Confessional
O'Knutzy Week Day 6: Finn's decade-long torment nexus; or, pretty little green eyes and the sea. Y’all ever been so tired you have a breakdown over something that happened a decade ago? Characters belong to @lumosinlove, fest prompts from @oknutzy-week-2026!
Solstice (B1)
It was 3 o’clock in the morning, and Finn was awake.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen that hour tick over. College, maybe. He almost hadn’t believed it when he checked his phone.
His heart still pounded, low in his stomach, low enough that he could feel it when he ran a hand from his sternum to his navel and back again. God. Fuck. He could feel it in his throat, too, clenching and releasing. He didn’t want to move; Logan was cuddly tonight, curled so tight to the side of Finn’s body that there was no way to get up and walk this clinging thing off without waking him. No way at all.
Finn laid his head back on the pillow and tried to breathe it out. Leo, at least, was asleep. He could hear it in the slow inhales from the other side of the bed. Logan’s arm was a concrete bar over Finn’s stomach, his thigh weighing both of Finn’s legs down. His lips were slightly parted. Soft hair tickled Finn’s nose where Logan had burrowed into him.
“Lo.”
The smallest, slightest hitch of breath.
Finn lowered his voice and trailed his knuckles up the ridges of Logan’s bare back. “Lo.”
Logan mumbled something, lashes fluttering. His nose nudged under Finn’s jaw. A long exhale cooled Finn’s skin, still damp with sweat.
“Logan,” he whispered, and bent to kiss Logan’s forehead. Warm as always. Their little radiator. “Lo, hey. Hey.”
Logan was awake between one breath and the next. Sleepy green eyes blinked up at him; his brow furrowed, cheeks pink at the top. He’d been deep under. Finn would feel bad about it later, but he waited patiently for Logan to look down at their tangled bodies and back over his shoulder at Leo. Could Logan feel his heart skittering away? He hoped not.
He hoped so.
“Too hot?” Logan asked, already starting to unwind his arm from Finn’s torso. He was still disoriented enough to drop the ‘h’. Something inside Finn heaved at the familiarity. A kiss bumped against his cheek, though it was more of a fond nuzzle than anything more. “Sorry, baby.”
“Hey, wait.”
Logan sat up on one elbow.
Finn didn’t know. He just didn’t know. He tugged at the drawstring of Logan’s shorts. “Can we…?”
The sleepy blur was gone. Logan glanced down. “Now?”
“No, no, I…” Finn shook his head. He didn’t know. “Not that. Can we go outside?”
Logan looked toward the window, then back at him. “Outside?”
Finn fought down a small shiver and tucked his feet deeper under the blankets. “Yeah. Just—just for a minute?”
That look. He’d died for that look, once. The closeness, the focus. He’d felt it burn right through him from every angle of every room they entered.
“Okay,” Logan said slowly, quietly. He cast one more glance at Leo’s slumbering shape. “It’s early.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re awake.”
Finn didn’t have to answer. Logan wasn’t looking for one—his face said plenty. He knew. Finn twisted the drawstring around his first two fingers and pulled. Logan’s mouth fell into a gentle frown, but he helped Finn ease the covers back and slipped out of bed behind him.
It was cooler in the living room. Finn poured himself a glass of water, though he didn’t really want it. The coldness on his palms helped. He could feel Logan behind him, lingering in the space between the kitchen and the sofa. He downed the water in two gulps, then refilled the glass, bracing both hands on the sink in the meantime. He just had to get a fucking grip.
A hand found the small of his back and Finn’s throat tightened. He looked away, to the side, to the safety of the key bowl by the front door and their haphazard shoe pile. He’d organize that in the morning. Maybe tonight, if he couldn’t make his mouth work.
“Fish?”
“Yeah,” he managed, rough. Logan’s thumb, rubbing tiny circles over his skin, stopped. Finn nodded. “Yeah, c’mon.”
Logan followed. His shadow, even in the dark.
The city was still up. Cars and people, lights in the distance. Finn abandoned his water on the tiny mosaic table by the balcony doors and let Logan close it behind them. The railing bit into his forearms. It was still mild, for June. Someone had pinned a pride flag to the complex across the street already. A siren wailed down Main, ten blocks down. If they were in New York, he would’ve taken them out onto the fire escape outside his bedroom window. His bedroom. Not Logan’s.
