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The mid-morning sun warms the damp grass of the schoolyard, turning the lawn into a sprawling patch of green where students scatter in small, noisy clusters. Léo lies flat on his back, staring up at the drift of clouds, his blond hair splayed against the earth. Without a word, Rémi shifts beside him and rests his head directly on Léo’s stomach, using his best friend as a pillow just as naturally as he would at home. He closes his eyes, completely at ease, listening to the steady rhythm of Léo’s breathing. A shadow falls over them as three girls from their class stop at their feet, whispering before one steps forward with a curious smile.
"Are you two a couple?" she asks, her voice light but ringing clear across the quiet corner of the yard.
Léo’s body instantly stiffens beneath Rémi. "No! Of course not," Léo shoots back, his voice tight, defensiveness rising in his chest like a sudden heat.
Beside him, Rémi doesn't offer a single word of clarification; he simply blinks up at the sky, indifferent to the question because, to him, their closeness requires no label. But the sudden weight of external eyes makes Léo’s skin prickle with a cold, unfamiliar panic. Unable to stomach the scrutiny, Léo abruptly twists away, flipping onto his stomach and breaking the contact.
Confused by the sudden distance, Rémi doesn't understand the invisible line that has just been drawn between them. Seeking the familiar comfort they’ve shared since childhood, he shifts forward and gently rests his head against the small of Léo’s back. Before Léo can process the persistent closeness, harsh laughs echo from the edge of the pitch where a group of older boys has been watching. Harsh, ugly slurs are hurled across the grass, sharp enough to cut through the spring air. Léo flinches as if struck. He pulls away again, shoving himself upright with an urgency that leaves Rémi staring at him, wounded and entirely bewildered.
Driven by a desperate need to fit in and escape the suffocating whispers, Léo joins the local youth ice hockey team. The sport is loud, violent, and heavy with thick padding and rigid rules—everything their quiet, gentle world is not. It is a space entirely his own, deliberately crafted to exclude Rémi, whose severe asthma prevents him from ever stepping onto the ice.
Yet, when the afternoon light fades into the harsh glare of the arena lamps for a practice scrimmage, Rémi is there in the stands. Wrapped in a heavy jacket, he sits alone on the cold wooden bench, watching Léo glide across the rink. From the ice, Léo feels the steady pull of his best friend’s gaze through the Plexiglas. It confuses him deeply; only days ago, that constant proximity felt suffocating, a liability that made his chest tighten with fear.
Now, under the cold lights, wearing the armor of his heavy gear, Léo finds himself secretly craving the warmth of Rémi’s attention, relying on those dark eyes following his every movement to feel grounded.
That evening, the quiet house in Dalhem smells of damp earth and late spring rain. It is the night before Léo’s first major game, and the traditional sleepover at Rémi’s house feels different, charged with a heavy, unspoken tension. They lie in the familiar darkness of Rémi’s bedroom, side by side beneath the thin duvet, just as they have done a thousand times before. But the space between their shoulders feels wide, filled with the silence of the past few weeks.
Léo turns his head on the pillow, his breath catching in his throat as he looks at Rémi’s silhouette in the moonlight. The fear, the confusion, and the lingering weight of the schoolyard slurs condense into a single, aching question that he can no longer keep inside.
"Are you in love with me?" Léo whispers into the dark.
Rémi does not pull away, nor does he hesitate. He turns to face Léo, his dark eyes clear and steady in the dim light, offering no defense, no denial, and no apology. In the quiet space between them, the truth remains absolute: he is. Rémi’s dark eyes don’t blink. The admission hangs between them in the dark, fragile as spun glass, filling the narrow space above the duvet until the quiet bedroom feels impossibly small.
Léo’s heart slams against his ribs, heavy and panicked. He waits for Rémi to laugh it off, to say it’s a joke, to pull back the word like a missed pass on the ice. But Rémi just lies there on his side, his breath slow and shallow, looking at Léo with that soft, agonizing honesty he’s always had.
"Rémi," Léo manages, his voice cracking slightly—the awkward, unpredictable pitch of thirteen. He swallows hard, his throat dry. "You can’t… we’re boys. We’re best friends."
"I know," Rémi says softly. His voice doesn't sound angry or embarrassed, just tired. He tugs at a loose thread on the edge of the blanket, his fingers moving nervously even while his gaze stays locked on Léo. "I didn't try to."
"They're talking about us at school," Léo whispers, the words spilling out fast, frantic, like if he explains it clearly enough, the reality will undo itself. "They call us… you heard what Charlotte said. You heard what those guys by the pitch shouted. If people think—if they say those things—"
"I don't care what they say," Rémi interrupts quietly.
"Well, I do!" Léo’s voice rises, sharp and defensive, before he catches himself and drops back down to a harsh whisper. He shifts onto his back, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to Rémi’s ceiling—half of them peeling at the edges. "I care. It’s weird, Rémi. It makes everything weird."
"It wasn't weird until you started running away," Rémi says. It isn't an accusation; it's just a statement of fact, heavy with the hurt of the past few weeks—the cold shoulders in the hallway, the hockey practices Rémi could only watch from behind the freezing glass.
Léo sits up abruptly, pulling his knees to his chest. He wraps his arms around his shins, tucking his chin down so his blond hair falls forward, hiding his face. "I'm not running away. I just... I need space, okay? I want to play hockey. I want to have things that are just mine."
Rémi sits up too, slowly, his dark curls messy from the pillow. He reaches out a hand, hovering an inch above Léo’s shoulder, hesitant for the first time in his life to touch his best friend. "You can have those things. I just... I miss you, Léo."
