12 #2
The kiss was soft first. Uncertain in the specific way of two people who'd known each other a decade and never once done this, both of them adjusting in real time,
Darcy's hand coming up to rest against Leah's jaw like she was checking this was actually happening and not just the wine telling her a story she wanted to hear.
Leah felt the precise strangeness of Darcy's mouth, familiar in some unplaceable way and entirely unfamiliar in every way that mattered, soft where she hadn't expected soft, certain where she hadn't expected certain.
Then it stopped being uncertain.
Darcy's hand slid back into Leah's hair and the kiss deepened, unhurried but no longer careful, and Leah heard herself make a small sound she hadn't planned on making, and felt Darcy smile against her mouth at it, just slightly, just enough to register.
The blanket slipped. Darcy shifted closer, one knee coming up onto the cushion between them, and Leah's hand found her waist without any conscious decision to put it there, just an instinct toward closing a gap that had apparently always wanted closing.
She wasn't thinking about Chad. She wasn't thinking about the twin mattress, or the wall, or six weeks of telling herself this was a different thing entirely, easier to quarantine.
She wasn't thinking about anything with a name.
There was just Darcy's mouth and Darcy's hand in her hair and the dismantling fact of wanting your best friend and being wanted back, no further qualifications attached to it, nothing held in reserve.
Somewhere on the television the slow-burn movie reached its own quiet conclusion, unwatched, the light flickering blue and gold across the two of them on the couch, neither one paying it the slightest attention anymore.
Time had stopped being a thing Leah was tracking.
Darcy's knee was fully on the cushion now, her weight shifted half over Leah's lap, one hand still in Leah's hair and the other braced against the back of the couch, and the kiss had gone somewhere unhurried and thorough, the kind that didn't seem interested in stopping to check on itself.
Leah's hand had moved from Darcy's waist to the small of her back at some point without her noticing the transition, just an instinct toward more contact, toward closing whatever gap was still technically left between them.
She felt Darcy's breath change against her mouth. Felt her own do the same thing back.
Nobody had said anything in a while. There wasn't anything that needed saying.
The conversation had moved somewhere past words, into the small shifts of weight, the way Darcy tilted her head to get closer, the way Leah's fingers had found the hem of Darcy's shirt and just slid under, resting, a held breath of a touch, waiting to find out what it wanted to do.
Darcy made a sound low in her throat when Leah's hand finally moved, just slightly, just skin instead of fabric, and the sound did something to Leah that she felt everywhere at once, low and insistent and entirely uninterested in being reasoned with.
She'd spent six weeks telling herself this was a different thing, easier to quarantine, and there was no quarantining this, no version of this conversation where she got to pretend later that she hadn't wanted it exactly this much.
Darcy's mouth moved from hers, unhurried, to the line of her jaw, and Leah's head tipped back against the couch cushion on its own, her eyes closing, her hand tightening slightly where it had landed.
This was the part where some clearer-headed version of herself might have asked where this was going. She didn't ask. She wasn't sure she wanted the answer to slow anything down, and some quieter, more honest part of her recognized that not wanting the answer was itself an answer.
She heard the key in the lock before either of them did anything about it.
It took a second to land, the small precise sound of someone who lived here letting themselves in, keys dropped in the bowl by the door the way they always were, the weight of a bag set down.
Ordinary sounds. The sounds of a Friday night ending the way Friday nights in this apartment always ended, except for everything that was different about tonight.
Darcy didn't move. That was the first thing Leah registered, underneath the spike of something that wasn't quite panic.
Darcy's mouth stilled against her jaw for half a second, and then she lifted her head, slow, unhurried, and looked toward the doorway like she had all the time in the world to do it.
Whit stood there.
He'd come further than the entryway; far enough to see the lamp turned low, the forgotten movie throwing blue light across the room, the blanket half on the floor, Darcy half over Leah's lap with her hand still in Leah's hair.
He stopped. Golf bag still over one shoulder, like he hadn't gotten as far as setting it down before the room told him what it had to tell him.
He didn't say anything for a moment.
Leah's whole body had gone very still, every instinct she had screaming at her to pull back, to put distance between herself and Darcy, to manufacture some explanation that would make this look like anything other than exactly what it was.
