Work Text:
It was the questions that made his heart stop in its tracks. It wasn’t hard when there were so many of them, always rising up out of nowhere. They would spring up and make him want to call in the middle of the day and ask ‘Do you remember when we drove out to the outskirts of town and watched the sunset over Radon Canyon’.
He always hoped the answer just might be yes because he couldn’t understand how someone might forget. It had been unbearably hot the entire drive there, but that didn’t stop them from making a picnic of it. Foolishly making sand angels because neither of them had ever seen snow, but thought snow angels looked like so much fun. Then there was a beautiful sunset that may have lasted too long, but that was alright. At least until the evening crept upon them like a shadow, forcing them back home, holding each other’s hand the entire time.
Some mornings, he wakes up with words on the tip of his tongue. He rolls over and expects to find freckled shoulders and pale skin where he now finds nothing, more often than not. In those moments he can’t help but say to no one “Waking up and seeing the empty spot in bed beside me… I wish you were still here.”
How could he not after years of waking up to someone else’s snore and skin cooled by the ceiling fan he no longer has?
And his traitorous mind would always turn toward a time he’d kiss every freckle until the man would smile in feigned sleep, fighting just to keep his breathing even. Most of the time it ended in sour morning-breath kisses that only earned false complaints. On a good morning it ended with the both of them being late to work and only too proud of that fact.
There were a million things on his mind, questions to be asked and statements to be made. Yet when he found himself seated next to the man at yet another PTA meeting. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he simply rolled his eyes and hissed out angrily, “I hope you didn’t bring those scones again.”
Steve would glare at him and try not to look in his general direction, but he always failed. Cecil could feel the other watching him throughout the meeting, much like he felt his tattoos squirming out of place, fighting for him to make contact so that way they could crawl over Steve. All of them except the heart tattoo that came to rest in the palm of his hand because, even after everything ended, he still held Steve’s heart in some fashion.