by Vivica Dorn
“She’s my cousin.”
Finn’s head snapped up.
“What?”
“Andrea Gallagher. She’s my cousin. She’s a senior here and works at the pub part time.”
Relief flooded through Finn’s body, fast and furious. And infuriating. He ignored the feeling though, and shrugged as nonchalantly as he could.
“Oh, yeah, that’s cool. Thanks.”
Lance regarded him for a moment, expression unreadable, then nodded.
“No problem. I have class. You’re welcome to use the shower and help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”
Finn shook his head quickly, his face heating up at the thought of being naked in Lance’s apartment.
“No, thanks, I gotta get going.”
Lance nodded again. He didn’t look particularly happy, but nor did he look surprised. Although, Finn thought to himself, had he ever even really seen Lance happy? A vague memory from last night started to surface – the image of Lance smiling broadly at him, illuminated by the cascading glow of the streetlight. He had been happy then, Finn was sure of it. But he couldn’t quite remember why.
CHAPTER 14
Cold water rushed over Lance’s skin and he was plunged into eerie, oceanic silence. He loved that first moment of diving deep into the water. It didn’t make sense to dive deep like that when racing, but when he swam for himself he often dove almost all the way to the bottom of the pool, letting himself drift along its bottom for as long as he could stand before surfacing. There was something so alien about being down there, especially when the pool was mostly empty of swimmers. It felt like he was floating on some cold, far-flung, undiscovered moon. He had thought many times before that he’d be content to live totally alone in some desolate place like that; a cabin in the woods, a fortress in Antarctica, or maybe even on some distant moon. But now, he wasn’t so sure. He thought of having Finn in his home last night – the maddening yet somehow comforting feeling it had created deep within him, having the boy sleep so deeply and so near. And suddenly being all alone didn’t seem so appealing anymore.
He pushed off from the bottom of the pool, speeding to the surface and taking a breath deep into his lungs, as if trying to clear the memory of last night. What could last night have meant, anyway? That Finn was slightly less terrified of him now? That he hated him just a little bit less? Lance was sure he hadn’t been forgiven – nor should he have been. He realized darkly that he hadn’t yet addressed what had happened in the locker room, had never attempted to apologize. And he was doomed for it. He knew it. He knew it by the way Finn behaved around him during the meet and then again this morning – awkward and formal and unsure. And yet so beautifully adorable, curly hair standing on end, blue eyes bleary with sleep. It had taken everything Lance had had not to grab Finn by the collar of his coat and yank his body hard against him. But if anyone knew how to hide his true feelings, how to push them deep below the dark and throbbing surface, it was Lance Gallagher.
When he finally emerged from the pool after more than 30 minutes of hard swimming, his muscles ached pleasantly. He was tired – more tired than he usually would be after a swim like that. He hadn’t slept well last night. He had been too preoccupied with the thought that Finn was so close in the other room, only one closed door away. He had never really been one for day-dreaming, or, in this case, night-dreaming, but he had not been able to help creating different scenarios in his mind for a good portion of the night – scenarios that involved Finn sheepishly knocking on his door before entering his room and crawling into his bed.
Lance showered and dressed quickly in the locker room. Before he prepared to leave, he pulled his phone out of his bag to check for any notifications. He liked to check his university email inbox fairly often. When he saw that he had a voicemail, and when he realized who had left it, he felt his posture stiffen. Sighing, he entered his voicemail password and pressed the phone to his ear, sure that whatever was about to come next would almost certainly mean something unpleasant was coming his way.
He was right.
His father’s deep, cold voice filtered through the phone, the words coming curt and sharp.
“Your grandfather has died. He had a heart attack last night. The funeral will take place here, at the Langdon Funeral Home, on Sunday November 12th. 10am.”
Lance listened to the message cut off. Typical of his father not to say goodbye. The man never used more words than were necessary, especially with his family.
