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N sometimes thought about kissing he liked the idea of it, it looked overall like a pleasant experience, he had read a couple times about it, how it was supposed to be this magical experience and the bond within the two people who did it and something he didn’t understand about fireworks.
He never quite felt it that way, it always felt weirdly uncomfortable, there was also a tingling on his lips and it was just. It didn’t feel right it just felt like something that wasn’t supposed to happen to him. He thought it was because it wasn’t the right person that he was doing it with, like, the kiss with V they had been technically school children, they were troublemaker teens now, it meant kisses were now supposed to feel good, and maybe V just wasn’t the one, you can have crushes and for nothing to come from it, probably.
And now he was with Uzi, they were boyfriend and girlfriend, as far as he thought –he did sometimes ask Uzi if she was sure and she always said yes so, point for N, team, hit the showers– and he could do all of it. Holding hands? Piece of cake. Cuddling? Favorite activity. Just sitting around doing nothing together? Absolutely nailed that. Kissing? Ah, yeah, he was absolutely dreading that part, he didn’t want to feel so foreign to his body with Uzi. He really loved Uzi, or at least he was very fond of her, he had been told love was too strong for this phase of their relationship. But he really did not want to kiss her.
And he was hyper aware that it was a him-thing and not a her-thing, at this point the only thing that was in common with all those situations was him, so it was for him to fix.
"Can we talk?” He said as soon as Uzi and him reached pretty far into the snow, it was somewhere they hadn’t really seen a lot of before, they were leaving a trail every couple of broken cars they found.
They had gone on a walk, it was a date, it definitely was a date, at least in his book, they wanted to explore around Copper 9 and to see the stars and they were holding hands whenever they didn’t get distracted by something. So yes, a date.
"About what?” She asked, he could see that she was pretty nervous. They had both seen more movies than had been in relationships, so the ‘can we talk’ meant breaking up. Which he hadn’t thought about until after he said it.
”Uh- It- Yeah, It’s nothing you did” He waved his arms around nervously, then he thought a little bit more “I made it worse didn’t I?”
She nodded a bit “Yeah, but, just tell me, the last thing I need is having ruined my first real relationship and not knowing why”
"It seriously it’s nothing you did” He took a deep breath, he wasn’t sure how it worked at all, he knew that filling himself with air didn’t actually do something within the grand scheme of things, but it just felt good, so maybe that was the reason for it. “I have been feeling like this for a while, like, for a very long time, more than weeks, it feels like it has been my whole life”
Uzi wasn’t sure what she expected after that, she had a branch she had taken during their time walking there because it made her feel like a mage going on an adventure, and now her boyfriend was talking about some deep seated feeling he might had since birth, and it felt out of place, but she didn’t want to let go of the tree branch, because it was cool, she didn’t really know what to do so she didn’t let go of it.
"I had been thinking about it and I wanna rip off the bandaid, whatever that means” N looked at his hands “Do you ever feel like you were born wrong? Because other people seem to enjoy something you really don’t?”
This was N basically bearing his soul to her, which was somehow attractive, in a way she couldn’t place, it felt like she was being trusted with a piece of him, and that felt good. Which kind of felt bad because N was probably distressed.
"All the time” Which was true, she had told something like that to N at some point, that she felt like she wished she had been born right, or something similar. There was some understanding to the level of distress they had on the day to day.
“There is this set of things that I thought would happen in my life, and none of them really happened” N kept looking at his hands he really didn’t know where he was going “And I don't like kissing…? Like, at all?”
“Oh”
“Yeah… Oh”
“I mean, we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to” She shrugged, she really did not know what to do in this situation, she really hadn’t thought to hard about it “If you ever want to, we can do it, but there isn’t a reason to do it just because”
N felt like he was going to tear up “Are you sure?” He looked at her with real hope. She still had her mage tree branch on her hand.
“Of course” she just shrugged “I mean, we don’t do a lot of things because I can’t handle it very well”
“Yeah, but if you ever wanna do it, then what?” He waved his arms around “I don’t want you to lose experiences of being a normal teenager in a normal relationship because I don’t like kissing”
“But I don’t feel like that” Uzi said “I don’t feel like I am missing out more than I usually do, I don’t feel like I’m missing out when I’m with you”
Neither of them knew what would be the appropriate reaction to have to this, so N just slowly walked towards Uzi and hugged her.
“And now we are hugging” Uzi said.
“We are”
“By the way, the not liking to kiss, is it like on the mouth or on your face?”
“Just the mouth, you have kissed my face, I enjoy it a lot” That made them both blush.
After that she just started kissing his face while they giggled, they fell on the snow while play-fighting, Uzi was able to get N’s hands off of his face in order to kiss his cheeks and his forehead. They were both giggling in the snow in the end, panting and holding hands while looking at the stars. Uzi then sat right up.
“My mage scepter!” She panicked as she scrambled to pick it back up. It made N erupt in laughter, and they were both glad they were together.
That felt just right.