Looking for Group - Alexis Hall Page 0,65

can honestly say I’ve never thought about it like that before.” He turned his head and so did Kit, and suddenly he realised how close they were. They stayed like that. “I really like talking to you,” he blurted.

A little tinge of pink crept over Kit’s cheeks. “I really like being with you.”

They angled their heads, nudging and edging at the distance between them. Drew’s attention wavered from Kit’s eyes—paler in the fading light—to his mouth, and then back again.

“Um,” said Kit, his breath fanning soft and warm and faintly strawberry-scented over Drew’s lips, “I really hope you’re about to kiss me.”

“Good.” And he did.

There was a brief moment in which all Drew could think was kissing a boy, but then that went away, and it was just kissing, and then kissing Kit.

Who seemed to like it too.

Drew had that nervous am I doing this right feeling he sometimes got with girls, but then he half opened an eye and saw Kit’s hand was waving about between them like he didn’t know what to do with it. He caught it, and their fingers got all muddled, and so they were both sort of holding each other. And Drew stopped worrying, and instead let himself disappear into Kit, and the idea that he was the first person ever to do this with him. To learn the shape of his lips, and the way his mouth tasted, and feel the tickle of his hair and the slight roughness of his jaw.

And that made him worry again. Because you didn’t want to mess up something like that.

Then Kit made this sound, shocked and happy and slightly muffled. Which made Drew feel kind of awesome, and next thing he knew, he was pushing Kit down into the grass, and Kit was going with it, and they were tangled together in all the ways.

Still kissing.

Kit was warm under him, sharp in places, not in others, hip bones grazing Drew’s, lean runner’s legs holding him tight. There was something reassuring—and, honestly, kind of hot—about that strength. About the unexpected ways they fit. And how natural it felt.

In his first term, they’d talked a lot about the way games have grammar. It was about the way games teach you to interact with them so there came a point when you weren’t thinking Press x to jump, you were just jumping.

This was kind of like that.

It felt like the bit in a game when you finally got it. When your character stopped toppling off ledges, missing jumps, and pulling out their binoculars instead of their sniper rifle.

The bit where it felt right.

At some point, Kit rolled him over and straddled him, and Drew gazed hazily up at him. Kit was a little glittery in the fading light. Flushed and smiling and mussed up.

Because of Drew.

Drew pulled him down for another kiss.

“You know,” said Kit, some time later, “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t dark when we started.”

Drew blinked. Kit was right. The sun was long gone, and the stars were out. “Man, it’s like playing Civ.”

“You mean—” Kit grinned “—just . . . one . . . more . . . kiss.”

“Yeah, I was two turns away from building a wonder.” A pause while that sunk in. “Uh, sorry, that sounded way less dodgy in my head.”

Kit pushed the hair back from his eyes. “So . . . do you need to get to get back or do you want to . . .?”

“No, I mean, yes, I mean, sorry, what were the options again?”

“Do you need to go home, or do you want to come up to my room? I’ve got tap water and PG Tips.”

It was late and Drew wasn’t sure how long the buses ran, but he really didn’t want to leave Kit. “Well, I do like tap water.”

They got to their feet, brushed the grass off their clothes, and Kit led the way into one of the old-fashioned buildings in the middle of the park. His room was slightly nicer than Drew’s, and significantly tidier. He had a rickety bookcase stuffed with tatty paperbacks and physics textbooks, and a scarily bare desk with just a laptop gleaming in the middle of it. Everything else was standard student-issue furniture. Drew glanced warily between the bed and the only chair and, after weighing the potential for awkward, settled on the chair.

Kit disappeared into the en suite and emerged with a University of Leicester mug full of tap water. He presented it ceremoniously to Drew, and sat down