Chapter Text
The silence between them stretched longer than he had expected.
It wasn’t the kind of silence that settled naturally, that you could fold into the quiet comfort of routine. No—it was sharp, the kind that throbbed at the edges of each day.
Every morning, he would unlock his phone with a flicker of hope, his heart rising for a split second—then dropping when there was nothing. No new message. No stories update. Just that blank space, and the strange ache it left behind.
He hadn’t texted first. He didn’t know how to.
What could he even say?
Thanks for singing that song that might’ve been or not been about me?
Sorry for looking at you like I was drowning into you?
And Lucio hadn’t written either.
At first, Tommaso told himself that maybe they were both just giving it time.
That maybe, like him, Lucio was still sorting through the feeling of it all—that night, the melody that haunted them both, the warmth of that hug.
But the days passed. Then a week. Then nearly two. The silence didn’t soften. It just thickened, like snow piling against the window.
He found himself scrolling through their old conversations, over and over again.
There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable in them—just shared jokes, homework questions, casual banter. But now, even those felt sacred. As if they belonged to a version of them that was simpler, unburdened by the weight of that night.
He re-read the last message Lucio sent him: “Fuck the weather.” Tommaso had stared at that line for minutes once. A quiet chuckle escaping him the first time he read it, as though his heart didn’t know whether to shiver or settle.
The worst part was not seeing Lucio at all. With winter holidays in full swing, school had emptied out. No more corridor sightings. No more half-smiles across desks. No shared silence as they walked down the street after class, with cold air puffing from their mouths like ghosts.
Everything was quiet now, externally and within. Tommaso wandered around his own room like a suffocating astronaut, wrapped around by a song that refuses to leave his head.
The more he replayed it in his mind, the more he questioned it. The way Lucio had sung those words, soft and raw. The way his voice had cracked slightly, like he hadn’t meant to feel what he was saying.
Was it a coincidence? Was it madness? Was he just reading too much into it because he was so painfully, foolishly in love?
He didn’t know anymore.
Some nights, he would burry his face into his pillow and whispered those words aloud, just to see how they tasted—how they felt sliding across his tongue.
They felt fragile. They felt like longing. They felt like a secret he wasn’t brave enough to name.
The dishes clinked gently beneath his fingers, and Tommaso stood at the sink, sleeves rolled up, steam curling softly in front of his face. The warmth of the water numbed his hands, dulled the clatter of porcelain and cutlery.
He wasn’t really washing dishes — he was moving through the motions like a man underwater, slow and distant, his body here but his thoughts drifting somewhere else entirely.
The smell of lemon soap rose with the steam, faint and clean, and the soft hum of the water filled the kitchen with a muffled kind of hush.
It should have been calming, this quiet ritual at the end of the day. But tonight it unsettled him — maybe because it felt so normal, too normal, when nothing inside him felt normal at all.
He wiped the last plate dry and turned, towel still in hand, glancing absently toward the window — and paused.
He blinked. The sun hadn’t set yet.
It poured through the glass in a thick, golden stream, not harsh but warm, honeyed, and low.
It painted the countertops in soft orange light, caught on the curve of the faucet, shimmered along the edges of the tiles like spilled amber. The kitchen, usually muted in winter shadows, now looked like a dream someone had left behind — drenched in light, slow and saturated, delicate as a memory.
Tommaso didn’t move. He just stood there, towel limp in his fingers, heart tightening inexplicably in his chest. The sunlight was so gentle, so strange, as if it knew something he didn’t. Something about the way it touched the room — soft, unhurried — made something inside him tremble.
Lucio would’ve loved this.
The thought arrived without warning. It slipped in like a whisper, too soft to resist.
And not just loved it. He would have noticed it. He would’ve walked into the room and said something impossible and perfect like,
“The sun’s acting weird because it misses us,” or “The light tonight is from another planet.”
And somehow, he would’ve made it true. He always did that — made things larger than life, made them feel meant to be.
Tommaso could almost hear his voice now, that light lilt of wonder and mischief, the way he squinted into sunlight like it held secret messages just for him.
The ache in his chest deepened. Not sharp. Just wide. Warm and aching and heavy.
He misses him.
Right since that night. Right since the song. But in his dreams. Oh a lot there.
He’d laughed, by the time he wakes up. Quietly, into his pillow. Like an idiot in love. Then… nothing else.
And now the silence had slipped into his clothes, lived in the corners of the apartment, settled behind his eyes. It was in the way he didn’t check his phone anymore, because it hurt. It was in the way he washed dishes like a sleepwalker, because he hoped that distraction was easier than wondering.
