"Go on," Kevin heard a lady whisper and a few seconds later, he felt a couple small taps to the semicolon tattoo on his left wrist.

When he looked down, he saw wide, curious brown eyes looking up at him and a small lower lip being worried between two gapped front teeth and it made him grin.

"Um…ex-excuse me," she muttered as she brushed brown bangs out of her eyes and looked closer at the tattoo of a sun compass on his left hand. "D-Do you draw the pictures on yourself everyday or does your Mom help you?," she asked seriously and Kevin nearly choked on a sip of his Dr Pepper.

"W-Well," he stuttered with a grin, "I kinda had some help, but it wasn't my mom."

"Then who?"

"Me."

Kevin slapped his right hand over his mouth but his shoulders moving indicated that he was very amused at what was happening.

The little girl looked up at Eddward as he sat down across from the redhead and rolled up his sleeves to reveal a sleeve on his left arm of a vinery of Irish Roses and an anchor with a shark wrapped around its shank and the word Dive at the top of the anchor and Deeper at the bottom that ran from his elbow to his wrist of his right arm where it stopped a few centimeters above a semicolon tattoo that matched Kevin's.

She stared at the ink on his arms and then asked, "Who helps you?"

"Me," Kevin shrugged and Eddward bit his lip to bite back a laugh but his cheeks went pink in amusement.

"Wooooooow," she breathed before skipping back to her mom to report her findings.

The woman shook her head and mouthed a thank you to the two young men who just nodded and shrugged before turning back to their lunch and each other.

Dates were rare as their schedules were busy.

College kept them apart, but their ink kept them united in ways geography never could.

Puberty was rough, societal ideals hard to accept.

Breaking away from what was the norm nearly broke them, but like the sun, they decided to wake up and face the world then die in the darkness of hiding who they really were.

A chance meeting in a tattoo parlor the day he decided to turn the page on his life lead to the greatest love either had ever known.

He was his compass.

He was his anchor.

They woke up to a brighter life that they wanted to dive feet first into with the one who understood it like no one else.

As they held hands under the table and Kevin complained about midterms and Eddward bemoaned the swim team's scheduling conflicts with his chemistry lab time, matching infinity loops on the insides of their left wrists burned under his touch.

Lunch was too quick, kisses goodbye bittersweet, but he held onto the promise inked in a small heart of one of the Irish Roses of Eddward's left arm and into one of the loops of the Celtic Knots wrapped around Kevin's right wrist.

Forever.