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The first time they kiss, she isn’t ready. She isn’t ready because they’ve been friends since before she can remember, and Levi has never been interested in kissing and he knows she’s never cared for the idea and so when he leans over the space between them and nudges his face against hers, she isn’t ready.
It’s not bad, though. It’s…wet, and warm, and Levi has his eyes squeezed closed like he’s waiting for a rebuttal, a verbal smack down or maybe a physical one, because she’s Hange and she’s mean when she wants to be. He smells good, too. His cheeks smell of lavender, like that little bar of soap he keeps by the side of the bath, the one he continually tells her not to touch because it’s his and she’s filthy and she can use the cheap, non-scented soap, but he’s never once complained when she’s flopped onto the bed with wet hair and skin smelling an awful lot like-
“Lavender,” she breathes, catches his lips between hers because he’s still that close, and he pulls back with a scowl that isn’t quite as deep as usual - it’s not as threatening as it should be with the blush colouring high on his cheeks. Hange rests her arms on the table top, revision notes and homework sheets crumpling beneath her elbows and she braces her chin on her palm to look at Levi.
He’s not looking at her, instead sketching his pen over the date in the top corner of his page. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Levi flustered before, but he is now, with pink cheeks and tight shoulders and his knuckles are white where the skin is stretched over the bone and Hange thinks she maybe wants to kiss him again.
“Sorry,” he says, and he flips to a new page and starts scribbling notes from his text book.
Hange’s never been interested in kissing before. She sees it all the time, classmates hiding in darkened corners and abandoned classrooms, couples on tv and in movies, she’s read about it deep in the pages of too many books but she’s never had a particular affinity to it. Nanaba has told her about it, too, late at night when the lights are out and the covers are pulled to their chins and the world is silent around them. Words always spoken in hushed, excitable whispers; it’s the best, Zoe, makes you feel warm and weird in the best kind of way.
Warm is right, and weird is true, but she’s not entirely sure she likes the butterflies turning her stomach or the strange stutter of her heart in her chest. What she does know is that yeah, she kind of wants to do it again.
The second time they kiss it’s a Saturday, the first one of the summer, and they’re sprawled over the tiny sofa in Hange’s sitting room with the windows open as wide as they go, sunlight bleeding in through the glass and dappling bright patterns across the floor. Hange hooks an arm over her eyes and groans.
“It’s so hot,” she says, fanning her shirt against her stomach. “Levi why is it so hot?”
“How the fuck should I know?” he growls, and Hange lifts her arm and winks an eye open to look at him. His head is tipped against the back of the sofa and she can see, from her spot flopped in his lap, the red, raw-looking sunburn shining on his neck. She reaches up, trails a finger over the angry skin, and Levi slaps her hand away with a hiss. “That hurts, four-eyes.”
“Told you you’d need sunscreen,” she says. Levi drops his chin to glare down at her and she smiles. There’s a pink tinge across his cheeks, too, but she’s not sure that has anything to do with sunburn. He smooths his palm from her sweaty forehead and down, down over her crown to knot his fingers into her ponytail and he tugs once, hard but a little half-hearted. Hange laughs, adjusts her back against his thighs and pushes her glasses up her nose. “You know what we need now?”
“What?”
“Ice cream.”
They probably need a lot of things in place of ice cream, really; water, and maybe something a little salty, and Levi definitely needs some after-sun, but it’s hot and ice cream is cold and that in itself is the strongest, most rational argument her sun-fuzzy brain can come up with.
“Freezer's right there.” Levi points towards the kitchen and Hange shakes her head.
“We don’t have any,” she says, and Levi stares down at her, incredulous, because why suggest it in the first place then, idiot? “There’s a shop over the road…”
“No.”
Hange has known Levi long enough to understand that no changes to yes with just enough prodding and ten minutes later, Levi is groaning in frustration and huffing out a petulant, “fine, fine, but you’re paying.”
“Purse is on the counter.”
It’s supposed to be a kiss on the cheek, a thanks between friends and it wouldn’t be the first time, but when she sits up and closes the space between them Levi turns to look at her and oh.
She doesn’t understand how his lips are soft and wet when the heat has dried her own but she doesn’t complain, because it really does feel nice, and there’s a hand at the back of her neck, tentative fingers weaving into her hair and Levi sighs through his nose and this, this is different to last time, but it’s nice. Really nice.
Hange can feel Levi’s lashes tickle at her cheeks and her own eyes fall closed. She’s warm all over and Levi’s mouth is hot against hers and the breeze blowing through the open window is lifting his hair so it tickles her brow. Hange closes the space there, traps the sweat-damp strands between their foreheads to stop them moving.
This has maybe gone on too long for a simple lip-on-lip kiss, and Levi pulls his mouth away just as she thinks it, but his nose nudges against her own and she clamps her throat closed around a noise she really doesn’t want to make.
“Ice cream,” he says, hoarse and breathless and his cheeks are definitely, decidedly more red than they were before. Hange scoots her way off his lap and drops onto the sofa cushions, sits and waits for the door to close before she lets out a breath.
Nanaba is her closest kissing authority - she’s told her the mechanics more times than Hange can count but she’s never taken it in, because why listen when she’s never going to kiss anyone? But now, Hange wishes she’d maybe paid just a little more attention.
It’s definitely weird, she thinks, wanting to kiss her best friend, because kissing isn’t friendly; it’s something couples do, parents and high school sweethearts and people who want to have sex, and she and Levi are none of those things. But he can’t be all that opposed to it - Levi has never, ever had a problem saying no in the past so really, if he hadn’t wanted to kiss her, he would have told her so, right? He would have shoved her away and wiped her spit from his mouth and scowled like he always does.
