You, Again

Two guys go out on a date together, and attempt to tear through the awkwardness hanging over them because of a connection that they both share.

Kieran opened the front door to find Seth standing there, his copper-frosted hair glowing against the porchlight above them.

“Hi.” Seth shot Kieran a quick smirk.

“Hey.” Kieran cocked up his head quickly and gave Seth a warm smile. Seth’s eyes were always exceptionally piercing; a particular green-gold that seemed to be lit with an inner fire - brilliant, but darkly sinister. Kieran quickly shuffled out the door and closed it behind him.

“Don’t wanna let my roommate’s cat out,” he grumbled as he whirled around and locked the door behind him. Kieran could feel Seth’s presence, his energy, as he stood behind him and quickly shook off the quiet unease he felt. He made a conscious decision to bend over slightly as he jammed in and slid his key into the door lock in spite of Seth’s proximity.

Seth felt the same unease. Kieran’s svelte neck peeked over the collar of his brown dress shirt. His dark skin glowed a beautiful, buttery-rich tan against the porchlight.

Ugly duckling became a swan, he thought to himself before glancing away.

Kieran turned around again to face Seth. Seth turned his head to face Kieran all well. Kieran inhaled and gave Seth a quick profile before locking eyes with him again, challenging himself to place his familial recognition he had for Seth in the back-burner.

Seth read Kieran’s activity loud-and-clear.

Challenge accepted, he thought as he smirked at Kieran knowingly.

“Come on,” Seth grinned as he took a step forward and hooked his arm around Kieran’s neck, pivoting him towards the driveway. “My car’s this way.”

“... Hate surprises,” Kieran complained with a coy smile. He slumped a little in the passenger seat.

Seth chuckled and glanced at him. “You said you didn’t care where we went. Don’t be complaining! Your fault.”

Both of them laughed.

You wanna listen to some music?” Seth grabbed his iPod, attached to an auxiliary cord connecting to his radio port, and thrust it towards Kieran. Kieran hesitated, with a quick whimper of confusion, before gingerly taking it in his hands and fumbling around the circular toggle.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

Seth shrugged. “So, what’s up? What’s been going on these days?”

Kieran politely rested the iPod on his lap. He seriously wasn’t that interested in looking through the expanse of Seth’s music library for the “perfect song” for the moment; as time went on, the task became unimportant compared to their larger hurdle.

“Same old, same old,” Kieran grunted. “It’s summer, you know, and I’m still putting in applications left and right. In the meantime, ah, two jobs, a lot of Netflix nights, working out -”

“I can tell,” Seth reflexively interjected.

Kieran let out a soft chuckle and continued, “- you know, just not having a life, really. You? You still in the military?”

“Yeah.” A small smile stretched across Seth’s face. “I’m actually looking at buying a house in town.”

Kieran jerked his head towards Seth and yelped out comically, “What!? Are you really?”

Seth grinned, and he slowed the car down at a redlight. “Yeah. I’m gonna be stationed here for a while. What, you don’t think I’m going to be living in a barracks forever.”

Both caught a particular glint in each others’ eye and laughed. More so scoffed - a little nervously. Both mentally took note of this. Both could tell that one another did.

A car horn blared behind them and they diverted their attention to the rearview mirror. The person driving the car behind them had their right hand in front of them, above the steering wheel, almost pressed against the windshield. Even past their blinding headlights, the pair could make out that the hand was giving Seth and Kieran a crude nonverbal message that both had seen before. Seth held his hand up apologetically and pushed forward on the gas a little harder than he had intended to, jerking both forward with meek, awkward smiles painted on their faces.

“Oops,” peeped Kieran, alleviating the awkwardness of the situation.

“Whatever,” Seth shrugged, and winked at him. He reached over and wiggled Kieran’s knee playfully. Kieran smiled. He wanted to reach down and place his hand over Seth’s to show him some affectionate receptiveness, but he thought that it would just be too much, too fast - especially for them.

Seth placed his hand back on the steering wheel and got quiet. He knew that Kieran felt weird. In all honesty with himself, he acknowledged that he felt weird, too. Guilty, more than anything else. Was he being selfish? Perverse? What would their mutual friends think?

“Do you - ?” Seth began before stopping abruptly.

“Mm, what?” Kieran looked over.

Seth shook his head dismissively. “Ah, nothing.”

Kieran down turned his eyes, as if he was preparing himself mentally, then he reached over and lightly grabbed Seth under his arm, which hung from his grip on the steering wheel, and pulled it towards him a little.

