A Midsummer Night's Kiss

The fire was receding into a distant glow, so she got up to grab another log from the box on the porch. "Do you need another beer?" she asked over her shoulder.

He considered the bottle in his hand, then tipped it against his lips and drained it. A few drops dripped into his beard, and she rolled her eyes. "Now I do!" he called cheerfully.

The screen door slammed behind her as she moved through the dirt room and into the kitchen. She grabbed another beer out of the door of the fridge, some craft brew with a punny name, and then considered her own options. Sake, she decided. It was a cold sake sort of night, dark and cool, with the heat of summer still rising from the dry lawn.

Back out on the porch, she selected a promising-looking log. She looked at the drinks in her hand, looked at the log, and decided to go for it. Tucking the sake bottle into her armpit, she tried to pick up the log with one hand, only to immediately drop it onto her foot. "Fuck!"

He was up on his feet in an instant, and he hurried over, only a trifle unsteady in his gait. "Oh my god, you ridiculous disaster, give me that log before I have to drive you to the ER." She shifted her foot so that he could grab it, then followed him back to the fire, unrepentant. "There is a pokey bit at the end there. If that hadn't been there, I totally would have had it."

"Yes, and then you would have dropped the beer instead," he said, stirring the coals and adding the log. He blew at the smolders, and they flared in the darkness, illuminating his face in fading flashes, catching the shadows of his curls. Finally, a little flame sprung reluctantly to life, licking the log in a sort of halfhearted way. "Good enough!"

She handed him his beer, and he cracked it and took a swig. She unscrewed the sake and sipped from the heavy bottle. He rolled his eyes. "You heathen, aren't you going to put that in a cup?"

"Nah." She shook her head. "Why get a cup dirty? I have enough dishes to do already."

"You're planning on drinking that entire bottle tonight, aren't you."

"There is a strong possibility that this may happen," she admitted, drinking a little more. It burned sweetly in her mouth. "It's been a long week."

"It's been a long year."

"Oh, let's toast to that."

He obligingly thunked his can against her bottle, and they both glugged down more alcohol at once than was strictly responsible. She coughed, spilled sake on her shirt. She looked down at the dark spots with dismay.

"Your ambient entropy field strikes again. It's probably fine. It's clear."

She nodded. "You're probably right, I just like this shirt. This really cool guy I know gave it to me for my birthday."

He grinned. "Tell me more about this cool guy of whom you speak."

She nudged him with her elbow. "You know him better than I do."

"Do I though? I think you know me better than anyone anymore."

She beamed up at him. "You're so eminently knowable!"

He laughed, then drained his beer and let forth an excellent belch, one loud enough that he seemed to startle himself. He almost fell off his stool.

"Oh, you should talk about drinking!"

He managed to lever himself up into a sitting position again. "Yeah..."

"Well, I'm not going to get up again to get you another." They sat watching the flames for a moment. "Do you want some sake?"

He took it gratefully, poured a mouthful, then handed it back. He swallowed and then sighed. "Look, I'm drinking because I'm anxious. And I'm anxious because I need to tell you something."

She swiveled on her stool to face him and looked at him seriously. "What's up?"

"Well. This is...I mean." He sighed again and looked away. "I'm just. I don't...okay, I'm feeling some...things, and I-"

She held up her hand. "Okay, no, I'm going to stop you right there. I think I see where this is going." He looked so stricken that she reached out at once and grasped his shoulder. "No, listen, I'm not stopping you for the reasons you think. I just need to say something before you say what you want to say. Which is rude, I know, but listen. We have become incredibly close friends in a fairly brief period of time, and neither of us are accustomed to this degree of emotional intimacy. I think that living in the culture that we do that we've been socialized to assume that male and female friendships can only result in some form of romantic entanglement. I'm not sure either of our brains are equipped to differentiate between types of intimacy right now. Given that, do you still want to talk about this?"

He gave her an inscrutable look, then let out a strained laugh. "Even now you sound like a professor."

She waved her hands in embarrassment. "Sorry, sorry, that's what I do when I'm anxious."

"I know. And yes. I still want to talk about this."

"We can't un-talk about it."

"That's fine."

This time, she sighed. "All right then. Talk."

"Okay."

The flames had died away again, but neither of them seemed to notice.

"You're not talking," she pointed out.

"Gah!" He threw up his hands, and then held his head in his hands.

"Okay, then," she harumphed, "then I'm talking. You are reluctant to say anything because you think I am going to tell you to fuck off and leave."

"Yes," he said, muffled by his hands.

"You are incorrect."

