“They’re not gonna last that long,” he says, typing away.
“They’d better not,” I say, and he gives me a sideways glance, already grinning devilishly, still typing.
After a minute, he closes my phone and tosses it in front of me.
“There,” he says. “The hearing is in your calendar, and I set up both alert and email reminders for a week before, a day before, an hour before, and thirty minutes before.”
“Overkill,” I mutter.
“Is it?”
“I remember important stuff,” I protest, but not that hard. Daniel’s not really wrong to set up a thousand reminders for the hearing date, even though I’m sure he’ll also be calling and texting. I’m almost definitely going to remember something this important, but getting the reminders can’t hurt, and I feel better knowing that they’re there.
“Well, now you’ll definitely remember,” he says, his hand sliding down my back. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” I admit.We order a ridiculous amount of Chinese food and, in a fit of indulgence, have it delivered even though I’m categorically opposed to having food delivered, because I hate paying someone to do something that’s so easy to do myself.
“Are you putting on pants?” Daniel asks as I find an old pair of pajama shorts and tug them on.
“The delivery guy is coming,” I say, rummaging through a laundry pile that I’m 90% sure is clean.
It’s a small pile. A discreet pile, sort of hidden next to my dresser. I forgot to fold it before Daniel came over.
“You’ve got a robe,” he says, still lounging on my bed, fully naked, though at least he got the condom off.
“I answer the door in my robe when you’re visiting,” I tease. “If you really think that’s the way to greet the delivery guy—"
“New plan,” he says. “Do you have a snowsuit?”
I throw a pillow at him, but he swats it away. I pull on the tank top, still laughing.
“I can see your nipples,” he says, stuffing the pillow under his head. “Come on, Charlie, a parka at least.”
“Don’t you dare go caveman on me,” I tell him, rummaging through the almost-certainly-clean pile again.
“I just don’t want you to be embarrassed,” he claims. “It’s got nothing to do with the fact that the thought of another man thinking dirty thoughts about you makes me wildly jealous.”
I find two socks and stuff them into my tank top’s shelf bra, right over my nipples.
“How’s that?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips and sticking my chest out. “Good? Any nip showing?”
Daniel laughs, sitting up in my bed. He moves like a tiger, big and thick and muscled, with the grace of a powerful animal.
He reaches out and squeezes both my sock-boobs.
“I’d still hit it,” he says solemnly, then grabs me by my waist and pulls me between his legs. “How long did they say delivery would take?”In the end, I do put a sweatshirt on over the tank top, because Daniel is right that I don’t really want the delivery guy getting the full highlights. We eat lo mein and kung pao chicken on my couch, right out of the containers, and watch half of Pirates of the Caribbean because it’s on TV.
It’s lovely. It’s peaceful. It’s the exact same thing we’ve done a hundred times before when Crystal has Rusty for the weekend, only this time my nipples are fully visible through my shirt, Daniel’s wearing nothing but boxers, and I’m snuggled against him with his arm around me as Johnny Depp prances and swashbuckles.
Daniel was right. Nothing that matters has changed between us, and it’s the biggest, most overwhelming relief.
We only make it halfway through the movie before I snuggle Daniel a little too hard, and before I know it, I’m gripping his hard cock through his boxers and he’s got my tank top pushed up over my tits and one hand up my shorts. I don’t even get the tank top off before we’re having slow, lazy sex on the couch, the movie still playing in the background.In the morning, I wake up to Daniel getting back into bed. Everything is slow, hazy, so for a few minutes I just watch him, lying there naked with the sheet barely draped over his lower half, one arm behind his head, as he reads my battered, worn copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
It’s a good view, and I just watch it for a long time, letting myself wake up. Every so often he takes his hand from behind his head, flips a page, and settles back in.
Finally, I take a deep breath, exhale, and roll onto my stomach.
“He dies at the end,” I say. “Moriarty pushes him over a cliff. I think.”
Daniel puts the open book down on his chest, both hands under his head.
“Bummer,” he says. “Though I think they brought him back. He was hanging on by his fingertips, or something.”