Emboldened by the sound, Jude leans his head in as Bodhi touches the back of his neck, angling to press back into the kiss. He likes the sound, likes the brush of Bodhi's facial hair, the cold and the rougher skin on the pads or inner knuckles of his fingers. They feel like distinctions: he isn't kissing a girl, or a woman, or a boy. He isn't kissing anyone, or anyone like, who he kissed before this place. His sense of self is so thin sometimes it doesn't occur to him to be of an age, to be anything at all--he's aware of his hair and his height and he knows what his hands look like better than he knows anything else, but when Bodhi gets close enough, Jude knows he's being pinned to the door by a man.

Without the world to hide from, it elicits a thrill. His breath hitches, and it's really the door holding them both up after a point. Jude wouldn't know--not enough about love or infatuation, not enough about kissing men--to think it anything but some kind of skill on Bodhi's part.

He's so focused on taking each day at a time, on staying busy, surviving, keeping his head down--kissing Bodhi in the front hall of his cold house is as much a mental break as physical. He gathers the fold of Bodhi's clothes inward, until his hand is pressed against his side through his clothes, just knowing the shape of him. Just knowing that somewhere under it, he's solid, he's the weight Jude wakes up under at times, bewildered at his own content. There's a fireplace and a couch one room away, but if he breaks this for the chap of his knuckles in the cold air, he doesn't know when it will start again.