Page 43 of Offside

Avoiding things we did as them–that was my play.

He fell for Metal because of who I was and how we were, not necessarily the shows we watched or anything. Changing a few details–that had him relaxed and happier most of the time.

And made my life easier–watching anything with lightsabers was hard for me. I had to bite my tongue because I knew it wasn’t all that common a thing to make my own sound effects for duels, and Knight always thought it was cute.

Yes, I was now actively avoiding certain things that would make him associate Metal with me.

“About time,” Landon teased, opening his door for me while I carried in smoothies for us. “Thought you’d forgotten about me.”

“Oh, please,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes at him as I passed.

We had good days and bad days–today was a good day.

“You’re so needy when you're housebound–”

“I am not housebound,” he argued, limping to follow me to his kitchen. “I am choosing to stay inside while my knee heals, but I can leave anytime I want.”

“And risk falling on your ass in public? I doubt it,” I snickered, dodging his shove of my head with my not-broken knees.

Playing with Landon was the closest I ever got to seeing Knight. I could hear it in every joke and tease, but seeing it?

Wow.

His eyes were intimidating when I met him, but now? They were the prettiest sapphire I'd ever seen, and I had them on me all the time. His hair was short, but always perfect, and that pale, vampire-like skin?

I wanted to touch it badly.

Adding a face to the man I was falling in love with was brutal–all I wanted to do was climb him like a tree. I left most of our hangouts with a raging hard-on that was just begging for me to go back to him, let him take care of it for me–a very new thought in my head.

I used to look forward to not being with people and doing things alone. Now my dick was angry that we weren’t letting Landon kiss the ache away.

Oh, and he had pretty lips–okay, we’d be here all day if I just went on tangents about how pretty he was.

Let’s just go with he was a very pretty man, and why I never noticed it before was lost on me, but my eyes were open now.

“Hey, I was thinking about something,” Landon started, casually taking one of the smoothies from me with a thankful nod. “A few weeks ago, the day I got hurt, you were telling me about someone you were dating, and I just realized you never brought it up again. Things still going good?”

Fuck.

Fuck fuck.

“Not exactly,” I managed to get out, locking my eyes on my straw for comfort. “Ended up breaking up, but it’s cool–”

“Shit, I’m sorry, man,” he mumbled, offering me a half-smile. “You seemed like you liked the guy–I’m sorry–”

“Guy?” I asked, my head shooting up and my eyes locking on his now very worried ones. “I never said he was–”

“Right,” he said quickly, shutting his eyes and letting out a quick, centering breath. “I’m sorry–I shouldn't have assumed. You were using kind of vague terms around them, so I just figured maybe…I don’t know–maybe they were something you'd rather keep to yourself, and now I'm being an ass and asking you about it.”

As fucked as I felt, maybe this was a crack.

Maybe he was starting to get there, too–maybe that was my play. Give him little breadcrumbs to get to the same conclusion I did, and see what he did with the information.

No, that was dumb.

Was it?

“It's okay,” I offered, nodding to myself. “You were right–he was a guy…I’ve never felt fully normal with attraction, so I didn’t really know how to address it, so I just used they and them and partner for things. I’m not really ashamed or anything, but I just didn’t know what to call myself, so I just stayed quiet.”