“I just saw a kid back here,” Robbie says. “I think you must be right about someone living there.”

Lance breathes out a laugh against Robbie’s neck, then smiles when the gust of his breath makes Robbie shudder and hold him tighter.

“I’ll tell you about them,” Lance promises, “but first there are some other things I have to say.”

“Okay,” Robbie says, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, soft and tentative. “I’m really glad to see you.” He moves his head, pushing his bearded cheek against Lance’s.

Lance closes his eyes. “It’s all done. They dropped the charges.”

“Oh,” Robbie says, with clear surprise. His arms flex like he’s prepared to pull back, maybe to look Lance in the eye, but Lance doesn’t loosen his grip, and after a moment, Robbie relaxes back into their embrace again. “That’s good,” Robbie says, rubbing his back. “But what—are you okay, or—?”

“I’m okay,” Lance says, and in this moment, it’s true. “I’m good.” He makes himself let go, but only retreats enough that he can tilt his head back and meet Robbie’s eye. “Last night, when you said I was family, it made me think about—” He has to force the rest of the words out, and they run together under the pressure. “—all the times you said you loved me.”

Robbie’s hands bunch in the back of Johnny’s jacket. Lance slides his hands from Robbie’s shoulders and uses them to frame his face.

“Do you remember that last night, before I left?”

Robbie nods, pressing his lips together like he’s having to make an effort not to speak.

“I didn’t want you to love me. I wanted you to want me.”

Robbie nods again, this time so shallowly that it’s almost imperceptible.

“Well, I was wrong. I always thought that it had to be one or the other, and that if I could choose—I’d choose you wanting me, even though a part of me knew that you never would. But then, these past few days, I had what I always thought I wanted. You wanted me back. And it was amazing. But I don’t know if it’s enough, because—because I’m really fucking selfish, as it turns out, and—”

“I love you,” Robbie interrupts him.

Lance falls silent, heart pounding with a desperate, painful hope.

Robbie’s dark eyes are so intent, the color of the bare-branched trees where they show wet and walnut-dark between the patches of snow. “I love you, and I want you,” Robbie says fervently. His grip on Lance’s waist has turned bruising. “It scares me how much.”

Lance manages another breath, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and then anything else he might have said is precluded by Robbie kissing him. He’s still holding Robbie’s face, his fingers curling slightly so that his fingertips rest on his cheeks, his palms curved against his bearded jaw.

With a moan, Lance tries to push himself closer, lifting himself onto his toes without thinking, and that small shift in their weight, and Robbie’s adjustment to compensate, results in a fantastic loss of that temporary, careful balance they’d found on the patch of ice under their feet.