#decson

He asks, genuine confusion seeping across his features. Declan’s never been one to withhold his emotions. The problem is that Mason never expresses his enough.

“I’ll be… I’m moving soon,” Mason starts, avoiding any and all eye contract as he fiddles with the frame of the doorway, still blocking it. Dec suddenly realises he doesn’t mean to let him inside, “We’ll be far apart and won’t get to see each other for ages.”

It’s true that they’ve had it easy up until now.

Even when Declan had been kicked from the Chelsea Academy, he’d only moved slightly more East to West Ham. It was still London. They were still together.

This.

This is different. Hundreds of miles will sit between them. Declan knows because it’s been weighing on his mind too. But he’d thought—

“It’s better this way.”

Mason adds when Dec doesn’t answer. There’s still way too many thoughts flowing through his mind to make sense of.

“Right,” He says finally, but the word is strangled and breathless, “Okay. And, that’s what you…“

That’s what you want?

He can’t bring himself to say it and trails off instead. He doesn’t really want to know the answer. Mason seems to understand, nodding slowly, lips pressed together in a tight line.

“It’s easier.” He reasons. Declan can’t think too hard about how it sounds like he’s also trying to convince himself of this too. It’ll break him.

“Yeah.”

He rasps out instead, pretending it doesn’t catch in his throat and choke him up, “Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Mason says then, and Dec’s heart breaks a bit at the lack of dictation. It’s a goodbye.

He nods slowly. He gets it, however much it’s ripping into his chest, “See you for the break then, I guess.”

Declan doesn’t know what he’ll do when they’re flung into close proximity again in just over a month. Mason nods.

The door clicks locked behind Declan as he turns, shooting a pang to his heart with its finality. Then he forces one foot in front of the other, following the garden path to the gate.

He finds Mason’s green bin the other side, the one for natural waste, and lifts its lid to dispose of the flowers he’d been hiding behind his back.

The ones that were supposed to cause Mason to fling his arms around Declan and kiss him slowly in the way that he loves. Then he was going to ask him, finally.

He’s been an idiot about it all this time and he knows it. That’s what makes this worse.

The hardest part is forcing himself to drive away, pretending that he’s not leaving a part of his heart behind him.