"I just-" He finally looked up. "Gods, yes, I think I am in love with you, I think about you constantly, and it is driving me insane. It's not okay, and we're both in relationships, and I desperately do not want to lose you as a friend, but it's eating me up inside, and I had to tell you."

She nodded.

"Have I made things weird forever?"

"No, absolutely not. People have crushes, even if they're in monogamous relationships. It's totally normal. Humans are novelty-seeking creatures, and all of our friends are hot. Of course crushes will happen. There is nothing wrong with your feelings, and feeling guilty about them isn't going to make them go away. Only your actions matter in cases like these."

"But I don't know what action to take," he said, a little desperately.

"Well, you took the action of telling me. I don't think there needs to be any further action."

"Oh." He was crestfallen and trying to hide it. "Yeah. I think...look, I'm going to go." He stood up, stumbled towards the house.

"Oh no you don't," she snapped. "Come back here, dude."

He kept lurching off.

"Hey, you don't get to nope on out of here, bucko. Get back here. Stop trying to do an emo boy exit stage right. Come here." He stopped moving, but didn't turn to look at her. She sighed expansively. "Listen. I think about kissing you at least once an hour. Sometimes once every few minutes. It's extremely distracting."

He turned at last. "Really?"

"Yes."

They stared at each other in a sudden and awkward silence.

"Um," he said, tentatively. "Now what?"

She shrugged. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" There was a subtle note of hysteria in his voice.

"Nothing. We are grown-ass adults in stable relationships. We can choose to enjoy these feelings, love each other dearly as friends, and do nothing. Affairs are messy, dishonorable, and extremely impractical. I don't love my partner any less for loving you. If something in the state of our relationships were to change, I would jump you in an instant, but that's not the case right now."

He smiled a small, wry smile and shook his head. "Your tendency to overthink things is so charming, and so wise."

"Aw, thank you."

"But what do we do about the...thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts."

"Yeah, me too. But the intensity will eventually fade."

"And if it doesn't?"

She shrugged again. "Masturbate?"

He laughed as he came back to sit next to her at the fire, now mostly ash. "I don't have a lot of opportunities for that."

She grimaced. "Ugh, that must be hard. I'm sorry."

He shrugged. "That's just the way it is right now."

She held out her pinkie. "Here, I'll pinky swear that if we're ever both single, I'll fuck you immediately."

He hooked her finger with his and gave it a squeeze. He didn't let go. She felt her pulse accelerate, and she wondered if he could feel it. Very quietly, he asked, "Can I kiss you? Just once?"

Her eyes widened a fraction and she felt her heart clench tightly against her ribs. "I really think we are much too drunk to be making important decisions like this." She did not let go of his hand.

"You're right."

He reached out with his free hand and cupped the side of her face. His thumb brushed her lips, and her breath skipped in the back of her throat. She gave an involuntary little gasp, blushed at once, and her breath tickled his skin as it quickened. With agonizing slowness, he traced the edge of her lips with his thumb as they stared at each other in wavering terror and desire. It felt as if the last coal of the fire had taken up residence inside her as she gently closed her lips around the tip of his thumb. He let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan. He dragged his fingers down from her lips to under her chin and gently tipped up her face. Her breathing was heavier; she felt as if she had been running in circles. They stared at each other for an interminable minute, their aching breaths audible in the silence. Finally she whispered, "Just once."

He gave a groan of such relief as their bodies crashed together. He pulled her half into his lap as her hands tangled in his hair and their tongues tangled in her mouth. She could feel him against her thigh, growing harder, and she moaned into his kiss as she--

He slammed the laptop shut. He felt as if he'd been punched.

He hadn't known this, any of this. The last time they'd had one of their regular hangouts, she'd gotten drunk enough to tell him, through embarrassed giggles, that she used to write erotica as a side hustle, and she had described some of it with just enough detail that he'd managed to find it with some determined Googling. Lots of strange stuff, to be honest, including an extensive, multi-chapter work involving fairies of all things, but knowing her, that was hardly surprising. And there, at the bottom of the list, a story published in the last few days, a story that he knew with absolute clarity was about them.

He'd come so close to telling her that night. And the week before. And the week before that. Dramatic confessions were, he was forced to admit, very much his style. But she, oblivious, chattered on in cheerful inebriation, and the moment passed by too quickly for him to grasp.

Yet here, against all odds, a barely veiled confession, buried on Literotica. He started to open the laptop again, reconsidered, then picked up his phone. It was late, but her hours were eccentric to say the least, and it was a weeknight, so he was tolerably certain that she was likely at home alone, playing video games or reading some dense history book.

