Chapter One – Terrible Kisser
The sun had that late-afternoon polish on it, the kind that made the whole beach look like it had been politely asked to behave for a photoshoot. Everything was gold and lazy. Waves rolled in without urgency. Somewhere down the shore a kid was screaming about a lost flip-flop like it was a national emergency.
I was stretched out on my towel, one arm flung over my eyes, the other nursing a beer that had given up being cold twenty minutes ago. Theo was next to me, equally horizontal, looking like the concept of effort had never reached him. Same black swim shorts sitting low on his hips. Same stupid perfect tan, complete with the sharp little line where the fabric started. Salt-messy hair. Sand stuck in a fine scatter across his stomach. Same expression that said he was already planning something annoying.
He reached over without asking and stole my beer.
“That’s mine,” I said.
“Was,” he corrected, and took a long swallow. “You’ve been treating it like an emotional support animal. It’s sad.”
I cracked an eye open. He held the bottle just out of reach, grinning. I shoved him. He shoved back harder. We ended up in a brief, pointless scuffle that ended with sand everywhere and my elbow in his ribs. He didn’t move away when we settled. Neither did I. This was just how we existed. Constant low-grade physical warfare and zero concept of personal space.
“You’re sticky,” he said.
“You’re stickier.”
“I moisturise. You just radiate poor life choices.”
I sat up and grabbed the sunscreen. The bottle made that sad empty-ish noise. I squeezed what was left onto my chest and started rubbing it in with the dedication of a man who had already burned twice this trip and learned nothing. Theo watched for three seconds, then made a noise of pure judgement.
“You’re missing half your back. Turn.”
“I can reach.”
“No you can’t. You look like a patchy tomato. Turn around before I start charging consultancy fees.”
I turned, grumbling. He sat up, took the bottle, and started spreading sunscreen across my shoulders like he’d done it a hundred times. Which he had. His hands were warm and efficient. Completely unbothered. He pressed harder than necessary over one spot near my neck.
“Ow.”
“That’s what you get for looking like a boiled lobster yesterday. Hold still.”
I held still. He finished my shoulders and then, because he is a menace, kept going lower. I felt the cool smear of sunscreen across my lower back, then the deliberate press of his palm.
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is if you don’t want to look like a zebra tomorrow. Stop squirming.”
I twisted to shove him. He shoved back. Somehow we ended up with me half on my knees and him kneeling behind me, both of us covered in sand and sunscreen, his hands still on my back. A woman walking past gave us a look that suggested she was considering calling someone.
Theo caught it, grinned at her, and stage-whispered, “It’s not what it looks like. He’s just very high-maintenance.”
I elbowed him. “You’ve had your hands on me for a suspicious amount of time.”
“I’m being thorough. Someone has to protect the public from your back.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’ve seen better backs.”
“Liar. You’re lingering.”
“I’m assessing sun damage. Try not to take it personally.”
He finally wiped the last of the sunscreen on my arm like I was a towel and flopped back down. I immediately balanced my beer on his stomach while I dug under the towel for my phone. The bottle wobbled against the warm, sandy skin. He complained the entire time and still didn’t push it off.
“I am not furniture.”
“You’re horizontal, warm, and currently not doing anything useful. That’s furniture criteria.”
“I’m going to drown you later.”
“You say that every holiday.”
That was when I saw her.
She was maybe fifteen metres away, sitting on a blue towel with her knees drawn up, scrolling on her phone. Dark hair in a messy knot. Sunglasses pushed up. The kind of easy summer confidence that made me sit up straighter without meaning to.
Theo followed my line of sight and made a soft, delighted sound of pure evil.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“You’re doing the face.”
“I’m not doing a face.”
“You are. It’s the one that looks like you’re trying to look mysterious while also mildly constipated. Stop it. You’re scaring the wildlife.”
I shoved him. The beer bottle finally tipped into the sand. He swore, grabbed it, and wiped it on his shorts. I was already standing, brushing sand off myself, trying to look casual and probably failing.
“I’m just going to say hi.”
“God help her.”
“Theo.”
“I’m serious. She looks nice. She doesn’t deserve the full Jamie experience.”