Tentative hands on his hips lost their hesitation when Finn didn’t flinch away, wrapping around him from behind. Comfortable weight against his back; a head resting between his shoulders. “You’re hot.”
“Thanks.”
Logan’s little puff of disapproval made him smile despite himself. He ran a hand over Logan’s forearm, though his palms were probably cold. Maybe Logan would like it. He didn’t know. He hoped so. Logan liked the cold, even when it bit and howled and threatened to pull them both under.
“Is it bad news?”
Finn shook his head. “Just needed some air.”
He didn’t want to be standing anymore. If they went back to bed, he’d just lie there, blisteringly awake, and if he didn’t sleep then Logan wouldn’t sleep, and he really shouldn’t have brought Logan out here at all. He should’ve closed his eyes and let it go.
He was selfish. For lots of things, he figured, but especially for Logan. Years of hunger and then more more more.
“Sorry for waking you up.”
He felt Logan shake his head. “Don’t be.”
“Well, I am.”
“I want to be there.” Logan shifted. His chin rested where his cheek had been. “Here, I mean. For you.”
“Can we sit?”
But that wasn’t enough, either, and Finn realized it the second he folded his legs under himself and cool stone seeped through his pajama pants. It wasn’t enough, until his feet were stretched out toward the far railing and his head was on Logan’s chest, and Logan’s, on his shoulder, laying the opposite direction. Finn was so tired he could cry. The stars above turned hazy through his eyelashes. Logan’s heart thudded along.
“I need to know,” he whispered. His chest hurt like he’d been kicked. He rubbed the heel of his hand over it, back and forth, pushing the tightness away from the soft center. “I gotta know, Logan, I can’t—it was so bad. I know you love me—”
Logan’s breath caught.
“—I really do, I promise and I believe you and it’s so, sogood.” Finn cursed under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. Jesus, it’s so good now, I know you hate talking about it, I’m just having these fucking—dreams, and it’s us, in that fucking water, and it’s killing me, Lo, it’s killing me. I gotta know.”
To anyone else, he wouldn’t be making any sense. He was sweating again. He could feel it prickling his face and underarms. Leo could parse through his rambling, but he always asked questions, even just one to confirm that he understood. Finn loved that, he loved him, he loved how Leo always made sure people felt seen and heard and that he had got it all right. He was so kind. Finn felt—with Leo, he felt so real.
“I loved you.” His eyes burned. He should let Logan speak, but he couldn’t stop his trembling mouth. “God, Logan, I loved you so much it tore me to fucking pieces. And you knew.”
A firefly bloomed out of their potted violet. “I did,” Logan said quietly.
“I wanted—” Finn stopped himself. It would be easier to list the things he didn’t want, in those heartsick, aching days. “I wanted us. Every bit of it. Was it like that for you?”
It was, it was, he’d read it all over Logan and tasted it from his manic mouth in their stolen kisses. It had certainly felt like theft. Every kiss Finn got was one taken from someone else, someone Logan didn’t like half as much as he liked Finn. He didn’t have to ask. He’d seen those pleading green eyes and felt the way Logan’s whole body tilted toward him when he walked into a room.
“It was the end of the world.”
Finn closed his eyes.
Logan breathed out into the night air. “I was…out of control. This—pressure, in my head. I wanted you so bad.”
“I’m sorry,” Finn rasped.
“Non, it was everything to me.” Logan’s chest rose and fell, bringing his head with it. “I didn’t want it to be different.”
Wet warmth slid down to the shell of Finn’s ear.
“That was hard,” Logan added.
Hard. Understatement of the century. Flayed, more like, every nerve exposed. Finn pressed his lips together.
After a moment, he felt Logan’s fingertips come up to toy with the hair above his ear. “I didn’t know if I could tell anyone,” he said haltingly. “My sisters…Noelle guessed. Because of Nice, and the draft. I think they knew before. I think I wanted them to. I didn’t want to carry it by myself and—I don’t know. I think I wanted everyone to know. It was very confusing.”
I’m sorry, Finn’s mouth tried to say. He dug his teeth into the inside of his cheek.
“Not you, though. You never confused me.” Almost an afterthought, but Logan didn’t do those. He thought, fully and completely, even if he rarely said it all. Goosebumps flew down Finn’s arms despite the heat. “I wanted you to,” Logan continued. “To confuse me. You were so loud. Friendly, and so fun, and you made people laugh, you liked to read, you did all these things that I don’t. It made no sense. If you were confusing, I could let it go.”
