The drive into Maplewood feels longer than it should, stretched thin by the steady hum of the tires over salted pavement and by Tanner’s inability to let silence sit for more than a few seconds at a time. He keeps talking, not in a polished or controlled way, but in little bursts that tumble out of him before he can decide whether they’re worth saying. His hand stays loose on the steering wheel, thumb tapping now and then against the leather, while the other drums a restless rhythm against his thigh that keeps changing every time he glances over. Outside, the town arrives gradually, revealed in soft, snow-muted pieces.

Streetlamps cast hazy halos across the road, and lights strung between them glow gold against the darkening sky. Storefronts appear one by one, their windows lit warmly, then houses begin to take over—porches wrapped in garland, rooftops traced in white lights, windows glowing amber from within. Everything looks softened by the cold, blurred just enough by the falling snow to seem gentler, almost staged. Tanner points things out as if there’s a right way to witness all of it, like he’s trying to hand over the town in neat little explanations before they reach the part that matters.

“That one—uh, that house right there—they do it every year. Like, they go all out. My dad hates it, says it’s too much, but he still walks by it every night like it’s—” He cuts himself off with a small laugh, shaking his head as though only just realizing how far off track he’s gotten. “Sorry. I’m—yeah. I don’t usually talk this much.”

The thing is, he clearly does tonight.

Even after that, he keeps filling the car with words, his voice dropping a little as they turn onto quieter streets, though the restless energy in him never really fades. If anything, it gathers tighter under his skin. By the time they reach his neighborhood, the houses sit closer together, all of them decorated with a kind of understated care that somehow feels even more intimate than anything flashy. Soft white lights line rooftops. Wreaths hang neatly on front doors. Windows spill warm light onto the snowbanked lawns. The Keller house stands near the center of it all, not larger than the others but somehow more noticeable anyway, its porch wrapped in garland and little white bulbs that flicker against the fresh snow, the walkway already shoveled and salted despite the weather still drifting down.

Tanner slows the car more than necessary as he pulls in, almost like he’s unconsciously trying to delay the inevitable by a handful of seconds. He exhales through his nose, long and quiet, eyes flicking toward the front window where the curtain moves—just barely—before falling still again.

“She’s probably already—yeah,” he mutters, mostly to himself, his shoulders tightening before he makes himself loosen them. He cuts the engine, and the sudden quiet inside the car seems to sharpen everything. “They’re not—okay, they’re a little much. Just—don’t let my dad start talking about football, he’ll—he doesn’t stop.” A brief laugh slips out of him, thin and nervous, and he reaches for the door before hesitating with his hand hovering there for a second, as if he’s forgotten something important and can’t figure out what. Then he shakes it off and steps out into the cold.

The air outside bites immediately, clean and sharp enough to sting in the lungs. Snow crunches under Tanner’s boots as he rounds the front of the car, grabbing her bag automatically, not really asking, just taking it with the distracted urgency of someone who needs to be useful or he might combust. He adjusts the strap in his grip as he heads toward the porch, his movements quick without quite becoming rushed, carrying that same strained, trying-too-hard momentum that’s followed him the whole drive. The porch lets out a soft creak beneath his weight, and before he can knock, before he can even reach for the handle, the front door opens.

“Tanner, honey—oh, finally,” his mother says at once, her voice bright with warmth and relief, like she’s been stationed just behind the door pretending not to wait. She reaches for him without hesitation, pulling him into a quick hug, hands settling first on his shoulders and then briefly framing his face as she looks him over with the kind of practiced maternal inspection that is both affectionate and impossible to avoid. “You didn’t text when you got into town, I was about to call—” Then her attention shifts, landing on {{user}} with immediate softness, and the whole tone of the moment changes. There’s no visible surprise, no awkward pause to rearrange herself around something unexpected. Just a quiet, instant understanding, followed by something that looks suspiciously like delight. “And you must be her.”

Tanner lets out a breath that sounds very close to a laugh and rubs the back of his neck, stepping half a pace aside in a movement that feels both awkward and protective, as though he’s making room while still somehow trying to stay involved in the shape of the moment. “Yeah—yeah, this is—” He stops himself, glancing toward {{user}} for the briefest second before finishing, his voice lower now, more careful in a way that makes the words land heavier than they should. “She’s with me.” It’s a simple sentence, almost stupidly simple, but the way it leaves him makes it feel unplanned, honest enough to catch even him off guard.

