Gods & Monsters

XXVI

He's probably being a little bit of a prick. He feels sour though, a little bitter, so he doesn't apologize or waver his gaze, just bites his lip and blinks slowly at Dylan who stares back unflinchingly, seemingly unbothered.

"Of course not," he says calmly. "We're going to choose the right moment to tell her. We'll know when—there will be signs."

Of course there'll be.

"And once we listen to those signs and tell her, we'll go from there. But it'll work, Jacob. It'll work because we love each other and we were meant to find each other." He leans back in the booth, loose-limbed and easy, acting as if he hadn't just fulfilled every Disney cliché in the book. "We're both dedicated and we're both willing to work for it, man. We have all the tools we need to construct our own path. And that's why I'm not afraid."

Hm. Something ripples through Jacob, a faint glimmer of recognition or understanding.

"You're not afraid, huh? Not at all?" he asks quietly, and his eyes fall back down to the table.

"No."

Jacob looks up, sees the tranquility in Dylan's brown eyes, the sweeping curve of his lids.

"I'm not afraid at all. We're too strong to be easily broken."

The sentence sits between them, both hopeful and heavy, and it strikes Jacob immediately, every fucking word. The image of troye—the one that's always a blink of an eye away, fluttering always at the back of his mind—sharpens into view, hope, hope, hope blooming like flowers around the curls of his head.

It could work.

The thought flashes through Jacob, made of lightning.

It could work. They could work.

"So you don't know what's coming," Jacob says as an influx of hope sweeps through his lungs. He's still staring at the table, lost in the words that are forming before he can even properly think them. "And you don't know how it'll affect you. But you're not scared. Because you know you're willing to fight for it?"

At the silence, Jacob looks up, pulse stronger than it was before. He finds Dylan peering at him from beneath his messy hair, a lopsided smile slow to form. He nods once, pads of his fingers now pressed together.

"Yeah, man."

Jacob swallows.

Shit. He's willing to fight for Troye .

Isn't that hilarious? Jacob Bixenman, the self-appointed 'don't give a fuck' guru is willing to fight for something. And it's a person, no less. A boy. A young boy who sometimes pretends to be a kitten whenever he wants his back scratched or whenever he's procrastinating on homework and demands Jacob's attention. A boy whose carefully white Converse have become ripped and stained from all the late night walks with Jacob, whose room smells like cinnamon because of the candles he always burns, whose favorite color is peach because it's sort of like pink but it's softer.

Jacob wants to fight for him. Jacob wants to keep him.

But will Troye want to do the same?

Closing his eyes, Jacob scrubs his hands over his face, rough and unforgiving as he pulls at the strands of his hair. He burrows his eyes in his palms, little golden dots speckling the darkness behind his lids. Fuck, everything is so hard.

"I like him, Dylan," he says suddenly, apropos of nothing.

"I know."

"I really like him. And I want to just, like..." Jacob stops, lets his hands fall from his face as his eyes drift around the pub sightlessly, searching for the right words. "I just want it to be us. That simple. I just... I dunno. I wanna just... Be with him. Just with him. And it should be fucking simple, right? Shouldn't it? I mean, fuck's sake, dylan—look around! Everybody's with someone. You're with someone. It's so easy for everyone else but it's always a fucking thing with me. Do you know how often I have to change the subject whenever Troye asks me about where I live? Because that's fucked up, right there. I'm essentially homeless. Whenever we talk about his family, I have to avoid thinking about mine—because that's fucked up too. My friendships are even fucked up—look at Timothee and I. Hell, my relationship with Troye is the most fucked up. Every single aspect of my fucking life is a mess while everybody else just lives their lives and it's just that fucking simple. But I've got to jump through hoops and, you know what? You know what's the best? The funniest part?"