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It was too small.
That sounded ungrateful, and so Tommy promptly sent an apology to the closet itself. It wasn’t that small, after all. Not like the cupboards or crawlspaces he’d wedged himself into once upon a time, the ones that starred in his recurring nightmares and smelled vaguely of dust and despair. No, this was a respectable sort of smallness. A cozy, well-intentioned confinement.
Perhaps, he thought—leaning against the slanted wall and trying not to inhale too deeply—the problem with small spaces had never been their size at all. Perhaps it had been the loneliness. A revelation, really, one that Loriel, his therapist, would simply adore unpacking on Thursday. He could already hear her gentle, thrilled, murmur: “And how did that make you feel, Tommy?”
Well, suffocated, Loriel. But in a rather charming way this time.
The closet was too small. The closet was too warm. And—he would very much like everyone to pay attention to this last part, because it was of critical importance, it ought to be noted in pink highlighter, underlined twice for emphasis—the closet was too him.
He shifted, sneakers scuffing against the wall behind him—mahogany, perhaps? Or birch? Something suitably expensive, he hoped. It was a nice distraction from the fact that the wall was slowly fusing with his spine. The other side brushed his shoulder, intimate in a way no wall should be. That might have been tolerable, even amusing, if not for the minor, devastating detail that Wilbur was there too.
Now, normally, this wouldn’t have been an issue.
And if anyone dared to make it one, Tommy would’ve been morally and spiritually obligated to punch them. Because, in Tommy’s humble yet well-founded opinion, Wilbur made everything better—even when Tommy was desperately trying not to behave like a lovesick protagonist in a particularly embarrassing romance novel.
But.
And this was a significant but.
Wilbur was not simply nearby. He was not at the adjacent end of the closet, or even at what might be generously described as a respectable conversational distance. No. Wilbur was pressed in, looming in that infuriatingly graceful way he had, with one arm braced against the wall by Tommy’s head, his chest warm and solid and so perilously close that each of Tommy’s breaths seemed to snag against the fabric of Wilbur’s shirt—as though his lungs had become socially anxious in his stead.
He could feel it all: the quiet rise and fall of Wilbur’s breathing, the subtle shift of ribs when he leaned just a fraction closer—a fraction that meant very little mathematically, but everything emotionally. And because this was Wilbur, and because Tommy’s brain had long since decided that emotional suffering was a recreational sport, he was aware of every excruciating detail.
The faint, steady hum of cologne—thankfully pleasant, since the alternative involved Tommy bursting into tears, literally and emotionally. The heat bleeding through the thin layer of cotton. The way the narrow space transformed Wilbur’s broad frame into a living, breathing wall, as though the closet itself had conspired with fate to make Tommy’s sanity the evening’s entertainment.
This, Tommy thought grimly, would be another item on Thursday’s agenda. Perhaps Loriel would appreciate a donut. God knew she deserved it.
In a heroic attempt to redirect his brain from the metaphorical cliff it was dangling over, Tommy focused on a splinter in the wooden shelf beside him. It was a very fine splinter. The finest he’d ever seen. So fine, in fact, that he briefly considered naming it—perhaps Gerald—and composing an elaborate speech in its honor for therapy. Loriel would undoubtedly enjoy that.
He was not, to be clear, using the splinter as a distraction. No, he was merely engaging in a noble scientific experiment to test the hypothesis that if he did not look at Wilbur, perhaps Wilbur would cease to exist.
This, unfortunately, did not work.
“You’re awfully quiet, love.”
Oh. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. BAD.
Wilbur’s voice was soft—far too soft—and low in a way that ought to be illegal. It rippled through the tiny closet like warm honey poured into a teacup, slow and golden and entirely unnecessary. It was the kind of voice that could sink under a person’s skin, rearrange their ribcage, and plant a small, thriving garden of mortification there. And then, there was the pet name—love—which knocked politely on his heart’s door before landing a sucker punch to Tommy’s already fragile composure.
Why now, of all places? Why not when Tommy had a conveniently placed wall to crash dramatically into and blame for his sudden, catastrophic blush?
“I’m—just—” he began, and promptly betrayed himself with a voice crack so tragic that somewhere, an angel probably lost its composure, “—thinking.”
