Eoin

Wyatt couldn’t count the number of times that Eoin snuck out in the middle of the night, came back days, weeks later, with an apology that had more holes in it than truth.

(He couldn't count the number of times he said he was alright with it, either, but he finds that a whole lot more difficult to admit to anyone but himself).

So this time. This time he holds a little tighter, struggles when Eoin tries to push him away, tries to let him go. Because letting go actually feels like Letting Go.

"I'll be back in three days, four tops," Eoin says, and he smiles that wrinkled smile, stares for ages at Wyatt’s mouth like if he avoids Wyatt's eyes long enough he'll stop trying to search for answers in his.

A lot can change in four days, Wyatt doesn't want to say, because he wants to trust him. He swears to fucking God he wants to trust him this time.

Eoin tastes like salt when he presses a deep, wet kiss to Wyatt's lips, and maybe Wyatt's mouth trembles against him, and maybe his hands are shaking at his sides.

He touches his lips to his mouth when Eoin pulls away. He wonders which of them is lying more.

The colour is high in his cheeks and his eyes burn but he kisses back when Eoin leans in again, hands finding Eoin's arms, holding onto the crook of his elbows with a childlike burning fervor.

This time Wyatt breaks the kiss, but keeps his fingers grasped in the butter soft fabric of Eoin’s jacket. Eoin stares at him until he cracks a weak smile and looks away, hot under his gaze.

“’ll see you soon,” Eoin says, and there’s a conviction in his tone, a grin playing at his cheeks, and he’s just so beautiful, so wrong, and God, Wyatt just, he just…

"Christ, I’ll miss you," Wyatt whispers, and it’s really fucking honest, even though it was an accident, and his heart thuds painfully in his chest, something like hope registering in his gut, and Eoin--

And Eoin... the look on his face becomes blank, unreadable, and he opens his mouth to say something before closing it again, making a low sound in the back of his throat that Wyatt can't decipher. It's just. They’ve never. It was never. It was never supposed to be this, and Wyatt should have known better.

Wyatt thought he fucking knew better.

Wyatt stands in defiance for a single, slow thump of his heart, but then Eoin looks up, looks away (avoids Wyatt’s eyes, and he’s so good at that, he’s so goddamn good at that), mumbles a quiet, “Wyatt,”, and he fractures Wyatt’s resolve like glass.

Wyatt pushes the door closed in Eoin’s face before he can take it back, brings his fist to his mouth and bites because he doesn't want to.


Four days come and go and restless anger settles in his bones, makes him mad, makes him throw all of Eoin's things out of his drawer, onto the floor, onto their bed until the items mingle with the sheets.

He sits amongst the sweatshirts and tracksuit pants and it feels like ten hours, but it could only be minutes, and he stares at his phone and prays. The time slips through his fingers like sand and he stares and he aches and he eventually starts packing it all back neatly, because what else can he do. What else can he do.

"Idiot," he mutters to himself, hands clenched tightly around a pair of stained socks. "You fucking idiot."


Wyatt's job takes everything out of him and Eoin doesn't call and he becomes so unhappy sometimes he can't stop the longing, the embarrassment, from seeping into his marrow, from making him... making him sick and tired and lonely (and it isn't even the first time, but he doesn't want it to be the last if it means he never comes back).

It's just. It's not his fault.

It's not his fault he fell into something that felt horribly like love.


It was easy. Eoin was there. Wyatt was there.

They shared an apartment and then they shared a bed, and then they bought an apartment that only had one bed because what the hell.

Because Eoin had bony knees, back then, and a smile like a hurricane and… and it felt like the beginning.

Wyatt liked to think of it as the beginning.

(Because it couldn't… it couldn’t be an end with the way his heart leapt every time Eoin looked at him.)



He gets a tattoo after the third month (the hardest month, when he can't afford the second half of the rent, and all of his friends have stopped talking to him because they were their friends. Eoin's friends.)

It's a lone wolf and it's so fucking poetic and so fucking stupid he can't even look at it without wanting to cringe.


The night he comes back...

Well, the night he comes back, he’s wearing the grey t-shirt he bought Wyatt for his last birthday, one he hadn’t even realised wasn’t there (next to the underwear Eoin left, the soft briefs that Eoin never wore, the white socks and sleep shirts and and and…).

Eoin bought that t-shirt in his own size and laughed when Wyatt punched him a little too hard on the arm, kissed him on the mouth and grinned against his lips.

His jaw had ached from smiling that day.

But today, today he can’t even school his face into a frown, just stares vacantly at Eoin’s face while Eoin stares vacantly at his feet, the shadows of the street light masking his face. It’s a minute of that, a minute of irrational hopefulness (that Eoin will do something, that Eoin will say something, anything), before Wyatt pulls him inside despite the thickness in his throat, despite the way his whole body screams to shut the door in his face.

(Because a lot can change in four days. But even more can change in five months).

Eoin’s hair falls in lanky tufts around his cheeks, and he pushes at it compulsively just before he whispers, “I don't know what you want me to say.” Wyatt’s knee jerk reaction is to hit him, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he could.

"Tell me why you came back," Wyatt says, because he's too fucking scared of what he'll say if he asks him why he went.

He’s so very tired of the answer always being, It’s not you, it’s me.

Eoin clears his throat, takes a step closer until he can rest his hand on Wyatt's chest, in the dip between his pectorals. Wyatt looks down, watches how his hand rises and falls with his own breathing, stuttering with little sobs that halt his breathing and make his head feel too-heavy.

"I..." Eoin pauses, contemplates his hand in a way that Wyatt suspects is to curb the reason he has to clear his throat again. "I need you."

Wyatt moves to grab Eoin's hand, but he falters, reaches for Eoin's face instead, fingering the moisture collecting on his cheeks. He whispers “fuck” and he’s crying, and Eoin is crying too and he almost wishes he'd try to fight him; at least then he'd have reason for the anger twisting poisonously in his gut.

But all he does is kiss Wyatt's wrist and bury his face in Wyatt’s neck when he pulls him against his chest, and it’s cold in the hallway, cold in Wyatt’s heart, but Eoin is warm and secure and.

He doesn’t want him to leave again. And he knows he’ll welcome him back if he does.

And that’s enough, Wyatt thinks. It has to be.