Until Then. // denis shapovalov - sascha zverev

3.9 - coffee shop kisses

Willow's POV

"When do you fly out? Are we on the same plane?" I ask Alex in a low voice, afraid to wake anyone up around us. We're walking out the Center and back towards the hotel. After drying off and grabbing a warm cup to tea, sitting in silence and taking a nap on a random press couch for a few hours, we composed our emotions and are in a much better headspace, now. It's dark, already and the air is crisp.

"Tomorrow morning. What about you?" Alex asks me.

"Wait... are you flying into Hamburg or Berlin? Not home to Monaco?" I ask.

"Hamburg, I think." Alex says. "I never really know where I'm going, honestly. Everything's so easily set up for me. But I usually fly into Hamburg because it's closer to home. I don't think I'll go back to Monaco for a bit. I want to spend time with family and train in Germany at the facility I grew up in."

"That sounds like a great idea. You must live close to me, I'm on Hamburg at eight in the morning," I smile.

"I think I'm on that one, too!" Alex says. "I call dibs on your plane peanuts."

"Oh, you can have them," I laugh. "I like the cheese platter more. Not because it's good, no. Sometimes I just crave shitty cheese."

"Oh, come on!" Alex laughs. "You live in Europe, which has the best cheese in the world, hands down, and you want the plastic packaged cheese that they serve on planes and have been sitting in a box for God knows how long?!" Alex exclaims.

"Woah there!" I defend. "Shitty cheese reminds me of America!"

"I guess that's a compliment?" Alex chuckles and nudges me in the side. "Hey, wanna take a detour?" He asks, coming to a halt, looking across the street.

I follow his gaze and look over to see the dark alleyway. Our alleyway.

"Yes," I nod. "Always."

We jog across the dark and empty street, ducking into the alley. All the lights are off, and the shops are closed early on a weekday. We reach the coffee shop, stopping. I stare at the clock inside, slowly ticking away in silence.

Alex suddenly drops, lying down on his back, looking up at the dark sky. I look at his confused and he scoots to the side, patting the spot next to him. "Come here."

"You're lying there? On the cobblestone? That everyone walks on? And hasn't been cleaned in five years?" I ask.

He shrugs, "The alleyway gives a darker frame so you can see more stars against the light pollution."

I smile, shaking my head and dropping down to my back as well, lying next to him, gazing upwards. He was right. Instead of seeing a completely blank, black, nighttime sky, there were quite a few stars... Well not much, but more than you'd expect to see in the middle of New York.

The cobblestone feels cold against my back and I feel goosebumps come to my skin.

"The Big Dipper," Alex says, pointing up to the left of us and nudging me with his other hand, letting it lay right next to mine.

I reach my hand up, parallel to his, to point at the constellation, with him. "The Big Dipper," I whisper, repeating him.

He then takes my hand softly, guiding my pointer finger to the right of the sky. "And over there is the Little Dipper," he explains. He then moves my hand, moving it slightly to the left. "Orion's Belt. And Saturn is just over there. Jupiter is here," he whispers, continuously moving my hand to point at different parts of the sky.

"How do you know all of these?" I ask as we drop our hands back down to the pavement in sync. This time though, his hand falls first, mine falling right on top of his. We don't reach to interlace our fingers or anything. I just felt my hand laying on top of his, almost feeling his heart steadily beat through the warm contact.

"After spending so many nights alone on tour, I've come to know the sky very well," Alex sighs. "It's the one thing that's always there for me. Like, everything around me is constantly changing, but when I look up to the stars, everything is where it's supposed to be, the same thing every time. It doesn't change. It comforts me."

"Can you show me more?" I ask him.

He nods lightly, taking my hand and bringing it back up into the air, pointing at another space in the night sky. "I know we can't see much cause of the pollution... Well, if you look back at the Big Dipper, it's actually a small part of the Ursa Major constellation. It's also known as the Great Bear, so it's the head and neck of the bear." He explains. "Oh, and there are The Twins. You can't really see them, but it's constellation Gemini, which connects to make a sort of 'U,'" he continues. "And that large red star is apart of the Bull constellation, which is also Taurus. Sorry, it's all not really visible, but I promise, they're all there."

I chuckle softly, "That's okay," I smile. "I like hearing you tell me about them."

"I want to take you and show you every single star in the galaxy," Alex whispers.

"Which one's that one?" I ask, pointing at the only other bright star that he hasn't identified yet.

"Willow," Alex answers. "The most beautiful name for a star."

I smile and turn my face to his just as his turns to mine. Our noses meet in the middle, touching. I don't move an inch and neither does he. I feel his breath, softly against my lips as we lay completely still.

"I could spend a thousand nights with you, and it feel like the first time every single night," Alex whispers. "You are my breath of air."

I lean forward barely a centimeter, slightly nudging me nose into his more, "You're my breath, Alex," I whisper.

"Willow," Alex mutters, reaching to brush my hair behind my ear. "Willow, you make me feel like I can take a breath and reset. You make me feel like I can breathe when the walls are closing in."

As he speaks, I can feel his lips almost slightly brush against mine. "I feel like I'm on top of the world, even if we're laying down in the middle of some random alley," he chuckles softly. "You make me feel this way. I never want it to end because when I think about not being with you, I can't... I can't breathe."

"Alex-" I murmur.

"Can I kiss you?" He asks.

My heart stops beating, and I feel my whole body fill with warmth as I respond with a slow nod.

He tilts his head up slightly to lean down into me.

Our lips meet right in the middle.

My whole body caves into him as I notice every single little detail of what's going on around me as my lips are against his, like I'm all the sudden woken up. I feel the dry crack in his lips press onto the lower left side on mine, and I feel a piece of his curl brush against my forehead and his breath brush against my upper lip. The kiss is fast, it lasts maybe two seconds, but for some reason, I felt the whole world around me in the clearest detail, at the slowest pace.

We pull away at the same time, staring at each other in silence.

I hesitate, trying to find the right words to say, but I don't feel pressured to say anything. Laying right next to him... it feels right.