The Grand Gesture

part 9

{(Everything I Do) I Do It For You by Bryan Adams}

They arrive at the airport. Ben parks and they sit for a moment. He leans over and kisses Joe.

"I love you," he reiterates.

"I love you, too."

They get out and Ben helps Joe with his luggage. They walk in the building and go through bag checks and everything together. Ben walks Joe to his proper terminal and by this time it is already 11:45 and their flight was set to take off at 12:20, meaning it was about to start boarding any minute. They reached the proper gate and they just stand there and look at each other.

"So, this is goodbye?" Joe asks, trying his absolute hardest to push back tears.

"Joe, listen to me. I cannot stress this enough. This is not goodbye. We will be together again, soon, you hear me?" Ben reinforced. Joe nodded. "God I wanna kiss you so bad right now." Ben says making Joe let out a chuckle.

"I love you," Joe whispers. Ben nods and gives him a half smile. Now it's his turn to try not to cry.

"Now boarding: first class flight. Heathrow to JFK."

"That's you. I love you. Stay safe. Please, call me when you land."

Joe nods. "I will." He gives him a forced smile and turns around to get in line to board. Ben stands watching him. Joe looks back and smiles at Ben one last time before continuing onto the plane. Ben stands there and watches until Joe is out of sight.

*****

Joe's POV

He gets on the plane and looks for his seat. He finds row F and sits in seat 1. He was relieved that he got a window seat. Since first class is the first to board, he quickly became impatient waiting for the rest of the people to get in their seats. He pulls out his phone and goes on instagram.

He sees everyone freaking out about something so the first thing he thinks to check is if Ben posted anything. He goes to the search bar and hits the B key and benhardy is the first thing that pops up. One new post. Of course. It's a picture of him from behind in the airport with the caption "see ya later mazzello". Now he had to think of something flirty, but not too flirty, to comment. Fuel the fire.

He begins typing. He types and deletes a few different comments and finally settles on "you know you're gonna miss me."

He hits send and the flight attendant comes on announcing take off soon so that meant he would be losing wifi. He pulls out his phone and sends a quick text to Ben.

Joe: I want to get off this plane so badly. I want to run out and jump into your arms... in front of everyone.

He sat there waiting for his reply, blocking out everything that was being announced, but the plane began moving which meant he was out of time. He puts his phone on airplane mode and leans his head against the window.

He tries his hardest to fall asleep but it's not working, so he decides to search for a movie. He stumbles across the iconic, the legendary, one of a kind: Bohemian Rhapsody. Although he's not sure it's a great idea given his current situation, he presses play. Throughout the whole movie literally all he can think about is how hot Ben was, not to mention he replayed the Killer Queen scene six times (who can blame him?).

He is finally able to fall asleep about halfway into the flight and is later jolted awake with the planes bumpy landing.

He gets off the plane, gets his luggage, and pulls out his phone to get an uber to his apartment. He is extremely groggy and already jet lagged. Because of the five-hour time difference, it is technically only three hours later than when he got on the plane, even though it was an eight-hour flight, thus it is only around four in the afternoon by the time he gets home, and he hates it.