Chapter Text
“You’ll get it next year,” Dante said before Bobby had a chance to say anything at all. Bobby nodded. Next year. There was always next year. Until there wasn’t.
“What if I’m not good enough, Dante? What if I can’t make the team next year? It’s my last shot and if I can’t make it, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You’ll make it.”
“You said that last year.”
“You got closer.”
“How would you know?” Bobby teased. “I thought you didn’t know anything about fencing.”
“I didn’t care about it at all either before I met you. I know enough.” Dante stood up, tossing Bobby the water bottle that had kept him company this whole time. Dante slung Bobby’s bag over his shoulder, though Bobby had reached for it himself. “And what I don’t know about fencing, I make up in knowing about you. You did great, Bobby. Better than you’ve ever done before. Next year, you’ll be better. You’ll make the team, I know you will.”
Bobby smiled at that, feeling a little better. He’d lost too many bouts today to stand a chance of making the team. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a major letdown, couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt. But Dante always knew just what to say to make him feel better. Not for the first time, Bobby wished he could hug Dante.
He still remembered the first day he’d met his best friend. Freshman year, moving into the dorms. Bobby had been intimidated by the incredibly tall boy he’d found in his room. And the height wasn’t the worst of it—Dante’s face was so serious and Bobby had found it stern and unimpressed at all times. During the first weeks of school, he’d done his best not to bother Dante. It was silly to think of it now, but it was true that he’d kept himself quiet and scarce. Until he’d noticed a loose button on Dante’s school blazer. A rambling mess of an offer to fix it had earned him a laugh from Dante. And, all of a sudden, he hadn’t seemed daunting or scary or stern at all. The rest was history.
They’d been best friends ever since, the only barrier between them the unavoidable one of touch. Bobby wasn’t conservative but, at first, he’d been sure Dante was. Not wanting to make any presumptions, Bobby had kept his hands and his hugs to himself. Touching bare skin was always intimate in a way, but if Dante was conservative about soulmates, he might have found the friendly affection offensive.
Dante wasn’t conservative. Bobby knew that now. Knew that people had assumed that he was all of his life. Dante had told Bobby as much. It was because he was intimidating, so big and serious-faced. Conservative or not, Bobby hadn’t breeched that boundary yet. Because, by the time he knew Dante wouldn’t mind the possibility of bare skin touching bare skin, he was too scared to try it. Bobby was too scared his touch wouldn’t stick and he liked Dante too much to give up on that crazy hope just yet.
Bobby screamed and hollered at the top of his lungs when Coach Williams announced there would be two reserves this year. He knew that meant both Nick and Eugene had a place on the team and it was so great to see them both stand on stage to receive their pins that Bobby hardly felt the sting of not being up there with them.
“You’ll make it next year,” Dante said again, stooping low to say it in Bobby’s ear. Bobby nodded, more ready to believe it than he had been the last time he’d heard it.
“Thanks, Dante.”
The assembly ended and the crowd started moving, everyone headed back toward class. Two seniors were roughhousing, and one pushed the other a little too hard. In retaliation, the boy hurled his backpack at his friend, who ducked just in time to avoid it.
“Dante!” Bobby warned, seeing the bag hurtling fast at his best friend. On instinct, his hand darted out to catch Dante and tug him out of the way of the projectile.
The backpack flew past them, uninterrupted in its arc to the floor. The seniors kept shoving each other. The crowd continued to flow out of the auditorium in mass exodus. Everything was fine.
“Glad that didn’t get you,” Bobby said, smiling with relief at Dante. Dante wasn’t smiling, he had his serious-face on, the exact arrangement of it meaning he was intrigued by what he was looking down at. Bobby looked down, too, because Dante’s gaze was even lower than it usually had to be when they spoke. “What is it—?”
Bobby’s mouth snapped shut and his eyes snapped open.
Oh no no no, not like this.
Bobby stared down in shock at his hand, clenched right around the sliver of wrist exposed by Dante’s disrupted jacket. And Bobby panicked.
“I can’t—,” he started, then shook his head violently when the words wouldn’t come out right. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t ready.
“Bobby,” Dante said steadily, “can you let go of me?”
“No,” Bobby squeaked pitifully. Because it was the truth. It was the truth to a different question from the one Dante had asked. But Bobby couldn’t let go of Dante. He wasn’t ready yet. He wanted to pretend for a little while longer that his crush—the one he worried was love sometimes late at night—could actually be love.
Bobby’s eyes were welling with tears and as the started to spill, scalding hot down his cheeks, Dante wiped them away easily with a thumb. One tear at a time. It was enough of a shock to receive that sort of thing from Dante when they’d never danced anywhere near the edge of touching skin before that Bobby sniffled into surprised silence.
“I’m sorry, Dante,” Bobby managed. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Is it so bad?” Dante asked, raising the arm Bobby had his fingers held tightly around.
“No! No, it’s not bad if we’re soulmates, that’s not what I’m saying.” Bobby wasn’t sure what he was saying but he couldn’t let Dante think he was in hysterics at the thought of a soulbind with him. It was the thought of knowing once and for all that their souls wouldn’t bind that had Bobby rattled. But he couldn’t say that. Not even to Dante. Because he might physically have been able to let go. But he wasn’t ready to yet.
Dante whisked Bobby away from the small pool of onlookers that had caught on to their scene and took him to their room.
“Do you think they saw?” Bobby knew the answer. “They’ll all think now that...” and it hit Bobby fully then. What he had done. Pretending to bind with someone was frowned upon. Even as a joke, it was seen as crude and invasive and offensive. And Bobby was worse than all that because he was being purposefully deceitful. Accidentally purposefully deceitful. And the whole school would hear about it. And Dante would probably hate him he knew the truth.
“I’m sorry,” Dante said.
“No, don’t be! Really, I’m sorry, please don’t feel bad.”
“I know you always wanted it to be something special.”
“Huh?”
“Your soulbind. You told me freshman year about all the romantic scenarios you hoped for.”
“Those were all just silly.”
“No, they weren’t. I’m sorry you got an auditorium instead of a rose garden or a cliff overlooking the sea.”
Bobby giggled. “Some of them were kind of over dramatic, weren’t they? Like saving my love from falling to their death.” He sighed. “I still had dreams of getting taller back then. If you’d needed saving from a cliff over a perilous but beautiful churn of ocean waves, I couldn’t have saved you. But,” Bobby said brightly, “I could have gone down with you. And that’s something, isn’t it?”
“Condemned to death by love’s first touch. A tragedy worthy of Shakespeare.”
Bobby smiled at his hand. He knew this was wrong but he liked the sound of that. Not about dying and tragedy. Love’s first touch. Bobby would have gone down with Dante, bound to him or not. And that was something, wasn’t it?