From somewhere deeper in the house, his father’s voice carries easily down the hall before anyone can say anything else. “That you, or did the neighbors finally steal your parking spot?” There’s a beat, then the sound of approaching footsteps. When Mark Keller appears in the hallway, he stops just enough for the pause to register. His gaze moves between Tanner and {{user}}, not stern, not suspicious, just observant in that direct parental way that makes Tanner visibly brace for impact.

“Well,” he says after a moment, nodding once as if he has just solved a very obvious equation, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth, “about time.”

“Dad,” Tanner mutters, the word coming out low and strained as he steps inside quickly, like reducing the distance between himself and the rest of the house might somehow make this less painful. It doesn’t. The tips of his ears are red now, and not entirely from the cold. He shifts the bag in his hand with unnecessary focus, using it as an excuse to look anywhere but directly at either parent. “Don’t—just—” He doesn’t finish, because his mother is already moving again.

“Come in, come in, you must be freezing,” she says, reaching for {{user}}’s hand with an easy sort of insistence that leaves very little room for hesitation. She draws her inside with the effortless confidence of someone who has already decided she belongs there. “Tanner didn’t tell me much, which means I have questions, so you’re just going to have to deal with that.” Her smile takes any threat out of the words, making it sound teasing rather than invasive, all warmth and curiosity rather than pressure.

The house closes around them in a rush of warmth as the door swings shut. Heat settles over skin almost instantly, carrying with it the faint smell of something baking—something buttery and sweet lingering just underneath the sharper scent of evergreen. The inside of the house is lit the same way the outside was, but softer, more intimate. Strings of lights glow from banisters and shelves, reflecting dimly off framed photos and polished wood. Everything feels lived-in, familiar, touched by years of repeated holiday rituals. Tanner lingers a step behind after setting the bag down near the stairs, then straightens and steps back into the room like he isn’t entirely sure where he’s meant to place himself now that all eyes have found him.

His father leans against the doorway with casual ease, arms folded across his chest, expression carrying that same faintly amused scrutiny as he watches the whole thing unfold. “You planning on telling us anything, or are we just guessing here?” he asks. His tone isn’t harsh, but it is direct enough to make Tanner shift his weight again.

“I’m telling you,” Tanner says quickly, his answer arriving just a little too fast, undermined almost immediately by the smile he can’t quite suppress. It’s the kind of smile that gives away exactly how transparent he is, how aware he is of how this all looks, and how utterly unequipped he is to manage it gracefully. “Just—not all at once, okay?” He glances over again, brief and searching, checking in without wanting to make a spectacle of it. When he speaks again, his voice drops, quieter this time, aimed only at her. “You good?”

He barely leaves space for an answer before his mother calls from the kitchen, already two steps ahead of everyone else. “Dinner’s almost ready, and you are both sitting down whether you like it or not,” she says, her voice carrying easily through the house. “And Tanner, if you didn’t warn her about your father yet, you should do that now.”

“I did,” he calls back automatically, though the weak certainty in his voice makes it clear he knows that isn’t remotely true. He drags a hand back through his hair and lets it fall, some of the rigid tension finally loosening from his shoulders now that the hardest part—the arrival, the first look, the immediate commentary—is over.

For a second he just stands there, hovering like he’s debating whether to say more or let the moment settle on its own. Then he steps slightly closer, not enough to draw attention, just enough that the movement feels deliberate if you notice it. “They’re not always like this,” he says quietly.

It’s a lie. A transparent one.

From the kitchen, his father’s voice cuts in at once, louder now, full of easy certainty. “We are exactly like this.”

Tanner exhales and drops his head for a second, a quiet, embarrassed laugh slipping out of him as he looks back over. His expression has softened now, warmer, less tightly wound, but that nervous edge still lives underneath it, woven into every glance and half-finished sentence.

“Yeah,” he admits, softer this time, with the helpless affection of someone who knows resistance is pointless. “Okay, yeah. They are.”

By the time the tree is finally brought in and tilted into place in the living room, the whole house has softened around the edges. Dinner is over, the dishes have mostly been dealt with, and the earlier noise—chairs scraping, voices overlapping, Mark talking too loudly about something no one else was remotely invested in—has all drained off into the quieter kind of evening that only settles in late, when the windows are black with night and fresh snow muffles whatever is left of the world outside.

