Kai• ros | Julian Brandt

11.

Magic midnight. A time when every morning bird sleeps deep and every night owl dances through the dark night.

I also danced with Julian. One, caught in the other's embrace. Kissing all over his apartment. Down a long corridor, through an open living area, ending on a comfortable couch. All without our lips being separated by even a millimeter.

We got to know each other. Otherwise than verbally. Through the touch of our lips or the tips of our fingers. I listened to him and he to me. We perceived the language of our bodies. We were learning and getting to know the way our bodies communicated with each other. No irony. No sharpness. A language that was foreign and atypical to both of us, but despite this, our bodies excelled in it, as if it were natural to them.

"We shouldn't," I breathed between kisses.

"No, we definitely shouldn't," Julian's breath tickled my lips.

"I'm not going to sleep with you, Brandt." every second word I managed to formulate in a rush of lust, Julian interrupted with a hungry kiss.

"No, you definitely not," his lips stretched into a playful smirk at the crook of my neck. He gently caressed it with his lips. He walked over it, across the collarbone, across the delicate skin, ending at the earlobe. As if he knew exactly where my sensitive spot was hiding.

"I'm serious, Brandt," I whined. My steady breathing suddenly turned eager. It was enough for Julian to bite lightly into the tender skin of my neck.

"You are," he still didn't object.

It was a game we could play until the wee hours of the morning. I would say something and he wouldn't try to negate it. A simple tactic with which he wanted to achieve his goal.

"That evening at Westfalen," I breathed, "it was just a one-time thing."

I opened my eyelids, which were closed with pleasure until that moment, and looked into Julian's eyes. There was no longer any trace of the fatigue that had been raging in them until recently. It was replaced by a boyish spark that played with his pale irises.

"No doubt it was,"

The smirk on his lips grew manifold. As if he wanted to laugh at me and my naive words that I tried to convince him of.

"Julian," I buried my face in his shoulder and whined in displeasure, "you're not making it easy at all. On the contrary, you make it hell. Like always."

I made his chest vibrate with the last words. He laughed. With gusto and to the fullest, which made me laugh too.

"And you," his hands slipped to my lower back, which he stroked lightly, "you're spoiling my fun once again, Carlotta."

"Then I think we're even."

We didn't really sleep together that night. Neither of us dared to cross again the slowly fading border that we had defined between us. Stealth kisses and passionate touches were the only thing which we tried to suppress the incessant desire pulsing through our veins.

And although my stubbornness and self-denial at least once won over alcohol-enhanced impulsiveness, I still spent the night at Julian's. I fell asleep in his apartment. On his couch. In his arms. Lulled by the warmth that radiated from him and his natural scent, which I couldn't get enough of. The last thing I remember was his lips pressing a soft kiss to my hairline.

It had been a while since I woke up next to someone or something other than the pile of pillows that decorated my bed.

I rested my tired eyes on Julian's still sleeping face. It was only a short distance from me, what's more, his full, parted lips were lightly touching my bare shoulder. I shuddered from the warm air that flowed through them and hit my skin. But it wasn't a strange or even a bad feeling, not at all. It was more like a pleasant tingling sensation spreading through my whole body.