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derek nagging julian and logan until they finally agree to go on a road trip with him because he insists that the largest ball of twine in the continental u.s. is a sight worth seeing and calls them uncultured swine. and they should’ve known that he would find a girl to hook up with sooner or later, but they’re not expecting for him to leave them at a diner with merely a wink, wearing a smug smile that makes them both roll their eyes.
and they can just go to a motel and call it a night but they’re both feeling suffocated by some unspoken thing, this feeling slipping and sliding between them, and they smile and bicker like an old married couple as if they can avoid it, getting back into the car and driving driving driving through some old run-of-the-mill town in the middle of god damn nowhere with maybe two gallons of gas, and they’re just too restless to sleep and logan knows that if they return to a motel all julian will do is grumble about “inadequately cleaned bed sheets and shitty television channel selection”
so they drive around aimlessly through dusty back roads and empty highways with flickering streetlights and there’s only one beer left in the back seat and they have to restock but for now they just share it, stopping at some empty parking lot and talking about nothing too important till it’s two am and they’re sitting on the hood of the car, julian with his legs curled beneath him and logan with his outstretched, and he looks up and julian is still watching him, still smiling, and he looks for all the world like just a regular guy; no paparazzi or perfectly styled hair or fake for-the-camera smiles. simply soft-worn clothes, outline bathed in the gentle glow of an overhead lamp and dark hair in an unusual state of disarray, draped in shards of yellow light and and and-
“you’re cute”
it bubbles out of his mouth without warning, tripping past his lips nearly hidden in a breath, and he knows julian was in the middle of talking and that he’d interrupted and he dimly realizes, tilting the bottle in his hand, that there’s no beer left. julian just stills and logan’s half sure that the other boy is going to tease him about the words for the rest of the foreseeable future, but he only smiles- this sad little smile that drives logan crazy- eyes fixed onto a nearby sign post, squinting as if he’s trying to read the words, though he really couldn’t care less. because logan says ‘you’re cute’ while he wants to say ‘i love you’.
and logan didn’t want to start talking, but he did. and now he can’t stop. “sometimes i think about you leaving, you know, leaving and not coming back, and it scares me so much that i can hardly breathe.”
julian just inhales and exhales and inhales and exhales, folding a scrap piece of a coffee stained map with his fingertips; pressing it into small and smaller squares until it’s firm where it lies between the tips of his index fingers. he doesn’t look at logan, not once, and logan can’t pretend that he’s not looking at his friend anymore, can’t pretend that his heart isn’t rattling in his rib cage like a trapped bird. he wonders what to make of the trepidation he can see in the slight tremor of julian’s hands.
maybe because it matches his own.
eventually, julian turns to meet his eyes, and it’s even worse. what, he doesn’t know; but it hurts more, like something twining right through the very makeup of him and burning like a star turning supernova, and nothing about this feels fair for either of them.
and then julian shifts over for only a second to rest his forehead against logan’s shoulder, as if to quietly say i won’t, i’m here and after that they get a call from derek to get their asses to some apartment to pick him up, and they don’t talk about it while driving there or the next morning or the day after that, but logan swears he feels the not-there words against his shoulder the entire time, all the way back to westerville by the time the end of the week rolls around and they need to head back to school.
julian thinks while watching logan’s fingers resting on the steering wheel and when logan catches his eyes and his lips quirk into a smile that’s soft and unsure and barely there but quite enough, he thinks maybe one day he can tell him i’m in love with you- it scares me how much, but i think you might be it
but for now?
he doesn’t say anything.