In the Lion's Teeth: Second Edition

Chapter Fourteen

As you and Dona walk to the door in the dim twilight, slowly, over the course of the few minutes, your hands slide out of your pockets and your knuckles bump and your fingers awkwardly half-wrap around each other, but by the time you reach the door of your building, your palms are tight and warm in the cold evening, hands wrapped in and over and around each other. There's something so intimate about that, a kind of closeness you've never felt, and even as you turn to properly face each other you reach for Dona's other hand, too, because letting go means the day is over and you're going back upstairs to a disgusting mess of a room and a chaotic mess of a head and even though none of that ever really went away, with Dona, it was bearable. Even possible to ignore.

All of his colors are different under the lamplight: where yours are dull, almost sickly, his skin and hair and eyes are so much warmer. For a few minutes, you stand across from each other, holding hands, looking at each other, then away, then back again.

"Thank you," you finally whisper. "This whole day is... it's the nicest time I've had in years. Thank you."

He smiles. His eyes dart between yours and he opens his mouth as if to speak, but he doesn't. This time, when he leans up on his toes to kiss your cheeks, his hands are low on your shoulders, fingers just brushing, palms soft on your collarbones. His mouth is so much hotter than it was this morning, his breath damp, and after he kisses your left cheek, slow, lingering, then your right, he's still so close when he starts to move away that your chins brush and if he moved less than a centimeter forward, your noses would, too.

Dona pauses, lips just parted. You stare at each other. After a moment, he starts to pull away, but you reach out, grabbing for him, trying to keep him close, and somewhere in that movement your arm ends up on the small of his back, trembling. His eyes widen and his breath picks up, a little quicker, a little more shallow. Yours, too.

When you speak, it's clumsy, and at the same time as him.

"Can —"

"Do —"

You both stop and you chuckle a little nervously. His smile, so soft and bright and warm, is like a sunrise on an early summer morning.

His mouth hovers just above yours, and the heat of his breath and his skin is like resting your palms against brick in the summer sun, welcoming, drawing you close. Slowly, hesitantly, he brushes his lips against your chin, his eyes locked on yours, questioning.

You lean forward, pause, and swallow hard. Your eyes drop down and you bump your nose against his and hesitantly, a little awkwardly, kiss the corner of his mouth. He smiles and his gaze falls down, and when he chuckles, you smile back.

For a short while, you almost kiss him and he almost kisses you back, lips on cheeks and noses and chins and fingers resting softly against throats and shoulders, fluttering, lingering, like butterflies trying and unable to find a perch.

And then, he kisses you, and his arms are tight around you, holding you close and safe and steady. And through him, you're finally breathing clean air for the very, very first time.

It's chaste and it's soft and it lingers for ages. When Dona stands on his toes to press closer when you finally pull back, you think he wants more but you don't really know what more means, you don't know what happens, now. Finally you both open your eyes, and he's so close you can see the stardust there that both of you are made from. Bright and sharp and every color you've ever hoped to see, contained in so many single pinpoints swirling together in one place.

He's so beautiful it hurts you, deep in your chest, on a basic, primal level that you don't understand. He's beautiful in the way marble statues are beautiful, delicate and soft down to every last curve and angle. He's beautiful in the way that perfectly executed equations are beautiful, sharp and precise and specific in every variable and every line.