Chapter Text
Philip shifts his weight from foot to foot, standing next to the baggage claim broadcasting that bags from the 5:00 flight arriving from Atlanta will shortly be falling out of the chute and onto a circular conveyer belt. Philip has never actually been on an airplane before. He’s been to the airport to drop Lukas off, but this is his first experience with the baggage claim area. He watches with fascination as bags start to slide down, momentarily distracted from the escalator where he assumes Lukas will be appearing any minute. The conveyer belt really reminds him of this cool sushi place he went to with Helen once when she drove down to the city as a surprise just to say hello. The sushi was on little different colored plates, according to the price of each item, and he could just pick up plates of whatever he wanted from the conveyer belt as it passed by him.
Apparently that few seconds distraction was too long—a weight collides with him and he’s being kissed hard before he even registers Lukas’s presence, arms around his waist, pulled in close.
“Philip,” Lukas murmurs against his lips, as though he’s trying to convince himself he’s not dreaming. Philip feels like he’s being hit by a truckload of feelings—it’s like he can taste Lukas’s loneliness and homesickness and lovesickness through his kiss. It really makes his heart ache. He misses Lukas a lot while he’s away, but somehow Lukas seems to have it worse. Philip guesses it has to do with being so far away from home and living out of hotels—and not being able to choose who he spends time with. The other guys on the motocross circuit are okay, according to Lukas, but not people who he would hang out with on a regular basis if he had the option. Incidentally, none of them like boys.
Lukas finally pulls back and he looks seconds away from tears again.
“I’m not crying,” he says firmly, glaring at Philip accusingly. Philip tries not to smile.
“No one said you were,” he replies pleasantly.
“So uh,” Lukas sniffs and looks at the ceiling, “where are we going?”
“My dorm, my roommate’s visiting his parents,” Philip tells him, spotting Lukas’s bag coming around to them and hoisting it up onto his shoulder. It’s incredibly light—as though Lukas just threw in a change of clothes or something and ran to the airport as soon as he could. Which is probably what happened, Philip reminds himself.
Lukas looks startled by the bag, Philip is positive he would’ve forgotten it if Philip hadn’t remembered.
“Unless you want to see your dad,” Philip continues, “If you do we can head up to Tivoli, Gabe would probably come get us if I asked.”
“No,” Lukas shakes his head, “My dad doesn’t even know I’m here. He’d kill me if he knew I blew six hundred bucks on last minute plane tickets.”
“Jesus Christ,” Philip breathes as he whips out his phone and calls an Uber, “Six hundred bucks?!”
“I don’t fuckin’ care,” Lukas says, shaking his head. Philip would offer to pay him back for some of it but he doesn’t even have that much. Lukas has money—not the kind of money that would allow a person to spend six hundred bucks like it’s nothing—but certainly more than Philip.
“Wow, thanks,” Philip smiles at him, “I’m pretty flattered to be honest. Six hundred just to come see me for like twenty hours?”
Lukas doesn’t laugh.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he mutters.
“Well yeah, you’ll run out of money pretty fast,” Philip says reasonably.
“I don’t mean that,” Lukas mumbles, “I can’t...” He shakes his head and just then, their Uber pulls up.
“Let’s talk about this back at the dorm, okay?” Philip tells him as the driver pops the trunk and Philip throws Lukas’s bag inside. Lukas looks like one word will open the floodgates and Philip knows Lukas is private enough not to want to cry in the back of an Uber.
They get inside and Lukas holds his hand in a vice grip all the way back to school. They are very quiet, Philip wonders if the Uber driver thinks they’re fighting.
Lukas has been to the campus before, but he still looks around almost wistfully—like he wishes he lived here too. It’s funny because Lukas has no artistic talent whatsoever, and Philip really couldn’t care less about motocross. And yet, Lukas so obviously wants to belong in Philip’s world, and Philip would absolutely travel the motocross circuit with Lukas if that were even somewhat feasible.
They run into a guy, Jake, Philip knows from class in the hall while Philip is fishing for his keys.
“Hey Philip,” Jake says, sauntering up to them and openly eyeing Philip. He doesn’t even look at Lukas as he asks “Who’s this?”
Philip smiles blandly at Jake—he feels Lukas stiffen by his side.
“I’m Lukas,” Lukas introduces himself, a little more forcefully than Philip feels is necessary, “I’m his boyfriend.”
“Oh,” says Jake, eyes wide, “You’re real then? We thought Philip was just making you up to keep the flocks of suitors at bay.”
Philip can tell Jake is trying in his weird way to be friendly, but Lukas absolutely isn’t budging. He feels like it’s up to him to defuse the situation, but his mind has gone blank and he can’t even think of a response.
“He wasn’t,” Lukas says shortly. Mercifully, Philip finds his keys, tells Jake he’ll see him later, and pulls Lukas into the room, breaking the staring contest he’s been trying to have with Jake.
“That guy likes you,” Lukas blurts out as soon as the door is closed and locked. He’s standing in the middle of the room as though he’s not sure what to do.
“I know,” Philip tells him with a smile, “He’s told me. I said I was taken.”
