◈ @multibg clicked ♡ for a smooch.
Night came early, and quickly, the winter sun doused by a dim blaze of opal hues, lilac blending with peach and pale blue. Dressed for the winter festival, Trost glittered in the growing dark. Lanterns of stained glass painted frosted cobblestones with pastel shades, coloured light catching in the needle-point tips of the icicles that clung to eaves. On the air, the scent of warm spice intermingled with the perfume of winter blossoms and pine.
Looking past the food stalls, Marco’s gaze had alighted on the frozen canal, on the skates hung up for hire – all leather straps and keen silver edges, designed to be fastened over the skater’s own footwear. Jean’s protests found no purchase and so, clutching each other’s hands, stumbling and slipping, they spilled out onto the ice. Bolstered by a sense of balance honed by ODM drills, bruised but growing in confidence, they carved silvery tracks into the canal’s frozen surface. Still, they held hands.
Far from the rush of other skaters, in the shadowy periphery where stars burned all the brighter, Marco paused to brush the snowflakes from his friend’s hair. Such a simple gesture – fond, reflexive – yet it gave him pause, stoked some yearning part of him. His hand lingered needlessly, fingertips lost in the soft, ash-brown tide.
“I don’t think we did it right before, you know…” Marco started, cautiously.
He remembered the heat of that room, the emerald glass-glow. The huddled press of cadets, watching with bated breath as the bottle spun. More than anything, he remembered the blush that climbed Jean’s cheeks as Marco had crawled to him undeterred. A fleeting first kiss, tentative but unresisting, shared before an audience who gasped and giggled their disbelief. Marco wondered if it disappointed Jean that the depleted cordial bottle had not chosen Mikasa. Marco wondered if his feelings of boyish affection and attraction went unrequited.
And so he did. With the immeasurable value of their friendship balancing on the tip of his tongue, Marco leaned in, pressing his lips, soft and slow, against Jean’s mouth. No witnesses here, no cause to hurry what should have been savoured from the outset.
