Tav closed the laptop.
Stood.
Crossed the apartment.
Alistair set the sketchbook down on the cushion as Tav reached the couch — set it down with the unhurried deliberateness that he had been expecting this and had decided, some time ago, how they felt about it. He looked up at Tav with the warm, sharp eyes that never missed anything and the expression below those eyes that he'd stopped maintaining tonight.
Open. Waiting. Honest in the way of things that had been decided rather than performed.
Tav leaned down.
One hand on the back of the couch, one knee beside Alistair's leg, closing the distance between them with the methodical care he brought to everything that mattered — and then Alistair grabbed the front of his sweater with both hands and pulled.
They collided.
The kiss wasn't soft. It didn't have the gentle carefully managed first contact. Two weeks of held tension had nowhere to go gently, and it didn't try — it broke open immediately, hot and decisive, Alistair's fists tight in Tav's sweater and Tav's hands finding Alistair's face and jaw and kissing him back with the single-minded intensity of something that had been accumulating far too long.
Alistair made a sound against his mouth.
Low. Wanting. He had been waiting for exactly this and found it better than anticipated.
Tav kissed him harder.
The sketchbook hit the floor. Neither of them noticed. Alistair pulled him down — insistent, demanding, his hands releasing the sweater only to find his shoulders instead, pulling him onto the couch and over him with a directness that Tavmatched without thought. He settled his weight carefully — one knee between Alistair's, his hands braced on either side of his head — and felt Alistair exhale beneath him like something released.
"There he is," Alistair said breathlessly.
Tav looked down at him.
Alistair's hair was disordered from the cushions. His mouth was flushed. His hands were at Tav's hips, possessive and warm through the fabric of his sweater, and he was looking up at Tav with dark amber eyes and the pure expression of someone who had wanted this for long enough that having it still surprised them.
"You talk too much," Tav said.
"You kiss like you're irritated about wanting to."
"I might be."
Alistair laughed — breathless and warm and completely real — and pulled him back down.
This time the kiss was slower. Intentional. Alistair's fingers found the hem of Tav's sweater and slipped beneath it and the touch of his hands against Tav's back was warm and deliberate and very direct, and
Tav felt it everywhere. He pressed in closer and Alistair arched into it and made the low wanting sound again, which was becoming a problem that Tav could not stop thinking about.
"Off," Alistair said, against his jaw.
"What?"
"The sweater." He was already pulling at it. "Off."
Tav sat back and stripped the sweater. Tossed it. Looked down at Alistair, who was looking up at him with the focused warmth of someone conducting an inventory and finding everything satisfactory.
"Your turn," Tav said.
Alistair sat up and pulled his own shirt over his head in one fluid motion, and Tav's hands were on him before he'd finished. He ran his palms up the line of Alistair's ribs — carefully, checking, the medical knowledge registering and the warmth registering — and Alistair hissed and caught his breath.
"Shoulder," Tav said. Not a question.
"Old injury. Fine." His hands found Tav's arms. "Stop assessing me and—"