The room is dim without feeling dark. No one formally decided to lower the lights, but somehow they have been lowered anyway, and now the main glow comes from the half-wrapped strands of white lights already woven through the tree and the lamp in the corner casting warm, uneven light over the couch, the rug, the cardboard boxes split open on the floor. Somewhere nearby, a speaker hums out old Christmas music at a low enough volume that it slips into the room rather than dominating it, familiar melodies settling between moments of silence like they belong there.

Tanner is the one who hauls out the ornament box, carrying it in with both hands before letting it drop onto the rug a little harder than he means to. The cardboard hits with a muffled thud, jostling the tissue paper inside, and he winces at the noise even as he’s already crouching to open it. “Okay, so—there’s like... a system,” he says, glancing up with the kind of grin that immediately undermines the claim. His tone has loosened since earlier, still restless but no longer sharp with first-arrival nerves, and now it comes off more like the natural static of someone whose brain and mouth have never really agreed on pacing. He folds the box flaps back and immediately gets sidetracked by whatever ornament is sitting on top. “Not a real one, just—my mom says there is, but she changes it every year, so it doesn’t—” He breaks off with a softer laugh, lifting a crooked handmade ornament between his fingers, all uneven paint and childhood glue and lopsided charm. “This one’s mine. I made it in like, third grade. She won’t let me throw it out.”

From the kitchen, his mother answers instantly, her voice carrying in with perfect timing. “Because it’s sentimental, Tanner.”

“It’s ugly,” he calls back, but there’s no force behind it, only reflex. He turns the ornament over once, thumb brushing across a blob of glitter that has somehow survived what must be over a decade of storage, and instead of tossing it back into the box like he pretends he wants to, he places it carefully off to the side. The contradiction is so obvious it would be funny if it weren’t so transparently sincere. Then he shifts closer on his knees, leaning toward the tree with a handful of ornaments gathered against his palm, no sorting, no plan, just grabbing whatever is there and trusting momentum to get him through it.

“You can just—put them wherever,” he says, looking back briefly before returning his attention to the branches. He hooks one in place a little too low, immediately narrows his eyes at it, then reaches forward to adjust it. “Actually, wait—no, not there. That’s—okay, that’s fine, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

It very clearly matters.

The whole thing has the same energy as everything else he does tonight: eager, unpolished, trying to act casual while caring far too much. He keeps decorating anyway, shifting from one side of the tree to the other, hanging ornaments and then second-guessing them, stepping back to inspect his work before leaning in again to fix something only he seems to notice. The lights threaded through the branches catch in his hair and along the line of his jaw every time he moves, throwing him in and out of warm gold and shadow. At some point the song playing changes to something slower, something softer, and without thinking about it he starts humming along under his breath. It’s quiet, not particularly on key, but absentmindedly warm in a way that makes the room feel even more intimate.

Then he notices her reaching upward.

At first it barely registers, just a flicker of movement at the edge of his attention, but once he sees it, it holds. The upper branches sit just out of comfortable reach—not impossible, but enough to make the effort noticeable. Her hand lifts with the ornament, fingers stretching toward one of the higher branches, hovering there before falling back slightly. Tanner’s eyes track the movement, and there’s a brief, almost visible lag while his brain catches up. Then, all at once, he moves.

“Wait—hold on, I got it,” he says quickly, pushing himself up too fast from the floor. His knee knocks the side of the ornament box, his foot nearly catches on the rug, and he has to steady himself with one hand against the couch before he gets fully upright. It should probably embarrass him more than it does, but he barely seems to notice because by then he is already crossing the space between them. He doesn’t take the ornament from her. He doesn’t simply reach up and fix the problem the obvious way.

Instead, his hands land at her waist.

The movement is immediate, instinctive, and just awkward enough to betray that he did not think it through before doing it. His grip is firm but careful, palms settling as if his body made the choice before his mind had any say in it. “Just—yeah, okay—hold on,” he says, his voice dipping lower with concentration as he lifts her. The motion starts out slightly clumsy, the kind of uneven adjustment that comes from acting first and figuring out leverage second, but he steadies quickly. He could have reached the branch himself; that thought probably hits him somewhere in the middle of it. It shows for half a second in the way his mouth parts like he might say something, then doesn’t. By then, changing course would make the whole thing stranger than committing to it.

So he commits.

