Page 32 of Looking for Group

Still slightly strawberry dazed, Drew went for it. “So, like, last time we were on a date, neither of us wanted to go home, but then we had to raid, so we kind of had to. There isn’t a raid tonight. So…”

“So…” Kit slid his hands into his sleeves. “Do you want to come back to mine?”

“Yes.” Wow, that sounded way too eager, but Drew realised he was, in fact, quite eager.

And if they went back to Kit’s, then he wouldn’t have to invite Kit back to his, because his was a state.

He’d left most of his T-shirts (and some of his pants) all over the floor, and Tinuviel tended to wander in without knocking or, in one extreme instance, wearing clothes.

And Drew was pretty sure any or all of those things would seriously kill the mood.

They got on a bus, and off again twenty minutes later outside the University of Leicester Botanic Gardens.

“You live in a garden?” asked Drew.

“In a house in a garden with three hundred other students.”

“Classy.”

Drew hadn’t actually been this far out of the city centre like…

ever. It was a little bit like going home to his parents’, because it was quiet and leafy, and it made him feel quite distant from his regular life on campus.

But not in a bad way. The sun was just on the cusp of setting, so the light was mellow and the shadows were long and golden.

And then Kit took his hand, and they walked together under the trees.

Here and there, they wandered past groups of students lounging on the lawn with plastic cups of beer or playing a late-evening game of Frisbee.

If he hadn’t been out with Kit or raiding, it was the sort of thing Drew might have been doing with his mates.

But it didn’t seem like the sort of thing Kit did, and Drew couldn’t decide whether he felt bad for him.

“This is a really cool place to live,” he said.

Kit nodded. “I really like being so close to the Botanic Gardens. There’s this willow tree I like to read under. And sometimes I bring my laptop.”

Drew gave his hand a squeeze. “Don’t you ever want to hang out with people from your course or anything?”

“I sometimes have lunch with my lab partner, and I go to the occasional party, but I don’t really feel I’m missing out.”

And now Drew couldn’t decide whether he felt bad for himself. “Oh man, I always feel like I’m missing out.”

“When I first got here, I had this serious freak-out because I thought I was doing it wrong. I was so convinced it was going to be massively different to school, but it wasn’t.

12 I was still the quiet guy who didn’t have many friends, and there were still the popular kids who seemed to be having this amazing time that I just couldn’t be part of.

” They’d come to a sun-dappled corner of lawn that nobody seemed interested in.

“Do you want to stop for a bit? It seems a shame to miss the sunset.”

Drew surveyed the area critically. “Well, there isn’t a rock and I’ve left my fishing rod in a fictional universe.”

Kit’s laugh seemed louder and brighter under the clear sky.

They got settled on the grass, side by side, Drew’s arm and leg gently brushing Kit’s.

“Anyway,” Kit went on, “I wound up having this really intense Skype conversation with Tiff and Jacob at about three in the morning, and they kind of talked me down, and told me that nearly everyone spends university worried that other people are having more fun or getting more sex or finding the work easier than they are. So the guys playing Frisbee are looking at the guys in the library thinking, ‘Crap I wish I was that into my course.’ And the guys in the library are looking at the guys in the bar thinking, ‘Why can’t I fit in like that?’ And the guys at the bar are looking at the guys playing Frisbee thinking, ‘Why am I wasting my life on beer and boring conversations, when I could be doing activities and having experiences?’”

Drew wasn’t sure if that made sense or was complete bollocks. “But what if they are having more fun, or getting more sex, or finding the work easier?”

Kit shrugged, and Drew felt it, and that was weirdly comfortable.

“So what if they are? There’s nothing you can do about it, and it’s nuts spending your life feeling miserable because you think you should be doing the things you think other people are doing, just because you think that other people are doing them, whether they’re doing them or not. ”

“I can honestly say I’ve never thought about it like that before.” He turned his head and so did Kit, and suddenly he realised how close they were. They stayed like that. “I really like talking to you,” he blurted out.

A little tinge of pink crept over Kit’s cheeks. “I really like being with you.”

They angled their heads, nudging and edging at the distance between them. Drew’s attention wavered from Kit’s eyes—paler in the fading light—to his mouth, and then back again.

