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Your fingers hovered over your keyboard. You let out a heavy sigh. Kissing scenes were always the hardest to write and the easiest to run out of ways to phrase. The one you were writing was beginning to sound awkward and unnatural. How did people do this anyway? It wasn't like you had a lack of great kissing scenes to refer back to. Writers needed to read as much as they wrote, if not more.
'He pressed his lips against her soft ones. She tasted like cotton candy.'
No, too generic. Weird simile. They just had soup.
'He kissed her. His lips were pillowy soft and as sweet as puffy marshmallows.'
Was this a sign that you needed to stay away from sweets?
You read the words over a few times, chuckling to yourself before aggressively tapping the backspace key. Why was this so hard? Your mind drew a blank. You leaned back into your chair, glancing around the dimly lit apartment until your eyes finally landed on Steven sat at his desk, rereading one of his books on ancient Egyptian mythology. He was hunched over a little, index finger sliding across the yellowed pages.
A light bulb really did turn on above your head. You grinned, calling your boyfriend's name. "Steven?"
He turned to you with an exhausted smile. Sweet as ever. As sweet as a marshmallow maybe? You shook your head at yourself before you returned his smile with one of your own. The glasses perched on his nose made him look like a grandmother, and he even did that eye squinting thing that old people did while reading.
You shuffled over to him, leaning down a little towards his face. "Kiss me."
"What?" His eyes widened.
You smiled at his flustered state. It was cute that he still got so nervous about physical affection when you'd be together for a while already. And there was always a lot of kissing involved with him. His touch was still hesitant when it came to linking your hands. He usually started with wrapping his fingers around your pinky or whichever finger he found first, but slowly, he'd intertwine your hands with a flickering glance. It always took everything in you not to grin like a madman, but it was so hard when you felt your stomach flutter wildly.
"I'm having writer's block, so I just thought that, maybe, if you kissed me, I could write how it feels?" You pressed your lips together after you listened to your idea out loud. "Is that stupid? That sounded a lot better in my-"
The words died on your tongue when Steven's mouth was suddenly on yours, but it was fleeting, and he had pulled away before you could register what was happening. Even then, he sounded out of breath. Like kissing you knocked the wind out of him. That shouldn't have been as attractive as it was.
He exhaled against your lips, whispering, "Was that what you wanted?"
"Yeah." You nodded, feeling a little dazed. "Yeah, that-that was it."
He nodded along with you. "Okay, good. Great. I... I think I'm going to do that again."
"That sounds great."
Steven went right in for another kiss. His lips pressed against yours with a little more confidence, a little more passion, and a lot more eagerness. His grandma glasses smashed against your face, coaxing a giggle out of you. He looked kind of mortified after you pulled away, but you just pushed them off from his face. They dangled in your hand as you wrapped both your arms around his neck, diving back towards his lips again. His arms snaked around you, holding you closer to him.
Steven was always a clumsy kisser. You found it endearing, but you also found that he was a quick learner. It probably came from all the long nights he spent trying to keep himself awake. You weren't sure how much time had gone by, but it was enough to leave the both of you panting and gasping for air.
He looked so, so pretty like this: his lips a little swollen and a lot more red, chest heaving against yours in sync. He looked a little lost, and you wanted to laugh because maybe he was just a little lost in you. You probably looked the same as him though. You definitely felt it.
"Can we do that again?" you asked with a sharp inhale.
His eyebrows furrowed. "What about your story?"
You brushed Steven's dark curls away from his face, staring into his eyes. They were dazed and darkened, focusing solely on you as you whispered, "Well, as a writer, you need to do a lot of research to make a story good. I'd consider this research, would you not?"
"No, yeah." He swallowed, nodding. He tilted his head to the side with a thoughtful shrug. "You probably need a lot of bloody research, don't you?"
You grinned. "You get it."
Maybe you weren't going to get anything done tonight, but you don't really care. Steven definitely didn't either.
