A/N: I'm baaaaack! I can't believe the wonderful response I've been getting. It might not seem like much to some people, but to me 226 reads is pretty crazy and I'm so thankful. You are all amazing and I'm super glad that you're enjoying this story. I'm certainly having a blast writing it.
I'm actually really excited about this chapter. It turned out better than I expected. I would love to hear what y'all think about it, so any comments (positive or otherwise) would be much appreciated. As far as warnings go, sex is mentioned like twice in passing, but that's about it.
Finally, this chapter is dedicated to samsiobhan. She is a super talented writer, and even more awesomely she takes writing (and getting better at it) seriously, which is one of my favorite things to see in a fanfiction writer. You should definitely check her out if you haven't. Anyway, enjoy! <3
The door opened quickly and Tyler’s flushed face appeared behind it, visibly brightening at the sight of me. “Hey!” he grinned, drawing out the y in a way that positively screamed Tyler. He stepped out of the way to let me in and I smiled back.
“Hey, long time no see,” I teased. Tyler laughed and winked saucily before striding further into the room, giving me a second to take in my surroundings. Everything was carefully organized- a blazer hanging crisply in the closet, a suitcase full of neatly folded clothes at the foot of his bed, his laptop and phone charging side by side on the bedside table. I wondered briefly if this was his natural state or if he had tidied before inviting me over.
“Want some Doritos?” he asked, gesturing in the direction of an open bag resting on his bed beside a pattern of wrinkles that suggested he had been lying there moments before. “Some of my people gave them to me. They know their queen.” He put a hand to his chest, feigning strong emotion, and I laughed.
“I’m okay.” I was suddenly very aware of how heavy and useless my hands were, hanging limply at my sides, and shoved them into my back pockets roughly. Tyler bit his lip. He seemed to be studying me. I tried to hold his gaze, but failed epically and instead dropped my eyes to the white-carpeted floor.
“So, selfie time?” Tyler’s bouncy voice broke the silence like a cracking fire, and my eyes snapped back up to his. It was then that I realized that it was very hard to look at him without smiling.
“Yeah, let’s do it.” I stepped towards him as he pulled out his phone. The following process took longer than expected, involving lots of ugly faces, ruffling of hair, and merciless teasing. Something in the atmosphere felt softer when we had a task to perform. The air became easier to bend into conversation, and my mind didn’t wander to strange questions of forever and it’s relationship to right now. But when a satisfactory selfie had been captured and we were sat on the edge of his bed with no remaining distraction I inhaled and the air felt sharp. The world had come into focus and everything was real again. Too real.
Tyler laid back and I felt the mattress shift a little under his weight. I chewed on a peeling bit of skin by my thumbnail and wondered what kissing him would be like. I guessed I would find out soon.
“Troye?” His voice was softer than I’d ever heard it, and I turned, confused. There was a strange sort of determination in his eyes. I wondered where the alcohol he’d consumed earlier had gone. “I don’t think we should… I mean- Um.” He faltered, looking a little lost. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and left them there as he spoke again, this time quickly, as though trying to get the words out with as little breath as possible. “I don’t know what you came here expecting but I want you to know I didn’t invite you with the intention of having sex with you and I really don’t think we should have sex yet. We should really just take things slow because I mean you’re hot as hell but you’re what? Like eighteen?”
“Seventeen.” I interrupted, almost immediately regretting saying anything. He peeled his hands away from his face and looked up at me, an expression that seemed close to amusement dancing over his features. It wasn’t unkind though; it was almost like he was laughing at himself.
“Of course you are. Not even legal. Shit, Troye, this is gonna be complicated.” I nodded slowly, biting my lip. I liked the way he said my name. And he had called me hot as hell. And he didn’t want to have sex, which, now that it was presented to me, was perhaps the most relieving thing I had ever heard. Suddenly, a crazy idea came over me.
I leaned over Tyler, reaching for the bag of Doritos on the other side of him, lowering myself so that our chests grazed each other through thin layers of cotton. The expression on his face was impossible to read, but it was exhilarating to imagine that one day reading him would become second nature to me. In a rush of unexpected confidence I kissed him gently, our lips barely brushing, our breath warm as it mingled together. Even that was enough to make me feel like I’d stuck a fork in an electrical socket. A heartbeat stuttered between us, but I didn’t know whose it was.
I pulled away as quickly as I had kissed him, but remained where I was, hovering above him, watching as a smile broke, ever so slowly, over his face. It was a bit like watching the sun rise, but somehow warmer. Much, much warmer. Finally he raised his eyebrows at me, and when he spoke his voice was low, positively dripping with sultriness.
“You don’t follow directions very well, Troye Sivan.” It was an absolute miracle that I managed to keep my cool. Somehow I grabbed the bag of chips, which had been my original decoy, and sat up, a nonchalant shrug rolling over my shoulders.
“You didn’t say anything about kissing.” There may have been a slight tremor in my voice, but he didn’t seem to notice. I wondered if I should be concerned that all of my internal organs seemed to currently be a gelatinous blob in the pit of my abdomen.
Tyler sat up and was staring at me with something like admiration in his eyes. I was slowly relearning how to use my lungs, the way one might relearn how to use a bicycle after riding it off a cliff. “You going to eat those?” he asked, nodding towards the bag I had clutched in my hand. I looked down at it, having forgotten it was there. I considered briefly whether it was worth eating them to save face and then shrugged.