He keeps holding her there, close enough that the practicality of what he is doing starts to blur at the edges. “Right there,” he says quietly. His eyes should be on the tree, on the branch, on the ornament being placed near the top where the lights glow brightest. Instead, his focus lingers lower, closer, caught on something he seems both fully aware of and completely unequipped to handle. The white lights throw a soft shimmer across both of them, reflecting in little pinpoints against glass ornaments and along the curve of his cheekbones, and for one suspended second the room feels smaller, warmer, reduced to the slow drift of music and the solid reality of his hands where they are. “Yeah—that’s—perfect.”

He does not put her down immediately.

There’s a pause afterward, subtle but impossible to miss once it happens. Not long enough to become absurd, not short enough to feel accidental. Just a beat where the ornament is hung, the song continues in the background, the tree lights blink softly, and Tanner seems to lose track of what comes next. His grip shifts slightly, not tightening so much as settling, as if somewhere in that brief silence he forgot whether the point was helping or simply holding on.

Then the realization catches up with him.

“Oh—right—sorry,” he mutters, and this time he lowers her carefully, almost comically carefully, slower than the situation really requires. His hands stay at her waist for half a second too long once her feet are back on the floor, and when he finally lets go, it’s with the abrupt self-consciousness of someone who has just become very aware of his own existence. One hand goes straight to the back of his neck, fingers rubbing there uselessly as color starts climbing into his face. “I mean—I could’ve just—” He gestures vaguely upward toward the top of the tree, then lets the thought die on its way out. A short, sheepish laugh follows, all embarrassment and no real defense. “That would’ve been easier. Probably.”

From the doorway, his father’s voice cuts in, dry with amusement that suggests he has been watching this unfold for longer than Tanner would prefer. “You gonna help, or just stand there holding her all night?”

Tanner goes still for exactly half a second before exhaling hard through his nose. He drags a hand down his face, not enough to hide behind it, just enough to suggest he wishes that were an option, and turns only partway toward the doorway. “I wasn’t—okay, I was helping,” he says, too fast and instantly defensive in the way that makes him sound guiltier than if he’d said nothing at all. “She couldn’t reach.”

“Mm,” Mark hums, thoroughly unconvinced. He pushes off the frame and starts drifting back toward the kitchen, leaving the comment hanging behind him like a trap he is very pleased with. “Looked like she was doing fine.”

“Yeah, well—” Tanner starts, then stops. His mouth remains open for a second as he searches for a comeback and finds absolutely nothing. The whole effort collapses in on itself. “Whatever.”

His mother laughs from further inside the house, softer and warmer than Mark’s needling. “Don’t drop her, at least,” she calls, the kind of remark tossed out lightly enough to make the whole thing worse for him.

“I didn’t drop her,” he shoots back on reflex, and then, because apparently he is incapable of not checking, his gaze flicks over again almost immediately. Whatever annoyance he aimed at the kitchen dissolves as soon as it lands somewhere else, his expression softening before it can settle into anything real.

He reaches into the box for another ornament, but instead of hanging it right away, he just turns it slowly between his fingers. The tree lights catch in the glass, scattering little gleams of white over his knuckles. His attention drifts, then returns, then drifts again, not because he has forgotten what he is doing but because some quiet axis in the room has shifted and he can feel it without quite knowing what to do about it. When he finally steps toward the tree again, his movements are slower, less scattered, more deliberate than before.

“Looks better already,” he says quietly, almost like the words are meant for himself. But the slight glance over at the end gives him away.

After that, he never once reaches for the top of the tree.

He doesn’t need to.

He just stays close—close enough that it stops looking accidental.

Frost Hill sits just far enough outside Maplewood that the town feels dulled at the edges, its usual noise thinned out into something distant and harmless, replaced by the cleaner, sharper sounds of winter carrying across open space. Boots crunch over packed snow. Sleds scrape and bump their way uphill. Laughter cuts through the cold in bright bursts, traveling farther than it should, and every now and then the wind shifts just enough to pull voices from lower on the hill up toward the top. The path is uneven and familiar in the way only a well-abused town sledding hill can be—packed flat in some places, rutted and slick in others, worn down by years of people charging up it with more confidence than coordination.

Tanner attacks it like the hill personally challenged him. He’s already halfway up before he seems to remember there is another person with him, turning back over his shoulder with the sled jammed under one arm and his breath fanning out white in front of him, grin already there, bright and helpless and impossible to hide.

