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Sometimes you wonder if he feels it.
On nights like this, you think it’s written all over your being.
Logan is just driving, one hand draped over the steering wheel carelessly, and his eyes are focused on the road, but the other hand is draped on the seat, around your shoulders as you press into his side because it’s a cold night and his damn heater doesn’t work. The only sound is the sound of your straw sucking up the final drops of your almost empty hot chocolate and the faint sound of oldies music on the radio that you swear Logan is occasionally humming to. You press deeper in his side and he doesn’t complain, just adjusts a little so you can wrap yourself tighter in his leather jacket and feel his warmth against you. Even though you’re freezing, you’re warm, and this is so familiar--the scent of his leather jacket and him and hot chocolate and the coffee that he downed about three seconds after paying for it.
You’ve known each other for years now, and it makes your heart hurt a little that he won’t just kiss you. And you don’t know if he feels the same way as you, but you hope to hell that he does, because you don’t know how much longer you can live with this bone deep longing.
He takes you to Canada, once. You go hiking and he shows you all the places hidden deep within his fractured memories. You end up at a hot spring, and you both dip your feet in and he teases you about how maybe it will finally heat up your always freezing toes.
“You always hog all the blankets when we watch movies,” he complains, even though he’s not really complaining because he’s practically a furnace. “‘Then you press your feet up against me ‘n it feels like a couple ‘a iceciciles.”
“We can’t all be our own personal furnace,” you tease him back, and at some point the teasing ends with you pushing him in the water and he drags you in after him and you’re both laughing and he’s got that smile that’s reserved just for you--the real one where it spreads across his whole face and his eyes sparkle a little and he looks wholy, truly, happy.
You convince him to take you on motorcycle rides on warm summer nights. He tries to teach you how to drive, for a little while, but it takes months and he finally throws his hands up in the air in frustration you know isn’t real. “You’re terrible at this,” he remarks, looking at you with that little half smile that you love. (Yes, you think this has become love, and it scares you to think that maybe he only sees you as a friend.) You don’t tell him that you know how to ride a motorcycle, you just like these nights, on a backroad with no one around except the two of you.
So you convince him to drive, while you press your face into his shoulder and feel the warm wind wash over your skin until you’re far far away from the mansion and any responsibilities the two of you might have. And you lay in the soft grass while picking at flowers (he loves me, he loves me not) and you both look at the stars and if his hand holds yours a little too tight, like he’s afraid he might lose you, neither one of you mentions it.
He buys you ice cream on tough days and good days and every day in between. Your favorite is Rocky Road, and you don’t know if it’s his favorite too, or if he just wants to share the carton with you, but you don’t ask about it. You talk about the little things, like how your desk is too creaky but that seems like such a small think to complain to Xavier about when the school burns down on a regular basis. You talk about the kids, and how Austin is flunking history, and Gina thinks she might be in love with her best friend Talia and she’s scared that it’s wrong, and that her parents might disown her, and you know with assurity that if any such thing happened, Logan would adopt her himself. You talk about the big things, like his regrets, and your dreams that you gave up on too early. And it always ends with the two of you on a couch, watching shitty sitcoms and him teasing you about how you always fall asleep and leave him watching by himself and you promise you won’t fall asleep on him this time so he can leave and go to bed when he wants. But you break your promise and it’s not like he would leave anyway. (He would never leave.)
And it’s a night like that and you’re sitting on the shore of the lake, a pint of rocky road between you, and you’re feeling that longing again, a longing so deep that it makes your entire body hurt. And you’re both silent, and there’s only the sound of the waves against the shore.
“I think I might be in love with you,” he says. His voice is quiet, and for a second your heart stops and when you look at him he’s just looking at you like you hang the stars in the sky.
“I think I might be in love with you too,” you say, just as softly, your voice breaking a little because is this real is he telling you he loves you like you’ve dreamt of a million times before?
He’s smiling now, and it’s that real smile you love but you know him well enough to see the relief and fear written in the lines of his face, and that he thinks loving him is a death sentence and he doesn’t know if he should pull you closer or tell you to run.
And you don’t know if you kiss him first or if he kisses you, but you’re kissing, and he tastes like rocky road ice cream and spiced cigars and scotch.
And the longing is gone, and this is so good and all you can think is that if this is a death sentence, it's the way you want to go.