Hange pushes her glasses to her forehead and digs her knuckles into her eyeballs. She is very used to understanding; math and chemistry and biology, tangible, measurable things but this, this want, this clawing kind of need.
She doesn’t understand this at all.
The third time they kiss, they finally talk about it. Levi’s face is shadowed by his hair and his hands are jammed in the trouser pockets of his suit, and Hange has her shoes in her hand, straps dangling from her fingertips. The pavement is night-cold but the air is warm enough, and they walk away from the music and the noise and the hordes of kissing teenagers in the ballroom behind them to sit on one of the benches outside.
“Never again am I wearing heels.” Hange fiddles with the hem of her dress - it’s a little shorter than she’d have liked, but Nanaba assured her she’d looked the part and really, Hange couldn’t argue - and sits, skims her feet over pebbles and dry dirt and fallen leaves and watches the stars over Levi’s shoulder.
Levi has to bend down to kiss her, which is odd because Levi never has to bend down to reach anyone, and he does so quickly, stiff and shy like the first time, and Hange swears that the only reason her mouth falls open is because she’s shocked. She absolutely has not been watching chick-flicks and rom-coms and one movie that turned out to be a porno, just to learn how to properly proceed if she and Levi were ever to kiss again.
Except she has, and she still doesn’t know what to do.
Levi doesn’t know what to do, either. His eyes pop open and Hange laughs out a shaky, nervous breath, and then there’s something hot and wet and minty slithering between her teeth.
The sensation of someone’s tongue rubbing against hers should be disgusting, she thinks, because mouths are kind of disgusting and tongues spend every waking second just sitting in them, but it’s…it’s nice. More than nice, and it only gets better when he skirts the roof of her mouth and the back of her teeth and she tilts her head, because that’s what they do in the movies and when her mouth slots nicely over Levi’s, his bottom lip caught between both of hers, she realises why.
She doesn’t really know what to do with her tongue, but what Levi did felt nice and she returns the gesture, feels bumps and ridges and the sharp edges of teeth and then his tongue presses up against the bottom of hers and he sucks, just a little, and it maybe isn’t supposed to feel good but it really, absolutely does.
He moans first, which is surprising because Hange was barely keeping it together, and it’s the smallest, most desperate mewl she’s ever heard coming from a person and the minute the sound crawls out from his throat she reaches up, slips her fingers around the cravat at his neck and tugs him closer.
It goes on for a lot longer than either of their other kisses have and even still, she’s a little disappointed when he pulls away. His breath is heavy on her face and Hange thinks hers probably feels the same. He sits beside her, fumbles at the hand still clenching her shoes and grips it in an awkward, uncomfortable hold. Levi has never been good at initiating contact; he thrives on hugs and touches, more-so than he does on actual conversation, but he is, honestly, terrible at starting it. Hange rolls her eyes, switches her shoes from one hand to the other and laces their fingers together.
“That was nice,” Levi says, and Hange licks at her lips. They still taste like him, like mint and tea and a little like the vodka they sipped before coming to this godforsaken party.
“It was,” she says, and she wants to go on but Levi is fidgeting, adjusting the folds of his cravat and frowning up at the sky and Hange thinks he has more to say.
“We should do it again.” Hange blinks at him and smiles because yeah, she’d really, really like that.
“Depends,” she says, shrugging a shoulder, and Levi stares over at her. “When did you have in mind? My schedule’s pretty busy so-”
Levi smacks his mouth to her cheek and Hange turns to look at him, and as soon as her neck is twisted far enough, Levi kisses her again. She smiles against him, squeezes his hand when his teeth graze over her lip, and then she just…stops thinking, for a little while. Everything is warm; Levi’s mouth, her cheeks, her chest and her stomach and just everything, and her gut feels weird, hot and fluttering and like maybe she needs to throw up, but it’s such a good kind of weird that Nanaba’s words float to the forefront of her mind.
It’s the best, Zoe, makes you feel warm and weird in the best kind of way.
“Not bad,” he breathes, flushing, when he pulls away, licking whatever Hange tastes like from his lips. We could do it tomorrow, too, if you remember to brush your teeth.”
“I always brush my teeth in the morning,” Hange says. Levi plays with her fingers, runs his thumb back and forth across her own. “It’s nights I sometimes forget.”
“Disgusting.”
Hange hums, smacks her lips.
“Best friends don’t kiss, you know,” she says. Levi cocks a brow at her and sits back on the bench.
“No? What sort of people do kiss?”
“Couples,” she says, and Levi’s fingers tighten around hers.
“Okay. Lets be that, then.”
Something warm and fuzzy unfurls in Hange’s stomach and she grins lazily, rests her chin on Levi’s shoulder and speaks into his ear.
“Does that mean I can call you my boyfriend?” Levi’s mouth curls into a smile and he digs an elbow into her ribs.
“You can call me whatever the hell you like.” He turns his head, brushes his lips over her nose. “Just let me keep doing that.”
“Steep conditions, short stuff.” Hange sits back and smiles, slips her shoes back onto her feet and stands. She tugs Levi to his feet and pulls him to her side, and with heels on her feet their height difference is almost laughable and she really can’t resist dropping a kiss to the crown of his head. He scowls up at her, cheeks dusting pink when he stretches up on his toes to catch her top lip between his. She sighs, and smiles. “But I think I can manage.”
**
Hange’s never been interested in kissing before. She sees it all the time, classmates hiding in darkened corners and abandoned classrooms, couples on tv and in movies, she’s read about it deep in the pages of too many books but she’s never had a particular affinity to it.
But, she thinks, lying on Levi’s bed, the movie forgotten on the tv and his hand twined in her hair, his mouth angledjust right over hers, people are allowed to change their minds.