Accidental Love

by Max Hudson

  He couldn't imagine that he would be drinking a lot, unless something bad had happened. He straightened up and took Derek’s hands in his. They were soft and warm, and for a second, Luca was absolutely positive that Derek was going to jerk away from him.

  “Derek,” Luca said. “Are you okay?”

  Derek smiled. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” he said. “And in this case, I'm better than you.”

  Luca nodded. Part of him didn’t want to go into this, but he knew that he needed to. “Derek, listen to me.”

  “I’m listening,” Derek replied, licking his lips. His hands hadn’t moved, but Luca noticed the absence of his touch, the way that his fingers remained steadfast in their place instead of stroking his skin. It was a silly, immature thing to be upset by, but Luca couldn’t help it. He wondered if it was too weird, to want his boyfriend to touch him, to want his boyfriend to care about him.

  He would sort it out later, he thought. Right now, he had more important things to take care of. More than anything, he needed to decide where to go. He was sure that he would have Derek’s support then.

  At least until he got back on his feet, quite literally.

  “Luca?”

  “My mom and my sister were arguing about who I have to go home with once I get out of the hospital,” Luca replied, his voice thin. “I don't want to go home with either of them.”

  Derek didn’t say anything. He just continued to watch him. Luca wondered what part of this made it so hard for Derek, what part of it made it so that Luca had to beg him.

  “I want to go home.”

  Derek nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  Luca shook his head. “So can I? Can I go home?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know,” Luca said, a little more impatiently than he meant to. “Can I go back to our apartment?”

  Derek's eyes widened. He instantly dropped his hands away from his own lap, where Luca’s own were, and he started to shake his head, muttering something under his breath.

  “Derek?”

  “Oh my God,” Derek muttered. “Oh my God, you really don't remember. You’re not lying. You don’t remember?”

  “I don't remember what?” Luca asked. His voice was a thin thread of nothing, and he already felt sick to his stomach. This had stopped being about proving that they were wrong to his family members and it had become a quest to prove to himself that he wasn’t insane.

  And he wasn’t, he told himself closing his eyes tightly. He wasn’t. Derek was his boyfriend, dammit. He was sure of it.

  “Are you going to make me spell it out for you?” Derek asked, his tone harsh.

  “I don’t think you have that much of a choice,” Luca said. “Look at where we are. It would be cruel not to.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess. Fine, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to freak out.”

  Luca scoffed. “Pinky swear,” he said, with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

  Derek appeared to successfully ignore him when he answered. “The week,” he said.

  Luka raised his eyebrow. “That’s not specific enough.”

  Derek cast his gaze on the floor. He didn’t look like he was going to look at Luca when he spoke. “You know,” he said. “The week in Las Vegas.”

  “What week in Las Vegas?”

  Derek started shaking his head, not saying anything, just shaking his head with his mouth open.

  “I can’t do this,” he said. He stood up and Luca watched in horror as he started to leave the room.

  “Don’t leave,” he said. He tried to plant his feet on the floor to follow him, but he still didn’t have that much strength. He stumbled but he willed himself to continue walking, despite the pain. It wasn’t too bad, it was mostly just annoying, and he wasn’t going to let a little annoying pain stop him from talking to Derek, when this was so very important.

  He wobbled and he found himself almost stumbling over. He held himself up, but it was hard, and he heard himself yelling Derek’s name. Derek turned around, looking even paler than before, but he didn’t rush in to help him. In fact, if anything, he started to walk quicker.

  Luca vaguely remembered calling him an asshole or something much worse than that—he couldn’t remember the specifics. Then all he could think about was the pain, which had turned from dull to searing. He remembered stumbling down so that his face was only inches from the floor, so close that he could almost kiss it.

  He remembered the sweat on his face, the way that his fingertips felt like they weren’t able to grip anything. Soon, he was landing on the floor, and the sound that his face made when it hit the tile was the one thing that Luca could remember very clearly from that moment.

  That was it. That was all that he could remember, as far as things that he could see. He also remembered hearing people’s voices—Derek’s, his mom’s, his sister’s, and maybe Brooklyn’s. He vaguely thought about looking up, but the thought was more intellectual than anything else. He was soon seeing nothing but blackness, the pain too much for his body to withstand.

  The last thing he remembered thinking was that he shouldn’t have gotten up. That Derek should have stayed. But it was too late to think that, and Derek was gone.

  That was the one thing he was absolutely certain of when he came to again. It was night time so he had clearly been out for a while. He wasn't sure if that was because of the fact that he had fainted or because he had been knocked out by drugs. He had been in a lot of pain, so he wouldn't have been surprised if it was the latter one. He looked at his mother, who was still there in the room.

  Luckily, she seemed to be the only person still there. That was good.

  Luca wasn’t sure how many people he would be able to deal with right now. He certainly didn’t think that he would be able to deal with an ‘I-told-you-so’ right then. He was feeling far too fragile, too vulnerable. The accident had been bad enough, but his encounter with Derek… Luca couldn’t be sure, of course, but he felt like it had made his trauma about a million times worse.