Does Lucio even give a damn? Had he just imagined it all? The song? The look in his eyes? The sticky atmosphere between them that night and every other?
He looked back out at the light. It was still there. Still open. Still kind. Like a hand he could take.
Maybe it was stupid, maybe it was nothing. He knew that the sun brought light and warmth to everyone. Maybe he just happens to live in a place with bigger windows. But as long as the sun shines for him one second longer, he will believe that this isn’t over yet. After all, the sunlight truly did enter his room, and it did fall across his face.
He set the towel down slowly, his heartbeat flickering with something too tangled to recognize. He slipped on his jacket. Bent to pull on his shoes, fingers fumbling a little as if his body had already decided before his mind caught up. There was no plan. No destination. But he stepped through the door anyway — a quiet urgency driving him toward something he didn’t dare put into words.
He almost stumbled into the cold. And yet, somehow, he didn’t feel cold at all. He was floating in the most peculiar way possible. But not his body.
It was his mind, his heart, his soul.
Now we have him here, wandering around the town, hands in his coat pockets, scarf drawn close to his chin.
He wasn’t following a street or a plan—he just walked, as if the stillness of the winter air could settle something inside him. Everything around him looked washed in soft gold, the kind of light that only appears on rare winter afternoons when the sun hangs low and wide. Even the quiet seemed deeper than usual. The bakery shutters were down, the florist closed for the season, and smoke curled from the chimney of a house he couldn’t name.
The world felt paused, like it was holding its breath, and somehow, his heart was doing the same.
His footsteps echoed gently on the cobbled pavement. He passed the bookstore, where he and Lucio had once taken shelter from a sudden downpour, and even then, Lucio had laughed like storms were romantic.
The memory crept in uninvited, but he didn’t push it away. He let it sit there, on the edge of his chest, warm and aching. His eyes scanned the sky—blue with faint peach streaks—and he thought, irrationally, of Lucio’s voice, how it had cracked ever so slightly in his voice box .
By the time Tommaso lifted his eyes and saw the edge of the field, he felt as if the town had quietly disappeared behind him, like a dream softening into silence.
He hadn’t meant to come here—at least, not consciously—but now that he stood on the side of the earth where the most wild things in existence once bloomed, there was no question why his steps had brought him.
The wind sighed low through the dry grass, and the sky hung heavy and golden behind the olive trees.
The field was no longer what it used to be.
The daisies had withered, all of them. Their stems lay bowed, darkened, twisted into the winter ground like forgotten prayers.
What remained was a ghost of summer—fragments of memory tucked into the soil, left behind like footprints half-buried in snow. The air smelled of frost and something old, something brittle. He swallowed the ache quietly. The last time he was here, Lucio’s laughter had danced through the light like dust in sunshine. And now—it was only wind, and stillness.
And then he saw him.
At first, he thought it was the way the light pooled under the olive tree—an illusion, a trick of memory and longing—but no.
There he was.
Lucio. Sitting in the pale grass, back leaning gently against the wide, familiar trunk. He had a notebook in his lap, pencil in hand, fingers still as if mid-thought. His hair caught the low amber light and shimmered like something unreal—like a memory stepping back into the world. His coat was opened, his legs folded, one boot tapping absently against the roots.
Tommaso couldn’t move. Not yet. He stood frozen on the far side of the field, watching like someone who’s stumbled across a sacred thing. His breath caught. Something about the stillness of Lucio’s profile, the delicate furrow between his brows, the way he held the pencil like it carried the weight of some truth—it all made Tommaso feel like the world had narrowed to this one impossible moment. A moment he hadn't planned for, but which felt strangely inevitable.
And in that suspended breath, the sun dipped a little lower, and the sky flushed a deeper gold.
Lucio looked up, as if he’d sensed the air shift. His head tilted slightly, then his gaze met Tommaso’s across the field—and without any change in his expression, he smiled. A soft, real smile, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. A smile that hit Tommaso in the chest harder than he’d expect.
“Hey,” he called out, casual as anything, as if the silence of days hasn’t been there at all. As if nothing had weighed between them. As if they’d spoken just this morning.
Tommaso blinked. Something fluttered painfully in his chest. He felt his feet move before he gave them permission. A strange, almost dizzy warmth began to bloom inside him—confused and hopeful and slightly afraid. He approached slowly, each step loud in the stillness. His hands curled awkwardly in his coat pockets. He hadn’t realized how fast his heart was beating until now.
