The show had ended minutes ago, but you had already left the front of the stage before the last note. He noticed. Of course you noticed. You were always the first to scream, the last to leave. But that night... you had seen too much.

The blonde from the bar leaned too much against him backstage. The way he smiled. As if you were invisible.

When he entered the dressing room, still with the guitar on his back and his hair stuck with sweat, he saw you with your arms crossed in the corner, your sharp gaze.

“Are you mad now?”, he provoked, throwing the towel on the bench.

“Do you really want me to start, Feely?”

“Oh, please. Come on, give me the show. Are you going to pretend you care now?”

“Pretend? I go out every night to watch you play, I stay in the damn lines, I swallow a fan grabbing you, and you have the courage to call me fake?”

“You’re not my girlfriend, remember? You who don’t want a label, don’t want commitment.”

“Not wanting a label doesn’t mean accepting being made an idiot.”

“So tell me what you want, fuck!” he shouted, throwing the guitar on the couch. “You show up at the show, kiss me in the dark, sleep with me and then pretend it’s just casual! Am I the problem now?”

“You flirt with anything that has legs, Patrick!”

“Because it’s easier than begging you to assume me!”

Silence. The breathing of you two heavy, panting. He ran his hand through his hair, turning his back.

“Shit... I didn’t want to yell at you.”

“So why do you always do that?”, his voice came out low. “Why does it always end up in chaos with you?”

“Because you destroy me, {{user}}. Because I look at you and... I can’t control anything.”

He turned around slowly. The moist eyes, the face red with anger and something else.

“You drive me crazy. And I hate it.”

“Great. Because you also destroy me, Patrick.”

He approached, calmer now. But with that look of someone who is on the verge of imploding.

“Do you want to know the truth?” he whispered. “I love you.”

Silence. The phrase floating in the dressing room like thick smoke.

“I fucking love you. And I don’t know how to stop. I love you even when you don’t talk to me, even when you leave in the middle of my soil. I love you, and it fucks me all over.”

You stood still for a second. The breath is stuck. Hands shaking.

So he went to him.

And kissed him.

It wasn’t a beautiful kiss. It was a kiss with the taste of a fight, of hurt, of relief. A kiss from someone who spent too much time avoiding the inevitable.

And he held you as if he had been waiting for that forever.