“I’m not really hungry.” Tyler’s resulting peal of laughter seemed to be pulled from his chest, bright and colorful and forceful, and I caught myself thinking that maybe everything would be okay if I could just make him laugh like that every day for the rest of my life. It was a strange thing to think about someone you’d only just met. Then again, this whole situation was strange.
As Tyler’s laughter died down he turned himself to face me fully, pulling his legs up and crossing them on the bed. “Okay, so tell me a story.” This caught me off guard- the childlike pose, the expectancy.
“About what?”
“About you.” So I did. I told him about the time I kissed a girl when I was 13 because everyone told me I should and I was afraid they would know I was gay if I didn’t. And then, on a whim, I told him about the first time I kissed a boy, and how it was sticky and not at all what I was expecting. And he told me stories too. About musicals and energetic siblings and unrequited crushes. We talked for hours. We told each other things the whole world knew and things we’d never told anyone else. We shared joyful memories and moments of crippling self-doubt. Our words curled together in the motionless air of the hotel room and I started to build a skeleton of him in my mind. I saw his passions throbbing in his slender wrists and every time he hated himself more than he didn’t curled in the spaces between his vertebrae. It felt like we had spilled ourselves all over each other and it was easier than I would have thought to not bother cleaning up the mess.
Over the course of the conversation we had shifted to a more comfortable position- me leaning on the headboard, legs stretched out in front of me, him curled into my side, head pressed to my chest. If I tilted my head the right way his hair tickled my cheek. I would say it felt as natural as breathing, but that isn’t quite right. Breathing never causes your whole body to erupt in butterflies with no warning.
We had fallen into a silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but I could almost feel Tyler searching for the words he wanted to break it with. I felt him inhale before he finally did. “So… this soulmates thing.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. His head bounced a little as my chest moved.
“Yeah?” I prompted, figuring he had more to say.
“How exactly do you want to… navigate this?” It sounded like he was negotiating a business deal and as much as I hated it I couldn’t really blame him.
“Um… I don’t know. What do you mean?” I was pretty sure I knew what he meant, but I was tired and it seemed much easier to run my fingers up and down the bare skin of his arm and let him explain.
“I mean… If this situation were different- like if our timers hadn’t gone off- I probably wouldn’t ask you out. ‘Cause you live in Australia and you’re underage and all that. And if you didn’t live in Australia and I did ask you out, it’s not like we’d be in a relationship right away. Like we’d go out for coffee or something, right?” I nodded and made a little humming noise in the back of my throat to let him know I was listening. This had all occurred to me, of course, but I certainly didn’t have any answers. “But our timers did go off, and it’s not like we can just pretend that didn’t happen. Especially because… well, I mean, I’m not exactly doubting it right now, you know?” I let those words bounce around in my head for a moment. He wasn’t doubting it. He wasn’t doubting that we were soulmates. Strangely, I wasn’t either.
“Well I mean we don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen to not be in a relationship.” I paused, realizing I wasn’t being very clear. “Er… We probably shouldn’t be in a relationship right now, or like not a traditional one, but we don’t have to pretend that we’re not…”
“Soulmates?” He finished the sentence for me, and I glanced down to see his eyes lifted to my face. We looked at each other for a moment before we both laughed. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt necessary. After a beat of quiet chuckles Tyler sat up, pulling a knee to his chest.
“So when you say not a traditional relationship…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but it was a question regardless.
“No commitment, I guess.” It felt weird, because I’d never been with someone before, and now there didn’t seem to be much of a point in starting. But I knew that wasn’t the case with Tyler. He nodded, a serious look painted on his face.
“And no sex,” he repeated his sentiment from earlier and I nodded my agreement. There was a knot somewhere in my stomach that was either clenching or unfurling but I didn’t give myself the time to hash out my feelings on the matter just yet.
“I’ll get a cap for my timer so fans don’t start speculating,” I offered. He smiled strangely, a crease in his forehead, and dropped his eyes to my wrist where it lay across my lap. His hands started towards it before he stopped and looked up at me.
“May I?” I nodded, lips slightly parted, not exactly sure what I was agreeing to. He took my wrist in his hands, timer facing up, and just cradled it there, thumb tracing over the zeroes, expression saturated in some emotion I couldn’t put a name to. It was perhaps more intimate than anything I’d ever experienced. “I didn’t expect it to be like this,” he finally admitted, his voice small.
“It’s not permanent,” I tried to reassure him.
“Exactly,” was all he said, sighing slightly. I didn’t know what he meant, but I didn’t ask. I couldn’t tell you how long we sat there but when I broke the silence my voice was lighter than I expected.
“I’ll probably move to L.A. eventually,” I informed him. He looked up, eyebrows raised.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I mean eventually I’m guessing I’ll get to a point where it just doesn’t make sense not to. You know, with my career and stuff.” and you, I didn’t say.
“Okay. Then we’ll wait ‘til then.” His voice was decisive. I got the impression that he liked having an end in sight. Maybe it made the whole thing seem more manageable. I nodded, a smile stretching over my face. Maybe the whole thing was manageable. Stranger things had happened, right?