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When Winn opens the door, it’s James he finds outside his apartment. He’s got one hand braced against the doorjamb like he needs it to keep himself standing and a pinched look to his brow, and Winn’s perpetually frenetic inner monologue comes screeching to a standstill at the very sight of him. He looks like shit, has the top buttons of his work shirt undone and the sleeves rolled up haphazardly, but all that does is accent the bulge of his biceps and that dip between his collarbones, and Winn quite frankly feels a strong urge to jump him.
Instead, he steps away and holds the door open.
James straightens and comes inside without saying anything, but he does let out a soft sigh as he moves past Winn, and if Winn had to guess he thinks it sounds like a sound of relief. Though he doesn’t know why James would be relieved just because Winn let him inside his apartment. It would be kind of a dick move just to leave the poor guy standing outside his door.
“You want a beer?” Winn asks, when James stops and looks around with a lost expression. This is the first time James has been inside his apartment, and it’s pretty much the bachelor pad of a computer nerd, but the general disorder of his living room is definitely not enough to warrant so much staring.
“Yeah, sure,” James says, distractedly. Winn waves him to his couch and disappears into the kitchen to rummage around in his fridge. He pops off the tops before he brings two bottles out, and hands one to James with a flourish.
“So, here’s to not dying a painful death by nuclear explosion today,” Winn says, lifting his bottle slightly. He has to pile his laptop and his iPad and a few boxes of takeout Chinese from yesterday together and drop it all on the floor before he can sit down on the opposite end of his couch.
“I guess that is worth celebrating,” James says, a little indifferently, as he watches Winn get himself settled.
“Well, yeah. Although I already made a few questionable decisions today in the name of, you know, YOLO or whatever, so I’m definitely down for celebrating on the down-low, if you catch my drift.”
James squints at him and finally takes a swig from his beer.
“See, now you’re just begging me to ask what you mean by that.”
Winn shrugs, pressing his lips together to keep from looking smug, and James grins a little, shakes his head.
“You know that just makes me want to not ask you about it,” James teases.
Winn’s mouth drops open. “What, you’d just leave me hanging?” He shakes his head. “Pff, fine, see if I’ll offer to tell you juicy stories about Siobhan ever again.” He sniffs, looking down at his beer, and watches James from the corner of his eye, waiting for him to take the bait. Jesus, but it feels good to do this again, this kind of flirting with a guy Winn knows is interested. He doesn’t remember the last time he tried this with anybody who wasn’t Kara, but he can be coy for as long as it takes to keep that little smile on James’s face, and better, he’s willing to bet money that James will pick up on the fact that he’s flirting, which is…a nice change from Kara, if he’s honest.
“Siobhan? What, work Siobhan?” James raises both brows and crooks two fingers in the air in quotation marks. “‘Assistant number one’ Siobhan?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, give the man a gold star,” Winn booms, like he’s an announcer. James reaches across the seat between them and shoves at his shoulder, not hard, but even a light shove from James is enough to near flatten Winn against the back of the couch, which Winn thinks isn’t remotely fair at all.
“Fine,” James does a ‘give it to me’ gesture. “You’ve got me. What’s the story?”
“Funny you should ask,” Winn says. He snickers when James rolls his eyes. “We kind of kissed? Well, she kissed me, really.” He pauses. “And then she threatened to kill me if I told anybody about it, so, if I turn up murdered in the near future you’ll know who did it.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Siobhan kissed you? Cat’s new assistant, Siobhan, the one with the,” James motions at his eyes, “dagger eyes?"
Winn shrugs, and it wasn’t like he was expecting James to just believe him right off the bat, because he hardly believes it happened himself, but the incredulity on James’ face stings anyways, in a way Winn hadn’t quite expected.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” he mutters.
James, perceptive guy that he is (damn him), says, “No, no, I didn’t mean – I’m not surprised she kissed you. I’m just surprised she kissed anyone.” Winn wrinkles up his nose at him.
“Well, she did,” Winn says. “I found her attacking the copier earlier and she told me she was upset because of that cheaters website, and then she told me this story about catching her dad with his assistant when she was seventeen – which she also threatened to kill me for if I told anyone, so I’m telling you, just…watch out for that, will you, ‘cause she scares me – and I don’t know, I felt sorry for her. So I caught up to her as she was leaving and I told her a little about my dad, just in like, camaraderie, you know? And then, wham, she was kissing me, and threatening me in the same breath, and then backing me into the elevator to kiss me in there, and…”
“She kissed you in the elevator?” James interrupts, his face darkening, and Winn has no idea what that’s about, but he nods.
“It was all really weird,” Winn says, rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth at the memory of her thick lipstick on his lips and her hands actually grabbing at the back of his head. He feels vaguely discomfited all over again. “She’s very pretty but she’s also kind of terrifying and I don’t really know what came over me aside from the fact that we all almost died a horrible death and I also managed to stop a supervillain with a virus that I wrote, so I guess I was flying a little high or something and I just…went for it. Not the kissing, the…being an empathetic person, thing. I really wasn’t expecting the kissing.”
James watches him intently with an expression that Winn can’t really parse, and he wonders if he should have not brought up the weird makeout session at all, because now he feels really uncomfortable all around.
“I don’t think,” James says carefully, after a long pause, “that someone who threatens to kill you multiple times is really the best person to be interested in, Winn.”
“Well,” Winn laughs awkwardly. “Good thing I am definitely not interested in her, then, haha. Ah.” He coughs.
James nods. He looks reassured by the declaration.
“But I don’t think you actually came here tonight to listen to me talk about Siobhan,” Winn says, to change the subject, and because he can tell he’s only managed to distract James temporarily. He’s already starting to regain that scrunched look he was wearing when he knocked on Winn’s door.
