He leans forward. It's not smooth — his hip catches at the angle where forward becomes negotiation, and one of his hands comes off the floor to brace against the cabinet and the motion puts his face right there, right in front of mine, close enough that I can see the stubble on his jaw that he didn't shave today and how his eyelashes are darker than his hair and—
His nose bumps mine.
We both go right.
"Sorry—"
"I went—"
"Left. One of us has to go left."
"I have a broken pelvis, I go where the pelvis allows—"
"That's not how directions—"
He kisses me.
Exceptkissesimplies a plan, something with choreography. This is — his mouth finds mine and it's off-center and then it corrects and his lips are warm and dry and slightly chapped and his hand comes up and finds the side of my face and his fingers are in my hair near my ear and his palm is against my jaw and I can feel every callus on every one of his fingers — the ones from the station, from the equipment, from a life of gripping things that mattered.
I make a sound. Small. Involuntary. The kind of sound that a person makes when what they've been imagining at the wrong distance for three weeks suddenly becomes real at zero distance and their body doesn't know whether to lean in or fall over.
I lean in.
My hands are on his chest — his T-shirt, the soft cotton, and underneath the heat of him, the steady bass-drum of his heartbeat under my palms. He's warm. He's always warm.
Three weeks of noticing his warmth from a professional distance. Now the distance is gone. The warmth is against my mouth, under my hands, everywhere I don't know what to do with.
It's nothing like I imagined. What I imagined was smooth. This is not smooth. This is his hip catching when he shifts, Bagel meowing at our feet because he's been displaced from his spot, my knee hitting the floor at a wrong angle, and his stubble scratching my chin in a way I'm going to feel for hours.
He pulls back. An inch. His forehead against mine. We're sharing the same air — shallow, fast, the kind of closeness that means the body is running systems that don't have names.
"That was—" he starts.
"Don't say terrible."
"It was architecturally flawed."
I laugh against his mouth. The laugh is warm and shaky and I feel it echo back from his lips to mine.
"Your nose," I say.
"My nose did its best."
"Your nose went right."
"Next time my nose will be better prepared."
"Next time?"
He looks at me. His hand is still on my face. His thumb moves — once, slowly — across my cheekbone. He hits mascara. He doesn't stop.
"Again," he says.
I go left. He goes right. It works.
It works how things work when two people stop performing and start colliding — messy and real and his hand slides from my face to the back of my neck and the touch makes my entire spine aware of itself.
We stay on the floor. Kissing like two people who have been starving and just remembered that food exists. Bagel inserts himself between our knees and purrs so loud the vibration travels up through my bones. One of the crutches falls from where it was leaning and clatters against the floor and we both flinch and then laugh and then his mouth is on mine again and the crutch doesn't matter, the garbage doesn't matter, the floor is cold and hard and perfect.
