wilbran fic part 1 but bran's perspective! The Texas summer was a physical weight, baking the asphalt outside and pressing into the house the second the screen door clattered shut behind us. Wil's bedroom felt suffocating, the air thick and stagnant. I always felt like an intruder in his space-too loud, too broad-but today, the heat made me reckless. I kicked off my shoes, letting them hit the floorboards with a dull thud, and collapsed face-first onto his mattress, letting out a heavy, miserable groan into the fabric. "I am officially dead," I muttered, my voice muffled by the pillow, breathing in the scent of his laundry detergent mixed with stale heat. "The heat today is insane." Wil stayed by the entrance, backing up against the closed door as if he needed the wood to keep him upright. "You're the one who insisted on driving around with the windows up," he countered, his voice tightly controlled, trying way too hard to sound unaffected. "I told you to roll them down." I rolled over onto my back, the friction of the mattress pulling at my skin. My heavy brown racer jacket was sticking to me, so i winced slightly as I peeled it off my shoulders and slung it over the footboard. I knew he had a thing for that jacket--l'd caught him staring at it more than once. Left in just my faded white tank top, I watched his gaze immediately dart away, snapping upward toward the ceiling fan. The rhythmic, metallic click-click-click of the blades was the only thing cutting through the heavy silence between us. "Come here," I said, reaching out to pat the empty sheets beside me. "Help me pick a movie or something. My brain is fried!" He froze for a beat, his shoulders shifting before he finally crossed the room. When he sat down, he drew his knees all the way up to his chest, creating a physical wall to keep me out. But the old mattress was unforgiving; our combined weight created a deep dip in the middle, and gravity took over, rolling him slowly toward my side. I pretended not to notice. Pulling out my phone, the sharp blue glare cutting through the dim room, I opened a streaming app and held it up between us. To steady my hand, I leaned my shoulder directly against his knee. He was rigid as stone, radiating a frantic, nervous warmth. I scrolled through a few titles before turning my head to look at him. "What about this one?" The distance between us evaporated. We were suddenly so close I could feel the heat radiating off his skin. If I moved even a millimeter forward, our foreheads would touch. I caught the sudden, wild spike in his breathing. Right beneath us, the springs of the mattress seemed to vibrate with the frantic, train-on-a-track thumping of his heart, so violent I was certain it was rattling his ribs. He looked utterly terrified that I could feel it. "Yeah," he choked out, his eyes locked onto mine, completely trapped. "Yeah, that one's fine." I pressed play and settled back against the pillows, acting entirely at ease while he sat there suffocating in mid-air right next to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his hands clenched into tight fists, his whole body wired as he tried to figure out how to survive the next two hours without completely breaking down. The movie started, but the air in the room only grew heavier, thick with the smoky scent of my cologne melting into his bedsheets. Then, the tension broke. "Brandon, I.." The sound of my full name made my chest tighten. I turned my head, my eyes locking onto his. "Yeah, Wil? You never call me Brandon." "I love you," he choked out. I saw the sudden shimmer of tears in his eyes, and my own widened in a mix of shock and total disbelief. He didn't stop. The words came spilling out of him, raw and desperate. "I love you. I love your eyes, the way you smell, your voice... I love it all. I love all of you, Brando, and I might be stupid for thinking you might love me back, but -" I couldn't let him finish that sentence. I didn't want him to spend another second thinking he was alone in this. I lunged forward, my lips slamming against his to cut off the rest of his words. The impact was sharp, a sudden collision of teeth and heat that melted immediately into something desperate and deep. My hands moved on instinct, sliding up the damp skin of his back and tangling firmly into his hair, pulling just enough to tilt his head and anchor him to me. When his mouth parted, my tongue met his, a slow, intoxicating rhythm that tasted like summer and pure relief. He was shaking, but he was pulling me closer, his lips moving against mine with a fierce, starved intensity that made the rest of the world completely vanish. Slowly, the frantic urgency slowed into something softer. I pulled back just a fraction, resting my forehead against his, our breaths mingling in the small space between us. "I love you too, Wil." I leaned down and caught his mouth again, softer this time, smiling right against his lips as the last of his tension finally dissolved into the mattress.