I ignored him and walked over. The sand was hot. My heart did that stupid little skip it always did when I decided to talk to someone attractive, like my body still believed this might go well despite extensive evidence to the contrary.
She looked up when my shadow hit her towel. I gave her what I hoped was a charming smile.
“Hey. Sorry to interrupt. Just wondered if you wanted company for five minutes, or if I’m about to get told to walk into the sea.”
She laughed. Actually laughed. Bright and surprised. “You’re direct.”
“I’m on holiday. Direct is all I’ve got left.”
We talked. It was easy in that temporary, sun-drunk way. She was here with friends who were currently off buying ice cream. I was here with the human equivalent of a second-hand embarrassment generator currently watching from fifteen metres away.
Theo, from his towel, gave me a massive, exaggerated thumbs-up when she wasn’t looking. Then he switched to slow, sarcastic applause. Then he started doing the most unhelpful encouraging gestures known to man, including one that looked suspiciously like he was miming drowning. I flipped him off behind my back while still smiling at her.
At some point we stood and wandered closer to the water, still talking. The waves licked at our ankles. She was funny. She smelled like sunscreen and something citrus. I thought, for one dangerous second, that this might actually work.
Theo, still watching, pulled an elaborate face of exaggerated approval and gave me a double thumbs-up so intense it looked painful.
We kept talking. The conversation drifted. She tilted her head a little, and I took the opening like the optimistic idiot I am. I leaned in. She met me halfway.
The kiss lasted maybe three seconds.
Then she pulled back.
Her face did something complicated. Not quite a grimace. Not quite a flinch. Something in between, like she’d bitten into fruit that looked perfect and turned out slightly off. She blinked once, then offered a polite, tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said. “I… yeah. Sorry.”
I stood there with salt water around my calves and the sudden horrible certainty that something had gone wrong. “Everything okay?”
She hesitated, then seemed to decide honesty was kinder. “You’re a really terrible kisser.”
The words landed with the gentle force of a brick.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. She gave me another of those polite smiles, the kind people use when they’re already halfway gone, and then she was walking back up the beach toward her towel. I watched her go. My ears felt hot. My mouth felt like it had betrayed me on a cellular level.
Behind me, from the direction of our towels, came a sound like someone trying very hard not to inhale seawater.
I turned.
Theo was on his knees in the sand, one hand pressed to his stomach, the other pointing at me like he’d just witnessed a public execution and found it hilarious. His whole body was shaking. The second our eyes met he lost the fight completely and folded forward, laughing so hard he made almost no noise at all, just these wrecked little gasps.
I walked back across the sand. Slow. Dignified. Absolutely murderous.
“Don’t.”
He looked up, eyes wet, face red, and immediately tried to recreate the exact expression the girl had made. The wince. The polite horror. He even added a little head tilt for accuracy. Then he collapsed again, one arm flung out like he needed medical attention.
“She— she fucking winced, mate.”
“I will end you.”
“She looked at you like you’d offered her a mouthful of seawater and a side of sand.”
I lunged. We went down in a tangle of limbs and sand. I tried to clap a hand over his mouth. He twisted, laughing harder, and somehow ended up with both my wrists caught in one of his hands while he used the other to keep recreating the wince in my face. Sand was everywhere. My knee was in his stomach. His thigh was hooked over mine. We looked, from a distance, like two grown men having a deeply confusing moment.
A guy walking past slowed down, stared, then carefully looked away.
Theo noticed and stage-whispered, still pinning my wrists, “It’s not what it looks like. He’s just very bad at kissing and I’m providing feedback.”
I got a hand free and shoved sand at his face. He rolled, still wheezing, and I finally scrambled up, dripping, shirtless, dignity in freefall, while the late sun kept shining like nothing catastrophic had just happened to my entire romantic future.
“Get up.”
“Can’t. Dying.”
“Theo.”
“She actually winced. I’ve never seen that in real life. That was cinema.”
I grabbed our towels and the half-empty bag of crisps and the extra bottles. “We’re leaving.”
“What? No. Stay. I need to process this. For science.”
“We’re leaving before I bury you.”
He scrambled up, still laughing, and followed me up the beach path toward the road that led back to the Airbnb. Every few steps he made the face again. The wince. The tiny shake of the head. I kept walking faster. He kept matching my pace, barefoot and relentless.
