Winner Takes It All

Chapter 8

Liam was out and they were on his roof having just bought the concert tickets after the Dan Martinez fiasco. The wind whipped viciously. Leo did not have a good excuse for being there bar the fact that the roof was possibly his favourite place on earth. Leo's guitar was slung between his legs.

"Any song requests?"

Xavier gave him a mocking smile. "I'm not into Ed Sheeran."

Leo fought the urge to scream. "God how is it that you're arrogant even about your music taste?"

Xavier gave Leo another mocking grin but something about the moonlight stripped it of its bite.

Leo started strumming a song.

"You know Led Zeppelin?" He asked with barely concealed shock.

"I didn't know you had a monopoly on listening to rock." Leo frowned with concentration but his fingers seemed to know where to go.

"It's just-" Xavier seemed to consider his words for a moment, exposing the column of his throat as he took another gulp of the 1966 Single Malt Scotch Whiskey. "It's just that you're always so happy, even when I piss you off. Happy people don't listen to Led Zeppelin."

"I have more than one setting you know," Leo grit out, hating the assumptions he was making.

Xavier scoffed and took another long gulp. "You're trying to tell me that you're not happy most of the time with your little martyr speeches and your - "

Leo stopped playing abruptly. "Doesn't mean I don't get sad sometimes. Why do you have to be such a dick about everything?"

"I'm not trying to be a dick, just trying to understand what you have to be sad about."

Leo angrily strummed a lone dissonant chord.

Another swig and a knowing smirk. "It's a boy isn't it?"

Leo flushed in humiliation, hating that he was right.

Xavier's eyes glinted as he spotted the truth, reading Leo so easily. "Ah, unrequited love."

Leo chuckled bitterly, desperately hoping he would not press any further. He should have known better.

"What's his name?"

Leo reached out, hoping that Xavier couldn't see the trembling in his hands, and tipped back some whiskey. If he was going to do this then God Damnit he was going to do it drunk. "Maximus."

Xavier snorted. "Well with a name like that you should've seen it coming."

Leo took another long gulp to hide the trembling of his hands.

Xavier eyed him out of the corner of his eye. "So what did he do? Sleep with your best friend? Film you and put it on the internet?"

Leo set the bottle down, harder than he intended to and pressed his hands flat against his thighs. God, why could he still remember what Max had said like it happened yesterday?

"Nothing that bad," Leo mumbled eventually, hoping that his words would get lost in the wind. "It was my fault really. We slept together a couple of times, I caught feelings, he said some shitty things."

Xavier looked at Leo long and hard, searching his eyes for something - what, Leo didn't know, but he must have found it because he eventually looked away and reached for the bottle. "You're an idiot but I'm sorry he said those things, whatever they were."

Leo swallowed, ignoring the itch in his throat. The heaviness in his chest was no longer unbearable but it lingered and he smoothed his hand against his chest. "Yeah, well. He was probably right anyways."