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Laughing, hard. It’s all instinctive as one palm stretches out across his stomach, and the other arm hooks around you, tugging you close.
He tenses when your fingers brush over his threadbare tee, your head turning into him as you mirror him, giggling. Burying deep into the fabric, it seeps into his skin.
And all Frankie thinks is—
It’s easy with you.
Has been for years. Since you’d stumbled in as the friend of one of his friends girl-not-girl, sticking around longer than they did.
You'd glued to him, happily. Never minding, or caring. Somehow surprised at how simple it was going from ‘do you want a drink’ to resting your head on his shoulder, while the two of you absently listened to whatever bullshit Benny was saying.
Now, he looks forward to seeing you.
To late-night burger runs and early-morning coffee meets, quiz nights with the others and just the two of you movie trips.
At some point, between his tongue doubling in his head at the sight of you that night to now, he’s been resisting kissing you. Sometimes easy, sometimes it’s harder.
Tonight it’s the latter.
A hand clenched around his heart, squeezing. Beneath the moon's gentle gaze, the world slows, each laugh and comment infused with the spell of the silvery glow. It's intimate, almost sacred.
And it forces him to remind himself of the usual array of things that stop him from kissing the wit-induced smile right from your lips. The list he runs through to ensure he doesn't ruin you, in the same way, he'd almost destroyed his license, his job. Stopping himself from tasting the gloss you’ve smeared there, the one which makes street lamps reflect as the two of you walk back to his truck.
“—so even if I scratched your favourite vinyl, you’d still be friends with me?”
Opening the passenger side door, he smiles, gleams, fucking beams. “Yeah!”
He hears you mutter bullshit when he shuts it, fighting a laugh as he comes around the back before sliding in.
It’s not a far drive to yours. One he’s memorised, etched into him. Not just from tonight’s location, but all over town. From his to work, and your favourite spot to his. Able to drive, mainly on auto-pilot, not needing to concentrate too much, able to answer your wild, and ridiculous, array of “even if” questions. Each ranged from ‘if I burnt all your grass’ to, ‘hypothetically if you had a dog and I kicked it’. Each is smudged with the sound of the radio you've tuned, a station he won't admit he listens to when you're not even with him.
You don’t stop your questioning when he pulls onto your drive, parking side by side next to your car. The one he helped you haggle for three months ago now—if he thinks hard, he can still hear the sound of your squeal in gratitude in the furthest part of his ear.
“—what if I stole your last coffee filter?”
“I’m guessing I’m desperate for it too?”
“Yes,” you say, defiant but playfully. “Of course.”
“You’re telling me that if I stole your last coffee filter, you’d still be my friend?”
Killing the engine, he sighs. Shrugging. “Yeah.”
Unbuckling your belt, you throw a glare. “I don’t believe you. You’re more coffee than blood.”
Shaking his head, he rests against the headrest, the corner of his lips growing into his cheek. “Not a thing you could do that would make me ever want to not be your friend.”
Rolling your eyes, you hover your hand over the doorhandle. A part of him wants to ask you to wait, to not go just yet. A routine he thinks through at least three times a month when he sees you. Each time ending in the same cowardly way.
“Goodnight, Frank,” you say, in that same tone—one hard to read, forged in sadness but dressed up in joy—as you press your lips to his cheek.
He resists touching it like he always does. Mumbling the same scripted, “Night” he always does.
Not jolting when the door meets the frame, eyes pinned on you as you walk down your path—waiting for you to step on your porch, turn back and wave, fidget for your keys before unlocking the door and giving him another wave. Another pattern, another repetition.
Except tonight you stop.
You don’t even make it halfway down your path.
Blood pounds in his ears, something knotting inside of him. An urge, a fire lighting in his stomach. One he listens to. His hand shoves the door open, as the other undoes his belt, forcing himself to exit.
Frankie spots the glance in surprise at finding him coming around the front to join you. As though the idea he would is a shock, a surprise as he calls your name.
