“Holy shit.”

  Leo glanced up from the torn page in his hand. They were in the storage room as they had agreed upon, and Ivan had told him everything that an elder at his pack had told him.

  Now everything made sense. The headaches, feeling like he had been shot in the head, and the lost bullet was still reverberating around the walls of his skull. This mate thing was turning out to be way more trouble than it was worth.

  He handed the drawing back to Ivan, and the other boy folded it and neatly tucked it into his back pocket.

  “So we just have to… be close to each other?” Leo asked, suddenly aware of the wide barrier of space they had created between them when they had entered the room, both retreating to opposite sides of the small room.

  “Seemingly.”

  Leo took a step forward and glanced at Ivan’s unreadable expression. “How close?”

  Ivan shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest with a sigh and taking a slight step back. “I’m not an expert. Just telling you what I know.”

  When he said this, white mist flowed out from between his lips. He had been rubbing the bumpy skin on his arms for a while, and Leo could tell that he was obviously feeling cold. He had expected someone so smart would’ve at least bothered to check the fucking weather.

  They stood in awkward silence for a few minutes, no one saying anything and both refusing to look in each other's direction. Each minute they stood there was making Leo’s skin itch. They were going to be there all day if they didn’t do anything.

  Leo walked up to Ivan, then stood next to him, leaning against a shelf of old boxes like Ivan had been doing. The bullet in his head started to slow down now, and he knew the other boy had felt the same sensation because the space Leo had left between their shoulders had narrowed and their shoulders were almost touching now.

  Ivan turned to him, moving his shoulder away. “The closer we are… the more it's working.” He stated it factually, and Leo knew exactly what he was thinking. What was possibly closer than they already were? Contact. Touching.

  Leo flexed his fingers at his sides. Were they seriously about to do this? The last time they had ever made contact before the mate revelation was when he had taped pictures of dead animals on Ivan’s locker and Ivan had punched him. And now they had touched twice, when Leo had handed Ivan the book and when Ivan had taken the letter from his hand.

  He hadn’t been able to drown the lingering feeling of Ivan’s fingers brushing against his palm. He had tried for hours.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He turned to Ivan. “Okay, fine. I’m just ready for this headache to be gone as quickly as possible.”

  “Okay…me too.” Ivan nodded. He unwrapped his arms from around his arms and put them at his side.

  Leo stuck a hand out, inviting Ivan to place his own hand. When Ivan extended his hand towards his, Leo's hand jerked back instinctually, like he had been burnt by the very possibility of their hands meeting.

  Ivan's hands moved back into his pockets in response, and he shrugged nonchalantly. “We don't have to if you don't want to.”

  Leo ran a hand through his hair. He didn't care what Ivan thought about him, but he still didn't want to seem like some immature teenager who refused to touch another boy's hand because that somehow ‘made him gay’.

  Leo sighed. “No, it's—this gets intense.”

  “Intense?”

  “When we first touched. You know with the book?” Leo gestured to Ivan's hand. “I felt like my hand was on fire.” He thought it was best if he didn’t mention the letter.

  Ivan said nothing for a few moments. “We don't have to. We can just stay here… See if we eventually start to get better.”

  Leo nodded. He wanted to grab the other boy's hand just to prove that he could do it, but he realised that that might give the wrong message, so he stopped himself. Ivan turned away from him and searched the shelf before grabbing an empty paint bucket and sitting on it.

  Leo followed suit, placing his paint bucket next to Ivan's.

  “Okay, so let’s talk.” Leo suddenly stated, then paused, staring at Ivan. Where the fuck had that come from? When he said this, Ivan raised an eyebrow curiously at him. Leo almost laughed at the idea himself. What were they, of all people, going to talk about, their mutual dislike of the other one? They did enough of that when they weren't locked in a claustrophobia-inducingly small storage and sitting on paint buckets so close together that Leo could shift his leg just slightly and their knees would be touching.

  “Are you that incapable of sitting in silence for even a couple of minutes?”

  Yes. “Of course not. I’m just saying,” Leo shrugged nonchalantly. “This could last way longer than ‘a couple of minutes’.”

  “Fine.” Ivan sighed in resignation, then shrugged. “You suggested it, so what do you want to talk about?”

  “Uh….” Leo rested a hand on his chin. What did he want to talk about? They didn't have anything in common, and everything he knew about Ivan was as boring and uninteresting as he was. He could bring up something he had been wondering about since he had told the other boy that they were mates. A question he had been avoiding answering to himself. He hadn’t seen Ivan’s reaction in the deserted classroom, and the one time they had talked, he had been neutral. Leo had no idea what the other boy was thinking. Disgust maybe? That would be the reasonable reaction, right?

  “Are you gay?”

  Ivan’s eyes shifted to him, and he shrugged. “I—I don’t know.”

  He drummed a hand on the leg he had been bouncing vigorously, then let out a breath. “I don’t think so. I’ve never really had a crush on anyone before, but I always imagined that if I did ....”

  “It would be a girl.” Leo finished.

  “Right,” Ivan nodded, then gazed back into his eyes.

  “Are you?”