"THIS ISN'T AWKWARD, RIGHT?"

Kieran shakes his head and laughs a little under his breath, rolling a slice of pizza up to avoid dripping tomato sauce all over the park bench they're sat too close to each other on.

The park was the safest place to go for their platonic quote-unquote 'date', since barely anyone knew it was there, and that meant the paparazzi certainly weren't going to waste time stopping and looking around there when there were plenty of other scandals to intrude on.

"Asking if it's awkward makes it even more awkward." Kieran replies matter-of-factly, raising an eyebrow at Michael as he tries to look dignified while also simultaneously inhaling an entire pizza at once, cardboard box and all.

"Oh, I wasn't aware of that rule." Michael half-smiles, leaning forwards in his chair and making direct eye contact with Kieran, who tries not to show that he's about to collapse from the intensity of Michael's stare.

The other boy's hair is slightly messy and faded, and Kieran also attempts to not think about sleeping with Michael, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. All Kieran really wants is a cute person to date, and his only criteria was that they were the guitarist in 5 Seconds Of Summer. Not that his standards were high, of course.

"Yeah, that's how it works." He shrugs, realising he got a little lost in his mental shrine and left the conversation unfinished.

Seemingly unfazed by the pause, Michael stands up from the bench, and extends a hand to Kieran, who takes it and allows the other boy to pull him up directly next to him. They're touching at nearly every contact point now: the position of Kieran's body is mirrored nearly perfectly by Michael.

Kieran cannot process how much goddamn flirting is going on right now - he didn't think a straight boy could do it this well.

The thought of Michael being obviously hetero (because he's Michael Clifford, meaning that boys like him don't date boys like Kieran) is what completely shuts down Kieran's entire body and mind; what if he's thinking of Kieran as a girl, and that's why he's flirting so much? Maybe he still sees Kieran as that reckless thirteen-year-old who climbed too many trees.

Violent shivers begin to trail down Kieran's spine, his heart contracting over and over again as his skin crawls and his lungs shrink to the size of an ant's. Air is precious to him now, and impossible to retrieve.

"Kieran, are you OK? Right, OK, I'll get you home, it's OK." Michael sounds like he's somewhere underwater; his voice is distorted almost beyond recognition.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, no, we don't have to go home." The words fight each other on the way out of his mouth, but eventually the sentence is hanging in the air.

"It's cold anyway, we should--" Michael starts nervously, before Kieran presses his finger to the other boy's lips.

He stops for a second, before pulling back and staring at the pink-haired boy. "How can I shut you up?"

Michael grins back. "You know how."

With a sarcastic sigh, Kieran laughs, before leaning forwards and kissing Michael softly.

It only took twenty-two years.