#lh48

Three years later, the roommate and your roommate were long gone, but Lane was still here, or rather you were still with Lane, shoulder pressed against yours in a cracked vinyl booth, nursing his second beer bottle while you worked through a glass of wine you'd already forgotten the name of. That was the thing about Lane—he stuck. He texted back, he remembered your coffee order, he showed up. He was the kind of friend who made other friends look like acquaintances, and he'd carried that loyalty with him all the way to Montreal when the Habs called his name, dragging you along in his orbit because you'd gotten a job in the city two months before he did, a coincidence he still swore was fate.

"So what's the deal with Habs girl?" you asked, dragging your finger through the condensation on your glass. He'd mentioned her twice now—someone on the media team, or maybe an intern, you hadn't been paying close enough attention because he'd been vague about it in a way that made you suspect he barely knew himself. Lane had this habit of getting fixated on girls he'd spoken to exactly once, building entire narratives in his head before he'd even learned their last name. It was endearing in a slightly unhinged way, like watching a golden retriever become emotionally attached to a stranger at a dog park.

He rubbed the back of his neck, and you caught the faint pink already creeping along his cheekbones—that stupid rosy flush he got whenever the conversation veered anywhere near his love life, or lack thereof. "I don't know, there's no deal. I just—she's cool, and she actually laughed at my joke, which, you know, most people don't because I guess my delivery is—" He cut himself off, took a sip of his beer, and set it down too hard. "I overthink it. Every time. I get in my head and then I don't text back, or I text back too much, or I say something weird, and then it just fizzles." His mouth did that thing where it pressed into a soft, closed line, like he was physically holding back whatever embarrassing admission was queued up next. His big blue eyes flicked to yours and then away, quick, like he'd touched something hot.

"Okay, so text her back like a normal human being. Say hey, want to grab a drink? Five words. You can handle five words, Hutson." You nudged his knee under the table. "You handle NHL defensemen."

"That's different. Hockey makes sense. Hockey has a system." He leaned back against the booth and stretched one arm along the top of it, his fingers dangling near your shoulder, a posture you'd seen him default to a thousand times when he was trying to look more casual than he felt. "The other stuff doesn't—it doesn't have a system. And I just feel like I'm behind, you know? Like everyone my age has all this experience and I'm still—" He made a vague gesture with his free hand, something between a wave and a surrender. "—figuring out the basics."

You raised an eyebrow. "The basics."

"Yeah."

"Lane."

"What?"

"Are you telling me you've never—" You lowered your voice, leaning in, and his face went from pink to genuinely red, fast, the color blooming across his nose and up toward his ears in a way that would've been funny if it weren't so sincerely pathetic. His dirty blond hair fell slightly across his forehead and he pushed it back with an agitated hand, jaw tight, those bright eyes darting around the bar like he was checking for eavesdroppers before they landed on you again, almost accusatory, like you'd cornered him on purpose.

"Can you not say it that loud?" His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, which somehow made it louder than if he'd just spoken normally, the kind of hush that broadcasted secret to anyone paying attention. "Yes. Okay? Yes. I've never—you know. I've done stuff, I'm not a monk, I just haven't—" He exhaled sharply through his nose. "It hasn't happened. And it's not for lack of, like, wanting it to happen. It's just—every time it gets close, I freeze up, because what if I'm bad at it? What if she can tell I don't know what I'm doing and it's weird and then the whole thing is ruined before it even starts?" He picked the label off his beer, peeling it in slow, anxious strips. "At least in hockey I know when I'm making a mistake. There's tape. You can review tape."

"You want sexy tape," you said flatly, and he shot you a look so withering it almost covered up the fact that his ears had gone scarlet. You laughed, pressing your hand over your mouth, and his expression cracked into that reluctant little half-smile, the one where his lips curved but he was clearly trying not to let them, like smiling would mean admitting the whole thing was as ridiculous as it sounded. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Keep going. You were having a crisis."

"I'm not having a crisis, I'm just—it'd be easier if I knew what I was doing. If someone could just—" He stopped. Picked at the label again. His knee bounced under the table, a rapid nervous tick you recognized from every exam he'd ever stressed over, every game he'd been scratched for, every time his brain was running calculations he didn't want to show. "Like. Practice, or whatever."

The word hung there. Practice. You took a slow sip of your wine and watched him over the rim of the glass, the way he was very carefully not looking at you now, his gaze fixed on the bartender's shelf like the top-shelf whiskey held the answer to his problems. His jaw had that tight, angular set to it, the taper toward his chin sharp in the low light, and you could see the muscle working there like he was physically chewing back the next sentence. There was something almost furious about how still he was trying to be, like if he held himself rigid enough you might not notice the blush that had taken over his entire face, or the way his fingers had gone white-knuckled around his bottle.

"Lane."

"Hm."

"Are you asking me to sleep with you?"

"I didn't say that." He said it fast, too fast, and then immediately winced at himself, dragging both hands down his face with a groan. "Okay. No. Sort of. I don't—I'm not trying to be a creep about it, I just—" He dropped his hands and finally looked at you, really looked at you, and beneath all the mortification there was something almost painfully earnest in those pale eyes, the kind of raw honesty that made your chest do something inconvenient. "You're the only person I can actually talk to about this stuff. You're the only person who doesn't make me feel like an idiot for not knowing things. And you're—" He stopped again, swallowed, and the pink on his cheeks deepened into something almost magenta. "You're hot. You know you're hot. I've always thought you were hot, and I know that's a weird thing to say right now but it's true, and if I had to do this with someone, I'd want it to be someone I actually trust, and that's—you. It's always been you."

Your wine glass sat forgotten in your hand. The bar noise—the clinking glasses, the low murmur of conversation, whatever generic soft rock playlist was filtering through the speakers—faded into a dull roar at the edges of your awareness, and for a long moment you just sat there, studying the flush on his face, the way his prominent ears had gone so red they practically glowed, the slight part of his lips where he'd run out of words and was clearly waiting for you to either put him out of his misery or put him through the floor. He looked terrified. He looked like he'd just given up a three-on-one in overtime and was waiting for the horn.

"You've been sitting on that for how long?" you finally said, and his expression cycled through about four different stages of panic before settling on confused relief that you hadn't immediately shot him down.

"A while," he admitted quietly. "A... significant while."

"A significant while," you repeated. "Lane, we've been friends for three years."

"I'm aware of the timeline, thanks."

"And you're just—"

"I didn't want to mess it up! I still don't want to mess it up, which is why this is probably the dumbest thing I've ever—" He cut himself off, pressing his lips together in that tight, soft line, and you could practically see the internal argument happening behind his eyes, the part of him that wanted to keep talking wrestling with the part that knew he'd already said too much. His knee was still bouncing. And he was still looking at you with that wide, earnest, slightly desperate expression, like you held the answer to something he'd been agonizing over for months and he was genuinely prepared for you to laugh in his face.

You set your wine glass down carefully. "So let me get this straight," you said, and the corner of his mouth twitched—nervous, barely there, that involuntary almost-smile. "You want me to teach you how to have sex so you can go sleep with the media girl."

"When you put it like that—"

"That's literally what you said."

"I said it better than that, I thought I said it better than that—" He rubbed a hand over his jaw, his straight eyebrows drawing together in genuine anguish. "I'm saying—I don't know what I'm saying. I'm saying I trust you, and I think you're beautiful, and I've thought about this, about you, more than I probably should've as your best friend, and if there's even a chance you'd be into it, I wanted to just—I had to put it out there. Before I lost my nerve completely." He paused, exhaled. "Which I think I'm losing. Right now. Actually."

"Your nerve or your mind?"

"Both. Both is fine."

