ROCKET

Håkon comes back a little somber but that's alright, I assume Nico cornered him to ask about it. He seems to be fine all until the cooldown run before the weight room. 

Then he sticks with me toward the back, even though I know he could outrun me in his sleep. We're the same size in stride so if I'm feeling speedy we keep up really well, but something about the way he's built works with running for some reason and the dude is fast as hell. 

"What's up?" I pant at him, a little winded because he's upping our pace faster than my normal. He seems perfectly fine with the speed and when he responds he sounds like he could be sitting on a couch instead of jogging a three mile run.

"Nothing."

"Oh come on, asshole."

"Fine, fine," he lets out a nervous laugh. "Nico cornered me."

"I saw that, did she ask a whole bunch of questions?" 

"No, she just knew, I couldn't do anything about it." He's watching the head of the group. We duck back inside the building and start our run past the offices.

"So you're alright with her knowing?"

"It's Nico." He glances at me, then around at the rest of the guys. We're at the back of the pack and for some reason he's lagging now, holding me back and shortening up his strides.

"Why are you running so slow? Are you okay?"

"No reason and yes, I'm fine." He seems to be paying very close attention to the movement of everyone else.

Suddenly I'm dragged sideways, my sentence cut off. "Liar, li-"

"Yeti-" He pulls me into an office, shutting the door and latching it, then pulling down the curtain in such a swift motion I'm surprised nothing breaks. "What are you-"

Then his mouth is on mine. I let out a little whine of surprise, but he's faster, stifling it. I struggle to put two and two together, collecting a single command in my brain. 

Kiss. Him. The. Hell. Back.

I blink once, a blurry smudge of his face in front of mine. The blink helps a little bit to free up my stiff and shocked body, my arms springing to life to lift to his hair. I try to figure out what's going on multiple times but eventually my brain gets tired of thinking about this so damn hard and leaves me on my own. A second after I stop trying to kiss him like it's a test I need to pass, my resolve buckles and we melt together like we've been doing this for years. 

His hands are knotted in my sweaty hair and he's kissing me hard, his body pressed on mine against the plaster. I'm there with him, barely thinking, just doing, just kissing. Just existing with him right now and it feels so good, beyond good. 

He nudges his tongue against my lips and I give in without a second thought, tipping my head to deepen the kiss, turning it into a filthy mess of bodies desperate to feel each other, an obscene, utterly explicit, filthy mess.

I sink my fingers into the front of his shirt, tugging him harder into me. He's breathing heavy and hot and messy on my cheeks and I'm out of breath and so dazed he might have to catch me if I pass out.

I needed this, I needed him. It all comes rushing back all at once, a month of pent-up frustration at not having him hits my body like a truck. Like a couple trucks. I kiss him like I wanted to a thousand times when he was sad and a thousand times when he was happy and a thousand times when I just needed it and it makes sense, it just works. I barely had him a full day before we stopped doing this and it was only a month without it but somehow I feel like it was years and years and years. Like I went and got myself shipped overseas and he was just waiting for me to get back. Like he went home for a full summer and I got to pick him up from the airport. Even as we're standing here, knotted up like this, it's like I still miss him and I know that I'll miss him the second his lips leave mine. 

"Håkon-" I manage. He pulls off me for a second, letting me catch my breath, our mouths ghosting against each other. My knees are weak and my grip on him is failing. My eyes are threatening to roll back in my head. "We're in the offices, what if- what- what if someone comes in?"

"Locked the door."

I suck in a deep breath. "Oh."

He gives me a sloppy grin before tangling our lips again. I'm really just not sure I'm alive anymore.

I get another singular thought, my brain putting together words at a rate of one every fifteen minutes with a buffer period, and before I know what's happening, I shove him off me. He stumbles backward, his hand up on his lip.

"What the hell?"

I take a deep breath, ignoring how little sense anything is making right now. My brain has stopped forming sentences altogether. "You're," I pant. "You're not ready yet."

"Yes, I am," he's hoarse. "What about all that is telling you I'm not ready?"

I put another thought together. "Håkon, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't-"

"Maybe I won't ever be able to be like you, Milo, but I'm done hiding from it. That's ready enough."

"No, no," I push a hand through my hair, putting it all back in place. "You're not okay with it, you made that clear two weeks-"

He cuts me off. "I'm fucking into you!" He hollers. "I'm Håkon Rex and I'm pretty damn sure I'm in love with you!" 

"What?"

"And I'm ready enough to fucking accept that about myself! I might not be one of those people that's able to talk about all of it, to wear it proudly on my sleeve! I might not ever be ready for the whole fucking world to know! But I'm ready enough to accept that I'm absolutely crazy about you and no amount of self hate is going to change what I feel. I'm sick of letting this tear us apart, okay? I want nothing more than to be with you right now, I need you, okay? So what if I can't face the rest of everyone and tell them the thing that has pulled me down since day one, but I'm so fucking sick of letting it torment me."

I can't manage anything else other than another soft: "what?"

