Chapter Text
“We should kiss.”
Oliver, who had been reading a comic while hanging his upper body out the edge of the bed, falls down to the floor.
“What?” he croaks, scrambling up.
Bruce blushes violently, but he stands firm, and his jaw sets with determination. “Neither of us have had our first kiss yet, and in your own words: ‘We’re fifteen, it’s getting embarrassing.’ We should kiss,” he repeats, “for practice. So we don’t suck when we actually kiss someone.”
“Oh,” he says, blinking. Oliver can follow that logic. “That makes sense.”
The relief in Bruce’s blue eyes is palpable. “You’re okay with it?”
“Sure, I mean. Right now?”
It’s Bruce’s turn to blink. “Um, if you want to.”
Oliver shrugs, casual against the whirlwind of his insides. “Yeah, why not.”
“Okay, good, yeah.”
“Do we just…?”
“Okay.”
He takes a step towards Bruce, who hasn’t moved an inch since the beginning of the conversation. He doesn’t move now either, sticking frozen in place but his eyes glinting with the stubborn determination that is so very Bruce. Oliver walks into Bruce’s personal space, his eyes flicking between his friends mouth and eyes, but it’s Bruce that closes the distance between their lips.
It’s a bit awkward, since neither of them closed their eyes, and it's just green staring into blue. Just the quick touch of their lips before they separate.
“That’s what all the fuss is about?” Bruce asks, bewildered. Oliver doesn’t mention he’s blushing. Thankfully, Bruce doesn’t mention it either, even though Oliver can feel his ears burning.
“Well, no. That was just a peck.” He thinks about how people in movies kiss, how Tommy and Laurel kiss, looking like they’re licking eachother’s throats, how he always made a point to remark ‘Gross’. He blushes harder.
Bruce frowns “Then what…?”
Oliver looks at his friend's mouth. “I can, um, try?”
He nods.
This time Oliver closes the distance, closing his eyes first. At the warm press of his friend's lips against his, this time, he tentatively sticks his tongue out between the boy’s lips. Bruce opens his mouth immediately and, oh. Maybe Tommy and Laurel were onto something after all. He gasps as he feels Bruce’s tongue exploring his mouth, yet the sound is drowned to his ears since the only thing he can hear is the rushing of blood. His hands are shaking in fists by his sides because if Bruce isn’t touching, he won’t touch but then the boy bites into his lower lip and–
His self control snaps and Oliver's hands bury themselves into the nape of Bruce’s black hair, using the hold to bring the boy closer. A sound escapes his friend's throat and Oliver swallows it. He feels Bruce’s entire body untense and shivers into the feeling as Bruce’s hands finally take a hold of his waist, exploring his sides, his back, his neck. Oliver feels like he’s drowning with too much feeling, burning up under his friends hands. Until he remembers that he needs to breathe. Maybe he’s actually drowning. He parts with a gasp.
“Okay, we definitely need more practice,” Bruce says, breathless.
Oliver can only nod.
***
“We should have sex,” Bruce says in the exact intonation he used two years ago. As if it’s just like that. As if it’s no bigger deal than a kiss.
Oliver doesn’t fall out of his bed this time, but it’s a near thing.
“For practice?” he asks.
“It worked with the kissing.”
It did, Oliver now had a reputation between the girls at his school for being an incredible kisser. He knows it’s the same case with Bruce, even if his friend doesn’t excitedly relay the story every time like he does.
“My sister is home,” he says. Thea’s room is right beside his, he does not want her to overhear. He would not hear the end of it from his parents.
Bruce doesn’t look surprised at his response, like he knew he would accept. Oliver wonders if this is something he should have thought twice about.
“You’re going to that gala in Metropolis next month?”
“Yeah.”
“Staying the night?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?” He shakes his head. “I’m getting my own room.”
“Alright.”
“Alright?”
“Yeah.
Bruce smiles. “Okay.”
***
“You know,” Moira says, and Oliver immediately knows something is wrong. “I got an interesting call from Alfred this morning.” Oh no. “He said Bruce came home quite disheveled, wearing the wrong tie.”
“He did?” Oliver's voice is an entire octave higher than usual. His mother's mouth twitches in amusement.
“And I seem to recall sending you out with a black tie, not the blue one you came in with yesterday.”
Oh shit. Oliver's hand instinctively raises to where the tie would sit, forgetting he's not currently wearing it. He hastily drops it with a pink face. They must not have realized they took the wrong ties.
In their defense, it's not like either boys were thinking clearly five minutes after having sex with their best friend for the first time.
“Um,” he scrambles for a response.
“I'm not mad, sweetheart. You're both almost eighteen, you're allowed to have sex with your boyfriend, I just hope you were smart and safe about it.”
Oliver has never wanted the ground to swallow him up more than he does now.
“We're not dating,” he manages to say, because what.
“Honey, I've walked in on you boys kissing more times than I can count. No, Alfred and I both saw this coming.”
He doesn't know what's more embarrassing, letting his mother believe he's dating Bruce Wayne, or trying to explain the truth. Wait. Is he dating Bruce Wayne? No, he would know that, wouldn't he? But Bruce did say he wanted to try the other way around next time…
Wait, Alfred too?
“Oh my god, Alfred is gonna shoot me.”
His mother actually laughs at him, Oliver just stares, pleading.
Alfred doesn't shoot him, thankfully. On the contrary, next time he visits Oliver gets an extra cookie besides his tea even though he can’t look at the butler’s face without his ears burning.
He never gets an answer on whether they’re dating or not. Oliver just can’t come up with the courage to ask the question, not with how Bruce is slipping away lately, not when the answer might be no.
It doesn’t matter in the end, because only days after Bruce’s eighteenth birthday, the boy disappears off the face of the earth without a warning.
Months before the prodigal orphan returns to Gotham, twenty-two year old Oliver Queen is shipwrecked along with his father and his girlfriend's sister.