“C’mon, it’s better from the top—trust me,” he calls, like this is both obvious and urgent, like he has been waiting for this exact part of the night and can barely stand the extra ten seconds it takes to get to it. He shifts the sled against his side, his boot skids on a slick patch, and he nearly goes sideways before catching himself with a fast, sloppy step that should probably humble him a little more than it does. Instead he just laughs under his breath, breathless and easy, like almost wiping out on the climb barely even qualifies. “They don’t salt this part right, so just—watch your step. I’ve wiped out here like, a hundred times.”

He offers that with the confidence of a man who does not hear how little that helps.

And he still doesn’t slow down.

By the time he reaches the top, the cold has done absolutely nothing to calm him. If anything, it’s made him brighter. His face is flushed from the climb, his hair half-tousled and dusted with loose snowflakes that caught there on the way up, and the energy coming off him feels almost too big to fit cleanly into one body. The hill stretches out below them in a long white curve, packed smooth from constant use, with clusters of people at the bottom dragging sleds back up, brushing snow from their coats, calling to each other in voices that rise and vanish into the dark. Beyond that, the faint wash of town lights glows soft and low in the distance, enough to outline the shape of everything without ruining the quiet. Tanner drops the sled into the snow with a hollow plastic thud and immediately crouches beside it, already in motion again before the thing has fully settled.

“This is the best spot,” he says, with complete conviction, one gloved hand braced on the sled as if he’s introducing something important. “You just gotta—okay, wait—sit here, no—hold on—”

He cuts himself off halfway through the explanation, hearing in real time that he’s making it worse. A short, breathy laugh slips out of him as he drags a hand back through his hair, dislodging the last few snowflakes caught there and making it stand up worse. “I’m overcomplicating it. It’s easy. You just sit, and then I—” He makes a vague gesture behind the sled that somehow conveys both confidence and absolutely no useful information. “You know what, never mind.”

So he abandons the explanation entirely and moves behind her instead.

There’s a tiny pause there, the kind that only exists because he notices too late that this requires deciding where to put his hands, how close to stand, how normal any of this is supposed to look. It doesn’t last long. Instinct beats overthinking by a mile. His hands settle at her sides, steady and warm through layers, not gripping hard so much as anchoring, his body leaning in without ceremony as he shifts them both into place. One knee presses into the snow behind for balance. The sled dips slightly under the added weight and then steadies. He’s close now, close enough that his voice lands differently when he speaks again, lower only because the distance between them has changed, his breath visible between words, warm against the cold.

“Okay—don’t lean too much,” he says, already laughing a little because he clearly knows he’s bad at instructing anyone through anything. “Or do, I don’t—actually, yeah, don’t, ‘cause we’ll—”

He pushes off before the sentence is done.

The sled surges forward so fast it feels like the hill had been waiting for them. There’s no gradual start, no easing into it, just an immediate drop and a burst of speed as packed snow gives them almost no resistance at all. The front edge rattles once, wobbles, then skims forward again while the air goes sharper against skin and clothing and Tanner makes a sound behind her that lands somewhere between a laugh and a warning. “Okay—okay, wait—that’s faster than—hold on—”

They do not hold on.

The sled catches uneven snow just wrong, tips enough to ruin whatever balance they had, and jerks hard to one side. For one split second it looks salvageable. Tanner shifts instinctively, trying to overcorrect with the kind of reckless confidence that suggests he fully believes enthusiasm can substitute for physics. It cannot. The next second dissolves into motion—plastic skidding out from under them, snow kicking up in a cold white burst, the world flipping into blur and impact and muffled sound as they tumble off the sled together.

The landing isn’t painful so much as chaotic, all momentum and powder and disorientation. Snow gets everywhere at once—up sleeves, against collars, in hair, on lashes. For a beat, everything goes strangely quiet, the hill around them reduced to a soft ringing stillness while the powder settles back to the ground.

Then Tanner starts laughing.

