“Why not sleep?” he slurs. Awake, then. Not even he can make semi-coherent sentences in sleep.
“I’m fine.” He sighs contentedly when I kiss his forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
“You too?”
“Yeah,” I lie. I’m not getting sleep tonight. Better that way. Nightmares follow me into my dreams, and a good night’s rest isn’t worth having him slip through my fingers over and over again. Losing him is my greatest fear, and six months ago it almost became my reality.
I can’t go through that again. I wish I could guarantee that it won’t, but we don’t exactly have safe desktop jobs. Not to mention, Spencer throws himself into dangerous situations like they’re party favours. It’s not an if, it’s a when, and that more than anything keeps me up at night.
“You’re not sleeping,” Spencer mumbles, poking me in the side.
“Neither are you,” I counter. If he were sleeping like he’s supposed to be, he wouldn’t know that I’m not.
“Can’t sleep with you thinking so loud. Are you scared?”
I can lie and say that I’m not, reassure him that everything is fine, and help coax him back into slumber. It’d be all too easy.
That’s not who we are. We’re messy and complicated, but we don’t hide. Not from each other. “Yeah.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, long enough I think maybe he’s gone back to sleep before he says, “Me too.”
My eyes close, and I drag him to lie over me, his comforting weight pressing me down.
Somehow I manage to fall into a deep sleep. One where nightmares don’t find me. Spencer, my guardian awake and in my dreams.
Unfortunately, “rested” isn’t the word I’d use when the alarm goes off at four thirty. Spencer says something unflattering under his breath and tries to burrow further into me. Unless he wants to rip off my skin and dive into my warm corpse, he can’t get any closer. If it means not having to get up, I’d consider it.
“Time to get up.”
“Not yet,” Spencer says stubbornly.
“I need to piss.”
He stretches a leg over my stomach, trapping me in. It presses on my bladder, which only makes the urge worse. Is he trying to be helpful or…? “You can wait.”
You can wait, he says as if my bodily function will obey his every command. “What do you want for breakfast?” Food should lure him out of bed.
Spencer twists further, his whole side against mine. I can feel his morning wood. While it’s good to know he can get hard around me, it’s not exactly in the most flattering way. The urge to rub myself against him is kind of pathetic. No, not kind of. It’s the most pathetic thing ever. I still want to do it anyway.
“French toast,” he says with a lazy smile. “Mmm, and hash browns.”
“Andhash browns?” Returning his smile, I thread my fingers through the hair at his temple. “Now you’re being greedy.”
“I’m always greedy for you.”
“Are you?” Sometimes I wonder if he truly understands what he means when he says those things. Or how they could be misconstrued. It’s more likely he’s doing it on purpose.
He props himself up on one elbow, one hand leisurely stroking my chest. “Yeah. I can’t stand it when you don’t look at me, when someone else has your attention. I want all of it, and they don’t deserve it like I do. They haven’t earned it. When you’re focused on something else, it means you aren’t focused on me. And I hate it, Ken. I need you.”
When he says things like that it makes me want to pick him up and take him somewhere where it’s just the two of us forever. Where I can spend every day doting on him, loving him, making himmine. Where nothing else can interfere or take my attention away from him. “I feel the same way, you know. When you aren’t looking at me, I’m looking at you, I promise.”
He kisses me softly and then tugs on my hair. “I love your curls.”
“You’re welcome to them,” I say dryly. They’re a pain in my ass. Growing them out only makes it worse and having them too short makes them impossible. I can’t win for trying.
“I don’t think they’d look as nice on me,” he muses.
He’d look good with anything, but I am partial to his current look, blinding blond and all. I love the way it feels running through my fingers, how it feels against my skin, when it’s dripping wet after a shower, when it’s sticking up in a hundred directions, even when he wears a cap for too long and gets hat hair. There isn’t a single thing that Spencer could do that would make me love any part of him less.
