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PDA makes Shane nervous. It’s not because he’s worried about showing affection in front of people, but because he’s involved and he doesn’t want to embarrass you. He’s not sure which scenario would be worse: that you’d grin and bear it when he touches you in public because you pity him, or, god, that you’d shrug him off out in the open because you’re disgusted by him. It's one thing to be close to him in the privacy of your own home, or in his room at the ranch, but in public where people can see you? You? With Shane? It makes him sick to think about either brand of rejection.
He insists to himself that the incident at the Tunneler’s game was a one-off. A heat of the moment, out of character thing that he would never normally do — shouldn’t have done to you. That night, after the game and the bus ride back, the one where you kept your leg pressed against his the whole way home, Shane hadn’t been able to sleep, mind bouncing wildly between elation and terror. He doesn’t regret kissing you, never, but he kept himself up that night agonizing over how massively that lapse in self-control could have fucked things up not just between you two, but for you personally. He’s damn lucky he kissed you in a stadium full of people you didn’t know in a town you weren’t from, where nobody would whisper about you from behind in the checkout line at the store, or while sitting at the other end of the bar, or to your family at your own fucking house. He’s luckier still that that idiot kid from across town was sitting in a section far away from you two, that your moment together didn’t end up on the kiss-cam, or that some jackass didn't record it and plaster it all over the internet. It’s one thing for people to know that you’re hanging out with the likes of him — an asshole recovering alcoholic, some loser that lives in his aunt’s house that works at a stupid fucking grocery store that’s probably going to close sometime in the next year or so — but another thing for them to find out that you’re shacking up with him and that you like it. It’s better to keep it under wraps for your sake. He doesn’t want to tarnish your image by smearing his filthy, nasty fingerprints all over it just because he wants something.
It starts to become a problem a few weeks into your relationship, not long after he reluctantly told Marnie about its existence. A guy can only escape out the front door so many times before his aunt starts asking where he’s going at night. Especially after — well, yeah. He doesn’t blame her for checking in on him, but holy shit, is Marnie nosy. Despite asking her to keep things on the down-low, he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist sharing her sweet, juicy piece of gossip with the ladies at her aerobics class, and so your shared, budding secret comes into the daylight well before Shane would’ve considered himself ready.
He made a big stupid deal of it when he told you what happened — that Marnie had cornered and pestered and fretted until he spilled the beans, that he couldn’t promise she’d keep it a secret, that he was so, so sorry. You brushed him off easily. No, it won't be fun being the main focus of small-town gossip for the next few weeks, but eventually George will publicly berate Gus in the town square for not having leek soup on the specials menu this week, or Pam will get pulled over driving the bus again, or Sam will hit someone’s car with a shopping cart in the JojaMart parking lot, and your relationship with Shane will become old news.
Besides, you’ve been together for more than a month now — you can’t keep your relationship a secret forever, right? So, if the cat’s out of the bag, then, well, no big deal. You were okay with it, but it hadn’t occurred to you that maybe Shane wasn’t.
You understood from the beginning that for whatever reason, Shane is weird and cagey about PDA, and that’s okay. It’s fine. You know — fuck — you know that he has issues, that he’s rusty, that he’s not an outwardly affectionate guy. The only other person you’ve ever seen him be publicly fond towards is Jas. Marnie once, when she got a single stilted hug out of him after he came home from the clinic. But the stark contrast between the way he treats you behind closed doors and the way he acts when you’re out in public together starts eating at you. The relationship between you two is green and tender, yes, but it still makes you feel like a fucking idiot when you reach for his hand on the counter at Gus’ and his knee jerks so hard when he slams it into the bar that your sodas rattle on their coasters. The reverberation makes yours slosh over the rim of your cup, puddling on the counter and reflecting the dim overhead lights back at you. Emily, like the little bar-cleanup fairy she is, whirls over to you before either of you can speak and wordlessly tosses a napkin onto the mess. She pats the counter in front of you twice in quiet reassurance and you watch her twirl away to the other patrons.
When you turn back to Shane, he won’t meet your eyes and is instead staring very intently at a speck on the counter. His hand, the one you tried to hold, is now wrapped around his glass, thumb nervously tapping at the condensation forming on the outside.
You start, sheepishly, “I’m — I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to —“
Shane looks to you and shakes his head. “No, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. Uh, here.”
He releases the glass from his grip and holds his hand out to you on top of his knee from under the bar, his palm facing upwards. It’s still wet from holding the sweating glass. You don’t take it.
“Here, it’s fine, really.” He taps the back of his hand against his leg lightly, fingers still outstretched to you.
You shake your head. “Shane, it's okay, seriously, I get it. I’m not — I’m not gonna make you do anything you don’t want to do.” You try to offer him a reassuring smile, but you’re sure it comes off more like a grimace, so you look away and take a sip of your soda instead, shoulders pulling in tight.
Shane reels his hand back in and purses his lips, studying you for a moment. He watches the hitch in your swallow when you take a sip from your straw, watches your tongue run over your teeth inside your closed mouth while you stare at the floor on the other side of the room. He looks at your hands, both wrapped around the base of your glass, where one thumb pets subtly, soothingly at the other, then at your neck where your shirt has shifted and he can see the spotty outline of a bruise on your collarbone, one he left there just the night before.
He calls your name under his breath. “It’s not — it’s — I’m — fuck.”
He grumbles frustratedly, tries to start, then garbles his words and gets stuck again. “Don’t — ugh.”
He takes a deep breath and swallows. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
You look back at him, confused, then raise a brow pointedly when he stays quiet.
“You don’t have to — I mean, in public, you know? You don’t have to…show people.”
Offended, you reply, “It’s not like it’s really a secret, Shane. People know.”