You studied him for another long moment—the way his blush had reached down his neck now, disappearing under the collar of his shirt, the way his hand was trembling slightly where it rested on the table, the way his eyes kept darting to your mouth and then snapping away like he'd been caught doing something criminal. Three years of movie nights and group chats and airport pickups and that one time he'd driven four hours in a snowstorm because you'd called him crying about your ex, and here he was, flushed to his ears in a sticky Montreal bar, basically telling you he'd been half in love with you since college and hadn't said a single word about it until this exact second. It was the most Lane thing you'd ever witnessed. It was so Lane it almost hurt.

"You're unbelievable," you told him, and his face fell so fast you almost felt guilty. "Relax. I didn't say no."

The party a few weeks laterhad the loose, sprawling energy of a Saturday night with no morning skate tomorrow—someone's Bluetooth speaker propped on a patio table playing music too loud for the residential neighbourhood, a cooler half-full of whatever beer whoever's house this was had grabbed on the way home, and most of the defensive corps spread across camping chairs and overturned buckets around a fire pit that was putting out more smoke than heat. 

You'd been inside for a while, trapped in a conversation with Cole Caufield about something to do with his dog that had somehow turned into a twenty-minute photo scroll, and by the time you escaped through the back sliding door, the cool air hit you like a wall, sharp and sudden after the stuffy warmth of bodies and kitchen lighting. The backyard was lit by the fire and a single floodlight on the garage, casting everyone in flickering orange and deep shadow, and it took your eyes a second to adjust before you found Lane.

He was slouched in one of those low camping chairs near the fire, knees spread wide, a red Solo cup balanced on his thigh, head tipped back slightly while Nick Suzuki said something next to him that made Juraj Slafkovský laugh loud enough to carry across the yard. Lane's cheeks were flushed—that deep, warm pink he got from a combination of alcohol and cold, the color sitting high on his cheekbones and spreading down toward his jaw, making his eyes look almost absurdly bright in the firelight. 

He'd been drinking steadily since you'd arrived, you knew, because you'd watched him go through three beers in the first hour alone, that loose, giggly energy taking over as the night went on, his laughs getting louder, his body getting more animated. He was drunk. Not sloppy, not slurring, but drunk in that warm, golden, touchy way that made him loop his arm around whoever was closest and press his cold nose against their shoulder and tell them he loved them, man, seriously, you're one of my favourite people, a confession he'd already bestowed on three different teammates tonight.

He spotted you the second you stepped onto the patio, and his whole face changed—lit up in that unguarded, uncomplicated way it did when he was drunk and saw something he liked, his lips pulling into that soft, closed-mouth smile, one hand lifting off the armrest to wave you over. "Hey, hey, hey—" He sat up straighter, or tried to, the chair creaking under the shift in his weight. "Where'd you go? I was looking for you. Cole stole you."

"Cole showed me forty pictures of Olive," you said, picking your way across the grass in shoes that were absolutely not designed for backyard terrain. The ground was cold and slightly muddy from an earlier rain, and you could feel the damp seeping through the soles as you navigated around Kaiden Guhle's outstretched legs and an abandoned cup someone had left on the ground. Lane's chair was one of the flimsy collapsible ones, the kind rated for maybe two hundred pounds on a good day, and he was already shifting in it, making room that didn't really exist, his free hand reaching for you with grabby, slightly uncoordinated fingers.

"Sit," he said, like it was obvious, like it was the most natural suggestion in the world, and you didn't even think about it, not past the quick mental calculation of the chair's structural integrity versus the alternative of trekking back inside for a seat, before you turned and dropped onto his lap, sideways, your legs draped over the armrest. The chair groaned. Lane's free arm came around your waist immediately, his hand settling flat against your hip, fingers curling into the fabric of your jeans to steady you, and he exhaled against the back of your head—a slow, beer-warm breath that stirred your hair. "There," he murmured, satisfied, like you'd solved something for him. "Better."

"You're going to break this chair," Nick said from the next seat over, not looking up from his phone, the corner of his mouth twitching.

"The chair is fine." Lane gave you a little squeeze, pulling you tighter against him, and you felt the exact moment it hit—the stiffening beneath you, gradual and then sudden, the unmistakable hardness pressing up against the underside of your thigh. He went rigid for half a second, his breath catching against your hair, and then his arm tightened around your waist like he was trying to hold you still, like if he could just keep you from shifting around it would somehow go unnoticed. His hips tilted slightly, an involuntary adjustment that probably made it worse, and you felt his forehead drop to the back of your shoulder, his nose pressing into the crook of your neck.

"Fuck," he breathed, barely audible, the word hot and damp against your skin. His fingers dug into your hip a little harder, not painfully, just desperate, and you could feel the rapid expansion of his chest against your back, his breathing gone shallow and uneven. He smelled like beer and cologne and woodsmoke, that sharp-sweet mix that was distinctly him, and beneath it the clean laundry scent of his hoodie, one you'd stolen so many times it probably should've been yours by now. His mouth was so close to your neck that you could feel the heat of his lips, not quite touching, just hovering there against the sensitive skin below your ear, and his hand on your hip was trembling faintly, a fine vibration running through his fingers like he was physically restraining himself from something.

You tilted your head, letting your lips brush the shell of his ear, and felt his whole body go tense beneath you—every muscle locked, his hand on your thigh squeezing reflexively, his breathing suspended like he was physically bracing for whatever you were about to say. "You're so hard right now," you whispered, barely a breath against the curve of his ear, and the sound he made was devastating—a high, thin whimper caught behind his teeth, his forehead dropping forward until it pressed against your temple, his eyelashes fluttering against your skin.

"I know," he whispered back, so soft you almost missed it, his voice cracked and thinned out to nothing. His ears were burning under your fingertips where your hand had come up to rest on the side of his head, the cartilage hot and flushed, and he turned into your touch like a cat, nuzzling, his nose skimming your jaw. "I know, I can't—it won't—"

"Can't what?"

Another giggle, breathy and sweet and wrecked, his lips dragging against your earlobe as he shook with it. "Stop," he managed. "Can't stop."

You traced your fingertip along the rim of his ear, slow, and felt him shiver full-body beneath you, a tremor running from his chest all the way down to his legs. "Do you want me to get up?"

"No." Immediate, urgent, his arm tightening around your middle like you might vanish. His mouth found your neck again, pressing a single, clumsy, open-mouthed kiss just below your ear, and you felt him swallow hard against your shoulder. "No, don't go."

"Then be good," you murmured against his ear, and the sound that pulled out of him—a soft, punched-out moan that he muffled into your hair—made heat pool low in your stomach so fast it almost made you dizzy. His fingers were trembling on your thigh, his hips pinned deliberately still beneath you like he was holding himself together through sheer force of will, and when you scratched your nails lightly through the short hair at his nape, his whole body sagged against you, boneless, a whimper escaping that was too quiet for anyone else to hear.

"'M trying," he breathed, so soft, so earnest, his pink lips barely moving against your skin. "I'm being so good."

"Mhm," you confirmed, and he giggled again—sweet and high and drunk, his breath hot and shaky against your neck, his arms wrapping around you tighter, pulling you flush against his chest like you were something precious he was terrified of dropping.

You let your nails drag a little slower down the back of his neck, barely any pressure, just a lazy scratch that made his breath come in quick little punches against your collarbone. "You're shaking," you giggled against his ear, and he laughed too—this helpless, breathy, hiccuppy sound that vibrated through his chest and into your back, his arms squeezing around your middle.

"Shut up," he whispered, but there was zero bite to it, his voice all soft and honeyed and ruined, his mouth curved into a smile you could feel pressed against your throat. "'M not shaking, you're shaking."

"Absolutely not, I'm very calm."

"You're—" He giggled again, high and sweet, his hips jerking once beneath you before he caught himself, a full-body shudder running through him that made the camping chair creak ominously. "Oh my god, don't—don't do the nail thing again, I can't—"

"Do the nail thing?" You did it again immediately, dragging your fingertips up the nape of his neck into the short hair above his collar, and his whole body bowed forward, his face crushing into the curve of your neck, a whimper spilling out of him that was so pitchy and desperate it made you laugh out loud. "That nail thing?"

