Hale carries his and Rayner's food outside, manoeuvring the door shut with his foot. He can't do the same with the car door though. Rayner must see him coming, because it opens at his arrival. Hale ducks inside and passes over the steaming bowl of pasta.
"You should eat it quickly. Before it gets cold," he says, shutting the door behind him.
"Thanks." Rayner stirs his fork through the fusilli before spearing a few. He eats and compliments Hale on the meal, as usual, but a distant melancholy hangs over him still. Hale can only half-enjoy the pasta.
Rayner's fork clinks as he sets the bowl aside.
Voice soft, he says, "I'm going to miss this place."
Hale can tell without asking that he means the car. He nests his own unfinished bowl inside Rayner's on the back parcel shelf.
"We might not have to go," Hale says.
Rayner's lip twitches. "I think we do."
"I can make you another sanctuary," Hale offers. "Perhaps a treehouse. Or a cabin."
The beginning of a smile turns into a real one as Rayner leans his head against the seat cushion. He looks almost wistful.
"Does that mean you've secretly bypassed your protocols and chosen to stay with me?"
He stumbles on the last word. Almost like he meant to say something less personal—stay with us. Sensing a charge in the atmosphere, Hale shifts a little closer. Rayner has one knee up, the other folded under him. Close enough to touch but still guarded.
Hale says, "No. But if I were permitted the choice, it would not be a difficult one to make."
Rayner looks at him with the glow of fairy lights catching against his cheek and eyes shining. Hale knows there is a certain science to beauty. Parallel features and golden ratios that give a face appealing proportions. He can map them all, but they're insufficient to explain the way he feels when he looks at Rayner.
"We'll just have to figure something out then," Rayner says.
The car fills with a particular kind of quiet after that, Hale digesting Rayner's determination to keep him close, and an undercurrent of another conversation they've both been avoiding.
Hale's voice quakes when he finally summons the courage to use it. "Can I ask you something?"
Rayner nods.
"What happened in the locker. You're...attracted to me, aren't you?" The moment the words are out, Hale's heart leaps into his throat to replace them. He waits for the silence after to swallow him up. That wasn't the precise wording he'd intended, and now it feels presumptuous and stupid, and he wishes he could take back the last second, until Rayner finally breaks the tension.
"Well," he murmurs. "You are very attractive."
Hale continues to stare at him.
"That's a yes," Rayner says. The blush that darkens his cheeks feels warm in Hale's data streams. "But I really shouldn't have done that, right? Tried to kiss you, I mean."
Hale flinches. He hadn't expected that. A broken noise that sort of forms the word, "Oh," manages its way up his throat. "Why?"
"I mean, I guess there's no point trying to hide it... I'm so bad at talking about my feelings, Hale. But they're obvious. Aren't they?"
Hale just finds that more confusing. "No. I don't understand. Why should our encounter in the locker be a bad thing?"
Rayner casts a shy look out the window of the car into the dark garden. "Because you can't say whether you want to or not. And it isn't fair. I can't just assume you're okay with it. Or that you aren't just going along with this because I'm your symbiont, and it's what your programming tells you to do."
A little knot of pain and incredulity forms in Hale's throat. How Rayner could believe for a second that Hale's inclination to kiss him is born of some kind of programming obligation is beyond him.
Hale says, "It's not my programming, Rayner."
Rayner's eyes widen. "Oh." There's a beat where his body seems to dance to the same rhythm as Hale's. Both eyes locked on one another. Both hearts thrumming like hummingbirds. Finally, Rayner says, "But that doesn't change—You need to tell me, Hale. I can't just assume. I want—I need—more than passive acquiescence. I need your consent. Because if I did something you didn't like, and you couldn't tell me to stop..."
"But you do want to kiss me?" Hale hedges.
A deep, reflective quiet returns to the car. Hale wonders for a moment if Rayner won't answer. Too afraid that the protocols tying Hale up in knots could also tie him into doing something immoral. But then he shifts closer, leaning the few inches it takes across the car to lift a hand and touch the pads of his fingers to Hale's jaw. He traces the line of Hale's chin, then brushes an index finger lightly over Hale's lips. Rayner's gaze—blue and brown—is so intense it makes Hale shiver more than the touch.
Rayner whispers, "Yes."
"You could," Hale says.
"You know I can't—"
Panic creeps in. "Why not?" Hale can't say the sole words aloud that could make this easier. I want you. I want to tell you how I feel. I want you to kiss me and take my clothes off and wrap your legs around my hips, and I want to stay that way all night. It circles his head with no means to voice them.
Rayner's voice comes out wounded. "I told you why."
"Because I'm an android," Hale says.
"No, because I love you!" Rayner shouts. His chest rises and falls as though he's been running, and Hale...can't form words. Can't articulate how that phrase fills his heart or how wholly, fully reciprocated those feelings are. But something in the whirr of his processes flying at maximum capacity, and the impact of the words—the truth of them—sending every part of his function into overdrive lets him say—
"Then kiss me."
"Hale—"
"Just once." Rayner's restraint wavers—"Please."—Then breaks.
He leans forward, crossing the infinitesimal distance left, and their lips touch so softly, it should be a thing barely felt, but Hale feels it everywhere. Not just in his lips, but all through his body. In a shiver coursing down his spine, in warm currents of electric charge that travel from the centre of his chest to the ends of his fingers and toes. And he kisses back not so softly, trying to drink Rayner in. Rayner's hands on his cheeks. Rayner making a deep, keening noise into Hale's mouth.
Then Rayner abruptly pulls away. Hale's eyes fly open. The tense pause that follows makes Hale's ears ring. He has so few points of reference when it comes to feeling, and none which could adequately prepare him for this. Rayner looks breathless and licks his flushed lips, as if to taste Hale on them.
Hale can't resist. He surges forward and kisses Rayner again. Insistent this time, more desperate. Splaying his fingers around the nape of Rayner's neck, carding them through his hair. And Rayner's body just surrenders. Sinking into Hale, fingertips digging into Hale's shoulders. Feeling bold, Hale nips his bottom lip. In surprise or submission, Rayner's lips part, and there's a fraction of a second where the kiss deepens.
Right before Rayner puts a hand on Hale's chest and gives a gentle push.
The kiss breaks, for Hale's part, reluctantly, but Rayner smiles a little and gives him an accusing look.
