Lourdes is statue-still against him, a line of tense muscle, before he pulls back. His tie slips through David’s fingers as he hisses, “Are you nuts?”, and there’s the reason, there’s the reason to hate him. He’s going to punch David, or laugh, or use it against him, he’s going to expose himself as the shitty person David knows he has to be, because he plays like an asshole and David knows he is one under the façade.

David should feel satisfied, but all he feels is nauseous, and not just because he put the one thing he trusts no one with into the hands of someone he doesn’t trust at all. His first kiss — at least his first kiss with a person he’s actually attracted to, which is what’s important — and he did it to prove something to someone who’ll probably use it as leverage, someone who doesn’t know the meaning of fair play.

Lourdes is looking down at David, and David sets his jaw and looks right back up at him, looks him in the eye, because if Lourdes is going to hit him he wants to know it’s coming.

“There are people everywhere,” Lourdes says, then, “Shit, I’m living at Goldie’s, I can tell him to head to his girlfriend’s?”

“What?” David asks, everything in him going blank.

“Like, you can come over,” Lourdes says, and then, sort of sheepish, “I mean, if you want to, I don’t want to assume.”

“What?” David repeats, voice cracking over the word.

“Do you want to?” Lourdes asks. His cheeks are pink. David would think he was blushing, but that’s stupid.

“I—” David says. He doesn’t think he can say ‘what’ again, though he wants to, because Lourdes isn’t making any sense.

David didn’t think his actions through, maybe, not properly, but he sure as hell wasn’t expecting Lourdes to invite him over, and if he wanted to beat the shit out of David for it he could just do it right here. There are people around, maybe, people close enough to come if David called out, but he wouldn’t, he’d take it and he’d hold that pain and he’d let it fester. There’s no reason to invite him over except the obvious one, and that’s too absurd to be true.

“Okay,” he says, because he refuses to be the kind of person to start things he doesn’t finish, balk at something that Lourdes didn’t.

If this is Lourdes’ sick idea of gay chicken or something, David’s going to be the one to win it. He’s never backed down from anything he wanted to do, and he can admit, privately, that he wants this. Not Lourdes, necessarily, though he’s objectively good looking, pink lips and a smile that looks bashful even if that’s a lie, eyes somewhere between gold and green, some colour David’s never seen before, because of course he’s got to be unique there too.

Another guy, though. If there’s one good thing about Lourdes, it’s that he has just as much to lose as David does.