all those broken promises | shyland

Epilogue

One Year & Six Months Later...

"Babe—"

His fingers slipped from the keys of his laptop, his head lolling from side-to-side as a pair of hands ran along the creases of his shoulder blades. The clock on the corner of the wooden desk in his dorm room read 2:57 am, a less-than-subtle reminder that he had yet to sleep more than four hours straight in the past week and a half, but finals week was slowly draining his sanity, a mixture of unwritten papers and studying and waking up at ungodly hours of the morning.

Luckily, his boyfriend had driven the fifteen and a half hours from Los Angeles to Denver to spend the week with him before they drove back to California for the summer. After graduating high school in Aurora, Ryland had decided on attending college, but Shane missed the atmosphere of his hometown so much that it nearly caused a rift between them. With Ryland living on campus and gone half the time, Shane had decided living with his boyfriend's aunt wasn't getting him anywhere and instead chose to move back home, renting a tiny apartment outside of Long Beach and visiting his long-distance boyfriend when both of them had more than a week free.

Shane hadn't spoken to his mom since he and Ryland moved to Colorado in the middle of Junior Year, and while she was only a short distance away from where he lived now, the auburn-haired boy tensed whenever Ryland brought up the possibility of the two of them making amends, always insisting he had everything he needed as long as he had Ryland. Still, Ryland made sure he held Shane a little tighter every time they had the chance to sleep together, unsure as to how anyone could live their life knowing they had the chance to love somebody like Shane Dawson and found it in themselves not to.

"Hey," Shane brushed his fingertips over the padding of the pullover hanging off of Ryland's slim figure and leaned down to kiss the crown of his head. "Come to bed."

Ryland yawned. "I have to finish—"

"It'll be there tomorrow." Shane assured with a whisper and another kiss to his boyfriend's cheek. "I've been here three days and I've kissed you three times. Come to bed with me, Ry. I'll let you work through tomorrow if you have to, but please, let me hold you for the night."

Ryland spun around in his chair, his eyelids drooping with every breath he took, his figure nearly sinking in its place. "Will you carry me?"

"As you wish."

Shane lifted him over his shoulder and quickly dropped him into his bed, going back to close Ryland's laptop and the lights before he climbed back in beside his boyfriend, missing the feeling of having someone to hug in his sleep. No matter how much he loved California, his apartment was lonely without Ryland's warm body snuggling up to his, and he cherished the weeks he was able to make the drive to see his boyfriend, whether it was for three days or twenty.

"Shane?"

The auburn-haired boy pulled the covers up over Ryland's body and ran a hand through his hair, unable to think about anything other than spending the rest of his life with the boy in his arms. They were only nineteen and far too young to be married, but he couldn't help but think about picking out a ring and getting down on one knee (which would later on turn out to be two, but hey, they were still them, and no matter how incredibly messy their story turned out to be, it was still perfect to them).

"What's up, babe?"

The blue-eyed boy shuddered, folding himself closer into Shane's body as though his boyfriend could shield him from anything that might try to hurt him. "What do you want to be?"

"I mean—" Shane took a breath. "I want to make people happy. I want to make somebody feel like they can do anything they put their mind to, like they can use me as an escape from reality for a little while, like I can make them laugh or smile when they're having a hard day, or—I want to be someone who my parents don't know how to be, someone that's always there for somebody else, somebody who—Hmm, I don't know, I'm not sure I figured out what career that is – or, if it exists."