From the corner of his eye—because he was still faithfully committed to his hypothesis that direct eye contact would lead to spontaneous combustion—Tommy saw Wilbur’s mouth curve. Not into a smile, no, that would have been merciful. This was a curl, the smug, knowing sort of expression one wears when they have just realized they hold the upper hand in a duel. Wilbur was, in short, a menace. a charming, six-foot menace.
“Thinking?” Wilbur echoed, tilting his head and leaning in yet another inch. (An inch, in this context, being the precise distance between sanity and disaster.) “About what?”
Tommy’s eyes darted to the shelf, the loyal shelf, the one that housed Gerald the splinter—steadfast friend and sole witness to his suffering. “The — uh —airflow,” Tommy declared, with all the solemn dignity of a man presenting a doomed scientific paper. “It’s, um, very limited.”
“Oh?” Wilbur’s voice dripped with the kind of amusement one should really need a license to wield. He leaned closer still, his breath brushing the side of Tommy’s face. “Is that why your cheeks are so warm?”
And that was the precise moment Tommy realized that closets, despite their reputation for privacy, were perfectly capable of holding witnesses—and worse, accomplices—to one’s humiliation.
Tommy made a wounded sort of noise—the kind of small, pitiful sound a person makes when struck in the dignity rather than the body—which, quite tragically, Wilbur appeared to interpret as encouragement to tease him further.
The next thing Tommy knew, Wilbur was close. not narratively close or emotionally close, but horrifyingly, oxygen-endangeringly close. Close enough that Tommy could feel the faint brush of Wilbur’s breath, could see the individual air molecules performing their doomed ballet between them, and with his big man eyes, could deduce with alarming scientific precision that there were simply not enough to sustain him for seven minutes.
Tommy pouted—not intentionally, of course, but purely out of self-defense.
Wilbur’s smirk deepened. Of course it did. Smirks always deepen when one least desires them to, like puddles in inconvenient shoes. “You’re adorable when you’re flustered,” he murmured, every syllable practically dripping with enjoyment.
Tommy opened his mouth—or tried to—to deliver what was meant to be a resounding and world-altering statement: I am not adorable, full stop. Unfortunately, before he could so much as breathe in the necessary outrage, Wilbur cooed. Like a bird. A handsome, infuriating bird who had just discovered the concept of victory.
And then Wilbur’s lips were on his.
It was not gentle. It was a storm—no, a tide, surging forward as though the sea itself had decided to conquer the shore. It stole the last of Tommy’s breath entirely and made no effort to return it. His hands flew up instinctively, fingers catching in the fabric of Wilbur’s shirt as the entire world shrank to the humid, dizzy warmth of the moment: the scent of cologne, the heat that rolled off his skin, the maddening press of his body that left no space for logic, or oxygen, or thought.
(For once—and he would deny this to his dying day—Tommy didn’t mind that Wilbur was taller. For once, he could admit, quietly and privately, that he never had.)
The knock on the door startled Tommy so thoroughly that he very nearly bit Wilbur’s lip — which, given the circumstances, would’ve been a poetic act of self-defense.
“Time’s up in there!” Someone called, in the cruel, oblivious tone of a person who has never known true suffering.
Tommy jolted back, heart hammering, but the door handle only rattled helplessly, like it, too, was in on the joke. It didn’t budge. Not even a little. He blinked up at Wilbur, whose arm—treacherous, possessive thing—had only drawn him closer still. There were degrees of proximity Tommy had once believed theoretical; Wilbur was now disproving them with alarming efficiency.
“You locked it?” Tommy demanded, voice high and horrified and also a bit in love, as though Wilbur had just confessed to arson.
Wilbur grinned—and it was not the smile of a man repentant. It was the grin of someone who had seen the edge of decency, waved cheerfully to it, and walked straight past. “Seven minutes,” he said, with the serene confidence of someone reciting scripture, “Is nowhere near enough.”
“Wilbur—” Tommy began, intending something sharp, scathing, and entirely reasonable, but the word dissolved halfway through—melted, really—into a muffled sound as Wilbur pressed in again. His chest was firm against Tommy’s, heat radiating through every inch of too-tight space, and the kiss deepened until Tommy’s knees threatened treason and then gave up entirely on him, slamming their resignation on the table.
It was, Tommy thought in the one functioning corner of his brain, profoundly unfair that physics allowed this much contact in a finite dimension.
Then again, Loriel did deserve some tea.