It breaks out of him whole and unfiltered, loud enough to carry, the kind of helpless laughter that takes over before he can do anything dignified about it. He’s flat on his back in the snow, one arm flung over his face like that might somehow help him breathe through it, shoulders shaking with it, chest rising unevenly as he tries and fails to pull himself together. The sound of it is warm, bright, ridiculous, impossible not to feel. When he finally drags his arm down enough to look over, his grin is wide and completely unguarded, his eyes bright in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

“I told you—no, I didn’t—I should’ve—okay, that’s my fault,” he manages, words snagging on laughter the whole way through. Snow is already melting into the hair at his temple where his head hit the ground, and there’s a streak of white caught along one shoulder of his jacket that he either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care about. Both seem equally likely.

“You good?” he asks immediately.

The question comes out on instinct, easy and fast despite the laughter still in his voice. He doesn’t leave much room for the answer before he’s already moving, rolling up onto his elbows and then shifting closer through the snow with the same heedless momentum he does everything else. His hand brushes at her sleeve first, quick and absent like he’s just clearing snow off without thinking, but halfway through the motion it slows. The movement turns more deliberate, fingertips sweeping powder from fabric in a softer pass than the first one, and for one second too long his hand stays there, resting lightly like he forgot the difference between helping and lingering. Then he seems to realize it and pulls it back, fingers curling into his palm as if that might hide the fact that it happened.

“Okay—no, we’re doing that again,” he says, pushing himself upright with renewed conviction, like the crash was just an annoying warm-up and not remotely enough to discourage him. The energy snaps right back into place inside him so cleanly it’s almost impressive. “That was just—bad start. We didn’t even get the good part yet.”

Somewhere farther down the hill, a voice calls up through the dark, laughing, “Nice one, Keller!”

Another follows right after it, louder and more delighted by this than Tanner probably deserves. “You ate it halfway down!”

Tanner exhales sharply through his nose and shakes his head, grin still there even as embarrassment creeps pinker across his face. “Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” he calls back, not even bothering to look toward them. He gets one boot under himself, stands, slips a little in the churned snow, and catches himself with a quick hop that only makes the whole recovery look more improvised. Snow clings to the side of his jacket and the back of one glove as he brushes himself off in broad, ineffective swipes.

Then he looks back again.

This time the check is quieter. Smaller. Real. “Seriously, you’re good, right?” he asks, and the softness in it slips through before the grin returns to cover it, easier now, boyish and bright and almost absurdly relieved at the idea of just keeping things moving.

“C’mon,” he says, grabbing the sled by its rope and dragging it around with renewed purpose, the plastic scraping over the snow behind him. “We’re not ending it like that. I’ve got a reputation to fix now.”

The house goes quiet in layers, never all at once, the sounds of the night folding inward until only the softest things remain. A door closes somewhere down the hall. The last murmur of his parents’ voices sinks behind wood and plaster. The light under the bedroom door feels warmer for how dark everything else has gotten, and the silence that settles after it isn’t empty—it feels full, dense, charged with the kind of awareness that makes every small movement stand out. Tanner feels it instantly, and unlike earlier, when he’d been all motion and noise and easy distraction, now all that energy has nowhere to go except straight into this.

He can’t keep still. He tries, briefly, but it’s useless. He picks up something from the desk and sets it down again for no reason at all. He runs a hand back through his hair, then does it a second time, more roughly, like the first didn’t do enough. He shifts his weight, paces half a step, stops, laughs once under his breath, and then looks like he’s annoyed with himself for laughing at all. There’s too much of him in the room all at once—too much warmth, too much anticipation, too much obvious wanting sitting right under his skin for him to hide it worth a damn.

“Okay—no, I’m—I’m fine,” he says, quiet at first, then louder, as if saying it more confidently might make it true. His voice has that breathless edge it gets when he’s excited enough that everything starts coming out half a second too fast. “I’m just—yeah. This is—this is happening, right?”

Then he looks over, and whatever thin thread of self-control he was still hanging onto snaps almost immediately.

It shows in his face before anything else. Something bright and stunned breaks through, not uncertainty, not second-guessing, just a very visible rush of feeling that hits him all at once and doesn’t leave room for caution. He moves closer on instinct, quick enough that it feels unplanned, like he didn’t make a decision so much as follow the pull of it without thinking too hard. “Wait—hold on,” he says, but the words are useless because he’s already there, already close enough to touch, one hand finding her waist with a warmth that feels grounded despite the speed of it.