Lukas fidgets. Philip sits on the bed and pats the spot next to him, and Lukas sits down numbly. Then he seems to sort of snap out of it, and reaches for the hem of Philip’s shirt.
“Whoa, slow down,” Philip tells him, “I... think we need to talk first. As much as I just want to spend the whole time having sex. We can totally have sex, it’s just you looked like you were gonna cry at the airport and we should probably like...deal with that before you take my clothes off.”
“Yeah,” Lukas agrees, looking down at the floor. He puts his elbows on his knees and rests his face in his hands. Philip scoots up right next to him and rubs his back. When Lukas speaks, the words are muffled and wet-sounding.
“I can’t be away from you like this,” Lukas tells him, “It’s killing me.”
“I know,” Philip says, “I...” He suddenly feels like crying too. He did enough of that last night, he cried himself to sleep even though he was overjoyed that he and Lukas were back together. Honestly, he hasn’t not cried at least once a day in over three weeks.
“I haven’t seen another guy who doesn’t want to talk about girls in over two months,” Lukas says quietly.
Ouch. Philip is surrounded by other gay guys every day now, truth be told. There are dozens of them in his department alone. Even when he and Lukas were broken up he had no desire to date any of them—it’s just nice that he doesn’t have to worry about how people will react if they find out or hide it or any of that shit. And nobody even blinks when he talks about his boyfriend. Lukas doesn’t talk about it much, but his impression has been that the motocross guys aren’t much better than the kids back in Tivoli. The idea of going back to living like that makes him feel a little sick.
“I’m sorry,” Philip tells him, and he means it, “that really sucks.”
“I wouldn’t even give a shit if you were there,” Lukas says, still not looking up, “It’d be like Tivoli all over again and I could totally handle it if I was with you.”
“I know,” Philip says, still rubbing his back.
“I just wish you could come with me,” Lukas admits.
“I know,” Philip repeats.
“Last night, I was like...thinking about you being here and getting hit on,” Lukas continues, “and I’m gone all the fucking time, like it’d be so much easier for you to find— “
“I don’t want to find someone here,” Philip cuts him off, because that’s stupid, “I won’t be in college for the rest of my life. This long-distance thing...it sucks, it really sucks, but it’s not forever. We can—I don’t know. Maybe I could do freelance stuff and then I could go with you sometimes after I graduate.”
“I’m not gonna do motocross forever,” Lukas says, as though he’s just decided it.
“Okay,” Philip says, a little surprised, “You don’t have to, you can— “
“I don’t want to,” Lukas tells him, and he lifts his head out of his hands and nods.
“You don’t mean that,” Philip says, “You love motocross, you’re just...I dunno, lonely. It’ll get better...” Philip’s not sure how it’ll get better, he just feels like it’s the thing to say.
“No,” Lukas says firmly, and he looks up at Philip with red-rimmed eyes, “I mean it. I like riding my bike but the like...the part where you never live anywhere and have to kiss ass all the time with the sponsors...I don’t want to keep doing that.”
Philip’s not sure what to say. He has no idea what, if anything, Lukas would do other than motocross.
“The idea of just doing the circuit used to sound so awesome,” says Lukas, flopping back on the bed with his legs hanging over the side, “I could just kind of move around and either do long distance with Rose or break up with her and I wouldn’t even care. But then like, you...”
“I don’t want you to give up your dream for me,” Philip tells him, leaning back so that he’s lying next to Lukas and looking him in the eye.
“Well too fucking bad,” Lukas tells him, “I’m living my dream and I hate it because I love you more than any of that stuff.”
Philip feels suddenly like he’s going to cry again. Maybe it would’ve been better if he’d just let Lukas tear his clothes off like he wanted to in the first place. He can’t really see any good outcome to this conversation.
“Look,” he tells Lukas, rolling over so that he’s lying on his side and pressing a hand to Lukas’s chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt, his heartbeat, “we can do this. We just need to make sure we know when the next time is that we’ll see each other. We’ll plan it better so you don’t have to spend six hundred dollars every time you want to see me—you’re never living that down, by the way.”
Lukas laughs and Philip feels the tightening in his chest ease up a little.
“Maybe I could even save up and come see some of your races.”
“Yeah?” says Lukas, sitting up a little and smiling, “You think so?”
“I’ll try,” Philip tells him, “And like...you’ll be back home for Christmas, right? We can spend a month together then.”
“A month together,” Lukas echoes, like it’s going to be his mantra until December.
“Hey,” Philip says, leaning into Lukas until their mouths are inches apart, “I love you. We’re gonna make this work.”
Lukas nods and looks into Philip’s eyes. He wants this to work so badly, and he feels like if they both try hard enough, the universe owes it to them to help them out a little. He must be projecting more confidence than he feels, because Lukas smiles then licks his lips.
“So, uh...” he says, “remember on the phone last night how you kinda talked about the barn...”
“You mean when we had phone sex?”
“Yeah,” says Lukas.
“What about it?” Philip asks.
“I was thinking we should spend the rest of this trip doing stuff we can talk about on the phone later,” Lukas tells him, slowly moving until Philip is on his back again and Lukas is hovering over him.
“Now we’re living my dream,” Philip says, arching up as Lukas bends down to kiss him.