“You know what the worst part is?” he said, once he’d caught enough breath to speak properly. “You looked so hopeful. Right before. Like a golden retriever who’d just been told there was a biscuit. And then— bam. Reality.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
“I do right now.”
He caught up properly and threw an arm around my shoulders, heavy and familiar, pulling me sideways into his side. The contact was automatic. It always had been. His skin was warm from the sun.
“She’s probably wrong,” he said.
I glanced at him. The mockery had softened by about three percent.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The face is fine. The body’s—” He stopped.
I stopped walking.
“The body’s what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, no. Finish that sentence.”
“I was going to say the body’s average.”
“You hesitated.”
“I was choosing a word.”
“You were about to say something nice and you panicked.”
“I was about to say ‘serviceable.’”
“You think I’m hot.”
“I think you’re mid at best.”
“You started rating the body and then realised you’d walked into a trap.”
He tried to pull his arm back. I ducked under it and jumped onto his back instead. He staggered, swore, and somehow kept walking with me hanging off him like an overgrown backpack, my chest plastered against his bare back, legs wrapped around his waist.
“Get off.”
“Not until you admit it properly.”
“Jamie.”
“Say ‘Jamie is attractive’ and I’ll consider mercy.”
“Jamie is a nightmare.”
“Close enough.”
He carried me another twenty metres while complaining the entire time, then finally dumped me onto the path. I landed laughing. He was still smiling. Not the dickhead grin. The other one.
We started walking again. The Airbnb was only a few minutes up the path. The pool would be waiting, blue and quiet and completely free of women who made faces after kissing me.
Theo made the wince one more time under his breath.
I pointed at him. “Do that again when we get home and I’m throwing you in the pool.”
He immediately did it again, bigger this time, complete with the head tilt.
I lunged. He ran. I chased him the rest of the way up the path, both of us barefoot and stupid and still covered in sand, the late sun stretching our shadows long in front of us.
Chapter 2 – The Kiss
We crashed through the villa gate still half-running. Theo was ahead of me, barefoot and smug, still doing the fucking wince every few steps like it was his new favourite party trick. I lunged for him again. He dodged, laughing, and headed straight for the pool like the complete bastard he was.
The place looked exactly as expensive as three months of saving had promised. White walls, big glass doors, a proper outdoor kitchen we had already pretended we would use, and a pool that glowed an unnatural blue in the late light. The water was still. Perfect. Inviting.
Theo stopped at the edge, turned, and did the wince one more time. Bigger. Complete with the head tilt and a soft disgusted little sound.
I didn’t even hesitate.
I shoved him hard in the chest.
He went backwards with a proper yell, arms windmilling, and hit the water with a spectacular splash that soaked half the terrace. I stood there grinning like an absolute villain while he surfaced, hair plastered to his forehead, sputtering and swearing.
“You absolute fucking—”
“I warned you,” I said. “Multiple times. You were asking for it.”
He hauled himself to the side, still coughing up pool water, and glared at me. “I’m going to drown you in your sleep.”
“You say that every holiday.”
“This time I mean it.”
He climbed out, dripping everywhere. Water ran down his chest and stomach and kept going. His swim shorts were plastered to him and completely useless. Without any ceremony at all he shoved them down, stepped out of them, and kicked the sodden fabric aside. Then he stood there naked, still arguing.
“You could have just told me to stop.”
“I did tell you to stop. Repeatedly. You kept doing the face.”
“It was funny.”
“It was grounds for assault.”
He walked past me still completely naked, water trailing behind him, and dropped straight onto the nearest lounger like this was a perfectly reasonable state in which to continue a conversation. I stared at him for a second out of pure practical irritation.
“Put something on.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t spend three months saving for this place so I could sit around looking at a naked man.”
“You could stop looking.”
“You’re six feet away.”
“Still looking, though.”
“I’m looking at your face, you prick.”
Theo’s grin was pure evil. “My face is higher up than where your eyes just went.”
I grabbed a clean towel from the stack by the outdoor shower and threw it at his head. He caught it one-handed, laughing, and eventually wrapped it around his hips with the same careless competence he used for everything. The towel sat low. Of course it did. Water still beaded on his shoulders. He looked like every holiday brochure had decided to get personal and then forgotten to edit.