Lance tucked his phone into his pocket. Sunday November 12th. The day after tomorrow. Instantly he began planning in his head. He should be able to catch a train tomorrow back to Langdon. Train service to Langdon didn’t tend to run on Sundays, so he’d have to go for a couple of nights. He yanked his phone back out of his pocket again, searching for Langdon hotels with vacancies. He hadn’t stayed at his family home in years and he wasn’t about to start again now.
Having something concrete to do, like booking hotels and searching train schedules, allowed Lance to ignore the cold iron bands tightening around his chest. His grandfather, George, was gone. The last real, human connection he had to his mother Selene had evaporated. His father didn’t count – he had never been the affectionate or communicative sort, and he had shut down even further after Selene’s death 10 years ago. Grandpa George had been the only person left who talked about Selene, who made Lance feel like family.
Lance took a shaky breath, then gritted his teeth, staring unseeing at his phone’s screen. Despite his fatigue he was seriously considering stripping back down and plunging straight back into the pool, right to the bottom, where everything was quiet and cool and made sense.
“Lance?”
A familiar voice brought Lance back from the depths. He sensed Finn standing somewhere behind him.
“I wanted to say thanks for last night. Um... yeah. So, thanks a lot.”
Lance turned to face the shorter swimmer and watched as Finn’s face shifted quickly from awkwardness to worried curiosity. His brows contracted and he narrowed his eyes, searching Lance’s face.
“You ok?”
If anyone else on this earth (besides possibly his grandfather) had asked him that question in this moment, he would have nodded stiffly and walked away. But for reasons he couldn’t understand, he opened his mouth and heard rather then felt himself say the words.
“My grandfather died.” The sentence felt totally surreal to speak out loud. He had thought that speaking it into the air would make it feel more real. But it didn’t.
Why was he even telling Finn this? In fact, why did he do anything of the things he did around Finn these days?
Finn’s brilliant blue eyes widened and his hand flew up to his mouth.
“Shit! Oh man, that sucks... I’m so sorry. I... I don’t know what to say.”
There was genuine empathy in that small, pale face. Genuine concern in the long-lashed eyes. Finn was a lot better of a guy than Lance had ever given him credit for. It was something he had been criticized for before – for judging too quickly and too harshly, for keeping people at arm’s length, just far enough away so that you could never really see or understand their good qualities, never truly let them in. He suspected he did the same thing with himself on an even more significant scale, but it wasn’t ever something he had particularly cared to address. Until now.
The next words tumbled out before he had time to really think about what he was asking.
“Want to pay me back for last night?”
Finn’s expression changed from one of sad worry to one of confusion. He tipped his head slightly to the side.
“Um, yeah, for sure, what can I do?”
The words fell from Lance’s mouth, heavy as iron, reverberating through the tiled locker room. He watched Finn’s face intently as they did so.
“Come with me.”
Finn’s confused expression deepened.
“What, now? Where to?”
Lance shook his head.
; “Not now. Tomorrow. To Langdon.”
CHAPTER 15
Finn shifted back and forth, clutching his suitcase’s handle, scanning the large, crowded train station for an exceptionally tall, broad-shouldered, stern-looking swimmer. As he waited for Lance to arrive, the same question that had echoed through his brain all day yesterday and last night as he had packed, returned: why am I doing this?
If Finn thought about it hard enough, and approached the question honestly, he probably could have named several reasons for accompanying Lance home to his grandfather’s funeral. Firstly, there was the undeniable desire he’d felt almost since the first moment he laid eyes on Lance, the first time he saw Lance’s awesome power in the pool: the desire to impress him, surpass him, and be close to him, all at the same time. This strange concoction of need had only intensified since their bizarre encounter in the locker room showers, though Finn would never admit that to himself. Secondly, and perhaps even more viscerally powerful, was the way Lance had said, “Come with me” yesterday in the locker room. It hadn’t sounded like a request but rather a command – a command that was tinged with the bleeding edge of grief. And in that moment, seeing how tight Lance’s jaw had become, how deeply his eyes had darkened with sorrow, Finn knew he could never say no. He probably would have said anything, done anything, to ease just some of the pain he saw in that extraordinary face.
