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Nate laughed, a low, warm sound as he banked the fire while Leo hovered and watched him do it.

With the fire gone, Nate carried his cup of tea across the dark lawn with both hands. Leo drifted beside him, eager to get inside. He could catch the smell of the tea in the air and it took over his thoughts.

Twice now he’d chased the taste of it off Nate’s lips. Both times he’d felt Nate’s hands on him while he did it, and both times some starving part of him had wanted more, unsure if he’d ever get it.

Tonight that might change.

When the door to the house fell shut behind them, Leo realized that he was actually nervous. Something under his ribs was fluttering as if he were a teenager, walking his first date home from a dance.

Oblivious to Leo’s thoughts, Nate proceeded to the sitting room and rolled the sleeping bag out along the wall. He set the cup down beside it, sat, and pulled his boots off.

He settled in a cross-legged position and picked up the cup. The steam had thinned.

“Are you sure?” Leo found himself asking one more time. “After what you told me⁠—”

“Yeah.” Nate looked up at him, and his eyes were steady—although his hands were not. “I’m sure. Are you?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Leo said, and found that it was true. Was he nervous? Yes. But it would be okay, because it was Nate.

Nate, who looked at him a moment longer, and then drank, emptying the whole cup in long swallows. Then, he set it down and lay back, eyes closed.

His chest rose and fell. The lamp hummed, and Leo waited, watching, nervous and not nervous all at once, wondering⁠—

And then Nate was standing in front of him.

He looked almost exactly like himself. His eyes were the same, his shoulders, his shirt—except that he was a little more translucent… and that he was standing a foot above the floor.

“Whoa,” Nate said, and tipped.

Leo caught him.

His hands closed around Nate’s arms, anchoring the medium.

“There’s no floor,” Nate said. His voice sounded the same. A little unmoored.

“There is a floor,” Leo corrected, without relinquishing his grip. “You just don’t weigh anything. You’ll want to stop expecting the ground to catch you. The ground doesn’t care about you anymore.”

“That’s—“ Nate looked down at his own feet, then at the sleeping bag, where his body lay breathing quietly with its hands folded, and swayed again.

“Don’t look at that,” Leo said. “Look at me instead.”

“Okay,” Nate said. “Okay. How do you ground yourself?”

“You don’t really. You decide how you want to move and you do. It helps to find something to focus on.” Helpfully, Leo put a hand flat on Nate’s chest.

There was no heartbeat, but there was warmth. Nate was warm on this side too — of course he was, he was the warmest thing in any world — and solid under Leo’s palm.

Leo liked that. He liked it a lot.

He moved his hand, up Nate’s chest, along his collarbone. Nate held very still and let himself be mapped, watching Leo’s face the whole time with an expression Leo couldn’t afford to look at directly yet.

He found Nate’s hand instead and traced it with his thumb. There was that thin scar across one of his knuckles, smooth and slightly raised. Leo ran a finger over it.

“A chisel did that,” Nate said “I was nineteen and stupid.”

“You’re still stupid. You burn marshmallows on purpose.”

“That’s just the best way to⁠—“