You're my safest place to hide

[Laurie Collins]

[[Content warning? Maybe? It’s more than a five second kiss so I’m saying content warning though a couple teenagers who’ve been dating, for like, ever getting some pretty mild action probably doesn’t need it.]]

This is weird. Is this weird? Should my response to seeing that my boyfriend still has all his bones assembled and working be to want to jump them? Matthew presses his hands into her lower back and she deepens the kiss as a measure of her approval both of the movement and how he seems to have overcome his initial hesitation. He pulls back and she opens her eyes, smiling almost wide enough to be ridiculous as she sees the look on his face- unworried enjoyment- and realizes she’s responsible for it as well as for the tension, the need, conveyed through his hands when he’d had them on her back a moment ago. She’s reminded, irrationally, she thinks at first, of one of the first times they’d talked as friends, down by the [link=http://100mtoanchorage.proboards98.com/index.cgi?board=allotherthreads&action=display&thread=526&page=2#4742
]lake[/link] back before they’d even admitted to themselves they felt anything for each other. She’d been uncomfortable then at the way he really looked at her, listened, responded, when most people, however nicely they did it, just brushed her aside in one way or another. For whatever reason he’d taken her seriously from the first and never having had a friend, a real one, who knew all about her mutation and wasn’t related to her, she’d been caught off guard at the time, had half wished he’d stop. Now she realizes this is a little of the same thing, that’s it’s the oddest mix of terrifying and wonderful to be wanted, to elicit a reaction like this that she knows isn’t the product of her pheromones which are still, fortunately, in check.

She moves her hands down from the back of his head and then realizes she doesn’t know what to do with them because the second she stops to think about what she’s doing, try to do it right, everything sort of goes to hell. Okay, so just…focus elsewhere… she thinks and closes her eyes, tilting her mouth back into his and parting her lips so that her tongue can run along the inside of his mouth, tangling briefly with his, tentatively exploratory. She breaks the kiss a little abruptly and pulls back, obviously gauging his reaction. Isn’t this supposed to just…come naturally? No uncertainty or fumbling just, you know, preserve and propagate the species? Not that we’re doing that but…I mean…I guess it does complicate things when I’m afraid I’ll give him the pheromone equivalent of a roofie any minute and he thinks…I don’t know…he’ll get too into it and irradiate me? Great. We’ve solved the mutant crisis right here: we die out because we’re way too awkward for- she realizes then that at some point during the kissing and mental rambling and ignoring of her hands they’ve made their way quite happily up the front of her boyfriend’s shirt and her fingers are lazily, almost independently, exploring the definition of his stomach, -oh. She blushes and curls her fingers slightly in embarrassment, biting her lower lip and looking down.

[Matthew Craft]

He’s enjoying this; just being there with Laurie, and sharing an intimate moment. It’s odd really, that Matthew can revel in the fact that despite being stranded in the future — in some rundown super-hidden compound full of renegades, in a terrible future — he’s having possibly the best moment of his life.

He’d had other girlfriends, way back when he was in normal public school. And he’d kissed them too, but Matthew had never kissed them like this. This was special — a moment he knew they would remember no matter what happened to them. He and Laurie could look back on this and know that this was a carefree time, even if their situation was not. And it didn’t matter if they got back to their timeline or not, not anymore. At least...not to him. He had her. She had him. And at that precise moment, that was all that mattered.

Matthew opens his eyes after several long instances of silence, and blinks at his girlfriend. She grins and he returns the motion, touching his forehead to hers. Laurie’s hands leave his hair and slide down his shoulders just as her lips reach back up to his again. He meets kiss eagerly, yearning to feel her return to him.

He can’t help but freeze momentarily when he feels her tongue brush along his lips, his teeth, and then further. Matthew’s delay passes almost as soon as he registers it, and he welcomes her advance, curling one hand deeply into her hair as another snakes around to the small of her back. His head tilts farther to grant himself better access to her mouth and lets his tongue twist with Laurie’s.

When she breaks the kiss, Matthew notices that he’s nearly panting, and it might not be from a lack of air. He’s kind of surprised by that, because he’s never had that happen before. The hand in her hair loosens after he realizes that he had been clinging to her a little tightly, and he slides his fingers through the strands soothingly.

Laurie tenses and looks down, and that’s when both she and Matthew notice where her hands had wandered during their rather heated moment. The touch of her skin against his stomach, the way her fingers push against him when she cringes in sudden shame, it all makes his body tingle. And not unpleasantly.

In an effort to calm Laurie — to show her that he doesn’t mind the way her hands have found their way up his shirt — Matthew tugs one of her fists up. He watches her carefully, even if it is only the top of her head, and coaxes her fingers to uncurl. When her hand lays open to him, he gently kisses the center of her palm before doing the same to the tip of each finger. The hand that had been happily nudging into back sneaks up to brush along her chin, persuading her to lift her head so that he can see her face. Entwining his fingers with hers, Matthew smiles softly, marveled by the way her hair falls against her face. He then leans in for another kiss — this one lighter and tenderer than their last few, but just as remarkable.