KISSED BY MY TEAMMATE

1

-Malcolm-

I WAKEslowly, begrudgingly, to a heavy weight across my body. Something is pressing down on my chest and the top of my thighs. I shift and try to roll away, but whatever it is is wrapped around me, pinning me in place.

It takes a moment for my brain to wake up enough to realize that this isn't normal, and I raise my head off the pillow, blinking my eyes open.

There's a long, tanned arm thrown across my chest. I freeze.

North is twined around me, his face pressed into the side of my neck, snoring like a hog. His soft blond hair tickles the side of my jaw, and he's clinging on with one arm wrapped around my chest and one leg thrown across my thighs.

A tidal wave of emotions crashes through me; fear, shock, confusion, and a crushing yearning, all muddied together and impossible to decipher.

I agreed to stay with him last night after I pushed his body to the limit. He took everything I gave him and still wanted more. He wanted me too. And now here I am, lying in the spare bed with him cuddling me. There's no other word for it. I've never woken up in someone's arms before. This is entirely unexplored territory for me, and the knee-jerk urge to shove him away is strong, but after everything that happened yesterday, after the progress we've made, I don't want to risk hurting his feelings. As I took him apart and claimed him as my own, piece by piece, I swore to myself that I was never going to hurt him again.

I could try to wriggle away without waking him up. But then what if he does wake up? What would I say to him? How would he expect me to act? How are you meant to behave when you wake up with someone clinging to you like an abandoned baby monkey?

Without moving my head, I glance at the clock on the nightstand. It's already 7 a.m., an hour after I usually get up and wake him for our morning run. I can't remember the last time I slept this long. How much of that has to do with the tiring events of last night, and how much has to do with sleeping next to North, with his body pressed against mine?

I shift slightly. If I wake him up he'll probably get off me. And . . . I'm not sure if I want him to. If I look past the blaring alarm in my head and the voice telling me to flee, I'm actually pretty comfortable. His body feels nice against mine, toned and yet soft. A reassuring weight. This moment right here, I can deal with this. I can just be in it for a while. The problem is when we're both awake.

I lie as still as possible, entirely frozen and barely breathing, and stare up at the ceiling as his warmth seeps into my muscles and bones, down into my core. Hours pass, the sun crawls across the wall and North still snores away into my neck. God, I need to pee. Is this how long he'd sleep in without me waking him up? It feels like most of the day has already gone.

My bladder is about to explode when he groans. I panic and snap my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. I'm such a fucking coward. his body moves sluggishly against me as he wakes, and then stops. Has he just noticed the way he's holding me? Did he mean to throw himself over me, or was it an accident? I find myself hoping it's the former.

Then his arms slowly, carefully, extricate themselves from me, his leg slides off, and he rolls away, leaving me cold. He doesn't want to wake me. Does that mean he's as freaked out as I am? Or is he just worried I'll be mad?

And what do I do now? Just lie here pretending to be asleep indefinitely? Maybe if I pretend to be asleep for long enough, he'll just get up and leave, and I won't have to face him, or what this relationship is becoming, in the cold harsh light of day.

I already said I was a coward, ok? I pretend not to be afraid of anything, but that's a lie. I'm just afraid of the things most people crave. Affection. Emotion. Connection. And the way they make me vulnerable.

There's a rustle of fabric and the bed shifts as North climbs off. Then the soft pad of his feet recedes until they're gone.

I crack my eyes open. The room's empty, the bedsheets messy next to me where he was. He's gone. I stare at the ceiling and take a long, deep breath. I preferred it when he was here, so why can't I face him? Why can't I face us?

There's the pad of feet on the stairs, a soft clinking noise, and I don't have enough time to decide whether to pretend to be asleep again or not before he walks through the open door carrying two steaming mugs. He pauses in the threshold, seeing me awake, and I sit up. Might as well face it, I can't pretend to be asleep all day. He's wearing the large T-shirt and comfy sweatpants he wore to bed last night. With his hair still sleep-ruffled and messy, he smiles at me, his eyes crinkling in the corners, and comes over to the bed.

"Hey, sorry if I woke you up." He lifts one of the mugs. "I brought coffee."

He hands it off to me and I take it, wrapping my hands around it and feeling incredibly awkward, and he settles back on the bed by my side, throwing his long legs wide over the sheets in a display of obscene comfort.

"Did you sleep ok?" he asks, scratching one hand through his mess of hair. I want to put my hands in those blond strands too, but I keep them wrapped around the mug. I don't think I've ever felt so uncomfortable in my life.

"Yeah," I grunt.

There's a moment of silence. This is the bit I hate, this skin crawling feeling, this expectation of...something. Something I don't know. And the creepy feeling of failure that I can't get it right.

"Is this weird for you?" he asks.

I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. "Kinda," I say.

He takes an obnoxious slurp of his coffee. "You look like you're trying not to freak out."

I narrow my eyes at him, and he laughs, impish. "And you think pointing it out will make it less weird?"

"I dunno," he says.

But it's worked. I feel less stiff. I gulp the coffee and sit back against the pillows, enjoying the burn of it down my throat and the warm, smokey smell. North's unreasonable level of charisma is hard to repress and impossible to avoid. I swear, the more time I spend with him the less immune I become. God damn cheerful asshole, making me feel relaxed when I should be agitated.

He nudges my leg with his foot. "It's ok, I'm not going to start calling you my boyfriend or anything. Or expecting you to be any less grumpy."

I grunt into my mug. "Good, because I'm not going to be."

"Good," he says.

"Good."

He's grinning far too cheerfully. "Good."

He raises his eyebrows at me and swirls his mug. "Because I like my guys like I like my coffee, dark, bitter, and—no wait, that doesn't work. I like my coffee sweet as hell."

I roll my eyes. I swear he has more sugar in his coffee than coffee.

"Guess you're shit out of luck then. I don't do sweet."

North pulls a shocked face. "What? No! You mean you've been lying to me this whole time?"

"You're such an idiot," I say, and his grin only widens.