Whoops We Did It Again
LEO
The probability textbook blurs in front of me for the third time in ten minutes. Focus. Regression analysis. The correlation coefficient measures the strength of… Max is on a date right now. With Jaren. the strength of the linear relationship between—
They're probably kissing. Jaren's probably got his hands in Max's ridiculous blue hair, and Max is probably making those little sounds he made when I… No, when Jaren.
Fuck. I throw my pen across the desk. It bounces off my laptop and clatters to the floor. I rake both hands through my hair and stare at the ceiling.
This is fine. This is what I wanted. I told Max we should just be friends because that's the smart play, the only play that doesn't end with me losing him entirely.
He asked me to take his virginity, and I should have said no.
I should have been strong enough to say no.
Instead, I said yes, caught feelings like an idiot, and now I'm sitting here trying to study while the guy I'm in love with is off with someone else.
There's a 97% chance this is my own fault. I pick up the pen. Put it down. Pick it up again.
The correlation coefficient measures the strength of—
A knock. Barely a knock, more like knuckles grazing wood, and then my door is pushing open and Max is standing there, and every statistical model in my brain crashes simultaneously.
He looks wrecked. Hair a mess, face flushed, eyes wide and slightly wild, and moving erratically. He's breathing like he ran here. I yank off my headphones. "Max? What—" I stop. Take in whatever his face is doing. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"I—" He falters. "Can I sit?"
"Yeah. Yeah, of course." I'm on my feet before I've decided to stand, gesturing to my bed like an idiot. "Do you want hot chocolate? I can make… There's probably some in the—"
"I went to Jaren's."
Everything in me goes very still. "Oh. Yeah. I knew that."
"Oh, right." He sits on the edge of my bed.
Hands twisting together. Can't stop moving, classic Max when his brain is overloading.
"We hung out with some of his frat brothers.
They were nice. Really nice, actually. There were two guys named Mark, which is objectively hilarious from an organizational standpoint—"
"Max." I sit down next to him. Not too close. Giving him space even though every cell in my body wants to reach for him. "What happened?"
"We went to his room." The words come out flat. "His roommate wasn't there. We had privacy."
My stomach drops through the floor. "Okay."
"And we started kissing. Which was… it was good.
Nice. He's a good kisser. Very… considerate.
Made sure I was comfortable. Asked permission before—" He's rambling, words tumbling out too fast. "—before escalating, and I was trying to focus on it, trying to be present and not overthink for once in my life, but then his hand went under my shirt and—"
"Did he—" My voice comes out tight. If Jaren... "Did he do something you didn't want?"
"No! No, he was great. Perfect, even. It's…" Max scrubs his hands over his face. "It felt wrong. His hand on my skin felt wrong, and I panicked and fell off his lap and faceplanted into his comforter."
Relief hits me so hard I almost fall over.
Which is fucked up. Max is clearly upset, clearly struggling, and my first reaction is thank god he didn't sleep with him?
What kind of best friend does that make me?
A jealous one. A hopeless one. One who's been pretending he doesn't want to be the hand on Max's skin.
There's a second of silence as I imagine it.
Faceplanted… He faceplanted. A sound escapes me, somewhere between a laugh and a cough. I clamp down on it immediately, but Max's head snaps up.
"It's not funny!"
"It's a little bit funny." I hold up my thumb and forefinger, barely an inch apart. Relief washes through me. If he's embarrassed, he's okay. Jaren didn't hurt him
"I looked like a malfunctioning robot! And then I rambled at him about how perfect he is and how I don't know what's wrong with me, and—" His voice cracks, and the laugh dies in my throat.
"—and he was so understanding about it. He said sometimes people don't click, and that's okay, and he wants someone who feels the zing too—"
"The zing."
"The zing! Sparks! Whatever people are supposed to feel!"
He's on his feet now. Pacing. My room isn't big to begin with, and the bed takes up most of it, so he doesn't have much space, but Max can never sit still when his brain's doing this. I know. I've watched him pace through approximately two hundred crises in the three years I've known him.
"And I don't understand because he checks every box! He's nice and hot and funny and has his life together, and he texts back, and he laughs at my tangents and—"
"Max—"
"—and the kissing was good! It was! But it didn't feel—" He stops. Turns to face me.