I dropped onto the lounger next to him, still in my own swim shorts, hair full of sand, ego somewhere back on the beach. The loungers were close. Closer than they needed to be. Our arms almost touched when we both settled.
Theo turned his head and looked at me. Then, because he was constitutionally incapable of leaving a good thing alone, he started recreating the entire beach disaster again. The hopeful lean-in. The three-second kiss. The recoil. The polite horror.
I stared at the pool instead of him. The water looked cool and judgement-free.
“You don’t even know if I’m bad,” I said eventually.
Theo snorted. “I have eyewitness testimony. Living, breathing, slightly traumatised testimony.”
“One woman isn’t a representative sample.”
“It’s a pretty convincing sample.”
“It’s one data point. Statistically meaningless.”
He turned his head again, slow and delighted. “Are you seriously trying to science your way out of being a terrible kisser?”
“I’m saying you have no right to judge until you offer a second opinion.”
The words hung there for a second. Theo’s grin widened like I’d just handed him a loaded gift.
“A second opinion,” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“From me.”
“Who else is here? The pool?”
He laughed, proper and loud, and tipped his head back against the lounger. “You want me to kiss you so I can grade it. That’s where we are.”
“Purely scientific,” I said. “Controlled conditions. One kiss. No feelings allowed. Just data.”
“No feelings. Right.” He was still grinning. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re the one who keeps reenacting the crime scene. Least you can do is give me an unbiased review.”
Theo sat up a little. The towel shifted lower on his hips. He looked at me for a long moment, still amused, still not taking it seriously enough for my liking.
“Fine,” he said. “One kiss. For science. Then I get to roast you with actual evidence instead of just the visual trauma.”
“Deal.”
We both went quiet for a second. The pool filtered. A bird made some unnecessary noise in the tree above us. The heat sat heavy and still.
Theo swung his legs around so he was sitting properly on the edge of the lounger, facing me. I did the same. Our knees almost touched. Neither of us moved them away. This was normal. We had sat closer than this on trains, on sofas, on every shared bed after nights out. It should have felt the same.
It felt slightly less the same the moment we were both upright and looking at each other with intent.
“Why are you sitting like you’re about to conduct a job interview?” I asked.
“I’m preparing for the worst.”
“Dickhead.”
“Come here then.”
I leaned in. He leaned in. There was a brief, stupid moment where we both misjudged the angle and nearly knocked foreheads. Theo made a quiet amused sound. I grabbed the side of his face to steady the whole operation, thumb against his cheekbone, fingers in his hair, and kissed him.
It was meant to be clinical. Quick. Efficient. A data collection exercise between two people who had known each other long enough that kissing should have registered as nothing more interesting than a high-five.
It was not clinical.
His mouth was warmer than I expected. Softer. The first second was pure awkwardness, both of us too aware of teeth and pressure and the fact that we were doing this at all. Then something adjusted. My hand stayed on his face. His hand found the side of my neck, not pushing, just there. The kiss lasted longer than the three-second disaster on the beach. Long enough that I noticed the taste of salt still on his lower lip. Long enough that the heat of the afternoon suddenly felt like it was coming from somewhere closer than the sun.
We broke apart at almost the same time.
I waited.
Theo studied me for a second. Then, with perfect timing and zero mercy, he recreated the exact wince from the beach. The polite horror. The tiny head tilt. The whole performance.
I stared at him in pure betrayal.
He lasted approximately one second before collapsing into laughter so hard he nearly fell off the lounger.
“You absolute fucking—”
“I’m sorry,” he wheezed, not sorry at all. “I had to. It was right there.”
I shoved him. He caught my wrist, still laughing, and I grabbed the towel from under him and tried to hit him with it. We ended up in a brief, undignified scuffle that achieved nothing except making the loungers creak dangerously. Eventually he held both hands up in surrender, still grinning like an idiot.
“Alright. Alright. Actual verdict.”
I waited, breathing harder than the wrestling warranted.
Theo looked at me again. Properly this time.
“Inconclusive,” he said.
“What?”
