Special Episode: Catch (Part I)
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
The little bar exactly halfway between the hospital and the fire station is called Juniper’s.
It strikes Luca as no surprise that the bar attracts exhausted first responders. The place is, at its core, cozy. There’s something almost nest-like about the way the big, comfortable chairs are arranged. The warmth of the cheerful fireplaces on both floors is nice even in the summer, when the windows are left open to the cool breeze.
Quiet, old-school music is constantly playing from some speaker Luca has never been able to spot in all his visits here, which makes it feel like the music is gently melting right out of the worn stone walls.
On an average night, the crowd is roughly fifty percent staff from the hospital, and fifty percent firefighters. The running joke among regular patrons is that Juniper’s is the safest place in the world to drink. The one time there was a small grease fire in the kitchen, it was put out so fast that the bar’s owner jokingly commissioned a historical marker plaque for the wall. Juniper’s: Site of the Shortest-Lived Fire In Ketterbridge History!
The delicious food, the always-familiar faces, the smoky dark, infinitely cozy decor… it’s no wonder that all the staff of the hospital and fire department keep coming back, and have been for years. It’s a safe place to land. The oldest of the firefighters who regularly come to the bar have been retired for so long that the younger firefighters have to shout in order to be heard when they talk to them.
There’s a special kind of inherent warmth to a place that’s held so much good spirit for so long. Luca liked it the instant he stepped in out of the cold with Roger the first time.
“I know it’s not much, but it’s one of my favorite places,” Roger told Luca, as they stood looking around at it.
Luca had felt his heart lift. He always thought that you could tell a lot about a person by their favorite bar. And if Juniper’s was something besides a bar, it would be a warm, reassuring hug.
That said something about Roger, Luca thought. A suspicion which he’s definitely confirmed by now.
He pushes the door open and quickly shuts it after himself, sealing out the stormy night. So far there’s been threatening charcoal-grey clouds, and heavy wind flinging leaves down the street on every gust, but only a few actual raindrops.
The owner of the bar calls out warmly to Luca, her familiar voice roughened with age.
“Luca! Come over here right now, young man.”
Luca obediently does. Everyone who sets foot in Juniper’s does what Juniper tells them to do. She’s constantly shouting at everyone, worrying about everyone, tossing her hands up in dismay, and beginning sentences with “Never in my life have I ever…!”
The firefighters and hospital staff alike are deeply fond of the tiny old woman. Something about the way she rails against them when she gets worked up has everyone secretly exchanging an affectionate grin.
Luca weaves his way through the crowd already gathered at the bar, waving to the ones who call out greetings to him. Salma, a beautiful NICU nurse who’s stopped to talk to Luca a few times this week, catches his eye from across the room. She casts him a sweet, inviting smile and pats the chair next to her.
But Luca is here with someone specific in mind. He casts Salma an apologetic, can’t right now look, then stops at the bar in front of Juniper for inspection.
“Luca!” she cries, as if she can’t believe him. “Why aren’t you wearing a warmer jacket? The storm brewing out there! Never in my life have I ever seen someone walking around like it’s bright and sunny when the sky is about to crack open!”
“It’s not so bad.” Luca tries to catch sight of himself in one of the mirrors behind the bar, hoping the wind didn’t mess up his hair right before he’s about to see Roger. “No need to stress, Juni.”
“I know what we’ll do. I’ll make you something hot to drink on the way home, to keep your hands warm. You let me know when you’re heading out so I can put something on, alright?”
“Juni, I’m fine, really!” Luca turns his gaze back to Juniper, letting out an affectionate laugh. “It isn’t even raining, and I-”
“No backtalk from you.” She waves a threatening finger in his face. “I’ve already had enough of that tonight from Roger.”
Luca runs his eyes over the bar, searching for him. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs. He’s in a mood.” Juni glances fretfully at the stairs. “You’ll go cheer him up, won’t you, Luca? No one’s better suited to that particular task.”
Luca draws back in surprise, hit with a burst of concern, but also a simultaneous flood of warmth in response to the last part of what Juni said.
“Oh, um - did something happen?”
