#five sauce

Except then you were rounding the corner and he could see you again. Your keys rattled between your fingertips and, somehow, with the mere sight of you, the rattling heartbeat pitter–pattering in his chest came to a halt, and everything was calm. Everything was okay. Luke stood up and leaned against the wall of the corridor as you unlocked your new apartment.

“My furniture is still being sent. It’s kind of empty for right now.”

Luke didn’t care. That apartment wasn’t empty if you were in it.

You shut the door and locked it. “You know you aren’t really supposed to be here.”

He knew that.

“This could get me in a lot of trouble.”

But that, he didn’t know.

“How?” He asked.

“People will post that they saw you here. That they saw you going into my office building and my apartment and the rumors will start all over again. I’m going to get in trouble for that.”

“For the rumors? Why? They aren’t your fault.”

“No, but I have this job because of them. Those rumors stopped because I moved and got this job, and people didn’t see me around you anymore.”

“Why would you do that? They were just rumors, Y/N. They weren’t that big of a deal.”

You nodded your head. “Yeah, I know. But the executives didn’t think that. So, in order to keep this job––or any job, really––and to keep you at that firm, I had to take this job. But you coming around here? All that does is start the rumors up all over again, and the execs are gonna hear about it, and I’m going to be in even deeper water than I was back in the city.”

Luke walked to you, then, with his arms extended as he gripped your biceps and looked straight into your eyes like he could see all the way through. (And you knew he could.) “I don’t care what those suits think about me being here, Y/N. And you shouldn’t either. It’s just us, you know. It’s always been just us. For years. That’s the most important thing, right?”

His eyes were all the oceans of the world, and you were drowning in them. But if that was how it all went down, if that was how this was all going to end: drowning in his eyes? Well, you’d be damned––that wasn’t the worst way to go. “Just us?”

He smiled, and it was better than any sort of Californian sun that has ever kissed your sun and even better than the sunlight that would melt against the spire of the Empire State Building. It was Luke. “Just us,” he repeated.

It didn’t matter that there was no furniture in the new apartment besides a pristine mattress in the bedroom and a beanbag in the living room and a couple books on the hardwood. It didn’t matter that there was only a box of pizza (unfortunately, gluten–free; nothing like the pizza back in the Empire State) in the refrigerator. It didn’t matter that you were essentially living in a ghost town of an apartment. Not with Luke standing there with you with that look in his eyes––the same one from the airport.

And with him that close to you (close enough for you smell the spearmint coming off his breath in waves) you wondered if you really hated Los Angeles as much as you thought you did or missed NYC as much as you believed you did. Maybe you just hated Los Angeles because it had no memories with you and Luke and maybe you didn’t really miss NYC in whatever way you thought you did; maybe you just missed that you were having to leave the memories of you and him behind. Maybe you didn’t really miss the city at all. You just missed him. And the biggest what if of them all: What if you missed him more than a best friend would? What if you were wondering what his lips would taste like with all that spearmint? What if, this whole time, it was always him?

“You know,” he started tentatively. “I don’t think the rumors were all that bad. Maybe––just maybe––they kind of had a point.”

You smiled, and it was a beam of sunshine––one the sun itself was jealous of.

“What if they did? What are you gonna do about it?”

His arms brought you in closer. Two magnets, that was what you were. You were the north pole; he was the south. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be. Always. You breathed in, and you could smell the New York on him, the very essence of the home that you had left behind for the man holding you. (Wasn’t he a man?) His lips parted. His face moved towards your own. You were frozen in his arms, like ice and like Jell–O, ready for the taking. Ready for him. You had always been ready for him. For those swimming pool eyes and gangly legs and messy blonde hair and arms that held you just like this. Just like Home.

Then, his lips were on your own and he was drinking you in like a fine glass of scotch. Drinking you and tasting you and savoring you and remembering every single detail of every single swallow. From the way your lips tasted like strawberries and were as soft as silk to the way your equally silk hands wrapped around his neck, pulling him in and in and in and in and in. He could smell you––all expensive perfume that reminded him of roses and vanilla. Anywhere you touched, sharp electric voltages trailed across his skin, shocking him every which way. You could feel his breath fanning out against your cheeks and the faint little puffs of breath against your lips. You weren’t quite sure what this right here was or where it even came from or if it was just Something that was a long time in the making, but you might have just been falling in some sort of love with this moment right here. (Not that you would ever admit that.)

So, you weren’t entirely surprised when you woke up on that new pristine mattress in that strange and new apartment of yours with a pair of long arms around you that you knew all too well. The Los Angeles sunlight filtered through the large windows of the bedroom and onto the hardwood floor of the room and the mattress itself. Luke’s skin was illuminated like diamonds with the Californian sun, all gold and holy and religious. This might have just been the only time that you remotely tolerated the change of locale. The New York sun could never do this man justice, not like this. Never like this.