The raw simplicity of it makes Léo’s chest ache. He looks sideways at Rémi, seeing the pale outline of his face in the moonlight, the quiet vulnerability that Léo has been trying so hard to shield himself against. He remembers the warmth of Rémi’s head against his back in the grass, the terrifying comfort of it, and the deep, confusing hunger he felt on the ice tonight just wanting Rémi to watch him.
"I miss you too," Léo mutters into his knees, the confession tasting bitter and sweet all at once. "But I don't know how to do this. I don't know what you want from me."
Rémi pulls his hand back, resting it on his own knees. "Nothing," he whispers, looking down at the duvet. "I just wanted you to know. I didn't want to lie."
They sit side by side in the dark, two feet apart on a mattress they’ve shared since they were seven years old. The space between them feels vast and uncharted, yet neither of them moves to leave it. Outside, the spring rain starts to tap softly against the window glass, steady and rhythmic, keeping time for a night that neither of them knows how to finish. The rain thickens outside, drumming a steady, hollow beat against the glass. Inside, the quiet remains fragile, weighed down by the distance that has stretched between them ever since that bright morning on the schoolyard grass.
Léo stays hunched over his knees, watching the fabric of his sweatpants twist between his fingers. He can feel Rémi’s presence right beside him—the familiar warmth of him, the faint scent of the floral soap from Rémi's house—and it makes his skin prickle with that same chaotic mix of fear and comfort.
"You stopped letting me," Rémi says quietly, breaking the silence. His voice is barely above a murmur, devoid of anger, just carrying a heavy, wistful observation.
Léo blinks, looking over. "Stopped letting you what?"
"Lie on you," Rémi answers. He pulls his knees up to match Léo’s posture, resting his chin on his forearms as he gazes at the shadowy wall. "At school. On the grass. Ever since Charlotte asked that question, you wouldn't even let me rest my head on your back."
Léo’s jaw tightens. He remembers the panic of that moment—the heat rising in his face, the cruel laughs of the older boys near the pitch, the sudden, terrible fear of being seen and judged. "Because people look at us, Rémi. They make up things. They call us names."
"I don't care about them," Rémi repeats, turning his head so one cheek rests on his knees, his dark eyes fixed on Léo. "When I put my head there... on your tummy... I can hear your breathing. I can hear your heart. When my chest gets tight from the asthma, or when everything at school feels too loud, that’s the only thing that makes my brain stop racing. It’s where I feel safe."
The raw honesty of it hits Léo right in the center of his chest, sharp and unshielded. A heavy guilt twists in his stomach. He hadn't thought about what it meant to Rémi; he had only thought about how to protect himself, how to build walls out of hockey gear and quick denials. Yet, beneath the panic of what the world thought, Léo knew the truth: he missed it too. He missed the unthinking ease of their physical closeness, the way they used to exist together before words and labels came along to break it apart.
Léo unclasps his hands from around his shins and lets his legs stretch back out beneath the duvet. He lies back down on his pillow, staring up at the peeling glow-in-the-dark stars, his heart hammering a rapid rhythm against his ribs. Rémi watches him attentively, reading the slight softening in Léo’s shoulders. Slowly, cautiously, Rémi turns onto his side. He lingers for a second, hovering on the edge of the space between them, testing the air.
"Léo?" Rémi whispers, his voice small, tentative, carrying the full weight of his quiet hope. "Can I... just for tonight? Please?"
Léo doesn't answer right away. He looks at Rémi in the faint, silvery light filtering through the window—at the dark curls, the wide, expectant eyes, the best friend who had belonged to his world before everything got complicated. The fear of tomorrow, of the big game, of the schoolyard whispers, still lingers at the edges of his mind. But right now, in the quiet dark of this room, the coldness he’s been carrying feels far too heavy to hold onto.
Without saying a word, Léo lets out a slow breath and gently shifts his arm to the side, opening up the space beside him. Rémi moves carefully, as if afraid that any sudden motion might break the fragile understanding between them. He shifts across the sheets, settling his body beside Léo, and slowly rests his head right in the center of Léo’s stomach. Léo winces slightly—a subconscious reflex born of weeks of sharp vigilance—but forces his body to stay still. He takes a long, slow breath, letting his chest rise and fall beneath the weight of Rémi’s head.
"Is it okay?" Rémi whispers into the soft fabric of Léo’s shirt, his voice muffled.
"Yeah," Léo murmurs back. He stares up at the ceiling, his hand hovering over Rémi’s shoulder for a long moment before he finally lets his forearm rest lightly along Rémi’s back. "It’s fine."
The tension in Rémi’s shoulders visibly melts away. He lets out a deep, trembling sigh—the sound of someone finally coming home after a long journey—and closes his eyes. Beneath Rémi’s cheek, Léo’s heart is still beating fast, a fluttery, uneven rhythm, but as the minutes pass in the dark room, the frantic tempo begins to slow.
The sound of the spring rain tapping against the windowpane grows steady and rhythmic. Léo focuses on the warmth pressing against his abdomen, matching his breathing to the soft, even rise and fall of Rémi’s chest. The suffocating feeling that had chased Léo through the school hallways, the cold fear of what the other boys might say, fades into the background noise of the night. Here, in the dark, shielded from the eyes of the world, the heavy armor Léo had been wearing all week begins to slip away.
Rémi’s breathing grows slow and heavy, his body completely relaxed against Léo’s. Léo reaches up with his other hand, absently brushing a curl of dark hair away from Rémi’s forehead, just as he had done countless times when they were younger.
Tomorrow, there will be the harsh glare of the arena lights, the cold sweep of the ice, and the heavy weight of his hockey pads. Tomorrow, there would still be Charlotte’s curious smiles and the cruel laughs by the pitch. But right now, surrounded by the familiar scent of floral soap and wet earth, Léo closes his eyes. He lets his hands rest on his best friend, listening to the rain, and lets himself drift off to sleep.