1 | Almost Happy ▷ Sam Wilson | ✓

37 - HERE NOW

NICKY PUNCHED HIM RIGHT IN THE JAW. His hand stung with the force of the punch, but he didn't care, grabbing the fabric of the borrowed blue button up and pulling him inside, the adrenaline and leverage giving him enough power to throw him into the room and painfully onto the ground.

He rose to his feet, but didn't fight back, instead just lightly blocking all the punches and kicks Nicky aimed at him, the younger man's words hitting him worse, wiping the smile right off his face.

"Where have you been?" he cried, hitting his chest, the blond just trying to catch his hands, "I've been looking for you for five fucking years! I don't know where anyone is, but you've been okay this whole time?"

"Would you rather I wasn't okay?" he tried to ask, trying to lighten the mood, but only got a slap for his troubles.

"Shut up!" Nicky screamed, and he went so far as to stomp his foot, and all the blond could see was that sixteen-year-old boy who had grown up faster than he ever should have, slowly figuring out all the emotions he'd never been allowed to feel, and he had helped with that, but now it was coming back to bite him, and he didn't know why.

He tried to butt in, to ask what was going on, to turn to look at Rhett who was watching from a distance, demand to know what was happening, but all he could hear, all he could experience was Nicky screaming at him, demanding to know where he had been, where the others were, why he was okay and never showed up, so many questions, yet he didn't understand why they were being asked.

He watched as Nicky began tugging at his own hair, a habit that he remembered having to try to talk the boy—man, now—out of for years, easing his hands away and smoothing them down, whispering comforts into his ear as he tried to help him work through whatever was bothering him.

He had never expected to be the problem.

It wasn't until Nicky started kicking the chair and digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands that he rushed forward, pulling him into a tight hug, making sure the man couldn't move at all, holding him the way he used to whenever he fell back into this kind of behavior that he hadn't seen since before he had left him; he had thought he was okay.

"Where have you been?" Nicky sobbed, gripping onto his shirt like it was the only thing keeping him there and with him, burying his face in the fabric.

"I didn't know," he whispered, turning back to look at the three others in the room, locking eyes with Rhett, "I didn't know..."

Rhett was crying, a hand over his mouth, almost in shock. When he finally locked eyes with him, he finally found his voice, taking a shaky breath. "You left us, Terran. Where have you been?"

Terran shook his head, still holding Nicky tight against his chest, turning back to look at the door he had just entered, catching sight of the various padlocks that were no longer in use, of the wear and tear it had endured, which hadn't been there when he left. How they were still in the same place, even though he was sure they had been planning on moving out.

He looked down at the man he was holding, how he was a man now, not a boy, though the title of boy wasn't too far off with his reaction. Then again, he had never truly been allowed to be a boy until he found him. He hadn't expected to find him like this when he came back. This wasn't how he expected any of this to happen.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper, turning back around to look at Rhett who had finally composed himself and was now trying to figure out how to feel.

The blond shrugged with a kind of numbness only he could have possessed in a situation like this. "You left us. You left him."

Terran let out a shocked huff, barely a breath, a hand coming up to cup the back of Nicky's head, the way he used to, and he felt the reaction, he felt the younger man shake and shudder and sob at the touch, because it had been so long since he had felt this, since it had been real, and he had just been starting to be okay with that.