Disclaimer: Um, as much as I would like to, I don't own The OC.
Author's Notes: I decided that I needed to write more random one-shots in second person. Thus the Trey/Seth kiss fic was born. Feedback is appreciated!
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It's strange, kissing him. Different from what you've imagined, a polar opposite from the awkward feel of lips against your own and hands down at your side, fingertips nervously tapping against your jeans because you're too afraid to put your hands on his shoulders or maybe on his waist, since you're not sure if it would break the spell or mean too much. And for some reason, in the back of your mind, you have the oddest sense of deja vu, like you've done this a hundred times before.
And maybe you have. Maybe you have kissed him like this, with your arms down at your side and your eyes wide open and your breath caught somewhere between your heart and your throat.
But you think you would have remembered. Honestly, how could you forget such a moment, one defying gravity and physics and every hope and expectation dancing behind your eyes, even though you liked to pretend they weren't really there.
Why does it feel so familiar, then? So comforting, like the smell of home and salt air against your skin, all the little things that calm your twitching nerves and allow you a moment of peace.
But it's terrifying, too. The kind of horror that jumps into your system, made you afraid to do anything but actually be afraid. You feel the same terror gripping at you, digging claws into the back of your mind, the same way it did when you were five years old and alone in the dark, with nothing but made up voices to soothe you, even though the prospect of sound without source made you all the more frightened.
So you stand here. You stand perfectly still, like a statue made of alabaster and shaky bones, and let him kiss you. Let him do anything, you're beyond caring, because it's too perfect, too incredibly good to feel him this close to you, sense him breathing you in and feeling every inch, and it's too wrong, too twisted inside your mind, too powerful for you to handle and you're not sure that you were built to withstand the awesome power of a simple kiss.
This isn't what you imagined, not at all like fantasies and day dreams. In your head, it was two o'clock on a Thursday morning, and you were in the kitchen, sitting on the bar, making some sketches for the comic and drinking chocolate milk, picture perfect naive child. In your head, he walked in through the side door, with tired eyes, lines of weariness and loss already around his too dark eyes, and disheveled hair. In your head, he didn't smell like smoke and beautiful and alcohol. In your head, he didn't smell like anything at all, because in these fantasies and day dreams, when he got close enough to breathe in, you ran away.
In reality, you were looking to see if Death Cab was coming back anytime soon, surfing through archives of the latest Ctrl+Alt+Del online comics, listening to your iPod and wondering why exactly the girl from Evanescence is so depressed all time. In reality, he was coming up to your room to ask if you'd seen his brother, because they were supposed to go to lunch and 'catch up', which meant Ryan was going to subtly berate him for screwing up but ultimately forgive him and accept him back into his life again. In reality, when you took off your headphones and told him you hadn't seen anyone today, when he nodded and when you stood up, when for some reason you were suddenly closer to him than you meant to be, when he leaned in and actually put his mouth on yours, you froze.
You think your heart has started moving again, remember that it has a job to do and could not just stand in awe while this creature, someone intangible and powerful and surrounded with beauty, kissed you softly and ran his hands through your hair. Your heart is beating, and that's a start, so you think maybe the rest of your body will start to catch up with it. Maybe you'll start breathing and blinking again, too. Maybe you'll even be able to kiss him back.
Right now, though, it seems that he's perfectly fine with you standing here like some sort of figurine while he runs his fingers over your jaw and slides his hand to your back and tilts your head to the side.
It's too soft, you think. And you wonder why he isn't angry, jaded anger making him push you away, and you wonder why he isn't confused, because it's obviously been obvious that you obviously wanted this, and you're not at all responding, and you think if you were him you would be hurt and embarrassed and fully prepared to run screaming away from this place and pretend like it never happened.
But it's nice. Weird as it is to have him treat you with such a fierce gentleness, his hands so light against you, his lips so warm, it's still the most calming, heart wrenching experience you've ever had. Because it's so genuine, not forced caring touches, not held back ferocity as he kisses you. It's real feather soft, actually earth shattering tenderness - tenderness, tenderness, and it sounds so strange bouncing around your mind while his fingertips rest on your jaw line - with which he cradles your lips against his own.
He's been gentle, careful you think, as if you're something to be broken. You're a fragile piece of antiquity, not to be shaken or turned upside down, but handle with care and placed down gently to your proper resting place. But that's not it. Fear of cracking fiber thin glass skin is not what makes him hold you delicately, so comforting and so easy to melt into. It's not, you know, because he's not afraid of anything. It's physically impossible for terror to wind it's wisps of frighten thorns into someone with such a rough exterior, someone with a force field of bravery and apathy keeping them covered from the outside world.
He's careful because he wants to be. Soft because he's letting you set the pace. Gentle hands and mouth because he knows, is positively certain, that you are ready and willing for anything he can lay on the table, but not perfectly able, not totally stable, yet. You're not willing to mold and fold and lead and bleed like a proper body should, and he's fully aware that it's not your fault you can't find it in yourself to create the tiniest millimeter of friction with him.
And he doesn't mind. Isn't worried that he's scaring you away, isn't panicking and wracking his brain with questions and doubts and warnings of the storm about to hit. No, because it's not in his nature to overreact to little things like your lack of reaction. He's going to be patient, wait until you're done waiting, sit back and relax while pushing forward slowly.
You sigh, soft and audible, filling the room with surrender and tension. He takes his small step forward, and you're relieved to find everything still in working order; still breathing, still beating away, still able to close your eyes if you really wanted to miss out on he miracle of watching him, with his eyelids shut and his eyelashes against the top of his cheekbones, so perfectly serene and in control and still, running water moving with the pace you set.
He's putting his hand in your hair, now. Fingertips moving through curls, slow but not hesitant, steady but not controlled, barely there but not insubstantial. He's asking you, asking what you want. How far you think you can go. Because even though he knows, use whatever Atwood mind reading powers he was granted with at birth, he thinks it's important for you to tell him, let him know that you know that the two of you are on the same page here.
And you know, and you hope, and you're trying to tell him, that all you want and all you think you've ever wanted, is a promise that he'll keeping kissing you until you're ready to kiss him back.
His hand is in yours, suddenly, palm fitting oddly against palm, his cool and firm and calloused, yours hot and sweaty and every nerve ending is jumping at the electric shock. His fingers in yours, intertwining your hands together, and he's telling you. Letting you know that there's no race to the finish line here, because he's not playing games and neither are you, because this is reality and he's meant every little touch you've been willing to take.
It's better, kissing him. More explosions in your mind than you've imagined, a trillion more rainbows and lighting bolts tingling to every pore, body humming with an energy you can't explain and can't displace because you still can't move so it will just keep on moving through you and through him until both of you become so filled with firecracker excitement bursts you burn or your breath is loosened so completely from both of your bodies you collapse in a heap of limbs still sizzling with the aftershock. And for some reason, in the back of your mind, you have the oddest sense of deja vu, like you've done this a hundred times before.