Lucio had already looked back down, pencil in hand, notebook propped against his knee. He scribbled something, scratched it out, then scribbled again. His brow was furrowed—not in frustration, but in that familiar, absentminded way Tommaso had always found strangely beautiful.
When Tommaso reached the tree, Lucio looked up again.
“Crazy light, huh?”
He said, motioning vaguely toward the golden sky. “I thought it was gonna be cloudy all day. But then it just cleared up.”
His voice was bright, loose, almost musical in its rhythm. Like he was narrating a weather report. Tommaso stood there, not quite sure what to do with his hands. He nodded faintly.
Lucio patted the ground next to him.
“Come, sit.”
It was so normal. So... easy. Lucio didn’t look nervous. Didn’t seem to be pretending. And maybe that was the strangest thing—that he could simply be here, smiling into the sun, inviting him to sit like it was any other afternoon.
Tommaso lowered himself slowly, brushing his coat beneath him to avoid the damp. The cold from the earth seeped in anyway, sharp and immediate, but it didn’t matter.
And then, with a quiet pang in his chest, he realized that Lucio wasn’t dressed for the cold at all. His coat was thin, more like something you’d wear in October, and the collar was open, no scarf, no gloves. His fingers were red, raw-looking, the kind of cold that stung. A gust of wind lifted a strand of his hair, and Tommaso saw him flinch ever so slightly, then ignoring it. It was so Lucio. So proud, so quietly reckless. It made him want to take off his own coat and drape it over his shoulders.
Lucio hummed a tune under his breath, scribbled a word, crossed it out, then scribbled again. “Sorry I didn’t text,” he said, without looking up. “Been writing a lot.”
Just like that. A small statement dropped like a pebble into deep water.
And Tommaso, who had spent days spiraling in that silence, could only nod again. He didn’t trust his voice just yet.
But something loosened in his chest, just a little. The tension that had wrapped around his ribs like wire, eased a single, careful inch.
“Yeah?”
He finally found his voice, a little rough from the cold and from not having used it in a while.
“What kind of stuff?”
Lucio shrugged, but his eyes stayed on the horizon. “Bits of things. Phrases. Melodies I forget by the time I get home.”
He gave a soft, lopsided smile, more to himself than to Tommaso.
“Stuff about the cold. About missing things. I don’t know. Winter makes everything dramatic, doesn’t it?”
Tommaso gave a short laugh, genuine but quiet. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose it does.”
Then after a pause, “I think I’ve been a bit dramatic lately too.”
Lucio looked over at him. “Oh yeah?”
Tommaso nodded, his gaze following the long shadows cast by the olive branches.
“I’ve just… been thinking too much, I guess. Being in your own head too long is like sitting in a room with bad lighting. Everything looks wrong.”
Lucio snorted softly. “That’s a good line. I might steal that.”
“Take it,” Tommaso said, smiling, but there was something sheepish in it. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, his thumb nervously brushing the inside seam.
Lucio let the silence stretch before speaking again.
“I always get a bit weird around the holidays,” he said. “It’s like everyone else has these perfect families, perfect plans. And I’m just…” He trailed off, not finishing the thought. “Anyway. That’s why I’ve been writing. Not to make songs really. Just to… stop my brain from leaking out of my ears.”
Tommaso huffed a soft breath, half a laugh. “I get that.”
……….
“Have you heard Velvet Goldmine?”
His head tilted, thoughtful.
“David Bowie?”
Tommaso nodded.
Lucio’s mouth quirked up.
“Of course I have.” He gave a small laugh.
“Absolute fever dream.”
“I swear,” Tommaso said, eyes lighting up just a bit. “The lyrics make no sense and perfect sense at the same time.”
Lucio chuckled. “Like he’s seducing someone and mocking them and saving them all at once?”
“Exactly ” Tommaso said, his voice warming with excitement. “Like some sacred, filthy promise…”
Lucio’s smile deepened, but it wasn’t just amusement — it was something else. Something alive in his eyes. “Yeah. Like a secret you don’t even understand, but you’d kill to keep it.”
Tommaso’s breath caught slightly. He didn’t know why that line hit him so hard. Maybe because that’s exactly how he felt lately — like he was keeping a secret he didn’t even understand. One that shimmered just under his skin, refusing to stay buried.
Lucio stared at the sky, then murmured, “He never explained what it meant.”
“He didn’t have to,” Tommaso said. “I think some things get ruined if you explain them.”