“Um,” said Kit, his breath fanning soft and warm and faintly strawberry-scented over Drew’s lips, “I really hope you’re about to kiss me.”

“Good.”

And he did.

There was a brief moment in which all Drew could think was kissing a boy , but then that went away, and it was just kissing, and then kissing Kit.

Who seemed to like it too.

Drew had that nervous am I doing this right feeling he sometimes got with girls, but then he half opened an eye and saw Kit’s hand was waving about between them like he didn’t know what to do with it.

He caught it, and their fingers got muddled, and so they were both sort of holding each other.

And Drew stopped worrying, and instead let himself disappear into Kit.

Into the idea that he was the first person ever to do this with him.

To learn the shape of his lips, and the way his mouth tasted, and feel the tickle of his hair and the slight roughness of his jaw.

And that made him worry again. Because you didn’t want to mess up something like that.

Then Kit made this sound, shocked and happy and slightly muffled. Which made Drew feel kind of awesome, and next thing he knew, he was pushing Kit down into the grass, and Kit was going with it, and they were tangled together in all the ways.

Still kissing.

Kit was warm under him, sharp in places, not in others, hip bones grazing Drew’s, lean runner’s legs holding him tight. There was something reassuring—and, honestly, kind of hot—about that strength. About the unexpected ways they fit. And how natural it felt.

In his first term, they’d talked a lot about the way games have grammar. It was about the way games teach you to interact with them so there came a point when you weren’t thinking Press x to jump , you were just jumping.

This was kind of like that.

It felt like the bit in a game when you finally got it. When your character stopped toppling off ledges, missing jumps, and pulling out their binoculars instead of their sniper rifle.

The bit where it felt right.

At some point, Kit rolled him over and straddled him, and Drew gazed hazily up at him. Kit was a little glittery in the fading light. Flushed and smiling and mussed up. 13

Because of Drew.

Drew pulled him down for another kiss.

“You know,” said Kit, sometime later, “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t dark when we started.”

Drew blinked. Kit was right. The sun was long gone, and the stars were out. “Man, it’s like playing Civ .”

“You mean”—Kit grinned—“just…one…more…kiss.”

“Yeah, I was two turns away from building a wonder.” A pause while that sunk in. “Uh, sorry, that sounded way less dodgy in my head.”

Kit pushed the hair back from his eyes. “So…do you need to get back or do you want to…?”

“No, I mean, yes, I mean, sorry, what were the options again?”

“Do you need to go home, or do you want to come up to my room? I’ve got tap water and PG Tips.”

It was late and Drew wasn’t sure how long the buses ran, but he really didn’t want to leave Kit. “Well, I do like tap water.”

They got to their feet, brushed the grass off their clothes, and Kit led the way into one of the old-fashioned buildings in the middle of the park.

His room was slightly nicer than Drew’s, and significantly tidier.

He had a rickety bookcase stuffed with tatty paperbacks and physics textbooks, and a scarily bare desk with just a laptop gleaming in the middle of it.

Everything else was standard student-issue furniture.

Drew glanced warily between the bed and the only chair and, after weighing the potential for awkward, settled on the chair.

Kit disappeared into the en suite and emerged with a University of Leicester mug full of tap water. He presented it ceremoniously to Drew and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“This is way classier than my room,” said Drew.

He glanced at Kit’s posters. One of them might have been an actual print.

It was one of those old-fashioned, hand-drawn adverts where there wasn’t even a slogan, just a picture of a dude with the product, and everybody else staring at him like he was awesome. “I like your…uh…man picture.”

“Thanks, it was the effect I was going for. I went into the shop and said, ‘Give me your finest man picture.’”

Drew gave him a look. “No, seriously, the geometries are really interesting. It’s sort of sharp and fluid at the same time.”

“It’s a Leyendecker.”

Drew made the over my head gesture.

“Sorry, I just find it intriguing. The way everyone is gazing at the man in brown, and how easily he’s being gazed at. I keep wanting to make up stories about him, but then I remember he’s just trying to sell a shirt.”

“What about that one?” Drew pointed at the three-panel poster on the opposite wall.

“It’s a film poster for the Back to the Future trilogy.”

Drew gave him another look. “I know that. It says so on it. But how is it the Back to the Future trilogy. It’s just dots and semicircles.” 14

Kit laughed. “Come on, I’ll show you.”