“The sample. Inconclusive. Need more data.”
My ears felt hot. I could feel the exact temperature of my own face and hated every degree of it.
“More data,” I repeated.
“Yeah. One kiss isn’t a proper sample size. You said it yourself. Statistically meaningless.”
“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to admit it was fine.”
“It was fine.”
“Fine?”
“Adequate.”
“That’s worse.”
Theo’s mouth twitched. He was trying not to smile and failing. “You want a proper assessment, we do it properly. Multiple angles. Different pressure. Controlled variables. I’m committed to the scientific method.”
“You’re committed to being a pain in my arse.”
“Same thing.”
We were still too close. His knee had ended up pressed against the inside of mine at some point during the repositioning. Neither of us moved it. I became extremely aware of the exact pressure of that knee and hated that I noticed.
“Alright,” I said. “Round two. For science.”
“For science,” he agreed, and already looked far too pleased with himself.
I leaned in again. This time there was less forehead collision and more intention. His hand came up properly, fingers sliding into the damp hair at the back of my neck. Mine settled against his jaw. The second kiss started with the same joke energy and then quietly stopped being a joke halfway through. He tilted his head. I followed. The sound the water filter made suddenly seemed very far away.
When we separated the second time, neither of us moved back very far. Theo looked at me like he was still deciding something and hadn’t finished the process.
He exhaled through his nose.
“Better,” he said.
“Better than fine?”
“Still not a ten.”
“What’s a ten then?”
“I’ll know it when I feel it.”
“You’re the worst scientific partner I’ve ever had.”
“I’m the only scientific partner you’ve ever had.”
My hand was somehow on his waist. High enough that my fingers were resting against bare skin above the towel. I became extremely aware of it at the exact same moment he did. Neither of us moved it immediately.
Theo’s gaze flicked down, then back up. A slow, knowing look settled on his face.
“Thought you didn’t want to spend your holiday looking at a naked man,” he said.
“You’re not naked.”
“So you are looking.”
“Fuck off.”
Ten minutes ago the bastard had been sitting beside me with his entire dick out and my biggest concern had been whether his wet arse was ruining the lounger. Now he’d put a towel on and apparently that was when my brain decided to start paying attention. Brilliant.
Theo’s knee pressed a little more firmly against mine. Neither of us moved away.
“Again?” I said, because apparently every remaining brain cell had evacuated.
“Greedy.”
“Thorough.”
“Come here then.”
This time, Theo kissed me first.
Chapter 3 - Heat
Theo’s mouth was still close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath when he spoke.
“Sample size is improving,” he said. “But you’re distracting.”
“I’m distracting?”
“Your face is right there. It’s hard to remain objective.”
“You’re the one who keeps pulling me closer.”
“For stability. Scientific stability.”
“You’re full of shit.”
He smiled against the side of my mouth like he knew exactly how full of shit he was and planned to stay that way. My hand was still on his waist. His fingers were still in my hair. Neither of us had moved back properly after the last kiss. The towel sat low on his hips. My own shorts felt suddenly too warm.
I reached for the water bottle under his lounger because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t climbing into his lap. He held it away without looking.
“Mine.”
“You offered it earlier.”
“That was before you became a liability to the research.”
“Give it.”
“Make me.”
I lunged. Bad idea. The loungers were already too close and I was already half over him from the last repositioning. I climbed halfway across the gap trying to reach the bottle and he twisted, laughing, and suddenly we were wrestling the same way we always wrestled. Except we were almost naked, still damp from the pool, and we had spent the last half hour kissing under the thinnest possible excuse of science.
My knee slid between his thighs. His hand caught my wrist. I got the bottle for half a second before he yanked it back and we both went sideways. I ended up sprawled partly over him, chest to chest, one of my legs hooked over his, the towel doing almost nothing useful between us. Sand from earlier still clung to his skin. Water from his hair had dripped onto my shoulder. We both stopped at the same time.
Theo looked at me.
I looked at his mouth.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Wasn’t doing anything.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
He kissed me before I could finish the sentence.
This one wasn’t requested. It wasn’t graded. It wasn’t justified by sample sizes or controlled variables or any of the other bullshit we had been using for the last half hour. He just closed the last inch and kissed me like the experiment had already failed and neither of us was interested in pretending otherwise.
