reluctantly. The thought of Leo in a hospital makes his stomach turn. “Might look a bit dodgy.” Leo frowns as he nods, still covered in red. Oliver hates the incursion of these stupid rules when Leo is hurt, in need of him. For a split second he thinks of calling his mum, then puts that idea right back into a box. “Give me your phone, let me call you a cab,” he says instead.
“Dodgy, right. They might ask who hit me,” Leo says impatiently, stepping away from Oliver taking out his own phone. “I’ll call the car. Don’t want it to be under your name. Should I plan on you being here when I get back?”
“Not in range of the door,” Oliver says gently. “But here, of course. Got to see our matching nose bumps, hey?”