"You're so mean to me," he breathed, but his arms were wrapped so tight around you, his hands fisted in the fabric of your hoodie, and his cock was throbbing against your thigh in steady, insistent pulses that you could feel through three layers of fabric. He was so close it was almost funny, this big, flushed, trembling mess of a boy with his face buried in your neck, breathing like he'd just done a full shift in overtime.

"Poor Lane," you cooed against his ear, grinning, and he let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his teeth catching your earlobe gently, a playful nip that made your stomach flip. "You're gonna be okay."

"'M not gonna be okay, 'm gonna—" He paused. Swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing against your shoulder. "I'm really close," he admitted in the tiniest voice you'd ever heard come out of a big strong hockey player, almost a whisper, a confession, his lips barely moving against the skin below your jaw. "Like really, really close, and I can't—it's gonna—"

"That's okay." You scratched behind his ear, slow, and he whimpered, actual tears-adjacent, his thighs tensing hard beneath you. "It's okay, baby. It’s natural."

The word landed and he broke—a shattered little moan, muffled into your neck, his hips stuttering up against you in two, three helpless little rolls that he clearly couldn't control, his fingers going white-knuckled in the hoodie fabric. "Don't call me that," he gasped, but the way his whole body surged against you told a very different story, his breathing gone ragged and thin. "Don't—oh god—fuck—"

"Baby," you repeated, sweet as candy right against his ear, and he laughed—this crazy, desperate, teary giggle—and his hand flew down to grip your thigh hard, anchoring himself, his hips pressing up and holding there, trembling, his breath frozen in his chest.

"I hate you," he whispered, voice cracking completely on the second word. "'M gonna—I'm actually gonna—oh no."

"Oh no," you echoed, giggling, pressing a kiss to his hot, red ear, and he shuddered so hard the chair legs scraped against the patio stones.

His whole body went rigid beneath you, locked, frozen, every muscle pulled taut, and then a sound came out of him that you'd never heard before, this high, cracked, whimpering moan that he tried to smother into your neck and mostly failed, his lips open and shaking against your skin. His hips jerked up once, hard, and then again, a helpless stuttered grind that pressed the full hard length of him against your thigh while his fingers dug into you like he was falling off something. 

"Oh—oh fuck, oh fuck—" His voice broke into pieces, thin and pitchy and barely above a whisper, each word pushed out of him on a shaky exhale, and you felt the exact moment it hit—the pulsing, the throbbing, his cock kicking against you in rapid, desperate waves while his breathing stopped entirely, his whole body shuddering through it.

You just held still, your fingers in his hair, your lips against his burning ear, feeling him shake apart beneath you. "There you go," you murmured, soft and teasing and warm. "There you go, baby."

"Stop, stop," he whimpered, but he was grinding up against you still, these slow, involuntary rolls of his hips that he clearly had zero control over, riding it out in tiny hitching movements while his breath came back in ragged, punched-out gasps. His hand on your thigh was squeezing rhythmically, unconsciously, his fingers flexing with each pulse, and you could feel the warmth spreading through the denim against your ass—wet, obvious, a dark spot blooming across the front of his jeans that he absolutely could not hide. He laughed against your neck, this wrecked, disbelieving, mortified little sound, his whole body going loose and boneless as the tension drained out of him all at once. "Oh my god."

"Feel better?" you giggled, scratching lightly at his nape, and he shuddered through the last aftershocks, his cock still giving weak, slowing twitches against your thigh.

"I hate you so much," he whispered, his voice absolutely destroyed—hoarse and thin and wobbly, muffled into the curve of your neck where his face was still buried, his cheeks radiating heat like a furnace. He was smiling, though, and you could feel it. Those soft pink lips curved against your skin in that helpless, embarrassed, giddy grin he got when something terrible and wonderful had just happened to him. 

A week later, Lane opened the apartment door with that crooked half-smile, the hallway light catching the faint blush on his cheeks like he’d run here even though it was his place. “Hey,” he said, leaning in the frame, one palm flat against the wood, hair a little mussed from whatever nervous pacing he’d been doing before you knocked. His eyes flickered over you like he was taking inventory, and then softened, “You came. C’mere.”

His fingers slid between yours the second you were inside, cool and careful, squeezing once before he tugged you down the short hallway past the living room, straight into his bedroom like there’d never been a question about where you were going. His bed was unmade, blankets kicked halfway off like he’d been rolling around trying to figure out what to say, and he just flopped onto it sideways, pulling you down with him, your joined hands landing smack in the middle of his chest. “Okay, so listen,” he said, breathless from nothing, already scooting closer, “I found this band last year and you have to listen because they’re the only thing that keeps my heart rate under 110.”

You rolled your eyes fondly. “I’m already here, you don’t have to sell me with hipster playlists.”

“They’re not hipster, they’re just—niche.” He reached up to tap his phone, the speakers on his nightstand filling the room with some dreamy, reverb-heavy guitar wash that sounded like rain on a tin roof. “See? It’s calming. This is my calming playlist. You’re on my calming playlist, by the way.”

“You put me on a playlist?”

“Yeah, it’s just—” He squeezed your hand, shutting his eyes like the music was seeping straight into his ribs. “It’s you and this band and a… video of puppies in sweaters. That’s the vibe.”

You shifted closer automatically, shoulder pressed to his, your free hand resting on the rumpled duvet as the music washed through the room—soft vocals, echoing guitars, something about the sound folding around you both like a blanket. Lane turned his head toward you, still holding your joined hands to his chest, the steady thump of his heart under your palm. “This part,” he whispered, even though there was no reason to whisper, “listen to the baseline here. It drops out and then comes back in the left channel, do you hear it?” He tilted his chin up, eyes wide, searching your face like he was waiting to see if you caught it, and his words tumbled out, sweet and excited. “They do this little syncopated thing, and every time it hits I swear my breathing gets easier.”

“You’re such a nerd,” you said, smiling, but you turned toward him too, really listening, and when the bass slid back in exactly like he promised, you felt it through his chest, the way his breathing actually did smooth out beneath your hand. Lane grinned, a boyish, slightly smug curve of those bright pink lips. “See? I told you.”

“You’re adorable,” you replied, and he made a face but didn’t let go, fingers tightening around yours until your knuckles pressed into his sternum. He rolled onto his side and tugged you with him, your joined hands tucked between you, his other arm slipping under your neck to hook around your shoulders. The bed dipped, the mattress sagging, and suddenly you were nose-to-nose with him, breathes mingling, the music turning into a hazy soundtrack to the warmth thrumming between your bodies. Lane’s hair fell across his forehead and you reached up without thinking, sweeping it aside, your fingertips lingering on his temple. He sucked in a breath, soft, then laughed quietly. “This is nice,” he murmured.

“Yeah.” You let him tug you back again until you were both staring at the ceiling for a few beats, the track fading into another similarly dreamy song. He shifted, rolling to his back and dragging the duvet up over your legs, then toed off his socks without releasing your hand.

“Okay, so smoothing things over,” he said at last, turning on his side again, draping an arm across your stomach as he scooted closer. “Step one: I tell you I am not, in fact, dying of humiliation about the backyard situation.”

“You are dying of humiliation, you mean.”

“Oh, come on.” He nudged his forehead against your shoulder, hiding his face for a second, then slid his cheek along your upper arm, the motion an unspoken question. You answered by curling toward him, rolling onto your side so he could slip an arm around your waist and pull you against him. His thigh slotted behind yours, his chest pressed to your back, and he exhaled, nose buried in your hair. “Okay, fine, maybe a little humiliation. But also… I’ve basically been replaying it on loop whenever I try to sleep, and it’s… not the worst memory to have.”

“Lane,” you chided, even as your fingers found his and threaded together again, trapping his hand against your stomach. “You said we were smoothing things over, not making them worse.”

“Maybe worse is better.” He pressed a kiss to the back of your shoulder—soft, quick, tentative—then laughed into the fabric of your shirt. “Kidding. Mostly.”