  He turned to look at his mother. Her breathing was deep and she had clearly fallen asleep while he was out like a light. She was laying down on the chair, vertically, in a way that looked extremely uncomfortable. Her legs were dangling off the side, and her arms were dangling off the other side.

  Luca couldn’t help but smile, but he felt bad instantly. He shouldn’t have doubted her. He didn’t like to think that she was right—the idea that he couldn’t even remember his own break-up scared the shit out of him—but she had been and he had to live with that.

  “Mom,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes fluttered open and for a second, it looked like she was about to fall out of her chair. She managed to straighten herself up as Luca snickered.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  She smiled at him and he smiled back.

  He knew her. He knew that if he let her, she would stay there all night. Then she would get his father to come to the hospital while she went to work and he wasn’t going to allow that. He had already been a shitty son to her once, he didn’t need to add any extra gratuitous stress to her.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “You have?” she said, the smile still on her face.

  Luca nodded. “Listen, why don't you go home?”

  “You want me to go home?”

  “You can’t stay on that chair for one more night,” he said. “It’s going to wreck your back.”

  “It’s not my back I’m concerned about.”

  “I know, but seriously, I'm okay.”

  She leaned in closer to him, her eyes narrow. That was the way she always looked when she was trying to tell if he was lying.

  He smiled at her, grabbing her hand and patting it. “I swear. Seeing Derek, well, it was just a little bit of a shock. But I’m fine, really. I’ll keep following the directions the doctors give me. I won’t do anything stupid.”

&nb
sp; She shook her head. “We're worried about you.”

  Luca nodded. “I know. I'm sorry. I should have trusted you.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I think I'm just confused.”

  She nodded, patting his hand too. “I know, sweetheart. I must be hard for you.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Mom,” he said. “it's not hard yet, it’s just… weird. Things keep throwing me for a loop.”

  “Think about where you want to go, okay? Whether it’s your sister’s or our place, you know that we can always help you.”

  “Yes,” Luca said. “I know that. Thanks, Mom.”

  “Are you sure you want me to go?”

  Luca nodded. “I really do need some time to mull things over. Get, uh, used to my new normal.”

  He didn’t tell her that he was likely to spend the rest of the night on his phone, trying to find out what had happened in Vegas and how long it had been since he had broken up with Derek.

  He was still confused. Massively, ridiculously confused. He wasn't sure when he had broken up with Derek, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that he wasn't sure what breaking up with Derek meant for his life.

  He couldn't remember his apartment without Derek being there. He couldn't remember going to work in the morning without Derek being there, next to him as he brushed his teeth, waking him up because the alarm sucked and he was likely to just go back to sleep.

  That was the kind of thing that he could remember. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. He remembered a few mornings without Derek. But those mornings, they were all few and far between. They were weird, and hazy, and spaced far apart. He couldn’t remember them that well.

  He tried to put on a brave face for his mother, who was still staring at him with that same look that she only reserved for when she was extremely worried. He couldn’t help but smile when memories flooded his brain.

  This entire thing reminded him of when he was little boy. There was the time when he had been in a bike accident, funnily enough. He supposed the parallels were numerous. He had just turned eleven years old and he had gotten a new bike for his birthday.

  Only a week had passed since he had gotten his bike, maybe two at a push. He had practically run into his neighbor's fence when he had been distracted by a rabbit crossing the road. He hadn’t seen many rabbits around their neighborhood and clearly that was far more interesting than actually looking at where he was going.

  It had hurt a lot, but kids were bouncy and flexible, and Luca hadn’t even been thrown off his bike. He had needed stitches, but the doctors had told him that he was lucky that no bones had been broken. They had also reprimanded him, asking him to be more careful. Up until a week ago, Luca had heeded their warning pretty well.

  That wasn’t the part that Luca was recalling right then. He remembered when he had first gone home, bike in hand. He had walked in through the backdoor of the house, to the kitchen, and announced that he needed to go to the hospital.

  His mom had rolled her eyes and asked him to grab some things from the pantry so that he could start setting the table. On reflection, he couldn’t blame her. He often went home covered in dirt and he was always a slightly histrionic kid, so his mom ignoring him was pretty much par for the course.

  That said, it hurt. His mother had almost not taken him to the hospital at all, in part because he was too cheery about announcing his needs. He didn't want to worry her, and it was only when he took off his jacket and started to help with carrying stuff to the table that she realized that his injuries were serious.

  She eventually gave him a talking-to for that, saying that he needed to be more assertive, particularly when he was in pain or needed medical attention.

  She was right and he had carried that lesson all of his life. With almost anyone else, except for his mother. He hated upsetting her. He hated doing it then, and he still hated doing it now, as a fully-grown man.

  His mom seemed to realize that she was deep in thought, because she smiled at him. “Okay,” she said. “If you really don’t need me, I can go.”

  “Go,” he said. “Get some rest. Spend some time with Dad. I bet he misses seeing you.”