His lips were open just a little, hot breaths falling past the pink flesh and fanning out across your own skin. Goosebumps rippled along its path. Hair that was more tousled than usual fell into his eyes, and you brushed the tendrils back behind his ear. Your fingertips probably (read: most definitely; obviously; of course) lingered a moment longer than necessary. But touching him felt like finding the Holy Grail; he felt like some sort of earthly Messiah. And that thought might have been entirely sacrilegious, and you were most definitely risking being smited by some supernatural cosmic force or entity. But for the man lying next to you on that mattress (the one that was now a little less than pristine), you didn’t mind all that much. For him, you would risk Everything.

But neither of you knew what to do after this. What was the next step? Where did the two of you go from here? When Luke’s blue eyes opened at 10:47 in the morning, though, to find you already awake and staring at him while in his arms, you realized that those questions didn’t matter. Not right now, anyways. What did matter was him and you and the fact that this was some sort of Always. The two of were always some sort of Always, weren’t you? And when he kissed your temple and pulled you into his chest where you could hear his heartbeat, you knew without a shadow of a doubt that nothing else but this mattered.

Luke and Y/N.

Forever.

Always.

It had a nice ring to it.

+

It had all started so innocently, so meaninglessly. Maybe he was just naïve and this was all inevitable. A cliché, if you will. The ultimate kind. The kind that he should only have been expecting at the end of the day.

And it was possible that innocently may not have been the right word for something like this. The two of you weren’t really innocent in anything whatsoever. At least, not between the hours of 10:00 at night to 03:00 in the morning of which they spent between white sheets. Nothing either of you did during those hours was ever innocent.

But when Ashton looked back on it all, trying to figure out the exact moment in time in which it all went awry, he couldn’t pinpoint that exact millisecond. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember how or when or why or where everything changed––when his name off your lips began to sound more like a sacrilegious prayer, when the touch of your skin against his own felt like a fiery inferno eating him alive, when the sight of you slipping your clothes back on felt like some kind of heartbreaking goodbye.

He couldn’t admit to any of that, though. In fact, it took what felt like forever to admit it even to himself. However, even with that personal confession, it was one he had to bury deep in the abyss of his soul. Ashton remembered your words: Just for fun. Nothing serious. No strings attached. None of this means anything.

That was fine at first. Really, it was. He wasn’t one to say no to a little fun here and there. But then, it became more frequent, and somewhere along the lines, the two of you became something like friends. Don’t get him wrong; that still meant you left as soon as you possibly could. That still meant that Ashton was left with the orchid oil smell of your shampoo on his pillows and memory of it all locked away in his mind.

So, now there was a merciless supercut of you playing over and over again in his mind. Even when you weren’t wrapped up around himself and those white sheets, he suffered with the thoughts and memories of you. You were a ghost with no mercy and no end in sight. There was no silver lining and no light at the end of the tunnel. There was only you––˙his damnation––and a complete and utter lack of strings.

He watched you now: sliding on the dark–wash jeans over the black lace underwear and swiping his own white v–neck shirt from the foot of the bed. Ashton was used to this part of the evening. Too used to it. Sometimes, he let himself daydream about what it would be like if you stayed––if you let the jeans and the shirt and the shoes stay on the floor until morning or mid–afternoon and curl up in those white sheets instead. But by the time his reverie had finished, you were always out the door, slamming the front door to his apartment behind you.

Ashton didn’t think about that heartbreaking reverie this time. No, he made himself watch you leave. Burned it into his mind. Maybe the pain would make it all stop. Maybe it would snap him out of it all. But right now, all he felt is the pain of watching you leave without a care in the world once more yet again just like you always did.

“You look better in that shirt than I do.”

“I’ll bring it back next time.”

“Keep it.”

And it was a simple statement, just two words. But somehow, someway, that was enough to sound like implications and possible base–level commitment to you. Maybe it was. Maybe you were right.

“Ash––“

“It’s just a shirt, Y/N.”

The air was heavy with the silence between the two of you. Him in expectation, you in anxiety. But then Ashton was smiling and shaking his head and laughing and turning over to the other side of the bed, facing away from you, before telling you to shut the door on your way out. Non-committal, that was what the two of you were. And that was what Ashton’s statement was.

Non–committal.

Easy–peasy.

No strings attached.

So, when you walked out of the bedroom with a smile on your face and a post–sex spring in your step, when he heard the front door slam shut with you wearing his shirt (the one you were going to return), he realized nothing had changed. You were still having fun. He was still falling in love. This was his lot in life. And if he were a bit smarter, he would cut it off and end it. Never see you again. But seeing you from 10:00 to 3:00 in the late hours of the night was better than nothing for his poor, old heart.

When you knocked on his door the next week at 10:32 at night with his white shirt in your hands, he let you in without a moment of hesitation.

Unrequited love?