You rolled onto your back and he followed, momentum carrying him halfway over you until you ended up staring up at him, his arms braced on either side of your head. The look in his eyes was so open it made your chest ache—no bravado, no jokes, just the raw, earnest way he’d always looked at you when he wanted to be understood.

"Hi," you said, and his face went so soft it was almost painful to look at, his eyes going half-lidded and warm, his mouth curving into that gentle closed-lip smile.

"Hi," he whispered back, barely audible over the guitar reverberating through the speakers, and then you attacked.

Your fingers found his ribs before he could react, digging in just below his armpits where you knew—he'd told you once, drunk, during a movie marathon—he was devastatingly, catastrophically ticklish. Lane shrieked, this high-pitched, undignified sound that was absolutely not becoming of an NHL defenseman, and his whole body jerked sideways, arms giving out so he collapsed half on top of you, half into the mattress. "No—no—don't—" He was laughing before he could even form words, that silly, helpless, breathless giggle that made his whole face scrunch up, his nose wrinkling, his eyes squeezing shut, and he grabbed weakly at your wrists but his coordination was gone, demolished, his fingers slipping off you every time you found a new spot.

"You said you wanted to smooth things over," you said, grinning up at him as he squirmed against you, writhing, his hips twisting away from your hands like he could escape through the mattress. "This is smoothing. This is peak smoothing."

"This is—oh my god, stop, not the hip thing—" He dissolved into another peal of laughter when your fingers dug into the sliver of skin above his waistband where his shirt had ridden up, his whole body arching, and in the thrashing his thigh pressed hard between yours and you felt it. The shift. The way his giggles stuttered for just a second, his breath catching on an inhale, his hips rolling forward once before he caught himself. His laughter came back but it was different now—thinner, breathier, threaded through with something else, and when you tickled him again right at the curve of his waist he moaned. Actually moaned, this soft, involuntary sound that got swallowed halfway by a giggle, the two noises tangling together into something so sweet and confused it made your stomach flip.

"Are you—right now?" You let your hands go still on his ribs, palms flat against the warm skin beneath his shirt, and he buried his face in your neck with a groan that was equal parts mortified and helpless.

"Don't," he mumbled into your collar, his voice cracked and smile-ruined, his lips moving against your skin. "Don't say it, I can't—you were tickling me and I just—it doesn't—it means nothing, it's a reflex—"

"It doesn't mean nothing," you corrected, your voice gentler now, your thumb tracing a slow circle against his ribs where your hands had gone still beneath his shirt. He shivered at the touch, a full-body tremor that ran through him and into you, and his face stayed buried in your neck, his breathing gone uneven and shallow, each exhale hot and unsteady against your collarbone. "Lane. Look at me."

He took his time, dragging his face up from the crook of your neck inch by inch like he was bracing for something, and when his eyes finally met yours they were so wide and bright and conflicted it almost made you laugh—pupils blown, cheeks flushed that deep rosy pink, his lips parted and damp. "Hi," he said again, barely a whisper, like he'd forgotten every other word he knew.

"Hi." You smiled, and he exhaled a shaky little laugh, his forehead dropping against yours. His hands had found your waist at some point, fingers curled into the fabric of your shirt, and they tightened now, pulling you closer with a hesitant, questioning pressure that asked permission without asking. You shifted beneath him and he bit his lip, hard, a tiny furrow appearing between his straight eyebrows. "What's going on in there?"

"I just—" He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing, and his eyes darted down to your mouth and then back up so fast it was almost comical, a guilty flash of blue. "I had a whole plan. I was gonna make tea and put on the calming playlist and tell you how much I like talking to you and how I think about your brain constantly, like, the things you say to me, the way you remember stuff, and now I'm—" His hips pressed forward against yours, involuntary, and he squeezed his eyes shut with a groan. "I'm a mess. I'm such a mess, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." You cupped his jaw, your thumb brushing over the warm skin just below his ear, and he leaned into it instantly, nuzzling, his lashes fluttering. "You can like my brain and also want to fuck me. Those aren't mutually exclusive."

He laughed, breathless, squeaky, and his eyes opened again, crinkled at the corners with that helpless affection. "You say stuff like that and I just—" He shook his head against your palm, his mouth falling open on a silent exhale as you scratched behind his ear, that same spot that destroyed him every time. "It's not fair. I had talking points."

You rolled your hips, just once, a slow deliberate shift that pressed him onto his back, and he went easily, boneless, pulling you with him so you ended up straddling his waist, your weight settling over the hard line of him straining through his sweatpants. His breath punched out of him in a sharp, punched-out gasp, his hands flying to your thighs and gripping hard, fingers dimpling the soft denim. "Oh," he breathed, staring up at you with those big blue eyes gone glassy and stunned, his chest heaving beneath you. "Oh, that's—you're—"

"Still want to talk about my brain?" you asked, grinning, and he barked out a laugh that dissolved into a whimper when you shifted your weight, his head tipping back into the pillow, the long line of his throat exposed, his pulse hammering visibly beneath his jaw.

"I always want to talk about your brain," he managed, voice thin and cracking at the edges, his thumbs tracing slow circles on your thighs like he was trying to ground himself. "I literally—I wrote things down. On a sticky note. I have a sticky note."

"You have a sticky note about my brain?"

"It's on the fridge, it says ask her about that podcast she mentioned and then underneath I wrote she's so smart it makes me insane and then I—can you stop moving for a second—" His hips bucked up against you and he clamped his jaw shut, eyes squeezing closed, a muscle in his cheek jumping. "I can't think when you—you're sitting right on—"

"Right on what, Lane?" Sweet, teasing, your palms flat on his chest, feeling his heart slamming against your hands like it was trying to escape.

He opened his eyes and looked up at you, and the expression on his face was devastating—raw and wanting and so tender it ached somewhere behind your sternum, his pink lips swollen from where he'd been biting them, his cheeks burning, his hair fanned out on the pillow like a halo. "You know what," he whispered, and his hands slid from your thighs up to your waist, pulling you down toward him with a gentle, insistent pressure. "Just—come here, please, I wanna—"

You let him pull you down, your hair curtaining around his face, and he met you halfway—his mouth landing on yours clumsy and eager and warm, a soft little "mmph" escaping him the second your lips touched. He kissed like he did everything else, earnest and slightly off-rhythm, his lips sweet and pressed firm against yours like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth through sheer focus. His hands slid up your sides, trembling, one settling on the curve of your ribs while the other tangled into your hair, and he made this tiny breathless sound against your lips—half sigh, half whimper—his hips tilting up beneath you, chasing friction he couldn't help wanting.

"Slow down," you murmured against his mouth, smiling, and he pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes hazy, his lips wet and swollen.

"I'm going slow," he whispered, offended, and you kissed him again just to feel the way he melted into it, his whole body going pliant beneath you, his chest rising and falling in rapid uneven bursts. His tongue touched yours, tentative, curious, and he groaned into your mouth—this quiet, shattered little sound—his fingers tightening in your hair. You rolled your hips down against him in a slow grind and he broke the kiss with a gasp, his head falling back, throat exposed, a blush crawling down beneath the collar of his shirt. "Oh god, I—wait—"

"Too much?"

"No, it's—" His hand left your hair and dropped to his own lap, reaching down to adjust himself, palm pressing against the aching line of him through his sweatpants, and you caught his wrist before he got there, pinning it gently to the mattress beside his head. His eyes went wide, pupils swallowing the blue, and he stared up at you with his lips parted, chest heaving. "What are you—"

You replaced his hand with yours, your palm pressing flat against the hard heat of him through the thin cotton, and Lane's entire body seized. His back arched off the mattress, a high thin moan tearing out of him before he could catch it, his free hand grabbing fistfuls of the duvet. "Oh—oh fuck—" His voice cracked in half, his hips bucking up into your hand, and you held them down with your weight, pressing him into the mattress while you traced the outline of him with your fingers. He was throbbing beneath your touch, hot and hard and straining against the fabric, and every tiny movement of your hand pulled another sound out of him—whimpers and shaky exhales and these soft, pitchy little whines that made heat pool low in your belly.