“I don’t know. But he isn’t eating the food I made him, and I know it’ll make him feel better. See to it that he eats, okay, sugar plum?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Good boy.” Juni has been speedily making Luca a hot drink as she speaks. She places it in his hands, then gives him a gentle push towards the stairs. “Go on, then. Something tells me he needs you.”
Luca pauses, then casts Juni a nervous, searching look over his shoulder.
Oh, shit. Does she know? Has she noticed the way I’m always looking at him? She wouldn’t tell him, would she? If she knew?
Luca tries to get a better look at her face, but she’s already turned away, busy cleaning off the bar.
He takes a sip of the drink she made him as he pads up the stairs. It’s something hot and full of spices, giving off fragrant steam. Luca takes steadying breaths of it as he steps out onto the second floor.
Still, his heart does its usual shy stutter when his eyes land on Roger.
He’s alone in a chair by the fireplace, his long legs flung out in front of him. His eyes are staring straight into the flames, his chin resting on his palm. There’s a window right behind him, and the wind is throwing sharp little smatterings of raindrops against the panes. But Roger is a picture of pure warmth.
Luca smiles to himself, remembering how Roger told him once that he’s not a very romantic guy. It couldn’t be less true, although he doesn’t seem to know that. He doesn’t go in much for the usual romantic things, but he has his own, unintentional style.
It goes beyond his looks, although his looks are romantic enough on their own. His unruly black hair in the deepest shade of black, the flowing way it moves when he turns his head. His gruff and serious expression, often unexpectedly broken with the sweetest smile imaginable. Always paired with warm, kind-hearted eyes.
The oasis green and deep blue of them, flecked softly together. Naturally full of fire. Shaded by those long, dark lashes.
Even right now, the flames cast their red glow onto his mass of soft black curls and piercingly handsome face in a way that makes Luca’s heart do a second stumble.
But what Luca really finds romantic about Roger is the spirit in him.
Luca is used to working with people who constantly operate under life-threatening conditions, who go to work every day knowing there’s a real risk that they won’t come back. People have different ways of coping with that.
On the ship, the crew kept their emotions so deeply far down beneath the surface that Luca wasn’t sure if they were even still accessible. It was to the point where someone they’d worked with every day for months could have gone overboard, and they all would have started the emergency procedures without a hint of panic.
But it manifests differently in Roger. It’s almost the opposite.
Roger feels everything, powerfully and immediately. He never pushes it down to wait for later. He gets seriously angry and upset, but he can also be uncontrollable with happiness and laughter. He both laughs and cries hard. He worries a lot, but also smiles a lot. He’s hot-headed, a little reckless with himself.
Instead of pushing his spirit down where it can’t get in the way, Roger seems to be perpetually breathing it out, constantly letting his own internal fire burn at full heat.
Sometimes it gives him a kind of wildness, a sudden and unpredictable restlessness. It comes off of him like steam, like invisible smoke. Suddenly he’ll get a brilliant glitter in his eyes, and he can’t sit still. Luca secretly wonders how he burns it off.
In those moments he often looks at Luca with an intense, unreadable, burning expression in his eyes.
Luca can tell even from here that Roger is in a bad mood tonight. Luca can read it in his posture, his expression, and the way he’s sitting perfectly still. But Luca can’t work out if he’s sad or angry, or… what.
The dark, strained expression on Roger’s face melts into something like warm relief when he looks up and sees Luca heading for him.
“Hey,” he says, sitting up. “Man, am I happy to see you.”
Luca drops to sit in the nearest armchair to him, stealing a quick breath of him. Clean cotton and fresh coffee, and the faintest hint of fire. That’s what Roger smells like.
The fire reflects in his eyes, moving like liquid, dancing softly against the blue-green.
“I’m happy to see you, too,” Luca says warmly.
He was surprised and secretly radiantly happy inside to hear Roger say that. They see each other every day, don’t they?
Roger brightens up a little, dropping his eyes to his drink on the table.
“I thought you might not come,” he says, not looking at Luca. “Thought maybe you got too busy.”
“Yeah, man, I’m sorry I’m so late!” Luca shrugs off his backpack and drops it next to the armchair, shaking out his wind-tossed hair. “The last patient we had in the ambulance was, um… unable to get through the ride smoothly.”
Roger arches an eyebrow. “As always, Luc, I have a feeling that you’re dramatically underselling what happened.”
