Truthfully, Once If Strangers
(Ben/Anna, Chasing Liberty)
by Dorian (@burberrycanary )
Summary: Anna sits on the low stone wall that edges the road and watches him wait in line. She admires how his shoulders look in the leather jacket and how his neck is lovely but so masculine, before getting distracted by his Adam’s apple, which she’d really like to skim her teeth over. [Read this fic to enjoy what @village-skeptic has brilliantly called dewy, angelic twenty-something Matthew Goode. That’s it. That is why this fic exists. Sorry not sorry.]
AN: For @village-skeptic , who somehow spoke this fic into being—and then beta’d it, too. This is the most fun I’ve ever had writing a fic, marvelous V!
Anna has nothing on her mind beyond the paper on realpolitik in European history that she hasn’t even started. But as soon as she passes through the soaring stone archway onto High Street, she spots him right away, like his body is a radio station she can always instantly tune into.
He’s leaning against his bike in that worn-soft leather jacket and staring off down the street, so she gets to watch him unawares. For a moment, Anna can be simply another student in a crush of students, and she knows she isn’t the only girl to notice Ben or to think about what running her hands over his chest and shoulders would feel like.
She steps out of the crowd to stop at the edge of the sidewalk just as he glances her way and she catches the flicker of his there-and-gone smile, the one that she missed noticing for so long because his expression hardly changes. His focus stays trained on her with an intensity that makes her shiver and remember the shared sleeping bag in Austria.
(If another part of her does something undignified like give an inner victory dance—because he is here and because his attention still zeroes in on her like she is the only girl on earth who matters—well, nobody has to know that. Ever.)
Anna feels daring enough to lean in to kiss him hello, light and casual in the way she’s seen other couples do but has never tried herself. She stays close to him, still touching his shoulders after the kiss is over, and with only a tiny blip of hesitation his hands settle on her hips. His thumbs sweep over the bare skin between her jeans and her t-shirt.