"You're so sensitive," you murmured, and he laughed, his eyes squeezing shut.

"I know, I can't—I told you, I can't help it, it's—" Another whimper when you pressed your palm down and held it there, just the steady pressure, feeling him pulse against you. "Please, that's—I'm gonna—"

He shuddered beneath you, his hand in the duvet going slack, all the fight draining out of him like water. When you pulled back to look at him his face was devastated—flushed to his ears, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, his expression so open and awed and overwhelmed it looked almost like pain. "You're so beautiful," he whispered, like he couldn't not say it, like the words were being pulled out of him involuntarily. "How are you—why are you—"

"Why did you invite me over, Lane?"

"I wanted to—" His breath hitched as you stroked him through the fabric, slow and easy. "Wanted to talk to you, wanted to tell you I like you so much it makes me stupid, wanted to—ah—wanted to ask if you'd maybe want to get dinner sometime, like a real—like a date, and now you're—" He gestured vaguely at your hand on him, at the whole situation, and let out a helpless, giggle-whimper hybrid. "This wasn't the plan."

"The plan sounds boring."

"It was a good plan—" You squeezed gently and his sentence dissolved into a moan, his head rolling on the pillow, his hips twitching beneath you. "Okay, the plan's gone, the plan is dead, you killed it, I don't care anymore, just—" His hand found your wrist, not pulling you away, just holding on, his fingers wrapped around it like a lifeline. "Don't stop. Please don't stop."

You reached down and tugged the waistband of his sweatpants down, just enough, and he helped you with shaking hands, lifting his hips, and then you were touching him for real—skin on skin, your fingers wrapping around the warm, hard length of him, slick at the tip. He was modest, proportional, flushed pink and pretty and twitching in your grip, and you stroked him slowly, base to tip, feeling him throb in your palm. Lane made a sound like he was dying—a wrecked, sobbing exhale—and his whole body went taut, his abs clenching.

You leaned over him, still stroking slow and easy, and murmured, "You've got such a sweet little cock, Lane. Bet you've been nervous about showing it to anyone, huh?" You knew you were teasing him, winding him up, but the way his eyes went wide and his lips parted told you he wasn't upset—he was melting into it, into the way you were handling him like something precious.

"Y-yeah," he admits, voice cracking, and he lets out a shaky laugh. "S'not... I mean, it's not impressive, I know—" His hips stuttered up into your grip, contradicting every word, and his hand flew to his mouth, pressing the back of it against his lips like he could physically hold in the sounds he was making. His eyes were wet now, glassy, his chest heaving, and through his fingers you could see those pink lips trembling. "Is it—are you—do you care? That it's not—"

"Do I care?" you repeated, letting the question hang, your thumb sweeping over the head of him in a slow circle that made his whole body jolt. He was leaking into your palm, slick and hot, and each slow stroke spread the wetness down his shaft in a way that made the glide impossibly smooth. You hummed, a thoughtful little sound, like you were actually considering it. "Mm. No."

"No?" he breathed, the word cracking in half, his hand falling away from his mouth so he could look at you properly. His eyes were so wide, so wet, so desperately searching your face for the truth that it made something ache behind your ribs.

"No, Lane. I don't care." You squeezed him gently, feeling him pulse in your fist, and his stomach clenched, a whimper slipping out—high and thin and helpless. "I think it's perfect. I think it's cute. I think it fits in my hand exactly right, see?" You adjusted your grip, fingers wrapping snug around him, and stroked down slow enough that he could feel every inch of the pull. His mouth fell open and a sound came out of him that wasn't a word, just a raw, shaken exhale, his hips canting up like his body was trying to chase your hand.

"'S not cute," he managed, voice thin and wobbly and completely without conviction, a weak protest that dissolved into a moan when you twisted your wrist on the upstroke. "Oh—that's—you can't just say it's—fuck—" His head pressed back into the pillow, the tendons in his neck pulled taut, his blush spreading down beneath the collar of his shirt in a blotchy, desperate pink. His hand found your thigh again and gripped, fingers dimpling into the denim, holding on like he'd float away if he let go.

"Why not?"

"Because cute is for—" He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "—puppies, and, and your laugh, and the way you—it's not supposed to be for my—" Another stroke, slow and deliberate, and his sentence crumbled apart, his train of thought derailing so completely he just made a frustrated, whimpery sound in the back of his throat. "I can't think when you do that."

"Mm." You dragged your thumb across the slit, featherlight, and his hips bucked so hard the mattress creaked, a punched-out moan escaping before he could catch it. His free hand flew up and grabbed the sheets, knuckles going white, his arm trembling. "You don't need to think."

A breathy, hiccuppy laugh escaped him, his stomach fluttering. "This is—this is a lot, I'm—this is really happening?"

"This is really happening." You leaned down and pressed a kiss to the hinge of his jaw, your lips trailing warmth across his skin, and he turned into it instantly, nuzzling against your face like he couldn't get close enough. His breathing was ragged against your cheek, each exhale a shaky, damp rush, and when you squeezed him on the downstroke he whimpered right against your ear—this tiny, pitchy, devastated sound that made your whole body go warm.

"I've thought about this," he admitted in a whisper, like a confession, his lips moving against your temple. "So many times. Not even—not just this, but like, you being close, and touching me, and looking at me the way you're looking at me right now, and I always thought I'd be so embarrassed but I'm just—" He let out a shaky exhale that broke into a moan when you thumbed over his tip again, his thighs tensing beneath you. "—I'm just so happy, I think? Is that weird? That I'm happy?"

"That's not weird, baby. I'm happy too..."

The words landed on him like a warm hand pressing down on a trembling animal, and you felt the change immediately—the frantic tension in his body loosening, his grip on the sheets going slack, his breathing slowing from those ragged, desperate gasps into something deeper and steadier, though still uneven, still hitching every time your hand moved on him. His eyes found yours and held there, glassy and awed and so deeply soft it made your chest ache, and his lips curved into that small, closed-mouth smile—the real one, not the nervous one—slow and disbelieving and sweet. "Yeah?" he murmured, his voice gone quiet and thin and wondering, like you'd just handed him something he'd been too afraid to ask for.

"Yeah." You stroked him once more, slow, base to tip, feeling him twitch in your palm, and then you let go—gently, carefully, your fingers uncurling from around him and resting flat on his stomach. He made a tiny, instinctive sound at the loss, his hips shifting, but he didn't chase it, didn't protest, just watched you with those hazy half-focused eyes, his chest rising and falling in deep, dazed breaths. His cock lay hard and flushed against his stomach, slick and shining, and you could see it pulsing faintly with his heartbeat, the muscles in his lower abdomen clenching and unclenching.

You took his hand—the one that had been gripping the sheets—and lifted it from the mattress, pressing your lips to his knuckles once before guiding it to the hem of your shirt. His fingers twitched against the fabric, questioning, and you hummed, nodding. "Take this off for me."

He sat up slightly, propping himself on one elbow, and his hand gathered the fabric with a slow, careful gentleness that made your stomach flip—like he was unwrapping something, like he was afraid of tearing it. The cool air hit your skin as the shirt came up over your ribs, your chest, and he pulled it over your head with both hands now, tossing it somewhere behind him without looking, his eyes already back on you. They dropped to your chest, to the simple bra underneath, and his lips parted, a soft exhale leaving him. "Oh," he breathed, the word barely there, his hand coming up to hover over the curve of your waist like he was asking permission with his fingertips. "You're so—you're so pretty."

"Mm. You too. Arms up." You tugged at the hem of his shirt and he went instantly, lifting without hesitation, and you pulled it over his head to reveal the long, lean line of his torso—narrow waist, defined but not bulky, a light dusting of dark hair below his navel that trailed down into his sweatpants. His skin was warm and flushed pink across his chest, his heartbeat visible in the hollow of his throat, and when you pressed your palm flat against his sternum he leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering half-closed.

