The Fall

by Tal Bauer

He doesn’t need to give me everything. He already is everything. “You are everything I need,” I tell him.

bury my face in the crook of his neck, draw him in until he is all there is. I still haven’t gotten enough; I’ll never have enough. This craving I have for him is woven into every part of me. “I want you,” I breathe.

“Is this really how you see me?” he asks quietly. I nod, unable to find words for the way I see him. He is the axis my world tilts on, and my drawings are a poor substitute for the truth of him. “I’ve always seen you,” I say quietly.

He pushes his helmet against mine, forehead-to-forehead. “Play stupid games.” Blair grins. “Win stupid prizes. Nobody fucks with what’s mine.”

“We play our game,” I tell him, low enough that only he can hear. “Not his.”

For all his strength on the ice, this is where he’s vulnerable, in the places where fear finds him. I want to protect him from everything that hurts, even the things inside his own head. His breath hitches against my shoulder, quick and quiet, and I wrap my arms around him, holding him steady. The man who threw punches for me minutes ago now needs me to be his anchor.

So let fate circle. Let ghosts prowl the door. There is no universe in which I will let go of this life. And I will not let him go.

How do you know which moments are real and which are only shadows? Maybe every memory splits—one strand living forward, one looping back—so every time I blink I am slipping between them.

Blair glances over at me between drills, making sure I’m still here, still whole. How many times has he looked at me exactly like this? How many times will he? And underneath it all: What if this is the last time?

Time feels like water circling a drain, and Blair is the center and the circumference of everything that matters. The way he adjusts his grip, the exact angle of his smile; these details burn themselves into me twice, once as they happen, once as echo. But an echo of what? When?

How do I save us from an ending I can only glimpse in shattered glass and broken screams?

He’s whole and here and alive, and I love him with the devotion of tides that always return no matter how far they’re dragged into the deep.

Every version of me orbits this same truth: he is the fixed point in my universe. No matter how many times reality resets, how many times memory betrays me, he is the center of my soul.

There’s no logic to it; all the rules can blur, timelines fracture and fold, but nothing touches the core of what Blair means to me. If love alone could rewrite fate, I’d al...

I’d give anything—everything—if it meant protecting him. Even when my mind unspools, even when nothing is certain, loving Blair is ...

there’s any choice left in me, I’ll u...

How many times have we done this exact dance? His eyes meeting mine across a crowded room, a look that says yes, you and always you without words. Some truths run deeper than time.

I built this. I chose this. I fell in love with him through a thousand small moments. Didn’t I?

smile across the locker room, his voice beneath the fireworks on a rooftop in Dallas, our eyes meeting across the ice, the way he says my name when no one else is listening. The snapshots flicker behind my eyes, faster and faster; I’m drowning in memories of loving him.

What would stopping even mean? Pausing time here forever? Hiding in this room where nothing has broken?

Every second we spend like this is another second toward whatever’s coming, another moment I’ll have to lose.

The way he watches me—God, the way he watches me, like I’m the first clean breath after drowning, as if I’m proof that good things still exist in a world that took his brother.

How many times have I watched the light fall and fade from his eyes? If this is all I’m given, if this loop is the last time I get to love him whole, let it matter.

This is what I have. This moment, and however many times it plays out. His lips brush mine, and my lips part for him.

More. The single thought is a bonfire in my head. I need more of this, more of him, enough to last a lifetime I might not get.

My hands fist in the front of his hoodie, twisting the fabric, trying to hold him here, in this exact second, forever.

I love you. I’m so scared. Don’t leave me. I pour my frantic thoughts into our kiss. I will not lose you, Blair. Not again.

Dreams don’t leave scars this deep.

There’s no exit from this. Either I’m losing my mind in slow motion, or something happened to me that science can’t explain. Both options leave me standing here, water drying on my skin, trying to reconcile love that predates its own beginning.

In this half-light, half-sleep, my thoughts soften and blur. I may have existed before I met Blair, but I never lived until I loved him.

Knowing doesn’t mean this life isn’t perfect, though, and expecting his touch doesn’t change how it devastates me. His hands slide from my back to my sides, knowing the map of me better than I do.

His touch is the language of us, and this is one of his most fluent verses.

All I need is here. I followed fate’s breadcrumbs all the way back to him, and he is the man I built this life with. He is the man and the love I fought for.

Somewhere, a shoreless dark uncoils, a place I walked before, where salt and silence tangle and upend my story. It is the edge of every tide, every return, where beginnings and endings share the same undertow.

For half a breath, past and present overlap. Once, I stood in this spot, uncertain of almost everything except the pull between us. Now I know his body as well as my own; our love lives in my blood. I can’t imagine existing without him.

“What do you want, babe?” What do I want? I want to pin this morning on my soul, and I want a thousand more mornings exactly like this, memories stacked in a deck I can thumb through whenever I’m lost. I want to stop time, stop whatever’s coming, stop the world from spinning.

The world feels impossible to lose, but I cling to him. I am his, body and soul, and I am scared shitless that time is hungry to take him away.

And then there’s Blair, my lighthouse through it all.

I love him so much it’s almost unbearable. It’s sunlight pouring through stained glass, gold and blinding and impossible to hold.

Some things can’t be said without breaking the rest.

I feel the quiet storm of him, the way he holds me like I’m both breakable and inevitable.

My grip on his jersey tightens, knuckles whitening, as if letting go means losing him. I can’t remember what it felt like not to love him, and I don’t want to. We are everything unsaid, everything unfinished. This moment is the only truth that matters; everything else can burn.

Grief rewrites at the cellular level. It changes how love moves through your body.

“What am I missing down there?” Blair leans in, voice low enough to raise goosebumps. Everything, I want to say. You’re missing how I dream about you in places we’ve never been, how sometimes I wake up and am afraid you’ll be gone like you vanished once before, like you were never real at all. Loving you feels like remembering something I’m not supposed to.

Our hearts beat a matched rhythm. His breath stirs my hair, and in the dim light, his eyes hold galaxies.

He’s given me everything: all of his strength, all of his loyalty, every battered hope he’s patched together after the years of his storms. His trust, his grief, his brother’s memory, his whole heart laid bare. Everything he is—history, hope, loyalty that tastes like salt and sunrise—sits between us.

For every scar he hides, I’ll press a promise against it: you’re not alone. I want to be the undoing that doesn’t wreck him, the safe place after where he can shelter his soul. Already, my heart carries him everywhere, the way the tide always carries the shore.

The world can try to erase what we’ve built, but my memory of him is set deeper than time can touch. I’ll find him in every version of reality, every timeline where he exists.

We have chosen each other across impossibilities, always and forever. We belong in the same story, on the same pages. Our love defies the physics of space and time. Nothing will stop me from loving Blair.

I’d walk through fire for the way he looks at me. I have walked through fire, I have crawled on my belly, through the wreckage and the refuse and the ruin, slowly, terrifyingly, beautifully all the way back to him.