ALEX X DONOVAN

I couldn't tell where it had started, or even where it had ended. One moment he was just sitting there, all deliberate distance between us, and the next he had closed the gap and his mouth was on mine. Somewhere, remotely, I felt his hands cup my face. My immediate reaction – what the hell – was swamped, ousted by the physical contact; although Donovan wasn't that much bigger than me, his movements were deliberate and forceful, if close to domineering, and I could feel the heat radiating off his entire body, and that liquid heat of his tongue spreading wildly as we kissed. We. Plural. Somewhere in those seconds it had stopped being a one-sided thing.

Then he pulled back, but not very far, and even in the pitch black darkness of the cell I could feel him breathing, his chest expanding. An expectant silence, before- "Alex, I…"

It was all he could manage, but it was all that was necessary. It all made sense now; the teasing darkness that I ever-so-often caught beneath his usual tough exterior, the recent curt behaviour and aggression whenever I was close to him. The lengths he would go to, in order to keep me alive.

I won't hesitate to tell you how confusing it was, mentally speaking. I was never… so inclined. At least, it had never occurred to me. I'd had a thing with some girl in one of my classes one semester, but it hadn't been anything serious, of course. And I'd found plenty of girls pretty, especially after my fourteenth birthday. But with another boy, for another boy, no. It had never even crossed my mind. And the very last place I would have expected to lose my first kiss was this hellhole, this inferno of hopelessness. But emotionally and physically speaking… I would be lying if I told you that what Donovan did hadn't sparked a raging inferno within me. It had been five months since I had first arrived at Furnace, and c'mon, it wasn't like a guy got any real privacy around here. And I was a healthy, growing teenager, notwithstanding the current conditions. Not to mention that the fact that Donovan was incredibly attractive. That hadn't been lost on me. At least not in the past few weeks.

"Alex," Donovan said, his voice now reflecting a sort of serious concern, probably in response to my stunned silence. "I'm sorry. Jesus, I don't know what I was thinking, what I've been-"

"It's alright." I swallowed, more to calm myself down more than anything. I couldn't see his face, but I could imagine it: a mask of worry, his jaw clenched in that way that made a muscle in his face pop. He had withdrawn, shuffling away to give me space, and the warm air that rushed in was no substitute for the raging heat of his skin against mine. All I could feel right now was a rush of disappointment, of sudden need to have that feel of him against me back.

Donovan must have opened his mouth to say something, but when it was my turn to pull him towards me, he didn't protest.

Somewhere later on in the night he crawled back to his bunk, and although he didn't fidget, I knew he wasn't sleeping. Like as if we could. This was a total gamechanger for us: one false move and we were dead. I was pretty sure that the blacksuits weren't going to take too kindly to such relations between inmates, and if any of the other boys found out… we'd probably sooner opt for death by the blood dogs rather than be ripped apart by our own peers. We had to be careful, so careful.

But that wasn't why I couldn't get to sleep. It wasn't just the fear of being found out, or the shock of so much happening in just one night – it was the feel of affection, so foreign to me, so heartwrenching. It went without saying that Furnace had taken from me every single thing I once had or claimed as my own – dignity, all my basic human rights, any reason for happiness or laughter – but the thought that it had actually given something, no, someone, to me, was unfathomable. I would have died for the boy sleeping above me – the boy who had been there for me ever since Day One in Hell. He was the one good thing left, the one perfect thing I had to protect, to make sure no one could ever take away from me. He was hope.

All of that came as a rush of realization, and suddenly, just like wave, the fatigue of all the day's events washed over me, and I dropped deep into sleep.