You reached behind your back with one hand, found the clasp of your bra, and unhooked it in a single practiced motion, letting the straps slide down your arms. Lane's breath caught audibly, a sharp little inhale that he held in his chest, his eyes going wide and dark as the fabric fell away. His hand lifted immediately—instinctive, reaching, those trembling fingers hovering in the air between you—and you caught his wrist gently, wrapping your fingers around it, and guided his hand downward instead. Past your ribs, past your stomach, pressing his palm flat against the warm skin of your lower belly, just above the waistband of your jeans.

"Not yet," you murmured, and he blinked, his gaze tearing itself away from your chest with visible effort, those hazy blue eyes refocusing on your face with a dazed, obedient quality that sent a curl of heat through you.

"Okay," he whispered, no argument, no frustration, just that soft earnest compliance, his fingers flexing against your stomach like he was memorizing the feel of your skin beneath his palm. His other hand was resting on his own thigh, loose and forgotten, and his whole body had gone pliant—still breathing hard, still hard and aching against his stomach, but the frantic edge was gone now, replaced by something slower and more wonderstruck, like he'd handed the steering wheel over to you completely and was content to just sit in the passenger seat and stare.

You guided his hand lower, your fingers stacked on top of his, and pressed his palm against the seam of your jeans, the denim warm and damp beneath his touch. His fingers twitched, a small involuntary flex, and his lips parted on a shaky exhale. "Oh," he breathed, so quiet, his eyes dropping to where his hand was pressed against you. "You're—are you—"

"Mm. Feel that?" You rolled your hips forward against his hand, just barely, and his fingers pressed in reflexively, exploring the shape of you through the thick denim with a slow, careful curiosity. His thumb traced the center seam, tentative, and when you let out a soft hum of approval he did it again, more deliberately, watching your face with that focused, eager-to-learn intensity he brought to studying game tape. "That's where I need you, Lane. Not here." You lifted your free hand and gestured vaguely at your bare chest, a small teasing smile pulling at your mouth.

"Right there is—is very distracting though," he murmured, his eyes flickering up to your chest and then back down with a guilty, sheepish grin, his cheeks flushing pinker. But his hand stayed where you'd put it, his fingers mapping the heat of you through the fabric with these gentle, pressing strokes that were clumsy and unpracticed but so earnest it made your breath catch. "Like this? Is this—am I doing it right?"

"You're doing so good." You reached down and popped the button of your jeans, the sound sharp in the quiet room, and his breath stuttered, his fingers pausing mid-stroke. You dragged the zipper down slowly, teeth parting one by one, and guided his hand inside, past the open waistband, pressing his fingers against the soaked cotton underneath. The sound he made was barely human—a low, broken whimper that vibrated through his whole chest, his eyes squeezing shut for a second before flying open again, wide and stunned.

His cock throbbed so hard against his stomach that it lifted visibly, a thick, pulsing twitch that dragged the flushed head through the slick mess already pooling on his skin, and Lane let out a strangled sound—half gasp, half moan—that seemed to surprise even him. His hips jerked on their own, a helpless little roll into nothing, and he pressed his forehead against your shoulder with a shaky laugh. "Sorry, I—sorry, I can't—just touching you like that and feeling how—" He swallowed, his fingers pressing deeper against the damp cotton, feeling the shape of you, the heat, the wet. "You're so wet, that's—I did that? That's because of me?"

"Mmhm." You carded your fingers through his hair, slow, scratching lightly at his scalp, and his eyes fluttered half-closed, his mouth going slack. "That's because of you."

"Oh my god." The words came out thin and wrecked, barely a whisper, and his cock throbbed again—another visible, aching pulse that made him whimper against your shoulder, his stomach muscles clenching tight. But his fingers didn't stop moving, tracing the slick outline of you through the cotton with this careful, focused attention, like he was studying something precious, something he wanted to get exactly right. His middle finger found the spot where the fabric dipped between your folds and pressed in, slow, and the soft moan you let out hit him like electricity.

"There?" he breathed, his voice cracking, and he pressed again, watching your face with those wide, blown-pupil eyes, searching, learning. You nodded, a small hum vibrating in your throat, and his lips parted in wonder, his finger rubbing a slow circle through the soaked fabric. "Right there. Okay. Okay, I've got—yeah." Another circle, steadier, and your hips tilted forward into his hand, a soft exhale escaping you. He made a sound—this tiny, awed whimper—like watching you feel good was doing more to him than being touched himself, his cock leaking steadily against his stomach, flushed and throbbing and completely ignored.

"Good," you murmured, the word slipping out soft, and his whole face changed—lit up, that crooked smile breaking across his face, his cheeks burning so deep a rose it looked like sunburn. He laughed, breathless and giddy, and ducked his head, pressing his hot face into the curve of your neck.

"Yeah?" he whispered against your skin, his finger still tracing that slow circle through the wet cotton, steady and careful and so goddamn eager. "That feels good? You like that?"

"Mm—yeah, just like that, keep—" You let out another soft moan, quiet and breathy, your fingers tightening in his hair, and his cock jerked so hard it slapped against his stomach, a tiny wet sound that made him groan into your neck. "You're doing so good, Lane."

"I'm doing good?" he repeated, dazed, like he was committing the words to memory, like he wanted to keep them in a jar on a shelf somewhere and look at them every day. His thumb found the top of the seam and pressed experimentally, rubbing a slow line upward through the fabric, and when your breath hitched he did it again, watching, learning, his lips moving silently against your collarbone like he was narrating the process to himself, cataloguing every reaction. His other hand had found your hip at some point, gripping loosely, thumb rubbing absent circles into the bare skin above your waistband, and the dual sensation—his careful fingers between your legs, his warm hand on your hip—made warmth curl tight in your lower belly.

You lifted your hips and pushed your jeans down over the curve of your ass, wriggling out of them one-handed while Lane watched with his lips parted and his fingers hovering in the air where your waistband had just been, like he wasn't sure where to put them now that his territory had been rearranged. The denim hit the floor somewhere near the foot of the bed and you settled back across his thighs, your bare legs bracketing his hips, the soaked cotton of your underwear pressed flush against the hot, hard length of him lying against his stomach. The contact—thin fabric on bare skin, heat on heat—pulled matching sounds out of both of you, his a low groan that vibrated through his chest, yours a soft unguarded exhale that made his hips twitch up beneath you.

"Okay," you breathed, wrapping your hand around him again, and he shuddered, his head tipping back, the long line of his throat flexing as he swallowed. You stroked him slow, feeling the weight of him in your palm, the silky heat of his skin, the way he pulsed and kicked against your fingers with every careful pull. He was dripping, slick and messy, and each stroke spread the wetness further down his shaft until your hand glided effortless and smooth. Lane's mouth fell open on a silent exhale, his stomach clenching beneath you, his hands finding your thighs and settling there with a gentle, grounding pressure.

"Your turn," you murmured, and you didn't have to explain. His fingers found you again, slipping beneath the waistband of your underwear this time, pushing the damp cotton aside, and the first touch of his fingertips against your bare skin made you both freeze. He stared at you, those hazy eyes gone wide, his middle finger sliding slow through the slick heat of you, feeling, learning, his breath coming in these shallow shaky pulls that fogged against your collarbone.

"You're so soft," he whispered, wonderstruck, like he'd never considered what it might actually feel like, and his cock throbbed hard in your hand at the same rhythm as his finger circling against you. You stroked him and he touched you and for a while that was everything—this slow, tangled, breathing-heavy loop of hands learning new shapes, his forehead resting against your shoulder, soft sounds filling the space between you. Every time you tightened your grip on the upstroke his finger pressed deeper, circling slower, like his body was trying to match your rhythm without his brain's input, a feedback loop of pleasure that made his thighs tremble beneath yours.

