In a hundred years it won't matter whether or not this moment happened.

There'll be no raising up or toppling of vast empires, no destruction of an already fragile ecosystem because of it. No prizes won nor fortunes lost under its weight.

But it's nonetheless a watershed a lifetime in the making. 

"I love you."

Does it matter that this moment was sparked by the fuse of a bomb? Does it make it less true, less an emotional reality that he'd handled badly for years? It had never been the knowing of it, but the owning of it that he'd fought. Hell, everyone knew. But it was that silent knowing, that pretense of the absence of a thing. An unnamed elephant fucking a headless ostrich in the shadows.

No, he'd known it early in their... what? Their association, perhaps their connection - "You know what it was, moron," the phantom fucker whispers from the shadows. Thrust. Thrust. - their relationship, which is what it had been since day fucking one, and in this moment... this moment...

This goddamned moment of almost losing him again. Not in that temporary ‘to another' sense, but that there would be no shared breathing of the same air, no shared warmth from the same sun. In the sense that twice - fucking twice! - Justin could have died. That his heartbeat could have stopped, that his eyes could have lost their light, that his smile could have... no, no, no, God no, NO!

He should have told him then, when it was ridiculously romantic, was going to tell him then, but a baseball bat fucking scared him back to the denial that lays at the bottom of a bottle. He was going to tell him and that moment stole his words, his voice lost in the noise of sirens and the smell of hospital disinfectant and the adrenalin of panic attacks. He wore the words, instead, around his neck, beneath his shirt, next to his skin until they leeched back into his subconscious and settled themselves again behind his mantras.

Now this moment, so fucking similar, so goddamned different. No hint of romantic golden oldies, just ridiculous violence and explosions in the dark and... Justin - God! - JUSTIN! This moment couldn't steal his voice again, couldn't bury the words beneath broken glass or the bodies of the dead. Wouldn't. He owned them and they fucking belonged to him, and the goddamned phantoms in the shadows could now fuck off!

He shared the words now, to his lips, as he'd shared them in his ear, the words he'd whispered silently at the edge of sleep so many times:

 "I love you."