“No, what is it?”

Seth sighed a little. “Do you feel weird about this?”

Kieran froze in his seat, stunned. Seth felt his middle tighten, he was so embarrassed. He had botched their date before it had even started. Then Kieran began to laugh. Hard. Kieran’s laugh reverbed throughout the car. His laugh was forceful and condescending. And a little malicious.

“I can’t believe you...” Kieran finally managed to say once his fit had subsided enough to where he could talk. “You’re kidding me!”

Seth worriedly looked at Kieran, who was looking at him incredulously. Kieran shook his head and held up a hand.

“You know what, just take me home.”

Seth let out a little scoff of bitter acceptance and began to look for the nearest u-turn on the road they were driving on.

It wasn’t too long before he finally found one. Both weren’t speaking to each other. He turned and headed back to Kieran’s apartment.

“I can’t believe it...” Kieran muttered under his breath, slumped in his seat.

“I’m sorry,” Seth said simply, flicking a hand up.

“Don’t,” Kieran shot back roughly. “I am so embarrassed. I feel sick.” Kieran took a deep inhale and shook his head again; he couldn’t believe this was happening. “This was your idea, okay! You pursued me! We’re not telling anyone about this, no way.”

“Okay,” Seth mumbled, defeated. He kept his eyes on the road, face blank. “You’re completely right, and I’m so sorry. I honestly shouldn’t have asked you. I know you were giving me the... I don’t know; I don’t know how we were able to even get this far.”

Kieran scoffed, a little more amused than he wanted to let on.

“That’s for damn sure.”

“Okay, okay!” Seth raised his hands in the air a little. “No, you’re right about everything.” He pulled over to the side of the road. He felt lucky that the road was nearly deserted except for the odd driver cruising past.

“What are you doing?” Kieran jumped forward in his seat and flailed his hands dramatically. “No, take me home!”

Seth put the car into “P” and turned to Kieran.

“No, let’s talk.”

Kieran shook his head. He squinted his eyes.

“No, I don’t want to hear it. Take me home!”

Never dropping his diplomatic poker face, Seth looked Kieran dead in the face. He may have said the completely wrong thing, but he reasoned that he wasn’t going to have the disrespect go any further without compromise.

“You wanna walk?”

Kieran, surprised looked at Seth, eyes wide. He was breathing a little bit heavier, but he remained quiet.

“I can let you out here, I can let you use my phone to call a friend, whatever you need.” Seth paused to see if Kieran was going to say anything. He remained silent. “The last thing I want to do is shame you and right now I think you’re being intentionally cruel by painting me as this irrational, inconsiderate guy against the person you know me to be. Seven years does not change a person that much. By no means am I calling myself a victim. I’m owning up to me messing this up. Now - would you like me to let you out here, or are you willing to talk to me?”

Kieran flipped his hands in the air, a movement that expressed that he had no choice but to listen, but that Seth was still wasting his time.

“Fine. What?” His voice was clipped.

“No, you go first -”

“Oh my god!” Kieran flipped his head upward in frustration and reclined it back until it landed with a hard thud against his window. “Can you just take me home!?”

Seth took a deep inhale, a nonverbal expression of his adamance.

Kieran cupped his hands over his face and groaned loudly. He doubled over, elbow rested dug into the cushion of the seat between his knees. Seth twisted the keys out of the keyhole, turning off the ignition.

They stayed like that for four minutes before the ambient summer heat began to warm the car, making it hard to breathe and making their skin glisten.

“I’m really hungry.”

Seth cocked an eyebrow towards Kieran. He still had his face buried in his hands. His voice was muffled and defeated.

Seth started the ignition and pulled onto the road, where he made another u-turn as soon as he found one on the road.

Seth tossed a couple of torn-off balls of bread rolls to the koi underneath the wood railing he and Kieran were seated beside. The koi swam up under the pair in a frenzy and the bread balls disappeared into their flapping, puckered maws.

“When’s the last time you’ve been on a date?” Seth asked Kieran as Kieran picked at his salad. The red-tinged glow of the paper lanterns lining the tops of the railing reflected off of Kieran severely, turning his usually creamy tan skin to a lighter shade of burgundy. It was a fitting complexion in that it matched the quiet anger emanating from Kieran’s small, distant frame.

Kieran took a prolonged inhale and struggled to speak against himself.