"Lane," you murmured, and he hummed, a question, his lips moving against your neck. You pulled your hand away from him and he whimpered—this tiny, devastated sound—but you were already shifting forward, lifting your hips, hooking your thumb under the waistband of your underwear and pulling it aside. You reached down and took him in your hand again, angling him upright, and guided the flushed, leaking head of him against your entrance, just holding him there, the heat of you kissing the heat of him. His whole body went rigid, every muscle locked, his fingers digging into your thighs, and the sound that came out of him was barely a sound at all—just a thin, shattered breath, his eyes flying to yours.

"Is that—are we—" His voice was gone, scraped down to a whisper, his pupils swallowing the blue almost entirely. You rocked your hips forward, just barely, just enough to let him feel the first inch of pressure, the tight wet heat of you starting to open around him, and his face crumpled—lips trembling, eyes stinging wet, that soft pink mouth falling open on a moan so raw and quiet it was almost inaudible.

"Oh fuck," he breathed, his hands sliding up to your waist, gripping, steadying. "Oh god, you feel—you're so warm, that's—you're so—"

"Mm. I know." You sank down another inch and he sobbed, actually sobbed, a broken little sound muffled against your chest where his face had buried itself, his whole body shaking. You held still, your fingers in his hair, your lips pressed to the top of his head, letting him feel it, letting him adjust. "Just breathe."

"I'm breathing," he gasped, clearly not breathing, his lungs stuttering in uneven little hitches. "I'm—this is—I can't believe you're—oh—" You rolled your hips, a slow shallow grind that took him deeper, his hands squeezing your waist hard enough to leave marks, his cock pulsing inside you so hard you could feel it in your stomach.

You sank down the rest of the way in one slow, rolling motion, and Lane went completely silent—the kind of silent that meant his brain had short-circuited entirely, every thought and word and function wiped clean by the tight wet heat of you settling around him to the hilt. His mouth was open against your chest, his lips trembling, his eyes squeezed shut, and his fingers on your waist had stopped gripping and were just pressing, ten points of warm pressure like he was trying to ground himself through his palms. You felt him throbbing inside you, deep and steady, his cock twitching with every rapid beat of his heart, and you held still, your hands cupped around the back of his head, your chin resting on his hair, breathing with him.

"Feel okay?" you murmured into the dirty blond strands, and he laughed—a breathy, wrecked, disbelieving little sound that vibrated through his chest and into yours.

"I feel like I'm dying," he whispered, his voice muffled against your skin. "In a good way. The best way. I feel like my brain is somewhere on the ceiling." His hips shifted beneath you, an experimental tilt, and the movement pressed him deeper and made you both inhale—yours a soft hum, his a thin, cracked whimper. "Sorry. Sorry, I moved, I shouldn't have—"

"You can move." You lifted your hips slightly, an inch, and sank back down, and the sound he made was devastating—this low, gutted moan that he tried to bite off and couldn't, his teeth catching the skin of your collarbone in a clumsy, open-mouthed attempt to muffle himself. His hands slid from your waist to your hips, fingers curling around the bones there, and he held you like something fragile, his thumbs tracing slow arcs over your hip bones while you rode him in tiny, shallow grinds that kept him buried deep.

"That's—" He pulled his face from your chest to look at you, and the expression on his face made your breath catch. He looked ruined—flushed from his cheeks down to his sternum, his eyes glassy and wet and unfocused, his lips swollen and pink and parted, his eyebrows drawn together in this soft, overwhelmed furrow like he was trying to understand how he'd gotten here, how this was real, how the girl he'd been pining over for years was currently in his lap, warm and close and his. "You feel so good," he breathed, and his voice was so quiet, so thin, like the words were being pulled out of him one at a time. "You feel—I didn't know anything could feel like this. Is it—does it feel good for you too? Tell me it feels good for you too."

"Mm." You rolled your hips in a slow circle, grinding forward against his pelvis, and the friction against your clit made warmth bloom tight in your belly, a soft moan slipping out before you could catch it. His eyes went wide at the sound, his lips parting, his cock throbbing hard inside you in response. "Feels good, Lane. You feel so good inside me."

"Oh my god." His head fell back, his throat exposed, his pulse hammering visibly beneath the flushed skin, and his hips lifted—slow, tentative, meeting your rhythm with a careful, unpracticed roll that made him gasp. "Like that? Is that—am I—"

"Exactly like that. Just follow me..." You set the pace, slow and deep and rolling, and he followed like he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to show him where to go, his hips finding the rhythm on the third or fourth stroke, his body catching up to yours in this sweet, slick, seamless motion. Each thrust drew a new sound from him—whimpers and shaky exhales and these tiny, pitchy whines that he kept trying to swallow and couldn't—his hands flexing on your hips, his stomach muscles clenching beneath you with every roll.

"I can't—" His voice cracked and he licked his lips, his eyes finding yours again, dazed and wet and so full of something it looked like it might spill over. "I can't believe this is—you're so beautiful, you feel so—every time you move I just—" A thrust, slow and deep, and his words broke apart into a moan, his fingers tightening on your hips. "I'm gonna remember this forever. Every single second. I'm gonna—ah—I'm gonna think about this when I'm eighty."

You laughed, soft and breathless, leaning forward to press your forehead against his, and he turned his face to kiss you—messy and off-center, his lips landing half on your mouth and half on your cheek before finding their way home, warm and sweet and trembling. He kissed you like he was trying to say everything he couldn't form into words, his tongue touching yours in slow, curious strokes that matched the rhythm of his hips, and when you clenched around him his whole body seized, a muffled groan spilling into your mouth.

His rhythm started to falter first, those careful matching strokes growing uneven and jerky, his hips losing the thread of the pattern you'd taught him and reverting to something more instinctive—shallow, desperate little thrusts that he couldn't seem to control, his body chasing something his brain hadn't caught up to yet. His fingers on your hips had gone tight, almost reflexive, pulling you down to meet each helpless roll, and the soft pitchy sounds spilling out of him had shifted too—closer together, higher, thinner, these broken little whimpering moans that he was making no effort to contain anymore. His face was pressed into your neck again, his hot breath coming in ragged damp bursts, and you could feel his stomach clenching beneath you in rapid involuntary waves, his whole body winding tighter and tighter with each thrust.

"Hey," he slurred against your throat, the word thick and slow and barely formed, his lips dragging across your pulse point. "Hey, if I—if I told you something right now, would you—would you be mad?"

"Mm. What is it?"

A shaky exhale, his cock pulsing deep inside you, his hips stuttering through two more uneven thrusts that made him whimper. "I think I love you." He said it fast, all in one breath, like ripping off a bandage, and then immediately followed it with a frantic, cracking: "I know—I know that's crazy, I know we're friends, I know this is just—I know, but I just—god, that feels—" His hips bucked up hard and he groaned, his teeth grazing your collarbone, his voice dissolving into a mess of half-finished thoughts. "I should pull out, I'm getting close, I'm really close and I should—where do you want me to—I'll pull out, just tell me—"

"Lane." You cupped the back of his head, your fingers threading into his damp hair, and your other hand rubbed a slow, soothing circle on his hot shoulder blade. "It's okay."

"It's—I don't wanna—I'm not gonna last and I should—"

"It's okay. Stay." You rolled your hips into him, slow and deep, grinding him against the spot that made warmth flood through your belly, and he made a sound like he was being unmade—a raw, thin, devastated moan that shook through his chest and into yours. "It's so natural, baby. It's so natural for someone so sensitive like you to want to stay buried somewhere that feels this good. Your body knows. Just let it."

