Chapter Text
When Connor wakes up, the first thing he registers is the arm resting over his torso, wrapped around his chest and holding him close. He tries to remember what happened for them to end up here, and it all comes back to him – their conversation yesterday, Chad’s rejection, the awkward distance between them for the rest of the day. He remembers coming into the tent to get ready for bed and there being a physical distance between the two of them the whole time, like there was some kind of invisible forcefield stopping them from coming too close.
He remembers going to sleep, and for the second night in a row, yearning to be wrapped around Chad, instead of awkwardly apart from him. He remembers how much more it hurt, last night, than it had the night before.
And now here they are, Chad still asleep and Connor blinking awake, wrapped around each other as if they can only be near each other when they’re asleep. Connor doesn’t know what to do – Chad would probably hate this, if he was awake, but Connor doesn’t want to have to wake him up and deal with the awkwardness. He can’t stay here forever, because Chad will wake up eventually, but part of him wants to just never move.
He just lies there for a while, and by the time he’s resigned to having to get up, he has no idea how much time has passed.
He pulls away from Chad, and sits up, ready to leave the tent. He turns back around to check on the other boy, and finds that Chad’s eyes are wide open, looking back at Connor.
Well shit.
Before Connor can let himself think about how long Chad must have been awake for, if he knows that Connor has been awake this whole time, he just gets out a “good morning” and rushes from the tent, leaving Chad alone.
When Connor makes it over to the main tarp, he finds Bitty sitting alone at the table, humming to himself. He looks up when Connor approaches, and greets him cheerily.
“How are you feeling this morning, hun?” He asks.
“Yeah,” Connor responds, “I’ve been worse. Probably.”
Bitty’s face fills with sympathy. Connor’s not very used to confiding in Bitty, especially not about this sort of thing, but he’d spoken to his captain yesterday, needing someone to understand what had happened and not quite trusting Parson enough yet.
“I’m sorry, Whiskey. But listen, I was speaking to Jack last night, and he said he spoke to Chad about it, and – I won’t start gossiping, but it seems like you really should have another talk with Chad. I think he might have misunderstood you, because he seems really upset as well. I know it’s hard, hun, but I think there’s a happy ending there for you if you chat wìth him.”
Connor’s getting kind of sick of people trying to get his hopes up.
“I don’t know, Bits. I think he made it pretty clear how he felt.”
But even as he says it, he thinks about Chad’s face when they made eye contact this morning, and he realises Bitty’s right: Chad was sad.
Bitty’s still looking at him expectantly, probably waiting for him to change his mind, so Connor adds, “But yeah, fine, it probably wouldn’t hurt to clear a few things up. I’ll talk to him later.”
Bitty looks like he wants to say something else, but before he can, Chad emerges from their tent and comes to join them. Connor barely catches the look Bitty throw’s Chad’s way, but he thinks it might have been pitying.
“Morning, Chad! I was just telling Whiskey about how we’ve run out of firewood. Jack thinks it might rain this morning, but he doesn’t really know the first thing about camping, so I think it might be best for us to prepare to light a fire anyway. After you’ve eaten breakfast, do you think the two of you could go collect some wood for us, like we did on Friday night?”
Chad just nods, looking kind of bewildered.
“Sure, Bitty. Sounds good to me. Connor, you good with that?”
He looks up to Connor, and when they make eye contact, Chad flinches a tiny bit, like he can’t quite deal with looking Connor in the eye.
Connor nods, and sets off to make himself some breakfast. He makes some for Chad too, knowing the other boy’s preferences already, and when he sets the bowl of cereal in front of Chad wordlessly, he forces himself to avoid eye contact.
Breakfast is a quiet affair, the air filled with awkward silence, until Mashkov and Parson emerge together, Mashkov’s loud voice carrying across the campsite.
When Connor finishes eating, Chad clears both their bowls and starts washing up without being asked. Connor takes the opportunity to take some deep breaths, preparing to head off in a supposed search for firewood. He doesn’t actually know if Bitty expects them to come back with supplies, or if the whole thing is an excuse for them to talk, but Connor imagines it’ll depend how well the ‘talking’ aspect of it goes.
When Chad finishes, he dries his hands and turns around to nod at Connor, and the two of them set off, half-heartedly looking around them for dry wood.
Once the campsite is finally out of view, Connor starts gearing himself up to start this conversation, unsure of how to begin without making it the mirror image of their discussion yesterday. Chad, however, takes the initiative, and starts the conversation himself.