“Ah…” Luca winces at Roger. “He - may or may not have taken a swing at me when I started to cut his shirt off. I honestly have no idea why. And when I dodged it he punched the side of the ambulance, which - wasn’t great, given that he already needed a lot of help.”
“What the fuck, Luc?” Roger snaps upright, his eyes widening. “Somebody tried to punch you?”
“He didn’t get me, though!” Luca quickly spreads his hands in a calming gesture. “And he’s gonna be fine. Everything’s okay. No lasting damage done.”
He smiles reassuringly at Roger, who stares at him in obvious disbelief, then slowly drops his gaze to the table.
“I - I don’t get you, man,” he murmurs, keeping his eyes on his glass. “You just - go through that, then come here all cheerful. You’re not even mad at the guy?”
Luca pauses, surprised.
“Mad? No.” He half-covers his mouth with his hand and drops his voice to a whisper, like he’s sharing a secret with Roger. “I work in the intensive care unit.”
Roger tries to make an irritated face at him. “Yeah, I know. Obviously. So?”
“So, I’m used to it. People who are angry and sad and scared. The patients I work with are all people who are having one of the worst days of their life.”
Roger blinks hard at Luca, his dark eyebrows drawn together. For a long moment, he says nothing.
“I mean, I kind of knew that,” he finally murmurs, very slowly. “But I never really thought about it that way.”
There’s another silence. Roger lets out a soft breath of disbelief and shakes his head slowly, staring at Luca.
“That makes it all the more crazy to me that you’re always such a lil’ beam of sunshine, Luc. Always running up to me smiling, with your backpack on.” Roger breathes out a quiet laugh. “When that’s what you’re surrounded by all day, every day. I have no fucking idea how you do it.”
Luca shrugs his shoulders, pushing his uncooperative hair out of his face.
“Guess I just try really hard to keep it positive for my patients? If it’s one of the worst days of their life, the tiniest thing that makes them feel less awful could go a long way. I think. I hope so. I don’t know. Probably worth doing just in case, right?”
Roger doesn’t answer. He stares hard at Luca, that intense, unreadable look slowly flaring up in his eyes again.
Luca isn’t sure what it is, but he can see the infinite warmth of it, beneath the flames of the fireplace reflected back. There’s so much depth to this particular expression in Roger’s eyes, and it seems to deepen every day. It seems to deepen right now, as Luca watches.
Roger suddenly sits back in his chair. He runs a hand up his own muscled arm, his knee doing a subtle, restless bounce. His eyes are roving over the bar, looking anywhere but at Luca.
He gets to his feet so swiftly that Luca blinks up at him in concern, thrown off.
“Think I’m gonna go for a walk,” Roger says gruffly, already snatching up his jacket.
“You, um-” Luca looks through the window at the windy, stormy night outside. “What?”
But he can already tell that Roger is caught up in the current of his own energy, that he’s going to go whether or not Luca tries to talk him out of it.
“Roger - at least eat something before we go!” Luca gets up, too, rushing to grab his backpack. “I promised Juni-”
Roger scoops up the bowl of warm, honeyed oatmeal on the table, then starts eating it in huge mouthfuls as he strides across the room to the stairs.
Luca hurries after him, biting back a smile. He knows that he should be annoyed that they’re leaving the warmth and comfort of Juniper’s for the rainy night outside. But all he feels is something smoldering hot in his chest as he watches Roger head for the door like this entire building isn’t big enough for him at the moment.
Juni sees them go, but doesn’t try to stop them or say anything about the weather outside, which is - surprising.
Luca thinks he sees Roger steal a very fast glance at Salma and her friends as they head for the door, but he can’t be sure.
He follows Roger out into the night, settling his backpack onto his shoulders. The sky overhead is a sea of deep grey clouds, every so often breaking to reveal a flash of a purple night sky dusted with fine, tiny stars. The air is humming with electricity from the coming storm.
They’re both tall, but Roger is taller, and Luca has to work to keep up with him when he’s like this. The fast movement gently warms Luca beneath his clothes, gets his lungs drawing in deeper breaths. The crisp, cold air feels strangely good. The windy droplets do a little work to soothe the blush in his face.