“It’s been a while. Like, a genuine date? It’s been a couple years, to be honest. I haven’t really been on a date since I broke up with my ex. The plans always fall through. The guys have always been such flakes.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand that,” Seth shook his head and grimaced. “It was like that back in Arizona, too. Like, I’d meet a guy at the club and we’d exchange numbers, so I’d do that whole two day rule thing and get at them two days later and ask them out and they’d be, like, ‘sure’.” Then we’d be talking about it and they’d disappear, like, an hour before we’d meet up. I wouldn’t hear from them until, I don’t know, a few hours later, a few days later sometimes, and they’d be, like, ‘I’m really sorry. My friend had an emergency.’ And, you know, I’d tell them ‘hey, it’s cool’ but I wouldn’t ask them out again, and they wouldn’t ask me if I wanted to go on another date. It’s crazy because that happens so much, and not even with young guys; like, guys my age, too, and everything.”

“Yeah,” Kieran nodded his head. “A lot of guys are like that. I don’t understand it. It’s like, where do they get off? I really... ‘abhor’ to those types. Those guys already know that the other guy probably might talk s**t about them afterward, so, I don’t know. They just shoot themselves in the foot when they do that. I’d always meet a guy if we were planning to meet, and if anything happened I’d, at least, keep on contact to try to make it up later.”

“Right,” Seth agreed. He picked up some chow mein noodles with his chopsticks.

Kieran cracked a grin and asked, “I hate when old friends ask me this, but when did you come out?”

Seth grunted and shrugged his shoulders, amused.

“I came out, like,” he began, grimacing thoughtfully, “ - around four years ago. Stupid part is, everybody already knew! Like, they didn’t say it was obvious but they figured it out.”

Kieran laughed. “Yeah, I mean, I didn’t know. I didn’t care when Whitney told me.” He grunted as well. “I don’t know.”

“I knew you were. Everybody did,” Seth chuckled from across the table.

“Shut up!” Kieran scoffed, and threw a piece of lettuce at him. “I was... different.”

“I thought you were cool. I mean, yeah, you got annoying after a while when you’d always hang around me and Whitney. We could never get any alone time together -”

“I was making sure of it!” Kieran interjected.

Seth shrugged. “We never had sex, anyway - “

“Don’t care! Don’t care!” Kieran interjected again, putting his hands up to his ears and stretching out his face comically in disgust. “You know,” he started, putting his hands down, “Whitney’s the one who told me.”

“Yeah,” Seth nodded with bitter amusement.

“Yeah. We were at our parents’ and she and I were talking and she just told me.” Kieran shrugged. “I mean, like I said, I didn’t care. I was just like ‘Oh’.”

“Was she mad?” Seth asked hesitantly. He had his eyebrow cocked.

“Um, I mean, she seemed annoyed but, you know, I understand.” Kieran admitted. “I still haven’t really figured out whether I’m offended at you or not. You dated my sister, you know. And now we’re here on this date and there’s that prospect that it’ll lead to something more, maybe; I don’t know.” He looked down and shook his head like he was still acknowledging the reality of the situation. “I’m still not quite sure why I even said yes.”

Seth shook his head vigorously in acknowledgement, “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Kieran nodded, then shook his head intently at Seth. “We’re never telling her about this. I mean, if... I don’t know.” Kieran nodded, “You were right. It was better to get this out of the way early on so that we could, I don’t know, shake it off. Like, you don’t feel like this is a little incestuous or something?” Kieran stopped again, and put down his fork in his salad dish. “Okay,” he said, looking Seth in the eye, “Cards on the table time - Why did you ask me out? You don’t think we’re crossing a boundary here?”

Seth looked back at Kieran and thought to himself, He’s always been this mature.

“Remember when I told you in the car that seven years doesn’t change a person that much?” he asked. Kieran nodded. “Well, it’s true, but what you and I have been through; dating, whatever, just being in the world, you know, everything past high school. We just know better now about stuff. I saw you at the club that night and we started talking and, yeah, you changed a lot.” He blushed a little when he followed with, “You’re really sexy now.”

“I hate being called sexy.”

“I’ve never seen you as someone ‘sexy’ back in high school,” Seth laughed. “You were this geeky little guy with pimples and an afro. Now you’re showing skin and it’s all cleared up, and your body’s gotten all defined with muscles and your hair’s nice and it smells good and just how you hold yourself... You always tried to sit up straight and walk good and whatever; now you have this confidence in your body and how you move and you’re so forward with people. It was great catching up with you that night because I couldn’t believe how much you’ve changed. I was really happy for you and, yeah, you’re kind of like this sex pot now. And the ‘sexy’ part about it is that you aren’t even trying. I mean I still see a - a semblance of that geeky kid but...” Seth trailed off, and shook his head a little in exasperation. He wasn’t blushing, though. His eyes locked on Kieran in an almost intrusive segue towards accepting a more overt seduction from him later on.