“Listen, Connor,” he starts, and Connor’s heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest, “I just wanted to apologise for how I acted yesterday. I shouldn’t have –”
Connor cuts him off.
“No, no, I’m sorry, Chad. I shouldn’t have assumed you felt the same way, that you knew that –”
Chad goes on like he can’t hear him.
“Assumed that you were okay with us dating, with everything that’s going to happen in the future, and I –”
“Parson told me the Aces would be happy to have me, because I never told you about the offer or that it was what I wanted, I shouldn’t have assumed you’d want me to just”
“Don’t even know where you’ll be next season, or why you’d ever want to just –”
“Follow you to Vegas!” Connor finishes.
Chad finally stops and looks at him.
“Yeah. I shouldn’t have assumed you’d just follow me to Vegas, even if that’s what I want. Exactly.”
Everything Chad just said comes together in Connor’s head, and he thinks oh.
“Chad, wait, what? You, you want me to follow you to Vegas? I thought you didn’t want to be dating me?”
“I – what? Connor, what? You’re the one that broke up with me!”
Jesus Christ. Bitty was right; they’d both definitely misunderstood.
“I didn’t – Chad, I wasn’t breaking up with you. I was – I was asking you if you wanted to date me.”
Chad freezes completely still.
“What? We were already dating, Con, why would you –”
Connor laughs, says, “I didn’t know. I didn’t realise we were dating, I wasn’t sure if you were serious about us, or if I was allowed to be. But everyone said – they all thought that we should talk about dating, so I thought I’d ask you, in case you wanted to be dating, and you just said it was – a bad idea, I assumed you were letting me down gently.”
Chad still looks like he can’t quite believe it.
“You absolute idiot, oh my god, how did you not know we were dating, I –”
And now Connor can’t help himself, because they both want to be dating and they both want to go to Vegas together, and Chad is just so beautiful, so he wraps his arms around the other boy’s back and leans in.
And then the sky opens up, and it starts pouring rain.
The two of them are standing under a few trees, but they’re not protected much, and the rain is absolutely bucketing down.
Neither of them seems to care, though, because Chad takes the cue and leans in too, and soon they’re standing in the middle of a national park, soaking wet, completely wrapped around each other, kissing like there’s no tomorrow.
It’s funny, Connor thinks, how sometimes things work out in the one way you didn’t expect them to.
///////////
When Connor and Chad return to the campsite with grins on their faces, dripping from the rain, holding hands, and without any firewood, Kent feels pretty justified in coming to a good conclusion. It seems the other three come to the same conclusion, because they all smile at the two Wellies as they walk over to the tarp for some protection from the rain.
The two boys were gone for a while, so they’d packed up most of the camping stuff while they were out, hoping for an earlier getaway than expected, so they could make it back to Samwell before it got too flooded.
Kent’s just loading one of the tent bags into the back of the car, trying to avoid the rain as much as he can, when Chad sprints over to him, holding an umbrella out to cover Kent as well as himself.
Kent looks up at him and smiles in thanks, then says “Congratulations,” in the least shit-eating way he can manage.
Chad looks far too happy to consider being offended.
“You better be serious about that contract offer, Parson. Connor’s serious about wanting to play for you guys, and I’m not letting him go anywhere where they won’t support him anyway.”
Kent puts his hands up placatingly, says, “Serious as can be, Chad. We’d love to have him on the team. And we’d love to have you around as well, maybe sitting with the other partners at games?”
Chad grins. “Looking forward to it, Parson.”
Kent’s damn happy for them. They deserve to have their shit sorted out, and Kent thinks that part of him that he sees in Connor isn’t doing as good a job at sabotaging Connor as it did with Kent right around when he first started seeing Tater.
He thinks back to that, to the days where he had no idea if he and Tater would ever be serious. He thinks back to just two days ago, telling Jack that people aren’t really serious about him, and Jack adamantly disagreeing.
He thinks about how he and Tater have come farther than he ever thought they would, and he honestly can’t see a future without Tater in it. Kent thinks maybe all the shit he’s been telling other people, even telling himself, about how he doesn’t trust it to last forever, is kind of bullshit.
He trusts Tater. He trusts himself. He trusts his intuition, like he did with Chad and Connor, and he knows a good, long-lasting relationship when he sees it.
He thinks about Jack telling him it was time to ‘put a ring on it’, and he thinks about the beautiful ring he saw in the jewellery store in Vegas a few months ago.
The future, Kent thinks, sure looks bright.