Another pause, and then James says without preamble, “Lucy broke up with me,”
Winn coughs again, this time around a swallow of beer, but he manages not to either die or spew beer all over himself and his couch, so that’s something. That relationship was bound to end sometime, but Winn had pictured James coming clean and ending it, not the other way around. Maybe that had been optimistic, with how hard James was struggling to admit to what he really wanted. Winn just can’t imagine ever having James and willingly giving him up like that.
“She says I’m in love with Kara,” James continued. “And – that Kara feels the same way.”
“Are you in love with Kara?” Winn asks, because that is the question.
James looks down at the beer bottle in his big hands. He shrugs. And that’s not an answer, either, but Winn studies the line of James’ jaw, the movement of his throat as he swallows, and he thinks it’s enough of one.
Winn tries to summon the words you’re supposed to say to a good friend who finds himself unexpectedly single. If this were any kind of normal situation, Winn would say that Lucy doesn’t know what she’s missing out on, that James is better off without her, and then he’d propose they get drunk, probably. But nothing about this is normal. Guys like Winn don’t get guys like James on their couches, torn up over a breakup. Guys like him aren’t even friends with guys like James. No, if this were normal, Winn would be telling James that the breakup is good, because Kara is the one he should really be with. But what exactly is Winn supposed to say when he’s in love with Kara too, and jealous of her at the same time, because this ridiculously hot guy who should, in any normal world, not even be on his couch kissed him or accidentally kissed him, or whatever the fuck that was, and since then Winn can’t get James out of his head any more than he has ever been able to get Kara out of it?
He sets his beer on the end table, rubs his palms over his thighs and says, inadequately, “I’m sorry, man.”
James shrugs again. Eloquent, Winn thinks, and has to stifle a nervous snicker.
“What?” James asks, apparently catching some of his amusement on his face. He tilts his head.
“I don’t know,” Winn says, shaking his head, “but I mean, this is good, right? I know you wanted to give it another shot with Lucy, and you did that, so…”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” James says, sinking back against the couch and looking down again, his expression morose.
Winn bites his lip.
“Work with me here, James,” he says. “I don’t really know what to tell you if I don’t know how you feel about this.” He tries for a smile. “You gotta, I dunno, give me something.”
“I should have kissed you outside the bar that night,” James says abruptly, and Winn feels the smile drop off his face and the awkward circular stuttering of his thoughts come to a halt. James sets his beer on the floor and turns sideways on the couch to face him, a serious expression on his face.
“I wanted to,” he says softly, and then he’s in the middle of the couch, leaning into Winn’s space, reaching out a hand to cup the side of Winn’s neck, and he continues, “so bad,” and Winn lets him, lets James’ long fingers pull him close, but then James stops moving, drops his eyes to Winn’s mouth, breathes. Their faces are just inches apart. Winn can smell the beer on James’ breath and a faint whiff of his cologne. He thinks, Oh god, this is so not happening right now.
He thinks, I am literally going to die if he doesn’t do something.
He thinks, Oh, fuck it, and kisses James himself, surging forward through the last little bit of space between them before he can change his mind.
There’s the smallest of pauses before James reacts, but it’s enough for Winn’s brain to start flashing ABORT and I fucked up, I fucked up, I fucked up. He doesn’t realize James has started kissing him back until he goes to jolt backwards and finds James’ fingers tangled near-painful in his hair. He freezes, finally registering the insistent press of James’ lips against his own, and James doesn’t stop – he pushes Winn back against the arm of the couch and leans into him, a deadweight, the solid muscle of him draped over Winn’s thighs, and Winn doesn’t think he could shift James off if he wanted to, which is totally and incredibly hot.
“James…” he whines, he gasps, and James has the nerve to just laugh. He buries his face in Winn’s neck and nuzzles him, kisses over his pulse point.
“Should’ve just done it, if this whole thing with Lucy was just going to end two weeks later,” James mumbles against Winn’s skin.
Winn can’t exactly bring himself to disagree, what with James draped over his lap and against his chest like a giant cat. The whole thing feels incredibly surreal, like he’s dreaming and he’s going to wake up alone in bed any minute. And even if he’s not dreaming, this is still too good to be true, isn’t it? That James, famous intrepid photographer Jimmy Olsen with his abs and his biceps and his crush on Supergirl, would be evidently both Not Straight and Interested in Kissing Winn Schott. The odds of both of those two things happening were just astronomically not in Winn’s favor.
Winn closes his eyes and runs a hand over the top of James’ head.
“Not to, you know, ruin the mood or anything, but I don’t really see how kissing me helps you with the whole, being in love with Kara, thing. I mean, obviously if that was a thing I would have attempted to kiss myself a long time ago, so.”
James lifts his head and stares at him, getting a tiny frown.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m – not exactly opposed to being a rebound, um, whatever, really,” Winn hurries to add. “I just…” And then he doesn’t know where he was going with that, because the thought of just being some guy James goes to kiss while he’s wavering between Kara and Lucy hurts about as much as the thought that James might not ever kiss him like this again.
“This isn’t about Kara,” James says very seriously, not even having cracked a smile at what Winn thought was a pretty good joke under pressure, if he does say so himself.
“O-okay,” Winn says, skeptical, because when have any of their interactions not been, in some way, about Kara?
“I like you,” James adds, and Winn sucks in a breath so quickly it makes his chest ache a little. “I care about Kara, but she’s not the one I keep thinking about kissing.”
“Um,” Winn says intelligently, drowning a little in the sincerity in James’ eyes. James leans forward and kisses him again, gently, pulling back before Winn can really react.
“Is this okay?” James murmurs, watching him carefully.
Winn rakes a hand back through his hair, a little dizzied by this turn of events. He says, “This is so much more than okay.”