and good evening, noble blade

For the next few lines of the course, they alternated who launched first, and on each platform, Adam carefully maneuvered himself to bump and brush against Ronan as frequently as possible. It was almost effortless—the platforms extended two feet from the trees they surrounded and while both of them were lean, neither of them were compact—but any effort he did put in was wasted anyway. On the second to last zipline, Adam barely reached the next tree when, behind him, Ronan called, “Coming in hot, Parrish.” Adam had just enough to get his feet under him and turn around before Ronan barreled into him, forcing him backward and into the tree trunk. Bark smashed into his shoulders as air left his lungs, and—instinctively—Adam wrapped his arms around Ronan. With both of them still connected to the zipline, they weren’t in clear and present danger of falling off the platform, but Adam wasn’t taking any chances. Plus, it kept Ronan crushed against him from knee to chest, all but pinning Adam to the tree, and they were so, so close.  It would have taken no effort at all for Adam to lean in and press his lips to Ronan’s.  From the way Ronan dropped his gaze to Adam’s mouth as he braced himself against Adam with one hand and the tree with the other, it didn’t seem like Ronan would mind if Adam closed that gap. Given another few seconds, he might have. Stranger things had happened. They’d always been tactile, touchy, but they’d been more hands-on than usual the past few days. Alcohol was partially to blame, but so was proximity. And they definitely hadn’t been closer than they were at that moment. Closeness Adam’s body was beginning to react to in a way that would be very embarrassing to explain in twenty seconds if he didn’t do something about it.  Then, when Adam was a heartbeat away from finally having the guts to surge into Ronan’s space and kiss him, one of the teens that had been trailing them through the course yelled at them from the platform they’d left behind. “Oh, come on,” he complained. “Make out later, newlywed guys. Move.” “Dickbag,” Ronan muttered, and he threw a middle finger over his shoulder before pushing himself off the tree and away from Adam.  “You would have done the same thing,” Adam said. Subtly, he adjusted himself in his shorts when Ronan turned to unclip his harness from the zipline.  “Yeah,” Ronan replied, and after Adam unclipped, they began inching around to the other side of the platform. “Because I’m a dickbag.”