Congratulations, Donovan. You successfully ran away from the only human being on this Earth that you’ve ever managed to fall in love with. Good ******** job cause now you’ll never see him again.

As the plane passed through the clouds he looked down at Destiny City falling away from him faster than he could have imagined possible and felt his heart tearing in half. The night before it had been pounding, caught up in Xander’s embrace. He’d been fully intent to spend the night together after their exuberant fun but sleep had trouble finding him right away. Perhaps he hadn’t quite come down from his high, yet. He looked at the redhead in the moonlight, strewn across his bed, and realized for the first time that he was completely, utterly, one hundred percent in love with him. As he shifted to put his arms around his sometime lover, Donovan could only stare at him in surprise and wonder. When, during the last few months, had he fallen, exactly? At what point had this fun and friendship turned into the gut-wrenching revelation that it was now?

Oh, s**t. Oh, s**t. Oh s**t.

He carefully scooted out of bed and perched on the edge of it, watching his lover sleep with a sheet barely draped over him, light shining across the scar on his back from Painite’s blade. It was a mark he’d run his fingers over more than once, something that made him simmer inside when he thought about that b***h of a general and her spear. Someday he’d have to visit pain on her to repay her attentions to Xander but today, right now, he was not strong enough. And, of course, there were other things more pressing on his mind.

Love and he were not things that got on well. He loved his mother but the woman worked two jobs and was literally never around. She never took him to little league. They never had dinner together. Hell, she hadn’t been to half of his birthdays growing up. Pappy was there for him instead to teach and guide him when his mother could not. He was closer to his grandfather than anyone in the world until his death some years ago, now. After that he felt adrift in the world without place or reason. The only thing that brought consolation was his job, which he was pretty good at. He’d thrown himself into it, going to Australia first, and then to Tahiti immediately upon his return. He barely spent the night at home in between assignments, focusing on work until little by little the pain dulled in the wake of Pappy’s loss.

They’d spent longer at their play than he had realized, spotting the lightening horizon out the bedroom windows. The sky was turning from a navy blue to hues of orange and magenta. It was enough to see by and he reached for his clothes, slipping them on with a heavy heart. His pulse was pounding, his mouth like a desert, but he couldn’t stay and tell the other man what he was feeling. He wouldn’t understand the fear or, worse, he didn’t feel the same way. Everyone he’d ever loved tended to not be around or leave him when he needed them most. If Xander did that to him…he wasn’t sure he’d survive that heartache. It was better to do the leaving than to be left behind.

Tugging on his jeans, he crossed the room and paused in the doorway to give one last look to the man inside. A few tears slipped down his cheeks as he turned away from him and walked out to the living room where his keys and shoes waited. Before long he was slipping through the door, locking it behind him, and driving down the street away from the apartment. Even if he wanted to turn around now he couldn’t, having locked himself out and unwilling to wake the other this godawful early in the morning. No, this was better.

“Chief, I gotta go.” He’d begged a short time and two cups of coffee later. “Send me somewhere, anywhere. I’ve got to leave today.”

“You just came back. What in the hell do you want to leave for?”

“I’ve got the wanderlust, you know that. Just tell me what to point my camera at and I’m there.”

It wasn’t true, of course. It wasn’t even remotely true. Thankfully, Donovan wasn’t awful at lying through his teeth and even if he was his editor was only interested in the quality of his work, not the drama of his personal life. He shuffled through some papers with a shrug, making the choice not to give a damn, before coming up with the thing he’d been looking for.

“The Congo.”

“Africa?”

Yes, that was just about as far as he could possibly get away from Xander and his heart and all of the conflicting emotions roiling around his stomach like a storm. He was already eager looking, so much so that the editor gave him a surprised look and leaned back in his chair to warn him.

“It’s a research piece, Flynn, a six-month contract.”

Six months, Jesus, he hardly hesitated before he was scrawling his signature on the contract. He hadn’t even read the thing, had no idea what he’d be paid or where in the Congo they were going. For all he knew he’d just promised to give his head to witchdoctors and ride on the back of a crocodile for fun. ******** all, it didn’t matter to him so long as he didn’t have to see Xander’s face when he inevitably ******** up everything good between them. The assignment didn’t start for a few days so he’d bought the first ticket out he could manage, ignoring his phone like the plague as he threw what he might need hastily into a suitcase.

He left a note for Marlin and left for the airport, putting his phone into airplane mode to avoid anything that might make him change his mind about all of this.

You god damned idiot. You think this is better than just telling him how you feel? What could you be thinking, running away from the one person that seems to think you’re worth something?

He landed at N'djili Airport some horrendous amount of time later, greeting a new place and a new culture the same way he had a hundred times before: with a drink. He found a bar inside the airport and proceeded to order a few beers, keeping them coming as soon as the old one was finished. He hardly minded that they were warm or the strange looks he was getting from the bartender. He eventually gave up and made his way into the molten streets, looking up and down. Already regretting his decision, he looked back and forth and tried to find a nearby hotel he could rest his head at.

The rest of the crew would be along in a few days.

He flopped down onto the small bed, the jetlag and his emotional constipation leaving him somewhat drained. Finally getting to his phone, he flipped it open and saw Xander’s number first thing.

s**t.

He pressed the power button and waited for the device to power down before tossing it down the bed a bit, watching it bounce before hitting the floor. If anyone asked, he could blame coverage. He wasn’t likely to get much of it out here. “********,” he breathed out, his eyes following the blades of the fan overhead, watching them spin around and around without any real reason to. Like his thoughts, they were simply spinning because they had no other choice. Until someone, probably him, turned them off they would continue to spin. He desperately, fervently, wanted to turn them off: his thoughts, not the fan.

Rolling over, he found paper and a pen scribbling “Dear Xander,” at the top of a page before ripping it in two. “I’m sorry” came next and that, too, ended up shredded and in the wastebasket. There was nothing he could say, no excuse he could make for leaving him alone without so much as a goodbye. If he called the apartment maybe Marlin would explain based on the note, but it wasn’t his place to. He should have had the guts to say something.

He sighed, jerking off his shirt to toss to the floor. The fan wasn’t doing near good enough to put a dent in the hot air around him but he was too tired to grope for the remote. Instead, he buried his face into the pillow and tried to block the words out of his mind one word at a time but they still haunted him, even as he fell asleep. This was love, and he ran away from it as fast and as far as he could be carried. No matter how hard he tried, he could not face up to the challenges of his heart.

Bravo, Donovan. Great job. Do you think he’ll even bother to speak to you at the end of this nonsense when you come back home? By then he’ll probably have moved on and forget about an a*****e like you. Whatever you had, whatever more you think you could have had, you’ve royally screwed it now. Bravo…

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