Silence again. Finn couldn’t help it. “And?”
“And I loved you.” Simple. They’d never had simple in the way he wanted. “I loved you the whole time. I didn’t even ask questions about it.”
“You should have.”
“Yes.”
“You—” He should be angry, he really should. “Fuck, Lo, I asked.”
In his hair, Logan’s hand slowed. “You did.”
“You lied.”
“Non.”
Finn couldn’t do another cycle of this, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. He pushed the heels of his hands to his forehead as hard as he could, then folded them back on his stomach.
“I…” Another firefly. They’d come up in the park, soon. Logan sighed. “I thought I was going to ruin your life.”
“You couldn’t.” Ignoring the fact that he very nearly did, of course.
“You would never have seen the draft if we were out.” Finn caught a glimpse of his face when he turned, the unhappy set of his mouth. “You deserved the first round. Anything less would be an insult. My fault. You’re so brilliant.” It came out a whisper. Logan dragged a hand down his face with a small sound. “Finn, you’re…extraordinary. They would have been blind and stupid to draft you any lower than they did. But they would have. Because of me.”
“We could’ve been quiet.”
“I would never hide you,” Logan said immediately. “You deserved more.”
Finn sighed through his nose. Back to square one. “You’re saying a lot about what you think I deserve.”
“I know you.”
Finn’s lower lip shook in spite of him. He bit back a curse and pressed his thumb to the heat of his inner eye, where the wetness still hadn’t dried. “Yeah.”
“I know you,” Logan insisted, pulling him open all over again. “I’ve loved you for so long I don’t remember what it felt like to not. And back then—at school—in the water. Telling you didn’t mean anything when I couldn’t show you.”
“It meant something to me,” Finn said thickly.
“I know.” Despair. Finn knew the feeling. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“It meant something. Everything you fucking did meant something to me, Logan.” Finn pressed his hands to his thighs until it hurt. “I felt like—it’s been so long. I’ve had nightmares about drowning for eight fucking years.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He could hear the tears in Logan’s whispers. Finally, they could be in the same boat. Finn looked up to the starless sky and laid his palm flat on the balcony floor; the other, he wrapped around Logan’s wrist behind him. He took an unsteady breath. “I’m not angry.”
“You can be.”
“I was. I was so angry with you. God, Logan, it ate me up.” The softest skin, right above his pulse. That had always made sense to Finn. His hard-shelled, soft-hearted boy. The admission felt too big for this place. “I get it, of course I do, I’m…I can’t love you quiet. Everyone can see it all over me.”
“I did,” Logan said miserably.
“Good.” Finn squeezed his wrist. “I wanted you to.”
Logan let it lie for a moment, then swore softly and pushed a hand through his hair, nearly black in the night. “I need to—I need to say something. I need you to let me say it.”
“Okay.”
But he didn’t speak, just breathed like each one took more effort than the last. “I love you.” A fast kiss found the side of Finn’s head. “Je t’aime, I love you, I always did.”
“I love you, too.” Finn waited, but when nothing else came, he tipped his head back on Logan’s shoulder. “Is that it?”
“Non.” Logan’s palm cupped his face, upside down and backwards, the warmest shelter from a mild night. Something stammered in his chest. His expression crumpled; he made a quiet sound, wordless and agonized, and kissed Finn’s forehead only to let his lips linger. “I’d do it again,” he murmured against Finn’s too-hot skin. “If I had to, for this. Never to hurt you, never that. But I’d do it.”
He would have loved Logan better than anyone. Logan would have loved him back. And none of it mattered, not even a little, because that choice was about as real as the leaves of their table’s mosaic tree. Finn covered his eyes and let Logan’s collarbone take the weight of his pounding head.
“It’s not fair.” He sounded like a child. He tried to choke it down, be an adult, be better than the worst of himself at age eighteen, but it just made the clogging, soggy thing in his throat even thicker. “I just wanted to love you, and it was just a fuckin’ massacre.”
Logan took him as he broke, like the waves had taken him until he gasped awake to a world only slightly kinder. Concrete sat hard and brutal under Finn’s shoulder when he turned on his side; it was quickly replaced by the give of Logan’s chest as he pulled him over in an awkward gathering of Finn’s puddle-body. He wasn’t much help, but he held tight to Logan, and something told him that was plenty.
