Page 151 of All the way home

“No,” Kieran agrees, and then he turns, and he’s right there, and Zach kisses him without even stopping first to see if anyone’s watching.

Just once, Kieran had said, but it’s not. Once turns to twice turns to more than Zach has fingers to count on, until they have to stop because both of them are smiling too hard.

“Hey,” Zach murmurs into the space between them. “Stranger.”

“Is that going to become a thing?” Kieran asks, disentangling his fingers from Zach’s hair. Zach isn’t entirely sure how they got there. “Is that what you’re going to call me back at school?”

Back at school. Zach has never loved a series of words more in his life. Pretending to think about it, he presses his index finger to his chin. “Maybe.”

“I’ll remind you that I have more than enough ammunition in the name department.” Kieran pushes off the barrier. When Zach flips him off, he laughs delightedly.

They walk the rest of the way to the gate bumping shoulders and knuckles.

Delirium is what this is.

Rena frowns when she sees them. “You didn’t have to run.”

“You made it sound like an emergency,” Kieran says, not acknowledging that their breathlessness has nothing to do with their sprint through the terminal.

“I’ll be right back.” Lucas sounds a bit hollow as he walks toward the bathroom.

Zach watches him go.

So this is the aftermath of Mount Vesuvius. When he catches Rena watching him, he holds her gaze for a moment.

He breaks first.

Too quiet to make out, Rena whispers something to Kieran, and he leans toward her, whispering back. When he rights his balance, the side of his hand bumps against Zach’s and he glances over, eyes bright. It’s impossible not to echo Kieran’s smile.

“Now boarding Zone 2,” the flight attendant says, and Kieran moves Lucas’s bags along with his own. Rena turns away, listening intently when Kieran whispers to her once more, nodding just the slightest bit.

When Lucas comes back, he keeps his eyes down and says nothing. Part of Zach wants to know the details, but then, he has a gut feeling that he’s going to find out at some point anyway. That Kieran’s going to tell him, eventually, just like Kieran’s going to tell him all sorts of other things he doesn’t know or understand right now.

When Zach pulls out his driver’s license, he does his best to shield it from view, which is useless, because Kieran already knows.

“Ammunition,” Kieran mutters in his ear, and Zach’s scowl lasts only until he gets caught in the tight whirlpool of his smile.

It’s only when they get past the flight attendant—Zach behind Kieran, so he can watch what he’s supposed to do—that the nerves kick in.

This is happening, for real. They are actually getting on the plane, and Kieran’s talking while they walk down the loading bridge, and as they step over the lip and the rush of freezing-cold air hits him, Zach sort of feels like he may as well be walking the plank.

Stepping onto the plane, the roar of the engine a deep rattle he feels in his bones, all Zach can think about is Delta Air Lines Flight 1086. As they navigate down the narrow aisle down to Row 17, Kieran keeps talking, but Zach can’t hear him because everything in his range of hearing has gone unpleasantly fuzzy.

A hand waves in front of his eyes. “Hey. Houston? Which seat do you want?”

Zach blinks over from where he’s wrestling his suitcase into the overhead compartment. “Uh.”

“Between aisle and middle.” Kieran’s smile is gentle. “Preference?”

His mouth is dry. “Is there an option that will be less likely to kill me if the plane crashes?”

“It won’t crash.” After a moment, Kieran adds, “Aisle.”

“Okay,” Zach says, and lets Kieran get into the row before him, next to the old man from their gate, who has already fallen asleep again, chin to chest, magnificent white fluttering mustache a brief and blissful distraction.

“It won’t crash,” Kieran repeats, after ten minutes of Zach staring at the back of the seat in front of him and doing his best not to astral project into a different timeline. Although actually, maybe if he were in a different timeline, he would be in a scenario where he was not about to go hurtling through the sky at five million miles an hour.

But then he wouldn’t have met Kieran, so.