Leo hadn't been able to stop thinking about Ivan the entire day. One of his friends would say something to him, and every single unrelated word would connect itself and make the long journey all the way back to Ivan. And then it was two days ago at midnight, and he was back on the swingset.

  Back to the way his lips had felt on his own.

  It was like Ivan had cast some spell over him that enabled him to think of nothing but the very idea of kissing him.

  Except they hadn't actually kissed. Not yet, anyway. And the scariest part of it all was that Leo had wanted to. Years of ignoring his feelings for any man had completely gone out the window in those milliseconds.

  Currently, Leo was sitting in the cafeteria, and apart from his occasional nods along to show his friends that he was listening, he had had unbridled access to a view of Ivan from across the cafeteria for the last twenty minutes.

  He was trying not to stare for all of the twenty minutes, but a part of him was hoping that maybe if he paid attention for long enough, Ivan would break and let Leo know what was running through his head.

  A mission which seemed to be impossible, because Ivan hadn't turned in his direction, and Leo figured it was probably intentional.

  He kept repeating to himself that this was a good thing. That Ivan had prevented them from making a mistake they both would have grown to regret eventually.

  But then he had started to imagine the kiss, and suddenly all he was doing was lying. Because the way he had felt in that moment was the most right he had felt in a long time.

  He sighed a little louder than he had meant to, and Amirah—who had abandoned talking to him after his third “Huh?”—turned to him. She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. He shrugged.

  “Woman troubles?” She whispered. She wiggled her eyebrows at him, and he shook his head in amusement.

  “Sure.”

  Across the room, he watched Ivan rise from the table, and without letting himself think about it, Leo got up from his own table and followed. He stayed a few seconds behind Ivan, then followed him down the hallway, making sure not to sprint past the few straggling students that were still strolling along the hallways.

  When he entered the bathroom and the door banged shut behind him, Ivan's head lifted, and their eyes met from inside the mirror.

  “I knew I heard something annoying.”

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  Ivan closed the running tap with a sigh and turned away from the sink, leaning against the granite tabletop with his arms crossed over his chest.

  He raised an eyebrow at Leo. “Did you follow me in here?”

  Leo walked further into the room, moving to stand on the other end of the basin tabletops. “You know we really need to stop meeting like this.”

  “In bathrooms?” Ivan raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. “That was one time.”

  Leo grinned smugly. “You mean when you ambushed me?”

  Leo watched Ivan's mouth stretch into a smile, and instinctively, his own matching smile followed. Their eyes slid to one another's, and they glanced into each other's eyes until their smiles gradually faded and they were just… looking.

  Leo pushed off of the tabletop and strolled a few feet closer to him, until only a single sink separated them.

  Ivan glanced down at their feet, then at the sink-sized gap that separated them, before Leo was staring into Ivan's green eyes once again. “We should probably talk.”

  Leo stepped forward, shrinking the distance between them until they were only a foot apart now. “About what?”

  “You know what.”

  “Do I?” Leo stepped closer. A pair of heavy footsteps glided past the door, and his voice lowered. “Whatever you're going to say. Don't lie and tell me you can't feel it.”

  Leo grabbed Ivan's elbow firmly but not tightly, allowing him to pull away if he wanted to. “that you haven't been feeling it.”

  “Stop, Leo.”

  “On the swings,” Leo started. “We almost... kissed.” The last word slipped past his lips in a barely audible whisper. If it had left his lips at any other volume, he wasn't sure he would have ever had the courage to let it escape.

  Ivan took a small step back with a sigh, a protest on his lips. “Yeah well we shouldn't have.”

  “Seriously?” Leo's heartbeat sped up, and something in his chest ached.

  Ivan glanced at him, his eyes cold and hard and tired. “Seriously.”

  Lep gave him a questioning frown. “Do you really think that?”

  “We shouldn't have,” Ivan repeated.

  “If you believed that, you wouldn't have leaned in either.”

  “We can't do this.” Ivan gestured between them. “We shouldn't have done this.”

  Leo wiped his hands up his face and into his hair. He groaned behind his hands and turned around and stared intensely into Ivan's green eyes. “What are you so afraid of?”

  Ivan’s mouth opened in the ghost of a response, but no words escaped his lips. His previously steady breaths had resolved into a state of haphazardness, escaping in shallow bursts. “Let's just forget it happened, okay?”

  But Leo didn't want to forget it had happened. He wanted to remember it for the rest of his life and then for whatever eternity awaited him at the end of it. He wanted to be able to tell Ximena about it.

  He wanted to feel right again.