But Finn didn’t think about these reasons. He preferred to live in ignorance of his true motivations, letting them settle at the back of his mind. And so he pondered the mystery of his current situation without any real conviction, and without any real chance at understanding.
A tap on his shoulder startled him and he whirled around. Lance stood before him and the immensity and proximity of his body made Finn stumble back a little.
“Hey!” He squeaked before quickly clearing his throat, embarrassed. “Hey... hey.”
Lance nodded bleakly.
“Hey yourself. Here’s your ticket.”
Finn took the small slip of paper from Lance’s outstretched hand and tucked it into his pocket.
“The train is boarding now. We should go.”
Lance turned and began walking to their gate. Wordlessly, Finn followed him. He realized almost sombrely that he was following Lance all the way to Langdon – where else would this brooding swimmer lead him? And just how far was Finn willing to go to follow?
It didn’t take them long to find their seats. The tickets, Finn realized as they sat down across from each other in large, comfortable seats, were Executive Class. I wonder how much this costs, he wondered, casting his eyes around the dimly lit, expansive train car. There were two more seats, currently empty, across the aisle, but otherwise he and Lance had no one next to them.
Almost immediately, Lance unfolded the small desk that was tucked into the wall beside them, between their windows.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said flatly without looking at Finn, securing the desk in a horizontal position, “but I have a lot of work to do.” He pulled out a sleek laptop and propped it open in front of him. “Sorry about the timing. It’s a long ride, almost six hours. We’ll get to Langdon around 9pm. They’ll serve snacks and dinner on the train, though, and there’s complimentary alcohol as part of the ticket.”
Without another word he began typing, his strong jaw and bone structure illuminated in the laptop’s digital glow.
“Yeah, no problem,” Finn replied slowly, feeling something like disappointment well up inside him. He hadn’t known exactly what to expect on this trip, but he had hoped for something other than... well, this. He suspected that this was how Lance dealt with feelings like grief – by shutting down and throwing himself into other things, whether that be school or swimming. With a quiet sigh, Finn pulled out his own laptop and set it up on the table between them. He had work to do, too – that Politics and Governance paper certainly wasn’t going to write itself.
He wished it would write itself, though. Because he quickly realized that he couldn’t. At least not here, not now. He was distracted. Every few minutes he found himself glancing up and staring at Lance’s face, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if he’d ever meet Finn’s gaze.
This was going to be a very long ride.
When they finally arrived at the hotel after taking a quiet taxi ride from the Langdon train station, Finn felt ready to drop. The long day of travel combined with the large hot meal and two glasses of red wine on the train had left him feeling stiff and sleepy. He woke up a little, though, when they entered the exquisite lobby of the building.
The hotel wasn’t part of a large chain but was rather a small, independent boutique inn. The lobby didn’t have the old-fashioned gold and marble look Finn had half-expected to see, but it was rather minimally designed with sleek dark wood and natural stone. An impressive water feature behind the lobby desk caught Finn’s eye – rippling water ran down the length of the entire stone wall, from ceiling to shimmering floor, creating an atmosphere of glistening relaxation.
A well put-together young woman with chestnut hair pulled into a neat ponytail greeted them warmly from behind the desk.
“Welcome to Stone’s Throw Inn! How can I be of assistance?”
Finn looked to Lance, waiting for him to answer.
“I have a reservation under Gallagher for two nights,” Lance responded, his voice sounding gruff. Finn regarded his profile keenly as the receptionist typed away at her computer. Lance’s jaw was taut, as it so often was, but there was a weariness around his eyes Finn hadn’t noticed before. So, even the mighty Lance Gallagher gets tired, he thought. The observation brought him no pleasure, though.
“Ah! Yes, I have it here. Very good, Mr Gallagher. I have you booked with two rooms, checking out on Monday. Here is a copy of your bill.”
