Why would I?
I was all the way down with that.
“Gabe?” I called quietly.
It was post fuck. Post cleanup. Even post cuddle session.
Though we were still cuddling, it was just that neither of us had said anything in a long time, and since I was draped down his side, I’d heard and felt his breath even out, so I spoke super quiet because I was worried he was asleep.
But that night we’d done a deep dive in the getting-to-know you stuff.
And this was Gabe, my man.
I wanted to know everything about him.
And there was something that I’d wanted to know since he brought it up.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Were you asleep?”
“No, baby.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he invited, and I noted, when he did, there was no tension in his body.
He was completely relaxed, and as such, the shit was behind him (behind the both of us), and now I could ask him anything without bringing pain by making him relive a nightmare.
Sweet relief.
“How do you know about people back in the day eating stuff in aspic?”
“In what?”
“Aspic. Essentially, savory Jell-O folks use to encase meat or fish for a dish.”
“Say again?”
I lifted up to look at his shadowy face. “When we were discussing all the reasons we shouldn’t be together, which to you were all the reasons we should…”
The white slash of his smile wasn’t all that shadowy.
I ignored it.
“…you mentioned men wearing stiff collars and eating food in aspic.”
“Mm,” he hummed (delicious) then turned into me and rounded me with both arms (even more delicious).
“Although that was a very good metaphor for why I was thinking a touch irrationally?—”
“A touch?” he teased.
I ignored that too.
“It was an interesting one.”
“One what?”