He’s always blushing around Roger. Emily was right. He’s so fine that it’s unbearable.
He makes Luca shy and nervous like nobody ever has before, sometimes to the point that Luca can’t even look him in the eye. Luca can’t even find the courage to flirt with him. Nothing shatters his composure like Roger’s beautiful stare.
When Roger flirts with Luca - so, all the time - Luca always either laughs it off or answers like Roger didn’t try to flirt with him at all. He’s way too bashful, too tormented with nerves to do any more than that.
The result is that they’ve grown to be close friends, and Roger is constantly, shamelessly flirting with Luca, but neither of them has actually tried anything. Despite how badly Luca wants to try something.
But he’s terrified of doing that. Given that Roger has slowly become Luca’s favorite person on the face of the earth, Luca thinks that fucking up their friendship would probably kill him.
He wants to kiss Roger more than anything, comes dangerously close every time Roger leans into him or looks at him with lingering eyes or says Luc in that purring voice Luca adores so much.
But he won’t do that unless he’s sure that Roger wants him to, which he definitely isn’t. Because if Roger does want that, why hasn’t he kissed Luca? Clearly he’s not shy. That can’t be the problem.
Probably because he still wants the ex, Luca thinks, his heart sinking. Maybe I’m just a distraction for him, someone to flirt with in the meantime.
Still, the way Luca feels about Roger grows deeper and stronger with every passing day. He can’t help it, can’t stop himself. Can’t help but stare for a second with hungry eyes as Roger stretches his arms over his head, revealing a slice of soft skin and hard muscle between his jeans and his t-shirt.
Without meaning to, Luca swallows a little.
Roger has been walking in silence, keeping his thoughts to himself. He’s only now starting to slow down slightly, and Luca uses the opening to gently slap his shoulder.
“Are you seriously not going to tell me why you had such a bad day?”
“Ugh. No.” Roger shakes himself like a giant cat, like he’s trying to throw off the bad mood. “Forget it. It was stupid, it was just - a long fucking day, that’s all.”
Luca looks over at him in surprise. It’s usually not hard to get Roger to open up about what he’s feeling. “What, are you hungover from the party last night?”
It was at Salma’s house, and it was fun. Luca and Roger spent all night together, which usually happens by accident even at group gatherings. The only notable thing that happened is that during a drinking-game version of truth or dare, Salma dared Luca to kiss her, and he did. He followed through on all the dares he was given, and so did Roger, so they didn’t really have to drink too much.
“No, not hungover,” Roger says quietly, and that’s all.
Luca’s heart falls further. He hesitates for just a second, his pulse picking up, then blurts out -
“Is it something to do with your ex?”
Roger’s eyes snap to him, startled and blinking fast. Luca has never asked about this before.
The subject is a well-known sore spot for Roger. Nobody ever brings it up with him, from what Luca’s heard. So he never has, either. And Roger has never said a word about it.
But if that’s what this is about… Luca knows that sometimes the best way is to just get the painful part over with as fast as possible. Something in his chest is screaming warnings that this is going to hurt, but he tries to ignore it.
His heart is hammering against his ribs. He has no idea what Roger is going to say, if anything.
“How’d you even know about-?” Roger cuts himself off sharply. “It’s not - I mean - yeah, it’s about that.”
Surprisingly enough, something tells Luca that Roger’s bad mood isn’t actually about that.
“But it’s not, like,” Roger adds quickly, with a sidelong glance at Luca, “I’m not trying to get him back, anymore. I actually ran into him and his new boyfriend at the grocery store a while ago, so… yeah.”
“Oh.” A stab of sympathy goes through Luca’s heart. “I’m sorry, dude.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” Roger lets out a heavy sigh, shaking some rain droplets from his hair. “Just feel like an idiot for trying so many times.”
Luca hesitates. Something about the wild wind pushing him closer to Roger, something about the intense storm building overhead - it’s making his heart pound in a way that makes him want to say exactly what he’s thinking, right to Roger.
“You know,” he begins, very slowly, “I never understood why you were doing that.”
Roger looks over at him, faintly puzzled. “Doing what?”
