AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve seen drag queens more subtle than you trying to get Thomas alone,” Kevin added.
“Whose side are all of you on,” Danny asked in mock offense.
“Thomas’s,” Mark and Kevin said in unison.
* * *
Seong tapped his phone against his thigh as he looked at the clock. Thomas would be getting on the plane any minute now to head out on a tropical paradise vacation with his friends and Danny.
He froze, then sighed in frustration.
It was getting harder and harder to think of the baseball player as anything except someone taking up Thomas’s time. Ever since Thomas let slip Danny’s reaction to the day of the signings, Seong had found more and more reasons to dislike the boy. Because he was a boy, someone still immature and petty and too self-absorbed to see the amazing person in front of—
He let out another frustrated sigh as he rubbed at his face, forcing himself to cut the thought short. It’s just a week, he reminded himself. Then they’ll all be back for two weeks, then Danny will be gone from the city.
His hands dropped to his side as he frowned at the ceiling. He shouldn’t be rooting for an event that would break Thomas’s heart. Even Issac wasn’t all that confident that Thomas’s relationship with Danny would survive their first semester apart, but that thought shouldn’t make Seong happy. It shouldn’t make him happy that Thomas was going to be left behind and most likely be broken up with before December. To be fair, he wasn’t happy that Thomas’s friends would be long distance. Kevin and Mark seemed like very kind and attentive friends that reminded Seong of Brutus and Bat in their own ways. Solid friends who seemed to genuinely care about Thomas outside of his relationships with Danny, solid enough, Seong hoped, that they’d keep Thomas’s friendship in the event he and Danny didn’t work out.
“If you start acting like a dick, cut yourself out because he doesn’t deserve that,” Nate had said in the cafe three months previously. Wise, intimidating, fabulously gay Nate.
Seong picked up his phone and sent the text he had erased and rewrote a dozen times over.
Have a nice flight. Enjoy being unplugged. See you when you get back.
He watched as the message tried to go through, his chest tightening as he worried that he had waited too long.
Then the double check mark came in, followed shortly by three dots dancing on the bottom of the screen. We will, read the text. A picture came through, Thomas’s smiling face in the middle, Danny’s head resting against his shoulder to look up at the screen, while Kevin and Mark scrunched in behind them. All happy, excited, maybe a little nervous about their first flight without their guardians.
“I’m a fucking awful person,” he sighed softly staring into Thomas’s eyes, already missing him. Exiting out of the conversation, he pulled up Ray’s contact information.
Peacock
Thomas collapsed into the king sized bed he and Danny had claimed for themselves, groaning at the weird aches he had all over from the day of travel. All things considered, it wasn’t that bad. They hadn’t missed their connecting flight, there had been no screaming babies or snoring men like Sean and Marcus had gone on about on the ride to the airport, and no one had lost any bags in baggage claim. They had even arrived two hours sooner than they were supposed to, thanks to a tail wind.
But he ached all over anyway.
“Babe,” Danny said, crawling onto the bed almost on top of Thomas and kissing his neck. “You good?”
Thomas flinched away, the urge to crawl out of his own skin only growing with Danny’s weight pressing in. “No,” he muttered, squirming away. “I think I need a shower.”
“Coooould I join you,” Danny asked, bottom lip pressing out as Thomas got off the bed.
“No!” He sighed when Danny flinched at the harsh word, rubbing at his face. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m just— That was a lot of people very close to me for way too long. I need a three foot bubble for- I don’t know. I just need nothing touching me.”
“Yeah, okay,” Danny muttered, looking down at the ground. “I’ll… I’ll take one after you’re done. Kevin and Mark will probably be taking turns getting a shower in as well, so whoever isn’t in the shower and I will brainstorm some place to eat.” He looked up at Thomas through his eyelashes. “Any requests?”
“You know what I like,” Thomas said, smiling at him and leaning forward to give him a quick peck on the forehead. He had to dodge Danny’s attempt to pull him back in, the pout returning. “I’ll try to make it a quick shower.”
“Sure,” Danny sighed, forcing a smile as he stood up. “I’ll- I’ll be in the other room, I guess.”
Thomas watched Danny leave the room and sighed, looking down at the sleeves of his hoodie. For all the teasing about Danny not being able to keep his hands to himself, there were two things they hadn’t actually done in the seven months of their relationship: anything related to anal, and Thomas taking off his long sleeves. Pulling back one cuff, he stared down at the scars Finnegan and other Clovers had given him over the nearly three and a half years. Thin and round scars that broke up his natural freckles, scars that couldn’t be ignored once they were exposed, scars he still didn’t want to talk about, to anyone.
“One thing at a time, Thomas,” he sighed, pulling his sleeve back down on going into his bag to dig out fresh clothes.
* * *
Danny knocked on the door of the shower room as Thomas rinsed soap off of him. “Hey, babe,” he called through the door, the knob jiggling as he tried to open it.
“I’m almost done, Danny,” Thomas called back to him, already feeling less pained with the hot water and soap.
