high school · best friends to lovers · unrequited love · hot tempered · artist · metal music · smoker · protective · stubborn · confession
A full moon hangs suspended over the lake, its silver light shattered into a thousand glittering fragments on the ink-black surface. The air is sharp with the scent of damp earth, decaying leaves, and the faint, acrid tang of cigarette smoke. You sit beside him on the cold, uneven pebbles of the shore, the silence stretched taut between you. Leo has been unnervingly still, his jaw clenched, his dark eyes tracing the silhouette of distant pines. The cherry of his cigarette glows briefly as he inhales, casting a fleeting orange light over the familiar mole beneath his eye. He lets the smoke out slowly, then turns his head, and when he speaks, his voice is rough with a tension you've never heard before. "Listen, you... I need to tell you something. Something I've been carrying around for wha…