Kieran looked confused and extremely taken aback, reacting to what Seth had just said as if he hadn’t heard it “a million times before.” In all honesty, Kieran knew exactly what he was doing; the personable confidence, the accentuation of his curves when he moved and the amount of skin he showed in the way he dressed, how he held his face; everything was consciously considered and executed in a way that would make it seem like he didn’t realize how sexy he was - that it just came naturally to him. He would never tell Seth, he’d never tell anybody, about his little secret.

Seth continued, “- and me, too, you know, I apologized to Whitney over Facebook and she was cool with it. You know, I just apologized because I didn’t mean to use her as a beard; I was just confused in those days, you know. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He shrugged a little guiltily.

“No, I totally understand,” Kieran shook his head in understanding. “Yeah, I used to do that to girls, too. I think every gay guy does it.” He stopped. He grinned mischievously. “So... did you think I was cute back then?”

Seth laughed. “Did you think I was?”

“You first.”

Both looked at each other. Time seemed to stand still. A new electricity awakened between them, and both were at a loss for words.

“Let’s go to the beach,” Seth said with a smile. The suggestion was natural to him.

Kieran smiled back. “Okay.”

His response was natural, as well.

The full moon shone brightly in the sky, illuminating the surf to where the rolling tide creeping back into the ocean left silver foam bubbles that sparkled like white gemstones when they popped and fizzled away.

Seth and Kieran strolled along the surf, closer now. Their shoes were held in their hands. Their feet sank lightly in the dry, cobalt sand. Seth was striding better than Kieran was, who was having to allocate a little more attention from Seth towards him struggling to keep his balance then he would have preferred.

If he notices I’m going to be mortified, he thought to himself.

Seth noticed, and laughed to himself quietly.

He’s still the same guy.

After a few minutes of silence Seth asked, “Whatcha thinking about?”

Kieran looked towards the ocean and shook his head absent-mindedly, his tan skin now a sleek dark grey. The moonglow of his skin radiated beautifully. It was a pheromone for Seth’s eyes, pulling him closer towards Kieran. He was suddenly aware of a small, phantom ache in his lips. He needed to apply pressure to his lips, and he licked them unconsciously.

“Ah, um, nothing.”

Seth shrugged nonchalantly and grunted, “Oh” - and sideswiped a spray of sand onto Kieran’s legs.

Kieran let out a yelp of amused surprise and pushed Seth towards the surf. He had caught Seth at the wrong moment. Seth stumbled towards the oncoming pool of water sliding towards them, stepped on the jagged remnant of a beer bottle illegally leftover from a random beach-goer that afternoon and was shook into spasming face-first in the receding pool of saltwater. His shoes flopped with a slick landing into the wet sand a few feet away.

Kieran waited until the water that pooled around Seth was receded enough to where his feet wouldn’t be submerged to step towards Seth, laughing hysterically.

“Wh-Why did you do that!? How did that happen!?” Kieran had his arms splayed out to his sides in confusion.

“Careful!” Seth called, shooting an open hand towards Kieran as he pushed himself up. “I stepped on a piece of glass, I think.”

“No, you didn’t,” Kieran stated automatically. He was saying it more for himself than to Seth.

Seth curled his left foot upward towards his face, making sure to maneuver himself towards the moonlight so that he could get a better view. A little below the pad of his foot Seth found a long, pale gash stretched across, sloping downward towards the ball of his heel. Seth stretched his foot apart gently, like an oyster, to see if his wound was deep enough to start bleeding. Immediately, it did.

Seth hissed in disgust. Kieran recoiled back.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry!”

Kieran jumped down towards Seth, completely unconscious of the returning pool of water that now surrounded them. The splash of his landing flicked water as high as to wetting Seth’s neck. He nestled himself into Seth’s shoulder and reached a hesitant arm towards Seth’s bleeding foot. Seth feigned a chuckle to ease Kieran’s panic and put an arm around him. He began to massage his thumb against Kieran’s panting ribcage.

Kieran turned towards Seth with worried eyes and plump, slightly agape, lips. Seth’s skin, up close, reflected a fuzzy white aura, like snow, from the moon hanging above them. The warmth of his body presented a noticeable contrast.