  “I think I’ll spend some time with my bed first,” she said with a smile. “I miss seeing it.”

  “Yeah,” Luca said. “I bet.”

  Immediately after his mom had left, Luca couldn't help but feel relieved. He was sure that she was going to want to talk about his treatment and other such things, and he didn’t think that he had the energy for that right then. He didn’t feel like he had the energy for anything much, really. But this, this was something that he absolutely needed to do. For himself, for his own piece of mind. So that he would feel normal again.

  He was excited to have some space himself. He expected that he would have to go through his emails to know exactly when he had broken up with Derek. He needed to do some investigating to find out when they had stopped communicating with each other. Luckily, his phone had survived the accident almost unscathed. There were a couple of big scratches on the front, but they weren’t too bad. He could still see the screen relatively well. He would probably replace it once he got out of the hospital, but for the time being, this was exactly what he needed.

  He took a deep breath, then grabbed the phone off his nightstand. He looked down at the small screen in his hands and he unlocked it. He opened his email app, bracing himself to go back through thousands and thousands of emails.

  He was about to start looking through it when he heard footsteps approaching his room. He was about to tell his mother that returning hadn’t been necessary, but when he looked up, the person there wasn’t his mother at all.

  Luca’s breath caught in his throat. The last time—and he supposed the first time, too—that he had seen Brooklyn, he had been wearing those gorgeous nurse scrubs that seemed to be painted on his body. He looked like he was modeling the stupid scrubs, but that had been nothing compared to what he looked like in his civilian clothes.

  He supposed that was what they were called. He wasn’t actually sure. On anyone else, they would have just looked like clothes. Regular, human clothes that people wore to do regular, human shit. But on him, they looked like high-fashion attire.

  He was probably going to go home and rest for the night, not appear in a music video. But he didn’t look like that. He looked like he was about to go to a photoshoot, and Luca was unable to say anything, so speechless was he by the way that Brooklyn looked.

  Brooklyn smiled at him. “Hey,” he said.

  Luca tried to smile back, though he wasn’t sure that the muscles in his face were actually moving. He felt like he was frozen in place. He didn’t think that he had ever seen anyone look quite that good and it was weird to him to think that anyone did. Especially his nurse.

  Maybe Luca just had some sort of weird crush on him. He had heard that happened. That people got crushes on the people that were looking after them after an accident or when they were in the hospital for any reason.

  That seemed relatively normal to Luca, more normal than thinking about how gorgeous this man was every time he saw him. Maybe once he got out of the hospital and he didn't have to deal with any of the aftereffects of the accident anymore, he wouldn't think that Brooklyn was the most attractive man that he had ever seen it is entire life.

  Or maybe he would still think that, but it wouldn't affect him nearly as much as it was now. Luca was normally quite a smooth talker. He had never really struggled with men. Only with other boys, when he was a teenager. But with men, well, he was good with men. And there were lots of reasons why he was good with men.

  He was good looking. It wasn’t just his face, though he was sure that helped. But he looked after himself and it showed on his physique. Or, it had, before the accident. After the accident, the effects weren’t nearly as obvious. There were other things, too.

  He was smart and relatively successful. He knew that he had all those things going f
or him. He wasn't the type of person that got tongue-tied when he saw a good-looking dude. He was confident and he knew that rejection wasn’t the end of the world.

  At least that was the way he had always been. Until fucking Brooklyn. There was something about him—maybe it was the way that he was good-looking, with those unattainable Hollywood good looks. Or maybe it was just that he was looking after him and that was inherently sexy. Whatever the case was, Luca remained tongue-tied as he stared at the man in front of him.

  Brooklyn cocked his head, then he giggled quietly. His giggle wasn’t quite what Luca was expecting. He didn’t know why, but he had expected something far more masculine from him. Perhaps it was because of how deep his voice was when they had first been talking. He couldn’t help it, and he started to giggle to himself too.

  Part of him was sure that it was insulting, and he wanted to stop, but then Brooklyn started giggling too, and that made Luca start giggling once again. Soon they were a feedback loop of giggles, one after the other, until there was nothing but laughter in the room. Brooklyn was doubled over, laughing, and so was Luca, though his laughter hurt sometimes. Every time that they caught each other’s gaze, Luca could feel himself about to explode into giggles again. Finally, after he had calmed down a little bit, he looked up at Brooklyn.

  Brooklyn took a deep, steadying breath. “I am so sorry. I did not mean to do that.”

  Luca shook his head. “It's okay. You didn't do anything.”

  Brooklyn leaned his body against the frame of the door. Every single one of his movements looked practiced. Luca made a mental note to ask him if he had ever modeled, but he wasn’t sure when or if that was ever going to come up. Even if he didn’t ever get to ask him, he wanted to know. He needed to find out Brooklyn’s surname if he was going to look him up on the internet.

  He closed his eyes, telling himself to stop being a creep. He wasn’t going to search for this man’s name on the internet. He was just going to talk to him, like a normal person.