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,fartoo 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 fuckingperfect.
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 myGod.’
‘Are you OK?’He strokes Jules’ face, pulls back just enough to see him, to geteyes onbecause 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 andloveis 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 justkeepshim 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 himlike 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’sallthat holds him back from lifting Jules out of the tub and letting this go wherever Jules wants, doingwhateverJules 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.
