Intimacy prompt 59: a height difference
Ahhh, thank you so much for this one pal! Any excuse for unrelenting early relationship tenderness 💖
THE WAY YOU TOUCH ME MAKES ME TONGUE-TIED for @danverses [rated G, 595 words]
You can read this on AO3 here if you prefer!
Patrick is under no misapprehensions about his height. He knows he's not particularly tall or short; decidedly average, like in so many other things. During one of he and Rachel's many breaks he tried online dating and one of the women he met up for coffee with told him he carries himself like someone much taller, and he never was able to work out whether it was a compliment or an insult or both. But he was taller than Rachel, and the few other women he dated for any length of time, which means that the first time he kisses David standing up — in the middle of their store in the middle of the day when anyone could walk in, and Patrick couldn't care less who sees them — he has a brief moment of readjustment when he realises he has to look up instead of down into the kiss. Before he can even begin to think about it too hard David's lips are on his and it's as natural as breathing, so simple that his body quickly forgets kissing was ever any different.
As the days pass and their kissing becomes more heated, David is gentle, and sweet, and has taken go slow more to heart than Patrick could have anticipated when he asked for it — but he's also unafraid to use the few inches he has on Patrick to loom over him, a move that might be intimidating if it wasn't accompanied by a smile at once so soft and so full of promise for things to come that it tends to make Patrick literally weak at the knees. There's something about David's sheer physicality, his expressive face and his wide gestures and the ease with which he moves his body, that makes Patrick's blood rush hot under his skin.
A week and a half after their first date finds them, like most other evenings, in the stockroom. Usually David lets Patrick stay in control but this time, somehow, it's Patrick who has his back pressed against the wall, hands clutching David's waist like a lifeline while David strokes his fingers soothing and featherlight across his shoulders, kissing so languorously Patrick thinks he could stay here forever and yet with such underlying heat his skin is humming with it. With the solid wall behind him and the warm weight of David in front Patrick finds himself slinking down, just a little, letting the wall support him as David has to crane over even further to keep their lips pressed together.
When David pulls away his lips are spit-slick and swollen, his eyes dark as he sweeps them over Patrick, who makes no move to straighten up. "You like this," he murmurs, syrupy voice laced with the kind of amusement that Patrick knows isn't directed at him but instead is something they share. David takes half a step forward, crowding into Patrick so he has to tilt his head back even further to maintain eye contact.
Patrick can think of several responses to the comment. Not as much as you do if he wants to tease, or he could rock their hips together and say seems like we both do if he wants to take things a little further tonight, but David is grinning down at him and Patrick just wants to give himself up to it.
"Yeah," he breathes instead, and David's eyes blaze. "God, David, I like it."
"Good," is all David says in reply before he bends down to kiss Patrick again, and that's the end of their conversation for a while.