It’s slow, the way you spin on your heels. You pause, eyes narrowing, before widening, fighting a smile. A thing he can tell, can read. Even if you try to hide it in the night, shield it from the almost full moon and the stars which twinkle above.
“You think you’d be able to be my friend if I kissed you, Nemo?”
Leaning against the brick of your house, watching your eyes flick from his shoes back to his face.
“Finally ran out of cat names?”
“I’m branching out. I could go back to calling you Salem.”
Smirking, rolling his lips. “Still not a fish.”
Sighing, shifting your weight. “Didn’t answer my question.”
Wiping his hand with his face, hurrying his brain to think of something, anything, because he’s not sure if this is a joke. If you’re pushing him.
But the longer the silence thickens, the more time you stare at him, eyes growing wider and wider, he thinks that it might not be his heart that is the only one pounding. The only one beating in his ears, the pulse throbbing in his neck.
“Fran—”
“No,” he stammers, clearing his throat. “I–I’d be too busy.”
Lips sliding into your cheek, nervousness fading, fingers scratching the tip of your nose as he swears a shooting star soars in your eyes. “Doing what?”
“Kissing you fifteen hundred times.”
“Just fifteen hundred?”
Shrugging, chewing his tongue, he exhales—loud, nostrils flaring. “To start.”
Taking a step closer, a timid one. Enough to make a point, but not enough to close the gap entirely. Your knuckles brush his stomach, a blend between a stroke and a nudge.
“You’ve thought about this.”
A small part—one wrapped in vines of doubt, encased in pretending—warns him to clamp his mouth shut. To swallow the syllables and forms letters that make the sentence buzz in his mouth, along his teeth, and jaw.
Flicking his eyes from the floor to your face. “All the time, baby.”
He hears it, but he enjoys watching it more, the way you gasp. Low, airy, trying to bury it.
“Give me a goodnight kiss, Morales.”
He doesn’t think twice.
Brushing his lips against yours, soft, cautious, and tender, before it deepens. It makes his heart throb, double; it almost somersaults in his chest as your palm presses to his cheek, fingers sliding into his hair as one of his hands finds a home on your waist.
Then you’re smiling, almost laughing, right up against his mouth as he tastes the sugar on your lips. He feels the joy brushing against his mouth as your fingers knot into his hair.
And it unlocks him, allows you to consume him, to find himself free falling knowing he'll never land, fall or be hurt—just floating, as you tug him flush to you, a feeling so heavenly he almost wishes to pinch himself—
“Of course, you’re a good kisser,” you whisper, ghosting the words over his lips.
“Been thinking about it, have you?”
Snorting, nose nudging his, you press your mouth back to his, more searing, open-mouthed. “When I drive. At work. In the morning. At night.”
Each is punctuated with a kiss. The latter flows around his head, swirling in different shades and fonts as he groans, fingers sliding around the back of your neck, deepening the kiss. Making it a little rougher, more committed, feeling you cling to him, tugging him closer as he manoeuvres the two of you—flushing your back to the brick, his chest to yours.
A moan escapes you, tickling his lower lip as your thumb brushes along the back of his neck. Mouths parting, for a moment breathing the other, simply staring, gazing, ogling.
“Fourteen hundred and ninety-nine to go?”
Shaking his head, nose brushing yours, thumb stroking against your cheek. “This is a goodnight kiss—a necessity to begin the counter.”
“Oh,” you whisper, elongating it, adding a smirk to the end. “So, we have another fifteen hundred and then, we stop?”
Taking a deep breath, the scent of your perfume weaving into his soul. The sound of a car streets away travelling in the quiet of the night.
“Depends.” Tilting your head, waiting, confusion there. “You might unlock the next stage.”
Grinning against him, able to feel it as he runs his knuckles along your jaw.
“Or my lips fall off?”
Laughing, just like he did earlier. He smiles. “Or your lips fall off.”