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The first time you saw him, it was New Years Eve. You and John had gotten the invite via Rose who had gotten it from someone else who had passed it along from the original hostess, whoever that was. All that mattered was the place was enormous and there were people from all over the area there.
He was out on the balcony, back to the doors and holding a bottle in one hand, head bowed. You were following a girl and lost her around a corner in the stairs and it was ten seconds to midnight. You can still hear his surprised gasp in your ears from when you grabbed his arm and twisted him around. He tasted like summer wine and his jacket was soft under your fingers. Behind your shades, you didn’t have to close your eyes into the kiss, so you were able to watch his expression melt from surprise to pleasure as it was lit by fireworks from behind. You didn't even know his name.
It was a once in a lifetime occurrence. You didn’t know who he was, his name, anything about him. He grabbed you and kissed you and you heard the cheering from party goers inside. His lips were chapped. His tongue wet and warm. His fingers firm on your arm and soft on your cheek. You were unable to stop yourself from kissing him back, from falling into the sensation.
When he pulled away you started reaching for him. You made yourself grip the balcony’s railing instead. “Happy New Year,” he whispered.
Your heart catches in your throat. He isn’t walking away from you. He isn’t laughing at you. He isn’t doing any of the things that usually happen when someone gives you a very sudden, very unexpected kiss. You lean in, barely able to breathe, and kiss the corner of his lips, too frightened to do any more. “Happy New Year,” you reply.
His hand was shaking as it reached for you, and then he made it stop.
His eyes were wide with emotions, whirling and circling, consuming each other. Attraction. Fear. Anxiety. Desire. Hope.
It was a heady sight, those pink lips being bitten to keep silent, the furrowed brows, the emotion charged eyes. And when he kissed you again it was hesitant and light, the touch of cloth or a flower petal and that was such a stupid comparison but it only looked to you like he was being overly careful.
So you cupped his face in your hands and you kissed him again. You swallowed the soft little sigh he gave you. You warmed his face with your palms. You sucked on his bottom lip. You tried to pull him closer.
But for the contact of mouth to mouth and hands on cheek, he didn’t touch you.
You wanted to know why.
“Wait.”
When you say that, he stops. He pulls back. He looks at you and waits. “Yeah?”
“Who are you?”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
You frown. You pull his hands from you face and step back. “It does. What’s your name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well it does to me.”
For a while, between you, there’s silence. The fireworks still explode and with the balcony doors cracked open because of him you can hear the voices and laughter drifting out into the night air. “How about this,” he draws your attention with his warm voice. There’s something inherently different in the way that he talks in comparison to all your previous friends and acquaintances before this moment, but you can’t pinpoint it. You simply feel it. “Let’s talk. You and me, about everything. And I mean everything. Give me half an hour of your time to talk, and then if you want to know my name, I’ll tell you and you can tell me your name.”
You blink in surprise. He doesn’t know your name? He doesn’t know who you are? How many times have you desperately wished someone you liked would just give you thirty minutes to talk to them? Just so they could see you differently, better. Just so they could see you and not what they’d heard.
Without a second thought, you agree.
The balcony is cold to sit on, but with the two of you huddled into one corner, sharing a bottle of wine and with your knees almost touching, it becomes its own bubble of warmth. He’s somewhere in the middle of a story about middleschool, when he wore a cape to school for the very first time. His cheeks are flushed and he wont meet your gaze but he still tells you the story. The second hand embarrassment makes you cringe but seeing his shoulders relax as he sees you’re not laughing at him is worth it.
When he talks, he’s these short bursts of animation, like his reserved attitude and actions are a front and this wildly gesturing, expressive creature is his norm. When he listens, his eyes watch you almost unblinkingly. He smiles or laughs a little even at some of the worst stuff you say and when you, quietly, talk about the time you nearly killed your brother in a play fight his fingertips touch your knee in a gesture of comfort.
You find similarities in the strangest places. Both of you were considered just a little strange by your friends in school and the teachers and staff thought you both were the kind of kid that would bring a gun to school. It turns out he did have a list of people he hated enough to want to shoot, though he didn’t write it down. You’d written yours down but pinned it too your bedroom wall. You weren’t stupid after all.
He likes hunting animals and you like preserving them. He routinely hunts and butchers up whatever he’s hunted and you pin bugs and photograph random roadkill you come across.
Music interests you both, except he likes to listen and you like to create. You make a couple of TV and movie references and he smiles and tells you he doesn’t get it. He goes into this long explanation that he just doesn’t see the point, that it’s really boring to watch this stupid shit but he has friends who are crazy about this show or that show and he’s gotten good at nodding and smiling and pretending to care.
When you finally work up the nerve to explain strifing and the sword battles between you and your brothers, he doesn’t get that worried look John does or that disappointed frown Rose has. He just asks to see your scars.
Before you know it, your shirt is off and you’re recounting the story of each little nick while he kneels close beside you and runs his fingertips over the scars. Even the ones you got when a couple of guys attempted to mug you fascinate him. He comments, of all things, on your bone structure, on the definition of your muscles, and on the difference in your skin from scarred area to smooth area.
With his eyes not on your face, and being a little distracted with the way his fingers dance along the edge of a scar over your hip, you let out a little fact that not even your closest friends know. “I killed a man once.”
His hands still on your skin and your brain has short-circuited, abandoning you with no words to say and only a sudden fear clawing at your throat that you just went and admitted something so-
“I have too.”
You stare at each other in silence for a while and then he asks, “What’s your name?”