My Rival, My Partner

Chapter Thirteen: The Storm

Dane's POV

The forecast had said scattered showers. The forecast, Dane would think later, had lied through its teeth.

By seven that evening, what had started as a light drizzle against the Transit Authority building's tall windows had become something closer to a genuine storm, rain hammering sideways, wind rattling the old window unit hard enough that Dane half expected it to give up entirely and fly across the room. Neither of them had noticed the escalation until the lights flickered once, twice, and the city outside disappeared behind a gray wall of water.

"I think," Callum said, peering out at the parking lot, where the storm had turned the asphalt into a shallow, churning lake, "we're not driving anywhere for a while."

"You think?"

"I'm an architect, Dane, not a meteorologist. But yes. That's a lake where my car used to be."

They ordered food from the one place still delivering, a Thai place three blocks over, whose delivery driver arrived soaked to the bone and visibly regretting every choice that had led him out in this weather, and ate cross-legged on the floor of the office with the lights dimmed low to save the building's flickering power, storm hammering the windows in a rhythm that felt, after the first hour, almost intimate rather than alarming.

"This is either the worst or the best night of this entire project," Callum said, around a mouthful of pad see ew. "I genuinely can't decide."

"Ask me at midnight when we're both sleeping on this floor."

"There's a couch. One couch. I noticed that earlier and made a note to feel concerned about it later, and later appears to have arrived."

Dane laughed, a real laugh, unguarded, the kind he'd started letting himself have more of lately, the kind that used to feel dangerous around Callum and now mostly just felt like relief.

"We'll figure it out. It's not the worst problem we've had."

"No," Callum agreed, quieter now, something shifting in his voice as the storm outside settled into a steadier, softer rhythm against the glass. "It's really not."

They ended up on the couch anyway, both of them, close enough that Dane could feel the warmth of Callum's arm against his, the storm's noise filling the silence in a way that made talking feel unnecessary, made the quiet feel like its own kind of conversation.

The dim emergency lighting cast everything in a soft amber glow, and Dane found himself, not for the first time, cataloguing small details about Callum he had no business noticing this closely, the way his jaw looked in low light, the particular, unguarded softness that came into his face when he thought no one was watching him watch it.

"Can I tell you something?" Callum said, quiet, into the storm-dark room.

"Always."

"I've been trying not to do this. Not because I don't want to, God, Dane, I want to, more than I've wanted almost anything, but because I know my father is watching, and I know what he'll do if he decides you're a liability instead of just an inconvenience, and I keep telling myself the responsible thing is to wait until it's safer." Callum's voice had gone rough, unguarded in a way Dane had rarely heard from him.

"But I don't think there's ever going to be a version of this that's safe. I think I'm just going to keep waiting for a good time that never actually comes, and lose the actual good thing in front of me because I was too scared to reach for it."

Dane turned to look at him fully then, close enough in the dim light that he could see every flicker of vulnerability crossing Callum's face, none of the practiced charm, none of the armor, just a man finally, entirely unguarded.

"So stop waiting," Dane said, barely above a whisper.

Callum's hand came up slowly to cradle the side of Dane's face, thumb tracing along his jaw with a gentleness that made something in Dane's chest crack wide open.

"Dane—"

"Stop waiting, Callum."

And he did.

The kiss, when it finally happened, was nothing like the almost-kiss in the parking garage, no interruption this time, no shrill phone breaking the moment before it could become real. It was slow and certain, Callum's hand still cradling his jaw, Dane's fingers curling into the front of his shirt like he needed something to hold onto, the storm still hammering the windows outside as if the whole city were exhaling right along with them.

When they finally broke apart, foreheads still resting together, breathing unsteady, Callum let out a soft, disbelieving laugh.

"I've wanted to do that since the elevator," he admitted. "The very first day. I just didn't know it yet."

"Took you long enough."

"You could have kissed me first, you know."

"I was busy hating you on principle."

"How's that going?"

Dane huffed a laugh against his mouth, close enough that he felt more than heard it.

"Terribly. Catastrophically. I have never been worse at hating someone in my life."

Callum kissed him again, softer this time, unhurried, like a promise instead of a question, and outside, the storm raged on, indifferent to the fact that inside one small, half-lit office on the third floor of an old Transit Authority building, everything between them had just, quietly and irrevocably, changed.