flora
He doesn’t kiss her back at first, and for the smallest, quietest fraction of a moment, Flora thinks she’s finally found the line. The one they’ve tiptoed across a hundred times in a thousand tiny ways—through innuendo, through bad jokes, through the subtle slant of her eyes when she looked at him too long. She hadn’t meant to cross it like this, not really. She’d meant the kiss to be soft. Gentle. A hush between the louder parts of life. But maybe that’s all it ever was—a pause in the story, not a rewrite of it. Not a new chapter of anything, maybe even just a bookmark.
It doesn’t shatter her; doesn’t make her pull back or apologize or rearrange herself into something safer. It just...settles, like all the other things that live unspoken between them. Except then he’s moving. His fingers curl against her spine, and the warmth of it sinks so fast and so deep that her breath hitches against his lips. A rush of something flares inside her like sunlight caught in a glass bottle, sharp and sweet and far too much to hold. It blooms down her ribs and along her hips, and she’s suddenly aware of every inch of herself pressed to him, of how their friendship has always grounded her, but this—this untethers her—but rather than flailing in a freefall, it makes her float.
Flora doesn’t think about the thousand reasons why, from the outside, this might be inadvisable. She doesn’t think of Koa, or the limbo he’s left Sohalia in. She doesn’t think of Caly, or the advice she’d so recently given Kai about what kind of date to take her on. All Flora knows is this: that she has him now and he has her; his body wrapped against hers, his heartbeat a steady rhythm beside her own, his hand at her back like the only harbour in a storm.
Whatever comes next—who he kisses after this, where the world chooses to fling them—none of it will undo what she feels for him now. If this ends in silence or in fire or in golden bands and aged laugh lines, she’ll still be the one who knows how he laughs when he chokes on pineapple, the face he makes right before he gets a brain freeze, or what the weight of him feels like when he hugs her because the day has just been too much. She'll always be the one who fills the spaces beside him with lavender and laughter, no matter how narrow those spaces become. She’ll still be his in the way she is now, and if moments like this ever become forbidden, then every embrace will carry the memory of what they were—what they are—in this breathless, suspended now.
Flora’s fingers trail upward, slow and sure, sliding along the nape of his neck until they bury deeper into the thick, unruly mess of his hair. She kisses him again—deeper this time, slower—her lips parting with languid intention, her tongue brushing against his with a softness that speaks not of hunger, but of utter affection and love. Her body melts into his, every inch aligning like waves folding into one another, chasing not just heat but the quiet, golden thread that binds them in this breathless closeness. The one that has kept them tethered together across all these years, no matter how far from one another they might have drifted.
Beneath her touch, he is warm and solid, all anchored strength and boyish wildness, and the feel of him under her hands—under her heart—sends a flush rolling through her chest like dawnlight blooming behind her ribs. Her thigh curls more tightly over his, and where his hand rests, she tenses deliberately, offering a wordless invitation that there is yet more of her he can hold.
It doesn’t shatter her; doesn’t make her pull back or apologize or rearrange herself into something safer. It just...settles, like all the other things that live unspoken between them. Except then he’s moving. His fingers curl against her spine, and the warmth of it sinks so fast and so deep that her breath hitches against his lips. A rush of something flares inside her like sunlight caught in a glass bottle, sharp and sweet and far too much to hold. It blooms down her ribs and along her hips, and she’s suddenly aware of every inch of herself pressed to him, of how their friendship has always grounded her, but this—this untethers her—but rather than flailing in a freefall, it makes her float.
Flora doesn’t think about the thousand reasons why, from the outside, this might be inadvisable. She doesn’t think of Koa, or the limbo he’s left Sohalia in. She doesn’t think of Caly, or the advice she’d so recently given Kai about what kind of date to take her on. All Flora knows is this: that she has him now and he has her; his body wrapped against hers, his heartbeat a steady rhythm beside her own, his hand at her back like the only harbour in a storm.
Whatever comes next—who he kisses after this, where the world chooses to fling them—none of it will undo what she feels for him now. If this ends in silence or in fire or in golden bands and aged laugh lines, she’ll still be the one who knows how he laughs when he chokes on pineapple, the face he makes right before he gets a brain freeze, or what the weight of him feels like when he hugs her because the day has just been too much. She'll always be the one who fills the spaces beside him with lavender and laughter, no matter how narrow those spaces become. She’ll still be his in the way she is now, and if moments like this ever become forbidden, then every embrace will carry the memory of what they were—what they are—in this breathless, suspended now.
Flora’s fingers trail upward, slow and sure, sliding along the nape of his neck until they bury deeper into the thick, unruly mess of his hair. She kisses him again—deeper this time, slower—her lips parting with languid intention, her tongue brushing against his with a softness that speaks not of hunger, but of utter affection and love. Her body melts into his, every inch aligning like waves folding into one another, chasing not just heat but the quiet, golden thread that binds them in this breathless closeness. The one that has kept them tethered together across all these years, no matter how far from one another they might have drifted.
Beneath her touch, he is warm and solid, all anchored strength and boyish wildness, and the feel of him under her hands—under her heart—sends a flush rolling through her chest like dawnlight blooming behind her ribs. Her thigh curls more tightly over his, and where his hand rests, she tenses deliberately, offering a wordless invitation that there is yet more of her he can hold.
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I'm covered in you
And now I'm covered in you