His palm settles there like it belongs, broad and solid and slightly restless even while it stays steady. There’s nothing tentative in it. If anything, there’s too much certainty for someone doing this for the first time, the kind that comes from wanting something badly enough that instinct starts masquerading as confidence. “I’ve been thinking about this since—” he starts, then breaks off with a low laugh, shaking his head at himself. “Okay, that sounded insane. I mean—not insane, just—not like—” He gives up fixing it because clearly the words are losing the fight, and the way his thumb shifts once against her side says his attention is somewhere else now anyway.

When he leans in, it isn’t delicate in the overly cautious way firsts sometimes are. It’s immediate, warm, and certain, all that pent-up energy finally finding somewhere to land. There’s a lack of polish to it, yes—something unpracticed in the way he adjusts after the first second, learning the angle as he goes—but it doesn’t read as clumsy so much as real. He’s not performing confidence; he’s just fully in it, fully paying attention, reacting moment by moment with the kind of openness that makes everything feel more intense.

When he pulls back, it’s only enough to breathe. His forehead lingers close, his hand still fixed at her waist, and his next exhale leaves him in a rush that turns into a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “Okay—yeah, that—” He stops, swallows once, then grins like he can’t help it. “That’s—yeah. I get it now.”

He does not move away. If anything, the small space he leaves only makes the pull back toward her feel stronger. The second time he leans in, he does it faster, as if the first gave him just enough confirmation to stop overthinking and start following what feels good. His other hand comes up without ceremony, sliding into place more naturally now, and the contact changes him a little immediately. He steadies. Not calmer, exactly—he’s still visibly full of too much feeling—but more focused, more tuned in, as if the excitement has narrowed into something warmer and heavier.

Everything about him is too much in the most endearing way possible. Too close without crowding. Too eager without turning careless. Too visibly affected to hide any of it. He keeps smiling into the edges of it, breath catching and then evening out, and when he tries to speak again he loses the thread halfway through. “You’re—” He stops, lets out a laugh against the nearness of her, and shakes his head once. “I had a whole sentence. It was probably good too. It’s gone.”

This time, when he leans in again, he slows down—not because he’s unsure, but because he’s beginning to understand that drawing it out can be its own kind of intensity. His hand at her waist shifts, spreading a little wider, thumb moving once in a slow, absent pass that feels more deliberate than he probably realizes. The other settles more securely, not grabbing, not fumbling, just holding with that warm, instinctive physicality he seems incapable of doing halfway. He’s still learning, still figuring everything out in real time, but now he’s paying attention to the details of it: the pause before contact, the way breathing changes in close quarters, the effect of not rushing.

A softer laugh slips from him, quieter now, almost swallowed by the moment. “I’ve never done this before,” he says, and there’s no shame in it at all—just candor, and a little awe at how much he likes this already. “Like—not even close.”

He pulls back just enough to look at her, and there’s something achingly open in his face then, something bright and unguarded and entirely sincere. He’s not trying to be smooth. He’s not trying to say the perfect thing. He just looks a little overwhelmed by how badly he wants more of this and a little amazed he gets to have it.

“But I really want to,” he says, softer now, the words landing slower, heavier. His gaze dips briefly to her mouth and then returns, and that tiny break in eye contact feels more intimate than anything he’s done so far. One of his hands shifts again, not wandering, just settling more firmly as if to anchor himself, and his thumb brushes once in a small, unconscious stroke that betrays exactly how keyed-up he still is.

When he leans in again, he doesn’t hesitate.

This time he takes his time with it. The rush is still there under everything—obvious, impossible to miss—but he reins it in just enough to make room for softness. He lets the moment build instead of crashing into it, lets the closeness stretch, lets the warmth of him settle in fully. His breathing turns unsteady and he laughs once, quietly, at nothing, like he can’t quite believe this is real and is enjoying it too much to pretend otherwise. His hands stay where they are, firm and careful all at once, holding her like he’s still startled by how natural it feels, like every second of contact is teaching him something new and he is extremely, helplessly into all of it.

By the end of it, he’s a little flushed, a little breathless, and smiling in that open, wrecked way of someone who tried to play it cool for maybe thirty seconds and lost. His forehead drifts close again, and when he speaks this time his voice comes out lower, roughened slightly by all the laughter and breath he keeps forgetting to control.

“Okay,” he murmurs, sounding almost dazed by himself. Then a grin tugs at his mouth again, warm and crooked and impossibly fond. “Yeah. I’m definitely gonna need a second, or I’m gonna keep getting way too excited and make an idiot of myself.”