She didn't move. She found, in the half-second she had to examine the impulse, that she didn't actually want to.
"Don't stop on my account," Whit said.
He said it flat. Quiet. Not a joke, not delivered with any of the easy performance he usually had lying around for moments like this. Not not a joke either, there was something underneath it that Leah couldn't immediately name, low and even and entirely unsurprised.
Darcy didn't pull away. Didn't flinch, didn't scramble for the blanket, didn't do any of the things Leah's own body had just tried and failed to talk her into doing.
She looked at Whit across the room with an expression Leah recognized instantly and completely.
She'd seen it through the kitchen window weeks ago, in the hallway the first night, every time Darcy looked at him like he was the only useful piece of information in the room.
It was the look that had sent Leah reaching for a pillow more nights than she could count.
"Hey," Darcy said. Soft. Not embarrassed. Almost amused.
Whit set the golf bag down by the door, slow, deliberate, his eyes never quite leaving the couch. "Long day," he said. "Decided to come back early."
"I can see that."
He crossed the room slowly. Nothing about him was ever fast, that unhurried confidence that had irritated Leah the first week and stopped irritating her sometime in the third.
He moved with a directness that left no question about where he was going, and Leah felt her own pulse pick up in a way that had nothing to do with alarm anymore.
He stopped at the edge of the couch. Looked down at the two of them, at Darcy's hand still loosely in Leah's hair, at Leah's face turned up toward him without her quite deciding to turn it that way.
"You good?" he asked. To Leah. Just her, for a second, his voice losing the flatness, something more careful underneath it.
She didn't answer right away. She was aware of every separate fact of the moment: Darcy's weight still half over her lap, Whit standing close enough now that she had to tip her head back to look at him properly, the lamp throwing long shadows, the movie still playing to no one,
the whole evening that had led here without either of them planning it and without either of them stopping it.
"Yeah," she said. It came out steadier than she expected. "I'm good."
Something settled in his face at that, like a question that had needed answering before anything else could happen was now answered.
Darcy shifted, just slightly, making room without quite getting up, her hand sliding from Leah's hair down to rest against her shoulder instead, and looked between the two of them with an expression that wasn't asking permission so much as confirming something she'd already decided.
"Come here," she said to Whit, and didn't specify what she meant by it, and didn't need to.
It didn't feel, in that moment, like anyone in the room was making a decision. It felt like something that had been arriving for weeks and had simply, finally, found the conditions it needed to stop waiting.
Leah sat on the couch beside Darcy, close enough to feel the heat coming off her, and when Darcy's eyes found hers there was no negotiation left in either of them. Darcy leaned in first. Her mouth was soft and unhurried, and Leah kissed her back without deciding to.
Darcy's hand found the small of her back, then climbed, tracing the ridge of her spine one vertebra at a time. Leah felt the touch land somewhere lower than her skin.
Darcy's fingers slipped under the hem of Leah's pajama top, cool against skin gone warm. Leah broke the kiss just to breathe, and Darcy caught her bottom lip between her teeth for it.
"Let's get comfortable," Darcy said, already pulling back to stand.
She peeled her pajama set off in one motion, unselfconscious in the way she did most things, and Leah's mouth went dry watching her do it.
She had seen Darcy naked in passing when changing before but never like this; her full perfectly round breasts with hard dark pink nipples, the swell of her hips, and her fully shaved pussy slightly puffy with arousal. It was a lot to take in.
Darcy caught Leah staring and didn't look away, didn't rush her either, just waited until Leah's eyes came back up to her face.
"Your turn."
Leah stood. Her hands weren't quite steady on her own waistband, and Darcy watched her get out of her pajamas with a patience that felt more like appetite than manners. Leah felt Darcy’s eyes approve of her own naked body, perhaps not as perfect as Darcy’s but still feminine and equally smooth.
From the couch, Whit made a low sound in his throat that neither of them acknowledged.
Darcy crossed the space between them and kissed her again, walking her backward until the couch caught the backs of Leah's knees, then sank down after her, straddling her thighs.
"Can I?" Darcy asked, hand already sliding down Leah's stomach.
"Yeah. Please."