His whole body shuddered at that, a full-length tremor that made the bed creak, and you felt his cock throb hard inside you—three, four rapid pulses that pushed a whimper out of him with each one. "But I said—I said the love thing and you—" His voice cracked and he pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes swimming, his cheeks burning, that confused, overwhelmed furrow pinched between his eyebrows. "You don't think that's—"

"Sex is so intense," you murmured, stroking his hair back from his damp forehead, your voice soft and warm and teasing at the edges. "It floods your brain with all these chemicals, Lane, it makes you feel things that aren't—I mean, you don't really love me. You just love this. You love how it feels. That's okay, that's normal." You clenched around him, gentle, and his face crumpled, his mouth falling open, his hips jerking up into you on instinct. "Your body is just being very, very sweet to me right now."

"I—" He blinked at you, glassy-eyed, his lips moving around words that wouldn't form, and then he laughed—this breathless, helpless, wrecked sound that was almost a sob. "No, I do, I actually do, I've—I've loved you since before this, since Boston, since you used to fall asleep on my couch and I'd cover you with a blanket and just—fuck—watch you sleep like a complete weirdo—" His hips snapped up, hard, and he gasped, his head falling back, his hands squeezing your hips. "I'm—I'm gonna, oh god, I'm really—please, can I—please—"

"Since Boston?" you repeated softly, smiling, brushing your thumb across his hot, damp cheekbone, and he nodded frantically, his eyes wet, his cock throbbing so hard inside you that you could feel every pulse.

"Since Boston," he confirmed, his voice nothing but a ruined whisper. "Every—every single day since—since Boston—"

You kissed him instead of answering—soft, slow, your lips moving against his with a tenderness that said everything you weren't saying out loud, and he melted into it with a sound that was half sob, half sigh, his mouth opening against yours, his tongue finding yours in clumsy desperate strokes. His hips lost the last of their rhythm entirely, grinding up into you in deep, helpless rolls that had no pattern and no control, just his body chasing what it needed, his cock throbbing so hard and so fast inside you that it felt like a second heartbeat. You clenched around him—deliberate, slow, a rolling squeeze that dragged from base to tip—and he tore his mouth from yours with a sound like he was dying.

"I'm—oh god, oh god—" His voice pitched up, cracking clean through, his fingers digging into your hips hard enough to bruise, his whole body bowing forward, forehead pressing against your collarbone. "I'm gonna cum, I can't—I'm cumming, I'm—please—"

You felt it before you heard him—the sudden swelling, the way he kicked and pulsed inside you, and then he broke. A moan tore out of him, raw and high and unfiltered, his hips slamming up into you one last time and holding there, buried as deep as he could go, his cock jerking in rapid desperate spurts that flooded warm and wet inside you. His whole body shook with it, thighs trembling, stomach clenching, his fingers flexing on your hips in time with each pulse, and the sounds he was making—these broken, whimpering, pitchy little sobs against your skin—were so devastated and so sincere that it made your chest ache.

"Oh—oh fuck—I'm—it's—" His words had dissolved completely, slurred and half-formed and melting into each other, just syllables pushed out on shaky exhales between moans. You held him, your arms wrapped around his head, your fingers in his damp hair, your hips still rolling in tiny slow grinds that milked him through each aftershock, and he whimpered at every movement, overstimulated and shaking, his cock still twitching weakly inside you. "I can't stop, I can't—it won't stop—"

"Mm, I know. Just let it." You pressed a kiss to his temple, tasting salt, and he shuddered, his arms finally releasing their death grip on your hips to wrap around your waist instead, pulling you flush against his chest, his face buried in your neck. You could feel his heartbeat everywhere—against your chest, inside you, in the pulse of his fingers where they pressed into the small of your back—and it was racing, hammering, tripping over itself like it couldn't slow down.

His breathing evened out slowly, the trembling fading to occasional shivers, his arms loosening around your waist as the adrenaline drained and the warmth of the room and the weight of his body pulled him under. You stayed for a while after that—longer than you needed to, longer than you'd planned—carding your fingers through his hair while his breathing went deep and slow and steady, his lips parted against your neck, his lashes dark against his flushed cheeks. Eventually you eased yourself off him, careful, slow, and he made a small unconscious sound at the loss but didn't wake, rolling onto his side and pulling a pillow against his chest like a substitute.

His apartment was quiet at three in the morning, the dreamy playlist long since ended, the only sound the low hum of his fridge and the distant rattle of a window in its frame. You found your clothes in the dark—jeans strewn by the foot of the bed, shirt draped across the floor by the door, shoes kicked against the wall—and dressed in silence, moving through the familiar space by memory, your fingers finding buttons and zippers without needing light. His bedroom door was half-open, spilling a thin strip of hallway glow across the bed where Lane lay exactly where you'd left him, sprawled on his stomach now, one arm flung off the edge of the mattress, his face smashed sideways into the pillow, his hair a mess across his forehead. He looked younger asleep, softer, the anxious furrow between his brows smoothed out, his lips relaxed and still faintly pink.

You were halfway to the front door, keys in hand, when you heard it—a small, thick, sleep-ruined sound from the bedroom, somewhere between a whimper and your name. You stopped, turned, and there he was in the hallway, swaying on his feet in just his sweatpants, squinting against the light he'd flicked on, his hair destroyed, his eyes barely open and glassy with sleep. "Hey," he croaked, his voice wrecked, scraped raw, and he reached for the wall to steady himself. "Where are you—are you leaving?"

"Yeah, Lane, it's three in the morning, I'm gonna—"

"Stay." The word came out so fast it tripped over itself, cracking in the middle, and he pushed off the wall and crossed the hallway in three unsteady steps until he was standing in front of you, barefoot and flushed and looking at you with those big wet blue eyes like you were about to take something from him he couldn't get back. "Please stay. Just—stay. I'll sleep on the couch, you can have the bed, I don't care, just don't—" He swallowed, his throat clicking, and his hand found the sleeve of your hoodie—not grabbing, just holding, his fingers curled in the fabric. "Please."

"Lane, it's fine, I'll text you tomorrow—"

"No, I know, but—" His voice broke and he pressed his lips together, that tight miserable line, his jaw working, and he looked down at his hand on your sleeve like he was embarrassed by how much he needed it to stay there. "I don't want you to go home and think about it and regret it. And be weird. And then we don't talk for three days and then it becomes a thing and then I lose you and I can't—" He inhaled shakily, his chest hitching, and when he looked up his eyes were wet, his lashes clumped together, that helpless overwhelmed furrow back between his brows. "I can't lose you. I'd rather nothing ever happened than lose you."

His fingers tightened on your sleeve like he hadn’t even realized he was clutching it, and he just stood there in the thin hallway light, shoulders rounded, mouth quivering on the brink of saying more. You could smell sleep on him—warm, slightly sweet, edged with that faint cologne he always wore—and it punched something hollow through your chest. The apartment felt too small; the silence between the hum of the fridge and the distant traffic felt like a held breath begging to be released.

“Lane,” you said quietly, the word coming out rougher than you meant. You wanted to tell him so many things, but they all felt thin next to the way his eyes glistened under the harsh hallway light, next to the desperate tremble in his fingers. So you stood there, the two of you inches apart, his hand in your sleeve, your keys biting hot into your palm, every second stretching until you could hear his heartbeat in the quiet.

“Hey,” he whispered, voice cracked from sleep and unshed tears. He swallowed hard enough to make a tiny clicking sound in his throat. “Say something.”  

You couldn’t think of a gentle answer that didn’t make the next moment worse. So you lifted your free hand, pried his fingers from your sleeve one by one, soft as you could manage, and placed his hand against his own chest. His head bowed as if you’d pressed something heavy into his hands. You felt him shudder when your palm brushed his sternum.  

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” you said. It was the safest thing you had.  

His throat bobbed. “Will you?”  

“I will.” You forced the words through stiff lips, felt your pulse hammering in your ears. “Get some rest.”  

He blinked twice, as if trying to keep his eyes open, and then nodded without meeting your gaze. His hand stayed flattened over his heart where you’d placed it, like he was holding something there. You turned the handle and stepped into the hallway, cool and dim and echoing, the door swinging closed behind you. He waited a few seconds until his voice slipped through the air, thin and small.