"You, you!" He lets out a worried laugh. "You helped me fix all this mess! Okay? It's never ever ever going to look like what you have and I'm perfectly okay with that! I'm not you, Rocket, I'm not going to dress up in a rainbow and be comfortable enough to tell the whole world. It's going to take me a long time to be able to joke about it like you can. But I'm out, I'm alright, I figured myself out!"

"When?" I can't process anything that's going on.

"I don't know." he runs his hands through his hair. "It just, I- I realized I was okay with it, for some reason I was able to look at myself in the mirror and be okay with it. I don't know when it happened, but frankly I don't give a fuck."

No no no no no no no no no.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this, I need more time. I need time to think and to come up with a plan or something, some more time to research or to prepare myself. He's ready, he's ready and now I'm not.

I'm scared. I'm fucking terrified.

I feel my breathing pick up, my hands pressed flat against the wall, eyes wide, ready to bolt.

"Milo?" He takes a step forward and I unknowingly lean back. "What's wrong? What's going on? Was that too much? Did I cross a line? Did I-"

"I've never dated anyone before." I blurt, too quickly. He takes a second with it, worry crossing his features.

"...you haven't?"

I shake my head, pressed back against the wall. "I don't know what I'm doing, I don't have a good reason why but I'm scared. It's a really big thing to fuck up and I don't want to ruin it for you."

He opens his mouth to respond, then shuts it again. "Is this why you've been stalling?"

I clear my throat. "No, but, kinda. Not at first but it's why I've been weird recently."

"Are you scared of me?"

I don't want to hurt him, but sometimes the answer is yes, absolutely. Sometimes the answer is no, not at all.

"I'm taking that as a yes."

I suck in a long breath. "No. I'm not." C'mon Rocket, you've always been talkative. Say what you need to. "I'm scared of not being able to love you as much as you need."

"That's what you're scared of?" He's baffled. Beyond baffled. 

"I-I-"

"You know I don't give a fuck, right?" He laughs, running a hand backward through his hair. "I've never done this either, this isn't just you. Okay? So what? We'll mess it up and we'll probably make weird and bad decisions but the point is to do it in our own way, not to follow some damned blueprint."

I swallow hard. "I just don't want to break your-"

"My heart? Fuck, I love that you care so much but I'd rather get loved in a shitty fucking spotty messed up traumatized way by you than loved in any other way by any other person." He puts both his hands in his shock white hair, pulling it back away from his eyes. "Don't you get it? I want you. Not someone else, not a perfect situation, not anything, Rocket!"

"Why?" My voice cracks.

"I don't know! You think out of anyone I'm going to be the one that knows the first goddamn thing about feelings? Hell, Rocket I've got the emotional range of a hockey puck, this is not something I'm good at." His voice cracks. "I don't know, okay? I don't. I have no idea what the hell happens in my head or what you do that makes me want to keep you around all the time. I don't know what it is about you that makes me comfortable with joking around publicly, with going a day without my retainer, with letting people hug me, with making me talk. I don't know what it is about you that makes me want to show you things about myself that a year ago I'd rather quit forever than tell someone. I don't know, I don't, I don't, okay? But I keep coming back to you. I keep trying to figure it out and it all comes back to you. I can't stop. I couldn't convince myself that having feelings for a teammate was a bad thing because you make me feel so fucking alright all the time and feeling fucking okay is so so so goddamn addictive."

He stops for only a split second before starting to ramble again. "I just, Milo, I don't know, I can't figure it out. I feel safe again. It's such a stupid thing to admit to but I'm serious when I say that you have all of me in the palm of your damn hand and you could take that handful and chuck it off a cliff right now and I'd crawl right back to you because I can't convince myself you're not-"

I reach out and grab the front of his shirt, pulling our chests flush again and pressing my lips to his to get him to shut the fuck up before I cry. 

"That I'm not what?" I ask. 

He's staring wide-eyed at me. "Perfect. Even though I know you're far from it, you're fucking perfect." 

I lift up and press my mouth to his again, unable to respond with anything but another kiss to try to tell him that I've seen him as perfect for as long as I can remember knowing him. That I feel the same damn way. That I know that it wouldn't matter how many times he might say 'i don't love you' and I'd still crawl back to him like the ocean returns to the shore because there's nothing better in this world than him. I'd wait as long as that same ocean's waves crash for him to love me back because I don't care to be loved in a perfect way by another person, only to be loved in an imperfect way by him. 

"So you want to do this?" He mumbles over my lips.

"Yes." I think on it for a second. "Please." 

***

and when the night falls around me,

and i feel your warmth

and when you say you love me

i fall a little more

love like mine - the chase

***

yes this chapter took an extra two hours,,,,, it's because I rewrote most of it on a whim.

WATCH FOR UPDATES; I HAVE TO SEND COLLEGE APPS ETC ETC IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS AND BECAUSE THIS BOOK IS NOW TWO PARTS I REDESIGNED THE ENDING SO I HAVE WRITING TO DO. 

THE POSTING SCHEDULE MIGHT GET REARRANGED BECAUSE OF THAT (SORRY)