“Trying to convince him to take you back.” Luca is speaking in a rush, trying to get the words out before he can think too hard about them. “Don’t you think there’s someone out there who wouldn’t need to be convinced to be with you? Someone who would love you exactly the way you already are, someone who already really wants to…?”
Luca falters, wavers, and trails off, blushing deeply. Grateful for the half-light of the streetlamps to hide his face.
Roger glances over at him again, confused.
“I - guess,” he says doubtfully, after a minute or so. “I don’t know, man. Kills me that I couldn’t get Jamie back and try again. I could have been better, this time.”
Luca had felt the beginnings of a crushing crash-down of disappointment, but this last part gives him pause.
“What-? What does that mean, Roger?”
“Just…” Roger shrugs his massive shoulders and stuffs his hands deep into his pockets, his eyes blinking away from Luca. “I always swore to myself I’d be the man my father never was, you know?”
Luca opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, caught totally unprepared.
“Like - the people in my life are actually going to want me around,” Roger goes on forcefully, “Because I’m going to take good care of them. Always do my best for them, and do the right thing by them. But clearly I didn’t do good enough with Jamie, because even though we were fine - honestly, we were fine - he broke up with me. And not even to be with someone else. He decided he would rather be single than be with me, even though I was - trying my hardest…”
Roger’s words slow down and fade off, like he only just realized how much he said. He blinks very hard a few times, then hastily turns his face away from Luca’s wide-eyed stare.
“If Jamie just gave me one more chance to try again, I could’ve done better,” he adds, in a much quieter voice. “I can do better.”
Luca keeps silent for a long moment, absorbing that.
“Hm,” he murmurs eventually.
Roger has been carefully avoiding looking at him, but now he steals a swift little glance. “What?”
“Um…” Luca winces apologetically at Roger. “Don’t get mad, but I can see why Jamie didn’t want to get back together with you. Think he probably made the right call.”
Roger had looked away, but now he does a double-take. He stares at Luca with his eyebrows furrowed, trying to work out if he misheard what he said. He kind of starts to laugh, then fades off when it becomes clear that Luca isn’t joking.
“What the f-?” Roger comes to a sharp stop on the sidewalk and turns to face Luca, staring at him with wide eyes. “What’d you say?”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t sound like you guys were a good match.” Luca’s fingers fidget anxiously in his jacket pockets, picking at the seams, but he forces himself to meet Roger’s gaze. “The reasons why you wanted to get back together with him don’t really have anything to do with him.”
Roger blinks down at Luca, blank-faced, uncomprehending.
Luca nibbles his lip, searching for a way to explain. “Just now, when I asked why you were trying to get him back, you didn’t even mention anything you miss about being with him.”
“No, there’s stuff I miss, I-” Roger begins forcefully, then stops, the confused knit between his eyebrows deepening.
There’s a silent pause.
“He’s sexy, in a cute way that I’m real partial to,” Roger finally says. “And super nice, you wouldn’t believe how nice. No one at the station would even do the post-breakup shit-talking the ex thing when he broke up with me. Everybody was just like damn, Roger, that sucks. Does that mean he’s not gonna come here and hang out with us anymore, or could you get him to stop by sometimes? Which was, you know. Just great.”
“Okay,” Luca answers slowly, uncertainly, jealously. “So he’s sexy, and he’s super nice. But what do you specifically miss about him? That you definitely can’t find in another person?”
“Lots of - it’s-” Roger gives his head an aggressive, annoyed shake. “There’s stuff, okay? You’re twisting what I said. There’s plenty of, um…”
Roger fades off, looking more perplexed than before. Like he’s thinking hard, struggling for a good answer.
He slowly begins walking again, lost in thought.
“Jamie always smelled nice,” he says. “Since he worked in a flower shop. That’s pretty specific to him, right?”
Luca drops his head, supposedly to wipe some raindrops off of his cheek and onto his shoulder, but really to sniff his shirt, silently praying that it doesn’t smell like hospital-grade disinfectant. He’s surprised and relieved when the scent that comes back to him is mostly from the warm, rich spices of the drink that Juni made him.
He starts to walk, too, keeping as close to Roger’s side as he dares to. “Is that the only thing?”
Roger doesn’t answer, but he looks as thrown by the obvious truth as Luca is.
“Did Jamie give you a reason, when he broke up with you?”