It was hotter for exactly that reason.
His hand slid from my wrist up my arm and settled at the back of my neck. I made a sound I would deny later and he answered it by tilting his head and deepening the kiss until the pool filter and the birds and the entire expensive villa disappeared. My free hand found his side, bare skin under my palm. He shifted under me and the towel slipped another useless inch. Every point of contact felt louder than it had any right to.
When we finally separated I stayed where I was for approximately two seconds, breathing like I had done something more athletic than lie on top of my best friend.
Then I found my voice.
“That was at least a nine.”
Theo’s mouth twitched. “Six.”
I grabbed the nearest cushion and hit him with it. He blocked, laughing, and the cushion went flying into the pool with a soft splash. We both watched it float for a second. Then he looked back at me and the laughter faded into something quieter.
“You’re still on top of me,” he said.
“Observational skills remain strong. Congrats.”
“You could move.”
“You could ask properly.”
He didn’t ask. He just slid his hand from my neck down to my shoulder, then lower, fingers spreading across my bare back like he was mapping the exact place the sunscreen had failed earlier. The touch was slow. Deliberate. Completely unnecessary for any scientific purpose.
“This is still research,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than planned.
“Obviously.”
“You’re being very thorough with the data collection.”
“I’m a professional.”
“You’re a menace.”
“You started it.”
“You kissed me that time.”
“You were doing the face.”
“There is no face.”
“There is absolutely a face. I’ve seen it directed at ice cream and once at a very expensive jacket. Never at me before. It’s unsettling.”
I shoved at his shoulder without any real force. He caught my wrist again, the same way he always did, and this time his thumb stroked once across the inside of it like an accident. Neither of us commented.
Theo’s other hand was still on my back. I was still mostly on top of him. My thigh was pressed along his. Every small adjustment sent new information through nerves that had previously been reliable and were now apparently freelancing.
“Again?” I asked, because the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation had clearly clocked out.
“Greedy.”
“You kissed me without a proper request form. I’m simply completing the paperwork.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re hard.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them. Theo went still under me for half a second. Then he laughed, quiet and a little wrecked.
“You’re one to talk,” he said.
“I’m conducting important research. Physiological responses are data.”
“Is that what we’re calling it.”
“Yes.”
“Come here then.”
I didn’t need telling twice. This kiss started slower. Less collision, more intention. His mouth opened under mine and I stopped pretending any of this was still about grades. Heat that had nothing to do with the weather climbed the back of my neck. His free hand found the waistband of my shorts and rested there, not pushing, just present, thumb brushing the skin above it in a way that made thinking extremely difficult.
We broke apart only when breathing became non-negotiable. I stayed close enough that our noses nearly touched.
“Still a six?” I asked.
“Seven. Maybe. You’re improving under pressure.”
“You’re an arsehole.”
“You keep kissing me anyway.”
“For science.”
“Obviously.”
I shifted my weight and the movement pressed us closer for a second. Theo made a low sound that did not sound scientific at all. I kissed the corner of his mouth just to hear whether I could get it again. He turned his head and caught my mouth properly, one hand sliding up into my hair, the other still resting at my waist like it had decided to stay.
The wrestle had left us tangled. My leg was still hooked over his. His thigh was solid and warm under mine. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest. I could feel the exact moment his fingers tightened in my hair. I could feel the ridiculous, obvious fact that neither of us was treating this like a joke anymore even while we kept using the language of one.
We stayed like that for a long time. Kissing. Breaking apart just long enough to breathe. Finding each other again. At some point my hand ended up under the edge of his towel at his hip, bare skin against my palm. At some point his fingers were splayed across my lower back like they belonged there. The pool lights painted everything soft blue. The floating cushion drifted in lazy circles. Neither of us mentioned moving.
Eventually I rolled off him, mostly because my arms were starting to shake, and collapsed onto my own lounger. The second we stopped touching my brain decided this was a problem. Rude of it, really. Ten minutes of lying all over the bastard and suddenly personal space felt like a personal attack.
