Crackerbox ✔

twenty-five: i'm sorry

Lee's own tears return anew, dripping down his cheeks as he sobs into Jack's shoulder and hugs him tighter. For so long, he's felt so cold. But Jack's confession ignites the dying flame inside his ribcage, setting it alight and sending it to the stars.

He should say it back. But his words won't make it past the lump in his throat, so he just cries harder, holding Jack like he's going to disappear if he lets go. "Don't lie to me. If you're lying, I'll break."

"I'm not lying. I swear I'm not." Jack gently presses his lips to Lee's face, kissing the tears away from his cheeks. The hole in Lee's heart fills to the brim with warmth, molten gold dripped into a rose-tinted glass. "I love you, Lee. I'm sorry for all the stupid shit I've said---pretending I didn't even like you when I think I've always been a little in love with you. And I don't care if you don't love me back, as long as you let me keep loving you."

"I'm sorry too," Lee whispers, smiling up at the boy he loves through a haze of tears as Jack wipes his eyes dry, fingers hot and slick on Lee's damp skin. "Because I'm in love with you too."

It's then that Jack kisses him, and Lee allows himself to wonder if heaven would feel like this. If it would feel like candied honeysuckle and bottled moonshine and castles in the sky. If it would feel like rose petals in June and chestnuts in winter and the air after a storm. If it would feel like the delicate, salty tang of Jack's lips against his, strong and firm and tender, starlight on his tongue.

How does it feel to fall in love?

Jack's hair is a spill of toffeenut latte down his neck as the rough brown strands tickle Lee's nose, his own bangs long fallen into his eyes in a splash of baby blue and tidal grey. The hot flush of another body pressed against his own sends tremulous ecstasy flowing through Lee's blood, roses blooming in his chest as he snatches the sun from the sky and clutches it in his trembling fist.

It feels like magic.

Again and again, Lee kisses the stars, grass sinking into his left palm as the other presses its fingertips into Jack's cheek, soft, fragile, glass-like. Jack is better-looking up close, somehow---not really pretty, not really handsome, but something more. He's gorgeous in the way that most people are striking, something that stands out in a crowd without really blending together. Like he shouldn't really be attractive but still is.

And what's magic to you?

Jack's hand is in his, and he's not sure when his own fingers had drifted off the ground and into Jack's palm, but he's not complaining. The lines of Jack's hand tell a new story now: the story of how he loves a boy, and the story of how the boy loves him back.

This. This is magic. We---are magic.

"Please don't throw me away," Lee whispers, terrified in the wake of his own emotions, heart swelling so hard he's sure it'll burst against the cage of his ribs, thoughts running wild with all the people who've loved him and left him. He's almost too scared to hope, almost too afraid to wonder if Jack would do the same---if he'd love Lee until his daily dose of love ran out and then leave him without a single backwards glance, just like everyone's done, just like everyone keeps doing---

The hand in his squeezes Lee's palm a little tighter as Jack gently presses his forehead against Lee's, hot breath dancing over their cheeks.

"Never," Jack murmurs.

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When Lee's finally stopped crying (and Jack's finished wiping his own tears away too, although Lee knows he'd never admit it), he asks for a moment alone with his mother. He expects Jack to argue, but instead, Jack presses a chaste kiss to the top of Lee's head and says, "I'll be waiting for you over there if you need me."