“I’m so sorry.”

Seth leaned in and kissed Kieran full on the lips. He quickly broke it off, assessing Kieran. Kieran wasn’t ready to stop. The second go round Kieran slightly licked Seth’s mouth open and slipped his tongue into his mouth. Seth’s tongue slid forward and caressed it in appreciation. Kieran reached over and cupped Seth’s face for support, pulling him slightly closer, forcing a playful aggression between them.

They gave each other a last, furtive kiss and Kieran caressed Seth’s hair, the tips of his fingers burying into the edge of Seth’s hairline in the back of his neck. Both casually pulled themselves up and began dusting themselves off, smacking off wet clumps of sand from their drenched clothes. When they had reached around and collected their shoes, now buried a couple of centimeters into the wet sand, Seth began to hobble towards his car. Kieran followed a ways behind to spot him. He preferred it.

“How’s that?”

Kieran pressed the last inches of masking tape around the toilet paper gause that wrapped around Seth’s foot, which rested on Kieran’s lap, who sat on the edge of the bathtub. Stretched out was Seth’s leg, who sat on the toilet seat.

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Seth lightly pulled his foot back dismissively. He pressed his foot against the floor, testing if he’d stretch open his wound. He didn’t want to show Kieran that it stung whenever pressure was applied to it. Both of them were making an effort to preserve whatever comfort they had developed between each other during the date.

He winced.

“Hey,” Kieran lifted himself off of his seat a little, raising a hand towards Seth, and hooked his arm around his shoulder.

Seth shook his head dismissively and lifted his arm off of Kieran’s shoulder. Kieran shuffled to the side, giving Seth a wide berth, as he trudged out of the bathroom and downstairs. Kieran quickly collected the masking tape, jammed it into his pocket and quickly washed his hands. He jogged downstairs and found Seth lounging on the living room couch.

“You want a beer or something?” Kieran asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Seth nodded. He hoisted himself out of the couch and followed Kieran into the kitchen. Kieran opened the refrigerator and fished them out some beers. He walked over to Seth.

“Do you need help opening this?” he playfully asked.

Seth smirked and snatched the beer out of Kieran’s hand.

“Shut up,” he shot back with a chuckle, and popped his can open.

Kieran led Seth to a few steps over to the window and opened it. The warm summer air gently blew around them. Seth made out the silhouette of the wooden panels of Kieran’s back porch set directly under them. Kieran popped open his beer can and took a sip. He set the can down on the windowsill and looked out. Seth watched him out of the corner of his eye, expecting Kieran to say something. Kieran exhaled a small sigh and passively bristled through the hair above the back of his neck.

“I really did have a good time... considering,” Kieran mused.

“Good,” Seth replied.

Seth looked out of the window, also, at the sparse scenery of Kieran’s backyard. The grass was a little too long underneath the weathered picket fence and the pungent scent of the old wood of the porch, of which sat two plastic seats upon it, crawled into his nostrils. He took a sip of his beer.

“This is a nice neighborhood,” he said quietly.

“Oh yeah,” Kieran nodded, “ My neighbors are great, and there’s never any crime here. Everyone’s always helping each other. You know, we all came from somewhere. It’s this cool little community. We have neighbors from Guatemala, some guy who’s a computer mechanic, the obligatory wife who’s husband is stationed so she’s always, like, passing the time by helping everyone else and hosting events and whatever.”

“Yeah, and what’s your role?”

Kieran shrugged.

“Ah, I guess... I guess I’m the university student who’s just getting by.” He tilted his head left and right in mock-thoughtfulness. “Yeah, that fills out that demographic pretty nice,” he huffed amused.

Seth smirked at him again. Kieran caught a flash of his green-gold eyes and felt a slight pressure squeeze in his belly that extended down to his groin. He inhaled deeply and, in the shadows of between his legs, knotted his fingers.

Seth nudged Kieran with his elbow. “Not the gay guy who can give all the women ‘man advice’?”

Kieran’s face fell slightly. He felt the “knot” in his stomach slowly drain and subside. He let out an irritated, feigned as amused, grunt and looked back out of the window. He gave another passive inhale.

Seth read that he had slightly annoyed him but, all things considered, this affront was small  and easily remedied. He laughed and slapped Kieran’s arm with the back of his hand.

“I think my assessment was better,” Kieran mumbled with a sly grin.