Theo stayed where he was for a second, one arm flung over his eyes, chest still rising and falling faster than normal. The towel had given up entirely and was barely clinging to his hips. I looked at it, then at the darkening sky, then back at him because apparently my self-control had also gone on holiday.
He turned his head and caught me looking. Again.
“Still conducting visual analysis?” he asked.
“Shut up.”
“Very thorough of you.”
I reached for the nearest remaining cushion and threw it at his face. He caught it one-handed without looking and used it as a pillow, still watching me.
The night settled around us. Theo’s foot found mine across the small gap between the loungers and stayed there, casual and deliberate at the same time. Neither of us moved it away.
We lay like that for a while. Not talking. Not kissing. Just breathing and existing in the quiet aftermath of whatever the hell we had just done to the scientific method.
Then I said, “So.”
“So.”
“After all that. All the samples. All the variables. All the extremely rigorous peer review.”
“Mhm.”
“You still haven’t actually answered the original question.”
Theo turned his head on the cushion and looked at me properly.
“Am I a bad kisser or not?”
He was quiet for a second longer than the joke required.
“No,” he said. “You’re not.”
I waited.
“You’re good,” he added, quieter. “Really good.”
The words landed differently than any of the ratings or the science jokes. No sarcasm. No performance. Just Theo, finally giving a straight answer after an entire afternoon of taking the piss.
I didn’t have a clever response ready. He must have noticed, because the corner of his mouth twitched and he immediately ruined it.
“Don’t look so shocked. I’ve had worse. Once. In 2019. Briefly.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m being generous.”
“You’re being a dickhead.”
“And yet.”
The original experiment was over. We had the answer. There was no legitimate reason left to keep going.
“So we’re done,” I said.
Theo’s foot was still pressed against mine.
“Yeah,” he said. “Technically.”
Neither of us sounded particularly convinced.
Another few seconds passed. The pool filter kept doing its quiet job. Somewhere a night insect started making noise.
Then I said, “We never tested duration under reduced visibility.”
Theo looked at me.
“What.”
“It’s dark now. Completely different conditions. Lighting is a variable. We didn’t control for it.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then the slowest, most unrepentant smile I had ever seen spread across his face.
“You’re right,” he said immediately. “Critical oversight. The whole data set could be compromised.”
“Exactly.”
“We’d be irresponsible not to address it.”
“Extremely irresponsible.”
“Come here then.”
I reached across the gap, hooked my fingers in the edge of his towel, and pulled him toward me again.
The original experiment was finished.
Neither of us mentioned it.
Chapter 4 – Feels
The reduced visibility testing had completely collapsed about forty minutes ago.
We had spent the last hour inventing increasingly pathetic variables and then ignoring them entirely in favour of kissing by the pool. The sun was properly gone. The beers were warm. Theo had mostly abandoned his towel and neither of us had made any serious attempt to do anything except stay exactly where we were. Kissing him had become disturbingly normal. The novelty was not the kiss anymore. The weird part was that all our ordinary best-friend behaviour now felt different around it.
Theo reached over and brushed sand off my shoulder the same way he had done a hundred times before. Same casual swipe. Same complete lack of ceremony. Except this time I felt the exact path of his knuckles across my skin. I went still for half a second.
He noticed immediately.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re being weird.”
“You’re being handsy.”
“I’ve always been handsy. You’ve never complained before.”
He had a point. I hated that he had a point.
I sprawled further into his space the way I always did. My bare leg ended up resting against his. Theo looked down at it, then at me. I left it exactly where it was. He left it exactly where it was. Neither of us moved.
At some point I realised I was looking at him properly. Not the usual glance. Actual looking. The kind of detailed inspection my brain had never previously required for someone I had seen naked more times than I could count. I was mildly appalled at myself.
Theo caught me.
“You checking me out?”
I didn’t even bother denying it.
“Apparently.”
The word surprised both of us. For a second neither of us had a joke ready.
Then his mouth did that slow curve.
“Finally. Recognition. I’ve been waiting years for you to admit the obvious.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“Ruin what?”
I didn’t have an answer. The question sat there between us. Theo didn’t push. Instead he reached over and pushed my still-damp hair away from my forehead. It was the kind of familiar gesture he had done countless times before. Except now I registered the warmth of his fingers and the fact that they lingered against my temple.