[hey, are you awake?] he texted.

The response was immediate. [Obviously. What's up?]

[Is it too late to meet at the park?]

[Sounds mysterious,] came the answer. [I'm in. Let me put on some Actual Pants, and I'll walk over.]

[see you soon.] He let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. This was possibly very stupid, but he couldn't unread what he had read or unknow what he now knew. If he hurried, maybe he'd leave his caution behind.

She was already there when he arrived, standing on the bank of the creek, an established meeting place for important conversations. She heard him moving through the brush that hid the bank from the rest of the park, and turned to smile at him. It was hard for her to not smile at him, so she generally didn't try. She sensed, though, an unusual amount of anxiety, even for him. "What's wrong?" she asked, when he came closer.

He leaned down to give her a hug, trying to not squeeze her too hard. She returned it with her usual enthusiasm, then sat down on the edge of the creek, patting the ground next to her. "Out with it. You wouldn't have summoned me in the dead of night unless it was important. You should be asleep."

He obediently sat. "I'm off tomorrow."

"Excellent. Now dish."

He ruminated. He wasn't really sure how to bring this up. "Well," he said at last, "I read something very...interesting on the internet a little bit ago."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "That's certainly not what I was expecting you to say."

"Well, it wasn't something I was expecting to read."

"Color me intrigued."

"Okay, but," he paused. He really wasn't sure how to bring this up, actually. There hadn't been much time to plan. "Well, I found - that is, I read - look, you told me you used to write erotica."

Her hand flew to her mouth as her eyes widened. "Oh fuck." She felt her face and arms burning, and she wasn't sure if the heat was fear, shame, anger, or excitement. "Did you-?"

"Yes."

"Oh my God. The whole thing?"

"Well, no."

She breathed a halting sigh of half-relief.

"But," he continued. "I read enough."

"Oh." Her voice seemed unusually small, and the awkward silence was broken only by the soft trickle of the creek, the water twisting on its way, illuminated by the edges of streetlights and the diffuse illumination of the moon through the trees. They both stared at the water, and very, very carefully did not look at each other.

"Now what?" she asked, finally.

"I have some ideas."

She still did not quite dare meet his eyes. "What kind of ideas?"

"Extremely bad ones."

And then he was kissing her, and she hardly knew what to do with herself when the experience leaped out of her constant rumination and her inadequate words and into the waking world. She almost pushed away, because he was right, this was an extremely bad idea, but her brain was so overloaded with the feeling of his lips crushed against hers, and the heat of his breath, and his hands twisting against her back, and the tip of his tongue meeting hers, and his neat beard rough against her skin, that she found herself not quite capable of remembering why, exactly, this was an extremely bad idea. So instead, she pushed her body closer to his and leaned into it, and finally, finally tangled her fingers in his hair, something she'd always longed to do. She felt smug in the fact that it was as soft as she'd imagined, and that was her last coherent thought for some time. The sound of the creek was drowned in her ears by gasps for breath and the terrific pounding of her heart, loud and rough enough to make her feel as if it would vibrate out of her body all together.

Finally, he pulled back, reluctantly, but he was afraid he was about to pass out otherwise. They stared at each other for an interminable moment, panting like they had raced one another across the expanse of the park to arrive here.

She let out a shaky sigh, which turned into whispered expletives. "Fuck. Shit. Fuck."

"Yes," he agreed. Another moment passed. Then he echoed her earlier sentiment. "Now what?"

She considered. "Can we do that again?"

He bit his lip. (She found it sexy.) "Do you think we'll be able to stop?"

"I don't care," she said, and lunged at him. Despite her smaller stature, she took him by surprise, bowling him over into the long grass behind him. Then she was kissing his mouth, his neck, his earlobe, and he was desperately grasping at her as her weight settled on top of him. Their limbs became increasingly tangled, leaving grace behind to embrace the desperation of an expression of feelings long-buried and ignored. When her legs settled around him, straddling him, he could no longer suppress a moan, which poured from his lips into hers, and she felt it echo through every part of her.

Eventually, she was forced to come up for air again, and looking down at him, taking in his heaving chest, his frightened eyes full of desire, she hesitated.

"Should we keep going?" she asked, softly.

It was painful to say anything but yes, but what he said instead was, "Things will get complicated if we do."

"More complicated," she corrected.

"Yes."

"So...that's a no?"

"I...don't know. How complicated do we want to make this?"

She smiled in a way that quirked up one side of her mouth only. (He found it sexy.) "Shall we find out?"

***Have I quibbled too far, or not enough? You'll have to let me know, friend. (If you find this, that is.)***