Kieran waited, as if on a precipice, for Jude to reply beyond the noise from his throat. And he was ready to back up at Jude's next statement, ready to make complicated explanations and excuses.

And then Jude was kissing him, and it was like Kieran was drowning. He opened his mouth, immediately leaning up into the kiss. His mind was empty with the thrill of it. On instinct, Kieran reached his hands around to Jude's back, grasping helplessly at the fabric of the other man's coat.

Years, years he'd been orbiting Jude and tormenting himself and fantasizing, and — maybe he could have had this all along? Jude's lips were soft, and Kieran's stubble scratched against his smooth face, and Merlin, he wanted his hands in Jude's hair. He wanted to keep tasting Jude like this, to spend long hours kissing him lazily, to kiss him frantically and desperately and again and again and again —

He wanted. He'd been wanting Jude for years and something had finally burst, and Jude was kissing him, and had kissed him first, and maybe Kieran was finally losing his mind?

It was a need to breathe that had Kieran reluctantly breaking off the kiss, stumbling back from Jude, and gasping for breath. "Come — home with me," Kieran managed, "It's a block, come home with me." If they were going to figure this out, they needed a little bit more space — any amount of space. He couldn't wrap his mind around this.