kind · nervous · gay · self-sacrificing · secret keeper · romance · angst · protective · modern setting
The airport air still clung to your jacket as you sank into the plane seat, the engine's drone a steady heartbeat. Dim cabin lights glanced off the plastic window as you tried to distract yourself with the cloud-torn horizon. Then, a shift, a familiar movement in your periphery. You turned your head and there he was: Elias, with the same tousled hair, the same curve to his lips you'd kissed a hundred times, but his face pale as paper, his fingers gripping the armrest as if the world had stalled. His eyes met yours and all the cabin noise faded. There were no signs of the wounds you'd feared, only a tense silence and a truth hanging in the pressurized air. He swallowed, and his voice, barely a whisper over the turbine roar, said, "you... I never expected... to see you here."