#stylefadel

Fadel hears his brother’s words and registers his anguished fury. He hears it, but doesn't want to believe. Even as he knows Bison wouldn't be wrong about this. Even as he knows he'd suspected something was off about the tattooist and his exuberant mechanic friend from the beginning. This was always the fallout he’d been expecting. So he isn’t sure when exactly along the way he started hoping that nothing would be wrong. That this was real. 

“Fadel. They're the snitches.” But anything else his brother says is drowned out by his own voice ringing between his ears, pleading, “Not him.” 

The phone falls away from Fadel’s ear. He turns back towards the diner, meeting Style’s eyes. Style grins cheerily at him as he wipes down a booth, always so eager to help Fadel in the restaurant. You can’t snitch if you can’t get close. Fadel feels his heart clench painfully in his chest. Had it all been a lie? Every word, every touch. Every kiss. Fadel isn’t squeamish. Blood doesn’t turn his stomach. But at the thought of that, he feels like he might throw up.

He can't look away from Style for a moment, separated by a pane of glass and a chasm of secrets. Fadel’s eyes are drawn down to Style’s lips, a center of gravity he is always pulled towards. They're full and spread wide in an unabashed smile. A smile Fadel had recklessly started to think of as his. 

Before his feet even move to carry him back inside, Fadel knows exactly what he's going to do. He can feel it like a lump in his throat he won't be able to swallow back down. He's going to give Style a truth, one he himself has been denied, that he'll pretend is a lie. Fadel was good at pretending. He'd done it from the moment Style crashed into his life and he'd been left to act as if it wasn't a knife between his ribs, a searing pain reminding him of how lonely he was. 

Fadel walks back into the diner, his sanctuary, a place he’d let Style into, ignoring every warning alarm in his head telling him it was a bad idea. This is why there are rules. This is why he guards his heart so fiercely. Look where his heedless longing had gotten him. He goes to the stereo, putting on a ballad and turning the volume up.  

“Hey, why are you playing music?” Style asks, looking at him across the low wall separating the diner’s interior. 

“We’re already closed. Can’t I get a little romantic?” Fadel replies, walking away from the radio towards Style. Every step feels like another nail in a coffin. His or Style’s? Anger and hurt burns hotly through Fadel as he stares into a pair of big brown eyes. 

Eyes that twinkle as he approaches. Style tosses his head playfully. “You were just calling me sickly sweet a second ago. And now you want to be romantic?” When Fadel doesn’t say anything, Style continues, “What did Bison say? Is he with Kant?”

Fadel nods and hums an affirmative. “Bison said he would be home late.” Does any part of Style suspect that he and Bison might know the truth? If he did, surely he wouldn’t be standing here staring at Fadel like that. Style doesn’t look afraid. He just looks like… Style. But what did that mean? What had he given Fadel that hadn’t been a carefully crafted illusion to win his confidence? 

“He must really have missed Kant.” Style muses. 

“I’ve missed you, too,” Fadel offers, wishing he’d never gotten far enough to learn what that felt like. “Without you, no one would mess up my life like this.” Catastrophically fucked it up, actually. Shot him dead through the heart, one sinfully devilish quip at a time. When he was with Style, he didn’t feel like he was the hit man at all. Maybe this is what made Style excel at being an informant. How many others had he pried away from their solitude until it ruined them? Rage bursts through Fadel at the thought. Though he can’t tell if it’s the idea of being just another hit to Style or if it’s the thought of Style making someone else feel what he’s made Fadel feel that undoes a measure of his self-control. 

Style cheekily replies, “So I’m the troublemaker? Is that even a good thing?”

“It’s good.” Fadel smiles gently, sorrowfully. “Having you around, just so I have someone to miss, is nice. It makes me want to go to the market and go jogging, hoping to run into you.” Fadel would never get to have that again. Never get to look over his shoulder wondering when this wrecking ball of a man would knock down yet more of his walls. 

Style sighs softly. “Are we officially entering romantic territory?” He teases. 

“I want to do what lovers do.” Just for tonight, Fadel vows. Just long enough for Style to hurt the way Fadel is hurting right now. Just so Fadel can remember, in the lonely, darkest recesses of his heart, how it felt to want someone again. And for them to want him, too. 

“It’s okay,” Style promises. “I don’t want you to do anything that isn’t you.” 

Fadel’s breath catches. If only Style meant it. If only he wasn’t shrouded in deception. If only he didn’t have to die. “But I can be exactly what you want.” Fadel exhales, tucking this wish into the secret depths of his own heart. Style looks back at him quietly, reserved for once. “I think…” Fadel’s eyes trail down to Style’s lips again. He pulls his gaze back up to Style’s before saying, “I’m in love with you.” 

And there it is. A dying ember of truth he’ll stoke just for tonight inside his hollow heart. Before he hardens it to inflict the punishment this man deserves. Before he rips it out of his chest when he pulls the trigger to snuff out this light that blazed forth in his life. 

Style softens further as he watches Fadel and it doesn't look like treachery. He grabs the back of Fadel’s neck, pulling him towards him. Their lips meet and for a moment Fadel forgets himself, forgets the bruising pain of betrayal, the crushing actuality of tomorrow. The only thing in all of existence is Style’s lips moving against his.  

Style’s palms bracket Fadel’s neck, his thumb stroking against Fadel’s earlobe before trailing down his chest towards his waist, setting off a series of shivers when his fingertips connect with Fadel’s skin through the open collar of his shirt. Fadel grabs his wrist, thinking he ought to push Style away from him, that maybe he’s not as good at pretending as he thinks, but all he manages to do is press Style’s palm more firmly against his side, relishing the warmth and pressure against his abdomen. Style knows exactly how to touch him, has always seemed to know. 

Fadel holds onto Style’s hips, afraid to let go because this will be the last time he lets himself indulge in the fantasy of this truth. When they finally break apart, Style blinks slowly, dazedly at Fadel. As if drawn towards each other like magnets, they rest their foreheads together, breathing unsteadily. Fadel can’t stop himself from bumping his nose against Style’s. He barely restrains himself from fitting his mouth against Style’s neck. To suck at that tender flesh or perhaps to bite so deep he draws blood. Why should Fadel be the only one with something irrevocably broken inside him?

They fall into one another in an embrace. Style strokes Fadel’s back, and a brief jolt of fear shoots through Fadel at the thought of those hands being gone from the world. They sway to the music. Fadel presses his chin against Style’s shoulder, the pressure building behind his eyes. A tear slips silently down his cheek. He wraps an arm around Style’s shoulders, pulling him even more firmly against him, as if he can just press hard enough, he’ll imprint this feeling of Style’s body into his own bones. A fossilized relic of what Fadel almost had. Or maybe Fadel clings so tightly because if he doesn’t let go, then time never has to move on. He never has to live through what comes next.