“I loved you.” Finn’s voice cracked. It wasn’t even funny. “I love him.”
Something sob-like and snotty rattled Logan’s body.
“I love you.”
The sea, the wind—his dreams even gave him the gulls, the only audience to the worst day of Finn’s life. They never spoke in that in-between place. Logan’s eyes. Logan, pulling away, until the water took him under and tore salt through his body. The sun burned him, sometimes. Other nights, it blinded him, too far still for Finn to reach. Sometimes, it was a nightmare. Sometimes it felt like mercy.
Logan was saying it back, in the cool-warm-busy air of this dry night. Finn could hear himself trying to gulp down a breath, and beneath it, a resonance he’d never forget. Iron-clad Logan clutching him to his chest and the raw things beneath, his mouth to Finn’s temple and his body shielding him from the balcony’s unforgiving floor.
I’d do it again. For this.
No draft. No Gryffindor. No team, no Cup, no Cap, no flock of Dumaises. No Kasey Winter, Chekov’s fucking goalie for Finn to stumble upon. They would have watched Sirius and Remus kiss on the ice from a TV screen—or not at all. A lower league, if they were lucky. Different teams, certainly. He would have kept Logan for a few more years, and then, inevitably, they would lose each other. Or one of them would give up the game to stay together, and they’d lose each other in a whole new way too terrible to imagine.
Finn was avoiding the last and greatest loss. Ten, thirty, sixty years without Leo was not a life at all. His unwavering devotion, and a temper that could match Logan’s like wildfire hitting stone. Are you going to kiss me?, sly eyes still sweet and eager, already reaching for Finn. His kisses took Finn out of the hurricane of his own head and set both his feet on the ground. Here, they said. You’re staying here with me. Yes, you, in all you are.
Hurt and hurt and pain and Logan. As much as it was misery, it was Logan, and that had been worth it. Still was.
“You have to tell me,” Finn sobbed. “You have to tell me.”
“I loved you every day.” It tore from him, trembling. Logan took a sticky-sounding breath. “Every minute. Crisse, Finn, it drove me out of my mind. I would think about you when I was doing my fucking laundry, just—wishing you were there with me. Can you believe that?”
He could. He did. He’d lived it and it haunted him and Finn had begged on his knees for some karmic force to take it away from him without ever meaning a single word.
“I would wake up afraid,” Logan continued, shivering under him, quick and shallow. “Sometimes…sometimes I still don’t know how to love you without being afraid. But I do. I’m so sorry. I loved you at Harvard, and here. At home, and New York, in New Orleans, and—the way he loves you, Fish, I wish you could see it like I do.”
Finn couldn’t have left Logan’s hold if he tried. Finally. At last.
“It’s like looking into the sun.” Logan’s hand vanished from his shoulder for only a second. Finn heard him wipe his nose. “Merde. Fuck. Do you remember the solstice?”
Finn huddled into the caving space of his chest. Sweat and sleep and home. “Which one?”
“New Orleans.”
New Orleans, Louisiana, on the longest day of the year. Finn remembered.
It had been him and Leo in the hammock, giggling into each others’ faces and half a hundred kisses from the uncoordinated struggle into their sticky-hot shelter. Leo’s hands were still callused. His smiling mouth, sweet and bitter from tea. Finn had wanted to lick up every drop of it.
“I could hear you laughing from ten feet away.”
I love having you here. Leo’s hand on his jaw, gentle-firm, shaking back and forth with a flash of his teeth. God, Finn, I love it so much.
“I don’t know if I ever made you laugh like that at school,” Logan said in a small voice. His fingers slipped through Finn’s hair to cradle the back of his head. “I would dream about it, though. I’m…I still don’t know which ones were real. I wanted to make you laugh like that. A lover. Not like a friend.”
“You did,” Finn whispered. So many times. His whole body had hurt from it.
“Are we—oh.”
Finn blinked the salt-crust from his eyes and peered out into the dark. It fizzed and blurred into the vague shapes of buildings; a smear of color here, wind buffeting their flowers there. Inside, the kitchen light was on. Finn put his sleeve to his dripping nose, but didn’t try to speak. Logan held out an arm.
Knees, folding into the bent backs of his own. A forearm on the concrete above his head, on the other side of Logan’s body. At his back, warmth, broad and safe. Finn shuddered his way through a breath. Exhaustion. Collapse. An arm slid beneath his own to wrap around him; a palm rubbed over his heart.