My heart stutters. He's looking at me with those wide blue eyes, and I'm being very careful, keeping my expression neutral, because I know what I want him to say and I can't let myself hope for it. There's a 2% chance he's about to say what I think he's about to say. Maybe 3%. Margin of error—
"It didn't feel like what?" I ask quietly.
"Like it did when I kissed you."
Oh, fuck. The words land somewhere in the center of my body and detonate. "Max—"
"It didn't feel like that." He's moving toward me now, eyes bright, hands gesturing wildly. "When Jaren kissed me, it was nice, but when you kissed me, it felt like, like a circuit completing. Like everything suddenly made sense and I couldn't think about anything else and—"
"Max, stop." I'm standing now, too. Hands up like I'm trying to ward him off. Like, if I don't keep some distance between us, I'll do something stupid. "You're upset. You're confused. You came from—"
"I want to kiss you again."
Shit. Shit shit shit. "That's not, we said we weren't going to—"
"I know what we said." He closes the distance between us. "But I need to know if I imagined it. If it was just the newness, or…"
"Max, this is a bad idea—" He kisses me. He launches himself at me, hands fisting in my shirt, pulling my face down to his, and for half a second I don't move. Can't move. Brain short-circuiting, every carefully constructed wall crumbling, and then something in me just... gives way.
I make a sound I'm not proud of, low and broken and desperate, and my arms come around him, and I'm kissing him back like I'm drowning and he's oxygen.
This is a mistake. This is such a mistake. I'm going to regret this. I'm going to—
He tastes like chapstick and something sweet, and his hands are in my hair, and I can't make myself stop. Don't want to stop. Want to live in this moment forever, even though I know it's going to destroy me.
"I hate myself," I mutter against his mouth. "I hate myself so much right now—"
But I'm not stopping. I'm walking us backward, hands tangled in his ridiculous blue hair, and then the backs of his knees hit my bed, and we're falling.
I roll us as we land, and suddenly he's under me, looking up at me with those wide eyes, and I'm braced above him with my heart trying to beat out of my chest.
Stop. You should stop. He's confused; he just came from another guy's room. He doesn't actually want… You.
"We shouldn't—" I try. Max pulls me down and kisses me harder.
Okay. Okay, apparently we're doing this.
I groan and give in completely. My hands find the hem of his shirt, hesitating just long enough to give him a chance to stop this; please stop this, please save me from myself, and then his shirt is gone, cool air on his skin for exactly one second before my mouth finds his neck.
He arches up into me, tugging at my shirt. "Off. Off, off—"
I sit back and yank it over my head. Toss it somewhere. When I look down, Max is staring at my chest with an expression that makes heat crawl up my neck.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi." My voice comes out strangled.
He reaches for me and pulls me back down, and then we're kissing again, deep and messy and desperate, his tongue in my mouth and my hands everywhere I can reach.
His skin is so soft, softer than I remembered, and he's making these little gasping sounds every time I find a new spot that makes him shiver.
I kiss down his jaw. His neck. That spot where his shoulder meets his collarbone. He shivers under me, fingers digging into my back.
"Leo—"
I bite down gently, and he moans. Actually, moans, loud and unashamed, and my hips grind down against him without permission. He's hard. I can feel him through his jeans, and when I grind down again, he makes a sound that shoots straight to my cock.
"Fuck, Max—"
His hands are at my waistband now, fumbling with the drawstring of my sweatpants. "Want to touch you. Can I—"
"Yes. God, yes—"
Getting my sweatpants off while horizontal goes about as well as you'd expect. Limbs flailing, fabric tangling, dignity plummeting. Max laughs. "You look like a flopping fish."
"I'm trying to get naked for you, and you're comparing me to a fish—" I finally kick them off with more force than necessary, my underwear flying off with them. Max shoves his jeans down and steps out of them, and I forget how to breathe.
Then he's back on the bed, back on me, and his hand wraps around my cock. My vision whites out for a second. He strokes experimentally, watching my face like he's cataloging my reactions, and I have to bury my face in his neck to keep from coming embarrassingly fast.
"Good?" he asks.
"Too good. Way too good. You need to—" I grab his wrist, still him. "Slow down, or this is going to be over very quickly."
He grins up at me, delighted. "Really?"
"Don't look so smug."
"I'm not smug. I'm just—" He strokes me again, deliberately, and I groan. "—gathering data."
"You're impossible."
"You like it."