Lucio glanced at him. “Maybe it’s worse if you keep it down there.” He pointed at his chest.
The quiet stretched between them again, filled only by the dry rustle of wind through the brittle grass and the faint scratching of Lucio’s pencil. Tommaso sat still, watching his hands, his profile, the slight furrow in his brow that hadn’t eased even once.
“Are you… okay?” Finally he asked softly.
Lucio looked up, blinked once. “What?”
Tommaso’s throat tightened. He glanced away toward the olive branches, then back at him. “Did you… get over her?”
Lucio stared for a beat too long, pencil still in hand, held mid-air like the question had caught him mid-thought.
The sunlight slanted across his face, catching on his lashes, and for a second, he looked younger than usual—less untouchable, more breakable. His mouth opened slightly, as if to answer, but no words came right away.
The silence pressed in again, different now—more uncertain. Like the two of them had just stepped too close to something neither of them knew how to name.
Lucio finally exhaled, slow and uneven. He dropped his gaze, pencil rolling from his fingers to rest beside his notebook. His hands found each other, fidgeting absently in his lap.
For a long moment, he just stared at the pages—half-filled lyrics and scribbles smudged by his own sleeve.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t really about her. Not in the way it was supposed to be.”
Tommaso didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he could. The words dug into his chest, soft and sharp all at once. His breath slowed, as if something inside him had to make room for them.
Lucio glanced up again, almost wary now. His expression had shifted—less guarded, but more tangled. He looked like someone still trying to make sense of his own truth.
“It felt serious to me,” Lucio murmured, “but maybe only because I wanted it to be. I think I thought… if I held onto it hard enough, it would give everything else a shape. Like she could be the answer to all the questions I was too scared to ask.”
He gave a quiet laugh, bitter and small, as if ashamed of how naïve that had all felt in hindsight. “But she never really saw me,” he added, almost like it was a confession. “Not even once. Not the way you do.”
The world seemed to still at that. Even the wind paused, hushed by the weight of the words. The trees, the birds, the whole olive grove fell into silence. And Tommaso—Tommaso felt his heart lurch so hard it almost hurt.
He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He just stared at Lucio, as if the boy might disappear if he looked away.
Lucio froze too. His eyes widened slightly—only slightly—but it was enough. A flicker of recognition passed across his face, the kind that comes when your mouth betrays you and the truth falls out too fast.
He turned his head away again, sharply. “Shit,” he muttered, voice cracking just enough. “I didn’t—I mean, forget it. That was stupid.”
But it wasn’t. And they both knew it.
He didn’t respond right away. He just stared at Lucio’s turned face, his lashes trembling slightly in the light, jaw tight, as if regretting the words even as they hung in the air. His heart was thudding so violently it felt like it might shake something loose inside him.
He didn’t even know if what he’d heard was what he thought it was — if it was real, if it meant what he’d been too afraid to hope for — or if this was just another cruel trick of his own imagination.
“What do you mean… by that?” Tommaso asked again, quieter this time, like he was afraid of shattering something. “The way I do...?”
Lucio shifted, clearly uncomfortable now. He glanced sideways, fingers fidgeting again in his lap, then ran one hand through his hair, messing it further, buying time. His mouth opened, closed. A muscle in his cheek twitched.
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said that.”
But Tommaso leaned in slightly. His pulse was wild. He couldn’t let it go. Not now. They were this close. He felt it.
“You do know don’t you,” he said, firmer. “Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out now.”
Lucio looked at him again. His eyes were wide and uncertain, dark with something unspoken. Something raw. “I didn’t mean to say it like that,” he said hoarsely. “It just slipped out. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You know you were…” Tommaso whispered. “You’ve been thinking about it. I can see it.”
The silence trembled between them, and Tommaso could feel it — that sense of something enormous and fragile stretching taut.
He felt hot all over, not from the sun, but from Lucio’s nearness, from the fact that the thing he’d been afraid to name might be real. Might already be here.
“I just need to know,” he said. “Lucio… Say it. If it’s true.”
Lucio drew in a sharp breath, stiffening. For a second, it looked like he was about to get up and leave — to run. But then, slowly, something in him seemed to give way. His shoulders dropped, just a little, like something inside him had finally, painfully, surrendered.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said, not looking at him. “I thought the song was for her. I really did. At least when I started writing it. But when I thought of… you. It all changed. I saw the way you listened to it… when you looked at me—”
He broke off, his voice thinning.
“It felt like it should’ve belonged to you from the beginning.”