Two rooms? Finn looked from Lance to the receptionist then back again, simultaneously disappointed and relieved. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should be offering to pay for some of this – the travel, the hotel, food, something. But when he saw Lance sign a bill for just over a thousand dollars, he knew that that could never be an option. Finn was lucky to have been awarded a needs-based scholarship to attend Kingston College. Otherwise, he had basically no money to his name. His parents ran a very small hardware store in his tiny hometown, and though they were happy, they didn’t have anything extra to send his way.
Just another way we’re different, he thought, too tired, and too sorry for Lance’s loss, to feel truly bitter.
“Here are your keys,” the receptionist said with a polite smile, handing each of them a plastic silver card. “Rooms 501 and 502, the top floor. Someone mans the desk 24 hours a day. If you need anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you,” Lance murmured with a nod, before turning and heading to the elevators.
“Thanks!” Finn echoed, and then he followed.
When the elevator opened on the fifth floor with an understated chime, Finn and Lance were faced with only two doors. There was no long hotel hallway, just a circular sort of landing with entrances to rooms 501 and 502.
“Is this it?” Finn said, head swivelling around the unexpectedly small space. “Wow, we’re the only ones on this whole floor!” Even though he was tired, and he knew he was there for a serious reason, he couldn’t help but perk up with a little excitement at staying in such a cool inn.
Lance nodded, dropping his bag in front of room 501.
“Yeah, I requested these rooms specifically. I didn’t want tons of people roaming the halls outside. This place is pretty small, but still.”
Finn nodded slowly, regarding Lance’s stiff posture.
“You know,” he began tentatively, not sure if he should say anything at all, “you didn’t have to book us separate rooms. It’s so expensive, and, well, I would have been ok to share.”
Lance turned to look at him then, his gaze both pained and soft. Something lurched deep in Finn’s chest and he felt heat rise in
his cheeks.
Without a word, Lance reached up his hand and traced his thumb, tenderly, softly, across Finn’s cheekbone, then trailed it down to the sensitive spot just below his lower lip. Instinctively, Finn opened his mouth, barely breathing, skin on fire.
A muscle jumped in Lance’s jaw, and something unnameable, something like dark fire, flashed in his grey eyes before he withdrew his hand. Finn shivered, suddenly colder. The sudden lack of Lance’s touch opened up inside him like a void.
“Goodnight, Finn,” Lance said, his deep voice barely above a whisper. And with that he retrieved his bag from the floor, tapped his card against the door handle, and stepped inside his room. The door closed with a soft click, though it resounded like a hammer on a gong inside Finn’s head.
Finn stood there outside for longer than he should have, staring at the closed door, tracing the path of Lance’s touch across his face with his own hand, loneliness closing in on him like a hungry dog. Eventually he entered his own room, barely noticing the luxury of the decor, before falling into bed and one of the deepest sleeps of his life.
CHAPTER 16
Lance didn’t need his alarm to wake him at 8am. He had been up for several hours already, working on a project for his Construction Practices in Civil Engineering course. He had always been an early riser, and being in his hometown for his grandfather’s funeral left him feeling unsettled and on edge, causing him to wake up even earlier than he normally would. The large hotel suite was silent as dim grey light filtered in through the broad windows. A slight dusting of snow had fallen during the night, and the charcoal heaviness of the sky promised more to come.
Lance sighed and closed his laptop. It was almost time to start getting ready. He stood, then paused for a moment, listening intently in the direction of the wall his room shared with Finn’s. He heard nothing, and wondered if it meant that the walls were just well insulated against noise, or if Finn was still sound asleep. He got the impression that Finn wasn’t much of a morning person – he had seen him struggle to stay awake in their morning Politics and Governance class on more than one occasion. The image made him smile, the most genuine flicker of happiness he’d felt since he heard the news of his grandfathers death. Well, that and the moment he saw Finn waiting for him at the train station, his head turning this way and that, scanning the crowds for his face. Seeing Finn waiting there for him had filled him with a joy so sharp it pierced his very core.