I kissed him.
This one was different.
No science. No competition. No rating. No excuse. Just slow and warm and stupidly affectionate because I wanted to. His mouth opened under mine without urgency. One of his hands came up to the side of my face. Mine settled against his bare chest. The heat that rose between us had everything to do with the fact that tenderness had somehow made the attraction stronger instead of replacing it.
When we separated we stayed close.
“That one was weird,” I said quietly.
“Bad weird?”
I shook my head.
“Annoyingly not.”
He smiled. Properly. Far too pleased with himself.
“Stop looking so smug.”
“You’re the one who just called my kissing annoyingly not weird.”
“You’re allowed nothing. Shut up.”
He shut up by kissing me again.
The heat rose wrapped in the earlier tenderness and that combination was somehow worse. Familiar touches now felt intimate because both of us knew they were wanted. His hand slid to the back of my neck. Mine mapped the side of his waist. We shifted closer until there was almost no gap left. Bare skin against bare skin. Breath shared. The quiet discovery that we could kiss slowly and still end up breathless.
We stayed like that for a long time. Not frantic. Just the steady fact of wanting to keep going. At some point my fingers found the edge of his towel at his hip. At some point his hand settled at the small of my back like it had been looking for an excuse to stay there all day.
Eventually we stopped because breathing had become non-negotiable. We collapsed onto our own loungers, flushed and tired and still barely dressed. Theo’s foot found mine across the small gap automatically. Neither of us commented on it.
I reached over and stole what was left of his warm beer.
“That was mine.”
“Was.”
“You’re a nightmare.”
“You keep saying that.”
Theo made one last attempt.
“We never tested the effect of actual conversation on technique. Could be a whole new variable.”
I looked at him.
“Can we stop pretending I need an excuse?”
Theo went still for half a second. Then he understood. He just nodded once.
“Yeah. Alright.”
“Alright what?”
He exhaled, almost annoyed at being forced into clarity.
“I wanted to keep kissing you. That’s why I kept agreeing to all the ridiculous experiments. Happy?”
“You could have said that hours ago.”
“You were the lunatic inventing controlled variables and reduced visibility.”
“You agreed suspiciously quickly every single time.”
“Obviously. I wanted to kiss you.”
“I wanted you to kiss me too,” I said.
Theo’s mouth twitched.
“Shocking revelation.”
“Shut up.”
“So what now?”
Theo considered it.
“I was thinking I kiss you again and we panic about the rest tomorrow.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”
He leaned across the gap and kissed me.
This one had absolutely no excuse attached. No experiment. No rating. No variable. We kissed because we both wanted to. Slow at first, then deeper when neither of us pulled away. His hand found the back of my neck. Mine settled against his jaw. His mouth was warm and certain and I could feel him smiling into it when I matched the pressure. The rest of the world stayed exactly where it was. We didn’t.
When we separated I stayed close enough to feel him smile.
“Final verdict,” I said. “Am I actually any good?”
Theo studied me with exaggerated seriousness. He tilted his head. Then, with perfect timing and zero mercy, he recreated the exact wince from the beach.
I stared at him.
He lasted one second before collapsing into laughter.
“You absolute fucking bastard.”
I went for him. He tried to scramble away and got about two steps before I caught him and shoved him hard into the pool. He went in with a spectacular splash, surfaced sputtering and swearing.
“I will end you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Get down here.”
I jumped in after him.
We went under in a tangle of limbs and came up laughing and shoving. Theo got an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in and kissed me instead of dunking me. Salt water and chlorine and the taste of him. I kissed him back and we both went under again because neither of us was paying attention to practical matters.
We surfaced coughing and laughing. Theo pushed wet hair out of his eyes.
“Still weird?”
“Annoyingly not.”
“Good.”
He dunked me anyway. I came up swinging. We wrestled and insulted each other until we ended up at the shallow end, breathing hard, knees knocking under the water.
I kissed him once more, quick and deliberate, the same way I might have stolen his beer or shoved him into a pool or called him an idiot. Ordinary. Easy. Ours.
He smiled against my mouth.
“Disgusting,” I muttered.
“You love it.”
“Shut up.”
He kissed me again instead.
The End
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