“I know, it’s just — no one needs to see, alright?”
You stare at him, incredulous. “You kissed me at that game in front of, like, forty thousand people. Dude, they could have put that on the fucking kiss-cam or something.”
He grabs your forearm. “I know! I know, that’s what I mean.”
You glare at him and pull your arm away, hurt knitting your brows close and your jaw tight. “Shane, I still don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
He sighs. “Listen, you — people like you. And they don’t like me. And I don’t want anyone to think any less of you if they see us, you know, together. I mean, I know they know, I get that, but they don’t have to — they don’t have to see you with me like — like that.”
It takes a minute for you to realize what he means, and you soften. “I wouldn’t have cared if they did, Shane.”
He picks at his cuticles for a moment before responding. “Yeah, well. I do.”
There’s another stupid fucking pause before you can come up with something to say.
“Kiss me right now.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Don’t.”
“What, you don’t want to?”
He side-eyes you. “That’s not what I said.”
“So do it. Who cares? Nothing bad is gonna happen.”
Shane scans the rest of the room. Pam is in her usual seat, chugging away at what has to be her seventh or eighth drink of the night. Harvey, Robin, and Demetrius are chatting enthusiastically near the door. Elliot and Willy are arguing about mermaids or something a few seats away. He can hear Abigail yelling over Sam’s obnoxious roaring laughter at the pool table in the room behind him. Clint is seated alone at a table along the wall where the overhead light is long blown out, chin resting in his hand and eyes only pulling away from his beer to gaze starry-eyed at Emily when she rolls around to refill his glass every so often. His aunt is seated at a table in the corner, talking decidedly at, not to, the mayor, who nods along only absentmindedly while he stares unabashed at a top-heavy woman in the gaggle of tourists located by the jukebox. His lip twitches in disgust.
Weakly, he argues, “Marnie’s here.”
“So what? I saw her and Lewis canoodling in a bush when I was walking home one time. Big deal.”
He glares. “Eugh, don’t say that.”
“She should really dump his ass by the way, that guy sucks.”
He loosens. “No shit.”
You nudge him. “Well then let’s show her what a nice healthy relationship looks like, maybe she’ll come to her senses. Or Lewis — maybe it’ll give him the jump start he needs to treat her right.”
He cringes. “Ew, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
You snort. “You wanna be sixty years old with a secret lover that you’ll only kiss in private?”
“No, I don’t.”
“So just do it. It’s one kiss, Shane, I’m not asking you to make out with me. I mean, I guess I wouldn't necessarily complain but I don’t know if that’s appropriate for—“
He leans in and ghosts his lips over yours, feather-light. It’s hardly a kiss, but it’s close.
“There.” He clears his throat. “Shut up about it.”
You smile and kick him lightly under the bar. “C’mon, one more. Make it a good one.”
“Jesus christ, alright.”
He leans in harder this time and plants a real, firm kiss on your lips. It’s sticky-sweet from the soda you’ve both been drinking, chaste and quick and perfectly PG, but it sates you all the same.
“Good enough?”
Before you can respond, Shane catches a glimpse of some kind of movement out of the corner of his eye and whips his head around to the other side of the bar. Emily is standing there, staring at you both and pumping two thumbs up in the air, face scrunched and smiling wide with her tongue sticking out from between her teeth.
“Oh, fuck off,” he barks.
She snickers and trots over in front of you, wagging her finger at Shane.
“See, I told you, you do have feelings sometimes.”
“Shut up, Em.”
She looks to you and swipes your soggy napkin off the counter, tossing it quickly into the trash bin underneath. “I knew the day you moved to town that this would happen. I had a dream about it, you know.”
Shane grumbles, “Shut the fuck up, Emily.”
“You’d better invite me to the wedding.”
Shane blushes hard. “Go. Away. Go somewhere else.”
He points behind her. “Look, see? Pam needs another drink, look. You’re gonna get fired.”
She doesn’t budge, still smiling and now crudely miming a passionate makeout with her pinched hands. He grits his teeth. “Get the fuck out of here.”
She snickers again and grabs a rag from under the counter, dabbing lightly at his forehead with it and jumping away before he can reach over the bar to retaliate. As she walks over to the other side of the room, Emily calls over her shoulder,
“Sure! You can name your first-born after me, I don’t mind!”
The tips of his ears turn scarlet and he folds his arms, dropping his head down to the bar and groans the whole way down.
He peeks at you from where he’s sheltering his face behind his arm. “See? This is what happens. You did this.”
You tease, “I didn’t do anything, you’re the one who kissed me. Twice, actually.”
Muffled, he replies, “And I regret it.”
You laugh, “Aw, no you don’t, you liked it.”
You nudge his shoulder where he’s still face down on the bar. “C’mon, one more. Third time’s the charm, you know.”
Shane lifts his head, but he’s still hunching his shoulders over himself protectively. “Shut up, I gave you two, that’s plenty. Baby steps, alright?”
You cackle, “Only if the baby’s name is Emily.”
He sits up straight and shoves you a lot harder than he originally intended to, nearly knocking you off the stool. You yelp when it throws you off balance, but Shane grabs your arm tight and hauls you back up into your seat before you can fall onto the floor.
You expect him to let you go as soon as you’re stable again, but instead he slides his hand down your arm until he’s holding yours, hefting your intertwined fingers to rest on top of the bar for all to see.
“Knock it off. You’re gonna get us kicked out.”
He holds your clasped hands up together in front of your face, shaking them lightly.
“See, is this good? That make you happy?”
You smile sweetly at him. “Yeah, it does. Does it make you happy?”
Shane shrugs and grunts noncommittally, opting instead to use his other hand to take a sip of his drink, but while he does so, he squeezes your hand twice to let you know that yes, it does make him happy.