Page 31 of Lance
Jamie glanced through the door of his room, head tilted inquisitively to the side, and Lance tried to bolster his heart against the way that look made him feel. How innocent, almost, Jamie seemed in that moment, a slight smile on his face.
“Yeah?” Jamie asked, and Lance glanced at Aaron, who shrugged his shoulders in response.
“I’m going to go get some snacks and stuff,” Aaron commented, but Lance knew better. Aaron was giving them privacy, which was pretty damn decent of the guy.
Lance sighed softly, looking around the room. Ken was gone and would be for quite some time—there was no doubt about that. The guy had had some serious stuff to work out, and Lance couldn’t begrudge him that.
“Come here?” Lance requested, patting the spot beside him on the couch as he sat down on it. Jamie frowned, maybe put on guard by the tone of Lance’s voice. Whatever it was, Jamie walked cautiously over to him, dropping down into the seat beside him with his face guarded.
“What is it?” Jamie asked, and Lance sighed. There was no way this was going to be easy, but at the same time, what choice did he have?
“Look, we have to be more careful,” Lance said bluntly. There was no point in trying to hold back on this one. Better to just get it into the open. “I mean, Aaron knows and …”
“He knows because you told him!” Jamie protested, interrupting Lance, but Lance just shrugged to acknowledge the point and continued on.
“I know. But Ken suspects something, too. He told me. And Lester said …” Lance tried to explain, his words tumbling all over each other as they spilled from his lips in a torrent, but Jamie just looked away, all masks firmly back in place, guard up once more.
God, Lance hated to see that, but he couldn’t exactly ask for anything else, not as long as everything was so strained between them. Not until he was really free to give himself to Jamie.
“Yeah, it’s cool, I get it,” Jamie said, his eyes fixed on Star, who was sniffing curiously at a table leg, rather than on Lance. “No big deal, man.”
No big deal, man? Because to Lance, it felt like a pretty fucking big deal. What had the gift of the cat meant? Or had Lance just been rushing ahead of himself, eager to see signs of romantic attachment when there weren’t any, just because he wanted there to be?
“Are we okay?” Lance asked, his tone coming out hesitant, but he forced the words from his mouth. Jamie, however, just shrugged, and for a long moment, he didn’t speak.
Finally, the redhead let out a soft sigh and gave Lance a cocky little half smile, the sort of smirk that he hadn’t seen on that beautiful face for quite a few days, now.
“Sure,” Jamie told him, not meeting Lance’s eyes, not quite. “Why wouldn’t we be? I mean, we both knew what this was.”
“Jamie …” Lance took a deep breath, and at that moment, he was ready to spill everything. Ready to tell Jamie about his plan, the one he’d secretly been forming. But was it what Jamie even wanted? Was Lance getting ahead of himself, letting himself like, or even love, this man?
“No worries. I mean it. It’s all good. I’ll be around if you wanna fuck later,” Jamie told him, his tone careless. “But don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret. We’ll figure it out.”
It’s all good. I’ll be around if you want to fuck later. And Jamie would keep Lance’s secret. Lance’s secret, not theirs. Lance wanted to curse, he wanted to grab Jamie and pull him down and make him understand, but Jamie was gone before Lance could even make up his mind to do any of those things.
Maybe gone forever, had Lance lost his only chance? Someone who had been hurt as badly as Jamie obviously had probably wouldn’t be all that interested in trusting.
He very easily could have ruined things with Jamie there, and all he could do was hope that Jamie would give him the chance to fix it. But that didn’t seem exactly likely to him.
* * *
That night, Jamie stayed in his own bedroom, and so did Lance. They both needed some time to figure out what this all meant. For the next couple of weeks, they barely talked to each other, except at dance practice, where Jamie stayed as far from Lance as humanly possible, and for rehearsals. For concerts. Other public places, where there was no time for anything.
Before it seemed possible, they were a whole month into their three-month tour, and Lance sighed as he realized that this was the time when he’d been planning to tell Lester that he wanted to stage a breakup with Ken and build something with Jamie. It could be slow, but he had been so determined to make it happen.
Now, he wasn’t sure. Was there even any interest from Jamie? They were barely speaking, and Lance had to wonder if it was worth rocking the boat for something that wasn’t even going to happen.
They were driving overnight to get to their next location, and truthfully, Lance couldn’t have even said, if pressed, what state they were in, much less what city their next concert was going to be in. It had all started to blur together long ago, and Lance lay, sprawled over the upper bunk of his bed, sleepless despite the fact that he could hear Ken snoring softly, and Aaron’s heavy breathing.
“Hey. These things aren’t very sturdy,” Jamie’s voice reached Lance’s ears, though only just. The other man was keeping it pitched low so that he didn’t wake up Aaron and Ken, Lance figured. “If you keep tossing and turning like that you might break the bed.”
Lance couldn’t help but laugh, though he kept it as quiet as he possibly could.
“Sorry. Can’t sleep,” he admitted, and then, acting pretty much purely on instinct, he hopped down off of the top bunk and onto the floor. He was being too loud, talking so that Jamie could hear him.
His intention was honestly innocent enough. He was just going to sit on the edge of the bed, and simply allow himself to enjoy the feeling of being around this man again. Things were weird between them, but that didn’t actually change how Lance felt about him. Maybe he was desperate, pathetic, but he would take what he could get.
Or so he thought until he actually laid eyes on Jamie, who was sprawled on the bed, utterly delectable, with his hair in a reddish halo of curls around his head, his crystal eyes sparkling with something like amusement at Lance.
