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Jonathan stopped in front of him and plucked at the wooden buttons of his cardigan. His frame tensed, as if he was about to run out of the room. “I thought you didn’t flee?”
“You’re not . . . glaring, Jonathan.” Breathless.
Another button. “Just to sleep, David.”
A swallow. A nod. A laugh.
Another button.
Swallow.
“You didn’t tell the whole story, about that night. You paused. ‘I said goodnight to you’, and . . .”
“And you held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe and I didn’t want to.” His voice cracked. “You spoke in my ear.”
Whispered, “What did I say?”
David met his gaze. “Please come back.”
Jonathan kissed him.
Chapter Sixteen
Social Challenge 10: That Word is Love
He kissed him as he should have then. A ghostly touch pressing infinitesimally closer, and closer, until the shape of David’s soft lips became the shape of his own. He breathed in David’s moist breath and breathed it back into him. Tendrils of it spilled from the corners of their lips, damp and trembling.
The tension in David’s body increased, the space Jonathan carefully left between them crackling.
Jonathan paused, holding himself perfectly still. One hitched breath. Another.
Seven years he’d waited for this.
David’s green eyes were on his, crystalised with shock, even though the writing had been on the wall. Even though this moment had been inevitable.
The seconds passed, knotted in his throat. He remembered David walking away, across the square. Remembered going home to find his things gone. Remembered the tears he’d spilled onto a worn cornflower pillow.
He shook. He wanted to lock David in his arms, hold him so tight walking would be impossible. His hands balled at his sides.
He stepped back—
David reached out and cupped a clammy hand on his nape. His eyes searched Jonathan’s and he touched their lips together again. Fingers came up to dance along his jaw, a gentle glide to his temple, his ear, down his neck.
His tightly coiled body cut the inches between them by half. Jonathan felt the speed of his pulse against his lips. Slowly, cautiously, David pressed their mouths together. Warmth and trembling, and Jonathan’s heart skipped.
A cascade of sparks, shooting to his toes, his knuckles, the insides of his thighs. David’s hesitation hadn’t been whether he wanted the kiss, but how to continue it.
Lips dragged along Jonathan’s, tentatively. Testing.
A little nibble at this bottom lip. The dart of the tip of his tongue to the bow.
Jonathan parted his lips and welcomed each nervous exploration.
I wonder what it feels like.
I’m waiting until it means something.
He shut his eyes, eyelashes not half as soft on his skin as David’s kiss.
He rarely laughed. He even more rarely cried.
Both swelled inside him now.
“Jonathan?” The whisper tickled his nose. “Am I not doing this—”
Jonathan sealed his lips against David’s, tight and crushing, like he might meld them together. He gripped David’s hips, thumbs rubbing. He wanted to curl himself around him like armour. An overwhelming instinct.
He softened his kiss, loosened his grip. “Perfect.”
Jerky, barely audible laughter puffed over his lips. It tasted like euphoria.
David’s body sang with nervous tension, but he lifted his chin, squared his jaw determinedly, and kissed Jonathan again.
Too dry, and then too wet. Teeth bumped. Noses jabbed. They didn’t come up for nearly enough air and panted when they did. One kiss stringed between their lips, little lines that cooled quickly in the musky air shifting over their chins.
They rocked on the balls and heels of their feet. Hands joined in, sliding over Jonathan’s back, grasping at shoulders, squeezing at his waist. They kept an inch between them, a quiet boundary but also a promise of more to come. Of other secrets to be shared.
David laughed, eyes glittering. Each moment their lips touched suffused him with confidence until he was nipping playfully, once more ready to tease, to get a rise out of him.
Jonathan soaked it all in.
Teeth grazed his ear. He reached out and unhooked the last button on David’s cardigan, fingers funnelling down the sleeves to draw it off, and David’s laughs turned back to shivers.
Jonathan cuffed his wrists tightly and met his gaze. Enough for now. “Sleep.”
Jonathan had tried to keep a careful distance between them, but David couldn’t stop wriggling. He tossed and turned, warring between throwing the blankets away and keeping them, twisting up the sheets, until Jonathan gave up on space to clamp an arm and a leg around him. David calmed under the weight, demanded a story, and finally fell asleep.
He slept on when Jonathan peeled himself away in the morning to shower, and percolate coffee, and check his phone. He let out a knotty breath. They’d made the cut. Eight teams left. Five would be gone by the end of the day.
He settled into a dining chair with cue cards and a black marker to reread the newest challenge.
He couldn’t concentrate.
He kept drawing the end of his marker over his bottom lip. Kept tasting David’s kiss there. The end of his kiss, too. His first kiss.