“Yeah, goddamnit.” Roger lets out a frustrated sigh. “A bunch of stuff about how it wasn’t my fault, or anything I did. He said that we just weren’t right for each other. Said he wanted something more than what we had, and that I should, too. Which didn’t even seem like a real reason to me.”
“But - isn’t it?” Luca asks haltingly. “If you can’t really think of anything you miss about being with him?”
Roger’s heavy footsteps slow to a stop again. He stares hard at Luca for a long moment, blue-green eyes unblinking.
“Goddamnit, Luc,” he growls. “I’m gonna kill you.”
“I’m sorry.” Luca breaks into quiet, affectionate laughter, gazing up at Roger through the windy night. “It just had to be said.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Roger groans, then lets out a soft, helpless laugh of his own. He makes a deeply exasperated face at Luca. “I hate how often you’re just right about shit. Knock it off.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sure it double-sucks this time, because it means Jamie was right, too.” Luca hesitates, his heart fluttering wildly, then quickly pins on - “But maybe you should want more, Roger. Maybe there’s someone - someone you would miss everything about. And they would feel the same way about you.”
The look on Roger’s face slowly, suddenly darkens again, his smile falling away. He lets out a soft, barely perceptible exhale.
For a split second, he looks crushed. Beyond disappointed, like - shattered.
The expression is there and gone in an instant before Roger recovers control. Luca only caught it because he happened to glance over at the right time. He stares searchingly at Roger, startled, more than a little confused.
“Yeah, I mean… I thought…” Roger says, not looking at him. He sounds like he really, really wants to believe what Luca said, but he can’t. He lets out a heavy sigh, lifting his gaze back to Luca’s. “Or we could all just grow up. That’s an option, too.”
“Boring option,” Luca informs him.
Roger lets out an indignant, half-hearted little laugh, then falls silent and hangs his head, runs a hand over his tattooed neck. It’s hard to tell in the low light of the streetlamps, but it kind of seems like he’s trying to pull himself together.
God, Luca wants to kiss him so badly. He stands there frozen, staring at Roger, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Without meaning to, he begins to lift his hand towards Roger, as if to draw him closer. A very small movement, one that Roger doesn’t catch when he looks up again and Luca instantly drops it back to his side.
Roger has a playful smile back on his face. He suddenly throws an arm around Luca’s shoulders, sending the butterflies in his chest wild.
“If only I could get my super hot friend to notice me,” Roger sighs longingly, drawing Luca up close to his warm, muscled body. “Then everything would be perfect.”
“Oh, my god.” Luca lets out a startled laugh, pushing Roger off of him, trying to hide the blush forcefully rising in his cheeks. “Come on, man-”
“Really, Luc,” Roger purrs in that sultry, smoky voice, playfully messing up his hair with calloused fingers. “How do I catch you? Do I need, like - a big net? Maybe we have one at the station somewhere.”
“A big net?” Luca laughs, his face on fire. “What, you’re gonna go fishing for dive medics?”
“Okay. That was cute of you. I didn’t mean a fishing net, but I see why your brain went right to the ocean.”
Roger’s vivid blue-green eyes stare deep into Luca’s, glowing with affectionate warmth. Luca breaks his gaze away and shakes his head, pretending to be irritated, but really his heart is battering around his chest like it wants to get out.
Do you really mean it, though? Do you really want me? Or is this all a running joke we have with each other?
“I meant like one of those trap-nets things that snatch you up when you step on them,” Roger elaborates, maybe thinking that’s what Luca looks so helplessly bewildered about.
“A trap?” Luca repeats, half-laughing, his eyes flitting back to Roger. “Why would you have to trap me? That makes it sound like I’m trying to get away from you.”
Roger laughs, but his face grows a little more serious. He slowly takes his hands from his pockets, lets them drop to his sides.
“Yeah, well,” he murmurs softly, his gaze falling to his boots, his pitch-black curls falling over his face. “Luc, if - you know, if-”
He and Luca both look up sharply as the storm clouds crash with thunder overhead, twisting darkly, threatening to burst. The wind picks up to a fierce, forceful kind that pushes through Luca’s hair, and Roger’s.
“Well,” Luca says, “We’re fucked.”
