One Shots 3.0 [boyxboy]

Galaxies

We didn't tell anybody for a while. We didn't know how to, and we weren't sure how they'd react, so without even talking about it we just sort of... Kept it to ourselves. Like a warm and exciting secret that was just for us.

Not that things changed a whole lot. It's not like we hadn't been pretty physically affectionate before everything came out into the open; the only real difference was that the frequency and duration of our hand-holing increased and we made out sometimes.

Okay, a lot.

And everywhere.

We made out in bed, on the futon, in the kitchen, against the front door every morning before we left for work or class. I still felt weird and awkward about initiating but I didn't have to - Micah did most of the leg work.

'Hey,' he said one evening as we were sitting facing one another on opposite ends of the futon, reading over some class notes. I looked up. 'You never told me. You know. What it looks like.'

'What what looks like?'

'You and me. Together. In your head.'

'Oh my god,' I muttered, dropping my eyes back down to my notes and trying not to turn red.

'No, come on,' he insisted, scooting towards me on the couch. 'I'm doing my best here but you've had infinitely more time to think about this stuff than I have.'

'Why, what have you been thinking about?'

He shrugged one shoulder. 'Pretty vanilla stuff. Futon, kitchen floor kind of stuff. I feel like I'm the beginner here and you're the expert.'

'You're literally the first person I've ever kissed sober. I'm not an expert at anything.'

Micah laughed. 'Come on, you know what I mean. I'm just trying to get an idea of what our life was like through your eyes. It's obviously different to how I remember it and I'm just wondering what I missed.'

'Right,' I said flatly. 'But you can see how that might be embarrassing and awkward for me to talk about.'

'Or,' Micah suggested, 'really hot. Come on. You told me. You said when you can't sleep and I'm right there next to you in bed you come up with all sorts of hot and romantic things.'

'That's not exactly...' I started to say, but then rolled my eyes and gave up, knowing I wasn't going to win. 'Okay fine. But you're not to use any of this against me, ever.'

'When have I ever used anything against you? When have I ever been against you?'

'Just don't make fun of me. This is going to seem dumb and funny to you, and it is, I can see that it is, but it was also really difficult and kind of painful for me and I wasn't ever really planning on telling you any of this. Okay?'

Micah sobered and nodded, moving even closer to me and pushing his legs past mine, resting his chin on my knees, wrapping his arms around them. 'I promise.'

I took a deep breath. 'Okay. Let's see. So there was one time, it was while we were camping with Charlie and Anita. We were around fourteen, do you remember?'

Micah nodded.

'So we all spent the day hiking and seeing who could climb highest in the trees and we went swimming in that lake we found. And it was the happiest I could remember being probably ever. And that night your dad made a fire and we sat around and just talked and told stories for hours and then your parents went to bed and we stayed up and we had to sit real close because it was so cold and you said something funny and we were laughing but we didn't want to wake your parents so our heads were close together and... I just kind of thought, you know, now, it would be so perfect if it happened now.' I didn't pause for a reaction before diving into my next example. 'I guess another one would be when we were at a party at Danielle's, I think we were about sixteen, and everybody was pretty drunk and a lot of people were making out and you and I were sitting on the floor by the couch by ourselves just talking and I was about four drinks in and there was some fucked up intoxicated part of me that just thought, you know, maybe I could get away with it, just try it, see what happens, blame the alcohol. And a year later when Charlie and Anita went to visit your grandparents and left us home alone to play house for a week. We cooked dinner together every night and you literally said at one point, 'It's like we're boyfriends,' and I had to leave the room for a bit. And a few weeks after that,' I went on, getting into it and finding it difficult to stop now that I'd started, 'we were in bed and it was the middle of the night and I couldn't sleep and... you were ten inches away... and I was staring through the window like I always do but then for some reason I just rolled over and looked at you and you were asleep and I just thought, My god, he's beautiful, and it was the most intense I'd ever-'