Realisation dawned, and his stomach dropped. This was it. The moment when you had to stop hiding, stop running and face all the things you’d tried desperately to avoid. It wasn’t very often someone came knocking on your walls so directly, and Flynn’s shuddered.

They got in the way, he knew they did. The fear of past pains kept him bricked away, and Cal had been reaching over them in little ways since they’d met. Sometimes, their fingers would brush, when he had the courage to reach out, but something always pulled him back again. That gnawing little voice in the back of his head which told him he was unlovable. His mother, Sera, Ellie, he hadn’t been enough for any of them.

And then there was that other part of him; the part that scared him. How could he let anyone over those walls if they didn’t know what he’d done? But confessing it, explaining that had happened all those years ago in the dungeon, and what he’d done to his colleague when Cal had been taken. It wasn’t fury, or rage, it was colder, more calculating, and never quite felt like him.

But if he balked now, then that was it. It was not a door that could be opened twice, he knew that, he felt it. This was his one chance.
“I have been such an idiot,” he said, looking at her, sensing her hesitance, her vulnerability. Everything he had was screaming at him to reach out and touch her. He wanted to explain to her, explain that he’d been born in a one-bedroom wooden cabin on the edge of the Labyrinth, that the Shaman he’d grown up in and been far less developed than where she’d come from. His mother had mended his father’s shirts so he could go to the core and do his duty.

But it all died on his tongue. There had been too many words already. Walls could be built out of words. They were distracting, ambiguous, filling silences that didn’t need to be filled. Flynn reached across the divide between them with his free hand and set it gently against her cheek.

And then he kissed her, and once their lips touched he didn’t want to stop.

He pulled back a little, his heart pounding, his thoughts racing, waiting for the rejection that had come every time before.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice uncertain, “I’m sorry I didn’t...I’m sorry I made you feel...”

He shook his head, taking a breath, his shoulders rising and falling as he searched for a smile.

“But I’m not sorry about that. I’ve been wanting to do that since I met you.”