[attr="class","thadmain"]Kepler made a little gasp as Ash picked him up and bodily hauled him onto his lap. He wasn’t one-hundred-percent on social niceties but he did have a feeling they were slightly past the point of propriety, at least for a public place. But the New Years celebrations were in full fucking swing, and everyone around them was half-drunk or full-drunk and no one was paying any attention to them.

So he let himself be lap sat and wiggled his way in between Ash’s thighs and sighed, heavy and dreamy, because if this wasn’t perfect he didn’t know what was. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Wanting to. Be alive. Enjoying it.” His words were a little slurry and the topic was deep but his tone wasn’t. “It’s nice.”

And maybe if he wiggled a little more for other reasons, maybe that was nice, too.

He does sober a little, then.

“I… you have to understand. Up until I met you I lived my whole life planning on being alone. These are never things that occurred to me as possibilities, before… now.” He takes a drink and leans back, looking up at Ashley with moonstruck eyes. “My parents were god awful and… I’d have to be sure… I wasn’t like them. Before. You know. Becoming one. A parent, I mean. Not a kid. I was a kid. It sucked.” He snorted and giggled again.

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[attr="class","thadmain"]“Of course I picked you. I couldn’t have picked anyone other than you. What’s important is that you picked me.” Ash is the first person that seemed to have genuinely liked him-- for all his sass and smallness and skinniness, his brains and his relative social inexperience. The only person who took a look at the whole picture and found it more than tolerable for the sake of an assignment grade.

Kepler folds his face into Ash’s chest and is drunk enough to not care that he’s just actively breathing in the smell and feel and warmth and presence of his boyfriend. This is what he wants to do, right now and forever.

The world seemed very large and very expecting right then. For a person who never saw themselves being in a relationship with someone, the idea of getting married and being a quote-unquote adult was somewhat scary.

What was scarier was the idea that Ash would pick someone else to do it with, though.

But then they’re kissing and marriage and kids and the future beyond the next two hours is a teal-colored smudge in the back of his brain.

“Wanna go back to my place, hot stuff?” he manages, around half-pants and Ash’s tongue in his mouth. It’s his attempt at a joke, because his place is also Ash’s place, and it’s not very good but he’s drunk enough to laugh at it.

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