“Hi, Fish,” Leo murmured, pressed to Finn from his ankles to the top of his head. A wall against the dark. A ledge above the void, holding firm.
The words tangled, tying his tongue to paralysis. He shook his head. Leo traced a bumpy path between his collarbones.
“Nightmare.” His throat clicked when he swallowed. “Sorry.”
Leo made a sympathetic sound and shuffled closer. “Want to talk about it?”
“We are,” Logan said softly. Finn saw his hand pass by. “Hi, Peanut.”
Finn heard a sound like a kiss. Logan’s hum vibrated. “Want me to go back to bed?” Leo offered.
“No,” they said at the same time. Something in Finn’s chest released. A knot, pulled in just the right place.
Leo’s knees gave a tiny pulse behind his own. “Okay. Are you doing your quiet time thing?”
It took Finn’s tired ears a moment to clock back in. Quiet time. Was he ever quiet? “Huh?”
“Your quiet time,” Leo repeated, like it was obvious. He was holding Logan’s hand, thumb running across his knuckles. “You know. When you get all sad about college and sit really quietly together for a while to think about it. It’s, like, a meditation thing, right?”
Finn stared at him. “Non,” Logan answered.
“Oh.” Leo sat up a little on his elbow with a frown. “Did you know you do that?”
“No,” Finn croaked.
One of Leo’s pale brows twitched upwards before he got ahold of it again. He shrugged, releasing Logan’s hand to dry Finn’s cheek with the side of his hand. “It’s not a bad thing. Giving yourself space to think about it, I mean. Seems like there was a lot to…you know. Get through.”
“You’re awake,” Finn realized belatedly. “Were we loud?”
Leo kissed his burning cheek. “No. I was cold. And thirsty. Is that your water up there?”
“Yeah.”
“Want me to get it?”
“No,” Finn mumbled. Leo snuggled closer, clearly satisfied.
Quiet time. Fucking hell.
Finn lifted his hand and whacked the back of it against Logan’s chest. “I was really fucking mad at you.” He wanted to leave it at that, but Logan was blinking at him like an owl and he had always been so beautiful at night, the moon to Finn’s stars and—
Finn whacked him again. Gentler, but still gratifying in the dull slap of skin on skin. It didn’t even leave a mark. “So fucking mad. You jackass. How could you do that to me? We should’ve just made out on the front porch. It would have ruined everything.” He groaned, burying his face in the softness of Logan’s belly. “You’re right. You’re so smart and right about everything. God fucking dammit, Logan, you and your goddamn eyes. I would have dropped out of college for you, but you wouldn’t even let me. I had to make it to the NH-motherfucking-L playoffs before you’d tell me you loved me. Is that it? You have a kink for pro hockey players? I was standing there like an idiot in the middle of the ocean, crying my eyes out, and you were still so goddamn perfect. I’m going to love you forever. You can’t stop me. Me and you and Knutty are gonna die within ten seconds of each other.”
That was a fact. The universe was crueler than he thought if it planned for anything else. Coarse hair scratched Finn’s cheek, and he raised his head to glare as best he could. Logan’s lower lip had disappeared between his teeth; bracing for impact, if he was smart, or stifling a laugh, if Finn knew him at all. “Fuck off,” Finn grumbled, and delighted in Logan’s visible alarm. “Hold me.”
Logan’s gaze darted to Leo for the briefest second. “And I.”
“What?”
“You and Knutty and I.”
Finn bit the nearest roll of his abs. “I said fucking hold me, Logan.”
Logan made a small noise, smiled a small smile, wrapped them both up in his arms until Leo was laughing into the crook of Finn’s shoulder. “You’re fucking crazy,” Finn felt Logan whisper into the top of his head. “I love it so much.”
“You’re welcome,” Finn groused.
Logan’s sigh pushed Leo’s weight harder into him. Finn counted three beauty marks on the underside of his chin, and one hickey in the perfect shape of Leo’s mouth. “I love when you say my name.”
Finn would say it here, in the comfort of the dark. In bed. In the light of the kitchen and the light of the moon. At home, in New York, in New Orleans; for crowds, for cameras, for just the three of them. He’d press it to the softness of Logan’s body, help Leo scream it, and someday, hopefully not too long now, he’d teach it to someone small and gentle. Logan Logan Logan and Leo Leo Leo. Three times, because he meant it. He always had.