Seth scooted his seat a few inches closer to Kieran, extending his hand onto his thigh and shook it gently, slightly squeezing. Kieran looked at Seth meaningfully and reached out to lightly stroke his forearm before drawing it back to his beer and taking a swig.

“So, why’d you say ‘yes’?” Seth asked, in an oddly conversational tone.

“I was curious,” Kieran shrugged nonchalantly.

Seth paused for Kieran to continue.

“I don’t know. Whitney and I don’t talk. I just don’t like her. I don’t know if I did it to spite her or because I wanted to see if I could put our history on the back burner and, I don’t know, develop fresh, genuine, feelings for you on my own. Maybe I felt guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“I didn’t find you attractive, like sexually attractive, because it felt like you were my brother or something. I mean, I know we talked about this but, honestly... you didn’t feel that?”

Seth gave Kieran a confused look. It was a gesture that expressed the message “I think you’re reading too far into it.”

“I said ‘yes’ for a lot of reasons,” Kieran continued. “All of them kind of selfish and really reckless and irresponsible.” He paused for a minute to take in what he was hearing himself say.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered weakly, looking apologetically into Seth’s eyes. He was trying to assess what was going on in Seth’s mind at a confession so candid.

Seth stared back at Kieran. It was a quiet moment between them. The static of the world beyond the other side of the window buzzed in their ears and vibrated lightly in minute waves on their faces.

Seth furrowed his brow as a wave of frustration quietly nudged him. He’d never been on a date, guy or girl, where so many stifling events occurred that prevented his charisma from leading whoever he was treating towards yearning for a second date. Now, from what he was hearing, his attempts were all in vain from the beginning. In his head, he began to second-guess his motivations for pursuing Kieran himself; was he really as shallow as Kieran may have been insinuating? Was he truly attracted to Kieran, or did he simply just find security in their “familial bond?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Kieran shook his head fervently and grabbed Seth’s wrist.

“No! No, ah, I’m sorry. No, not at all. I mean...” Kieran wanted to choose his words carefully, but he was so confused. “I don’t mind anymore.”

Seth scoffed and shook his shoulders.

“Oh, you don’t mind anymore!?”

Kieran pushed Seth playfully on his shoulder.

“Stop!” he laughed incredulously. “You know what I mean. Come on...”

Seth let out a relaxed laugh and reached around Kieran’s head and caressed the back of his neck, quickly pulling him close to him. His lips parted. Kieran quickly maneuvered and ducked beneath Seth’s face and buried himself in his chest, putting an arm around him. Seth, head rested on Kieran’s, stifled a chuckle.

That was pretty dumb of me, he thought.

He’s nervous..., Kieran thought.

They left their beer on the open windowsill and made their way over to the couch, where they lay cuddling for a few minutes. After a while Kieran began to yawn. He lifted himself up slightly.

“Hey, I’m gonna go to bed.”

Seth pulled himself up and stretched his arms.

“Yeah, I should go.”

Kieran walked over towards the door where Seth had haphazardly thrown his shoes, picked them up and brought them over to Seth. Seth struggled comically to put his shoe on over his injured foot. With a slow groan, he finally fit and tied his shoe and gingerly walked towards the door. Kieran’s hand was already on the handle to let him out.

“Yeah,” Seth mused, “I’m just gonna get a first aid kit when I get back and fix it up.”

Kieran nodded. “Yeah, just be careful,” he offered dumbly.

Both stopped and gave each other modest smiles. Kieran was struggling to not break eye contact with Seth.

“Text me as soon as you get home so I know you made it.”

Seth nodded, “I will.” He stretched out a hand and massaged the back of Kieran’s neck.

Kieran opened the door for him and let him out. Seth remembered to quicken his step less he let Kieran’s roommate’s cats out and bumbled out at a sort of scuttling motion. He texted Kieran half an hour later to tell him that he made it.

Two days later, Kieran didn’t even want to look at his phone. His heart leapt in dread every time his phone would sound the familiar ring of a text message. He had to admit, though, that he did feel wounded - used, even - when he opened his text and found that it was anyone else other than Seth. It was especially upsetting concerning this when he opened a message telling him that he had overused his data minutes. Not Seth.

Good. No, bad. No, I can’t believe I did this. I hate him. I hate myself. Get over it. That b*****d.

HEY, Seth texted later that night, WHY HAVEN’T I HEARD FROM YOU? ANYWAY, I’M FREE ALL DAY TOMORROW. WANT TO DO LUNCH?

Kieran immediately responded, YES