Tommaso felt something unfurl in his chest — warm, heavy, terrifying in its certainty. He hadn’t made it up. He hadn’t imagined the softness in Lucio’s voice, the way the lyrics bent at the edges when Lucio looked his way. His breath came slower, deeper, like his body was making space for something long denied.
Lucio kept going, quieter now. “That night I panicked. I kept wondering, does he know? Has he saw through me? Have I ruined it?”
Tommaso’s voice trembled. “Why would that ruin anything?”
Lucio’s eyes finally found his again. This time, he didn’t look away. And in that gaze, something cracked open.
“Because I never thought you’d feel the same.”
Tommaso’s breath hitched. His heart lurched against his ribs. For a second, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think — only feel. The relief, the astonishment, the quiet, spreading heat that settled in his chest like dawn.
“I’ve been going crazy these past few days ,” he said, a breathless laugh escaping him. “Thinking maybe I made the whole thing up. That I just saw what I wanted to see.”
Lucio gave a shaky laugh of his own. “Yeah. Me too.”
Then he let out a shaky laugh, something between disbelief and relief breaking through the tightness in his chest. His fingers twitched against his knees before he slowly leaned forward, just enough to close the distance a little more.
Lucio was still watching him, breath caught halfway in his throat, and in that moment, he looked so alive—so real—that Tommaso could hardly stand it.
“Well,” Tommaso said, voice light but thick with something trembling underneath, “Now we’re supposed to be kissing, aren’t we?”
Lucio blinked, startled for a split second. Then a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, crooked and a little wild. “Is that the rule?” he asked, voice dry, eyes flickering over Tommaso’s face.
“I think it is,” Tommaso murmured, “after a conversation like that.”
Lucio laughed softly, and it loosened something in the air around them. The tension shifted—not gone, but softer, warmer, pulling them closer instead of holding them apart. The winter wind moved through the grass around them, crisp but gentle, and somewhere in the trees, a bird sang just once before falling silent again.
Lucio tilted his head slightly, that same amused look still lingering, though his voice was quieter now. “Are you going to do it, or just keep talking about it?”
Tommaso didn’t answer—not with words.
He leaned in.
As their lips finally meeting, it felt as if the whole world had gone still.
At first, it was light — barely a brush, a tentative test, like a feather gliding across the edge of their mouths.
Lucio’s lips were soft and warm, carrying a hint of winter’s chill and the faint scent of mint on his breath. Tommaso closed his eyes, and it felt as though that one point of contact had ignited his entire being — the spark flaring from his lips, spreading through his chest, slipping into his fingertips. His heart beat too fast, so fast it nearly stole his breath — but he didn’t pull away, not for a second.
Lucio was a little stiff at first, as if caught off guard, unprepared — but soon he kissed back. That response carried the kind of surrender that comes only after long hesitation, like he was finally letting himself want. The corner of his mouth twitched — Tommaso couldn’t tell if it was a sigh or a soft laugh — and then Lucio’s hand found his chin, almost unconsciously, drawing him closer.
The movement of their lips grew deeper.
Tommaso let out a soft breath, almost a moan, as he felt Lucio’s lower lip tug gently between his, like a tease — or perhaps an accidental glimpse of longing.
His hand had already found Lucio’s waist, and through the layers of his autumn clothes, he could feel the tremble in that body. He hooked his fingers lightly around it, like he was anchoring a heart that wasn’t sure whether to flee or stay.
He in the other hand, tilted his head slightly, just enough to make the angle fit, their noses brushing and parting again. Their breaths tangled between their cheeks. The kiss turned slow and deep — the kind that didn’t hide anymore. Lucio’s tongue brushed tentatively forward, once, then again — a little clumsy, but so earnest it ached.
Tommaso met it gently, steadily, like he’d already rehearsed this in a thousand dreams, and now it was finally real.
This wasn’t just a kiss.
It was the silent confession of two boys. The answer they’d been fermenting all winter long. A collapse and a salvation that existed entirely between breaths.
The wind still moved, but they couldn’t hear it anymore. There was only the feel of each other’s mouths — the heat, the damp, the trembling — and every movement struck like thunder in their chests. Lucio’s hand finally gripped the hem of Tommaso’s coat, tightening slightly, like he was afraid he’d disappear.
When they finally parted, it wasn’t with any certainty, or clarity, or the sense that something had concluded.
“Well tonight has ended up weird.”
Lucio teased, panting.
Tommaso just smiled and pulled him in closer.
“Tu sei il mattino.”
THE END.