Page 59 of Offside

“I don’t really know,” he finally mumbled, more to himself than me. “I guess I just never really thought about it until now. I admired you and generally liked you, but didn’t find you hot until the curtain came down–until Knight and Landon were one person.”

“Huh,” I huffed, shaking my head a little. “That’s…whatever–go sit down. I’ll make the chicken thing.”

“You really don’t have to, Land–”

“Shut up.”

Chapter 27

Landon

This was bad.

This was domestic and sweet, but so very bad.

Every second I spent in Sam’s apartment was just digging the knife in a little deeper, yet I couldn’t seem to just bring myself to leave. It hurt in such a different way than avoiding him did, but what kept my feet plastered to his kitchen floor was the fact that it hurt better.

Or maybe just less.

“Eat,” I said plainly, handing Sam a bowl of chicken pasta that I should have had no business remembering how to make that easily.

But it was important to Metal, so I remembered it.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, carefully sitting up on the couch to accept the bowl from me. “You really don’t have to do any of this, Lando–”

“Shut up,” I grumbled for about the hundredth time in the last hour, taking a seat next to him with my own bowl.

With space between us.

My brain couldn’t do it–it couldn't meld them into one person.

Metal wasn’t a liar–he was so honest, even to a fault, but I liked that about him.

Sam was a really good friend to me, and I would have said the same thing about him, but now I couldn’t wipe that look on his face out of my head. I just kept replaying the never-ending minute of hearing him call me Knight and watching him realize the jig was up.

My heart couldn’t do it–it actually was so fucking mad at the rest of me because it was still beating harder for Sam. It got a little excited when it all came out because all it saw was the brain of my boyfriend being shoved into Sam’s perfect body, and it was sold.

It was also an idiot, which was how this war of caring for Sam and internal screaming waged on.

“How’d you do it?” I asked, barely louder than the movie Sam had playing while we ate in silence.

“Do what?” he asked, pausing with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth.

“Combine us.” I gestured at him, making him come back to life enough to finish the bite he was trying to take. “I’ve been trying–I’m trying right now, and the best I can do is envision Metal's brain in your body–”

“That's all I did,” he managed to get out, swallowing down his food to speak. “I just started looking at you with Knight’s brain in your body, and eventually…it took a while. Didn’t happen overnight, but one day you just were one person.”

Time.

His answer was time.

“But…being around you is hard,” I mumbled, looking down at my almost empty bowl. “Part of me wants to be here, and part of me wants to hide in my bed for another month.”

Sam was quiet for a minute, uncomfortably leaning forward to rest his bowl on the coffee table, taking mine too. I let it go easily, watching him hesitate, but still chose to reach out a hand to me to take if I wanted to.

He was nervous, so when I took his hand, he seemed almost shocked. It was like he didn’t think it would actually work, but I wanted it to.

I wanted him to fix this.