“Oh, god,” Roger groans, tugging on the sleeve of Luca’s jacket. “Come on, my car’s a few blocks away, we can make it!”
They slam the car doors after themselves roughly two seconds before lightning arcs through the sky and thunder cracks so sharply that Luca gasps and Roger startles a little. The rain chases on the heels of the thunder, arriving before it’s even over. The windshield goes from clear to drenched in seconds, swirling water sparkling with the glow of the streetlamps.
Roger and Luca look at each other with wide eyes, panting for breath - then break into helpless laughter.
“Holy shit,” Roger stammers, tossing his dark curls out of his face. “Yeah, let’s go for a walk right before a fucking maelstrom. Why do you always go along with my ideas, even when they’re stupid?”
“I don’t know,” Luca laughs, grinning at Roger. “I like that you just - do stuff. It’s fun. I’m having fun, aren’t you?”
Roger gives him a slow, small smile, then starts the car. “I’ll give you a ride home.”
“Thank god. This would not be a good night for the bus.”
Roger begins letting out a stream of extreme profanity as he realizes he’s got to back out of the parking spot in the torrential downpour. Luca listens for a minute, smiling fondly at him, then joins in with his own curses, so much dirtier and sharper than Roger’s that Roger snaps upright and twists around to stare at him, his eyes enormous.
“Goddamn, Luc,” he laughs, almost scandalized. “Where’d you pull all that from?”
“I’ve been living with sailors, man. I can curse you under the table, I just choose not to.”
Roger breaks into a smirky, sideways grin, his eyes lingering on Luca’s.
“Full of hidden talents, aren’t you?” His voice has dropped back to that soft, playful purr. “Any more of them I should know about? I’m all ears.”
Luca rolls his eyes and turns his blushing face away, his heart tripping over itself.
“You’ve got the mischief in you like nobody else, Roger Wright,” he groans, and Roger laughs, pulling out onto the road.
“You like it,” he answers.
Luca wonders if he has any idea how much that’s true.
~~~~
Luca is helplessly lost, swimming in a dream as he walks up the stairs to his apartment. Smiling dopily to himself, catching his toe on more than one step.
He tries to snap himself out of it, but it stays all throughout his shower, as he makes himself some dinner, as he curls up on the couch and stares blankly at the video game he has paused.
Why is he so, so happy? He’s always happy after he’s been with Roger, but this is… something else. And he feels nervous. Seriously, unaccountably nervous, like he’s standing on the edge of something dangerously high up. There’s a bright edge of excitement, too, making him glow from within even as he anxiously taps a fingertip on his lip.
He’s inexplicably kind of turned on, too. Honestly, what’s going on with him?
He’s lost in thought until his Playstation powers off automatically. Staring out at the falling rain with his chin on his palm, silently struggling for an answer. But he figures it out in the end.
Based on the conversation he and Roger had tonight, it sounds like Roger doesn’t really want Jamie back, after all. And not just because Jamie found himself a new boyfriend.
It sounds like Roger’s heart might be free to want someone else.
Which means… it’s possible that all of the flirting with Luca hasn’t been a side thing for Roger. Or a joke.
Luca doesn’t know what to do with the realization. He tries to calm down, to get back to his game, but it’s no good. The bright, shimmering nervousness and excitement in his chest takes hold of him, and begins to grow.
He paces fast circles around his apartment, looking out at the storm like it might have answers for him, his fingers fidgeting with his hair. What was Roger going to say, before the storm cut him off? Did he ever explain why he was so miserable earlier? No, he didn’t…
And what’s going to happen tomorrow, when Luca sees Roger again? How the fuck is he supposed to act all casual about this, when he just figured out that it might be real for Roger, too? He’ll find a way, he has to, but still…
Luca finally tumbles into bed, exhausted. All the thoughts spinning through his mind are pulling for his attention, his internal voice directing him to a hundred different things.
But as Luca drifts closer to sleep, one voice keeps going long after the rest have finally fallen silent. A voice humming with possibility, stumbling with breathless eagerness, bright with hope. A voice with vivid blue-green eyes and big calloused hands and a warm, rasping laugh on its mind. It whispers softly into Luca’s ear all night long.
Roger, it sighs, and Luca smiles in his sleep.
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