“You can crash here,” he mumbles. His voice is already loose, half-gone. “If you want.”
I’ve got a house twelve minutes away. A five AM alarm. A shop that opens at seven. Every practical reason in the world to get up and leave.
But I say, “Yeah. Okay.”
He lets out a small breath. I feel it more than hear it, the press of his shoulder against my side.
He’s out cold before the next episode hits halfway. All the fight just drains out of him at once, and his weight sinks into me completely. His head finds that perfect spot where my shoulder meets my neck, like his body still remembers exactly how we fit. His breathing evens out, finally done running on empty. The TV glow paints him softer, younger, stripping away all the noise he usually hides behind.
It’s irritating as hell how much I don’t want to move. How badly I want to keep him right here.
I turn the volume down.
Later, he shifts in his sleep. His hand comes up and closes around a fistful of my shirt. He isn’t really grabbing it, more like just holding on to it. He doesn’t wake, his breathing stays steady, then eases back into stillness.
“Stay,” he murmurs, more breath than words.
Jesus Christ.
I sit there for a while before I reach for the remote and kill the TV. The room goes dark. Lance doesn’t move. His hand stays on my shirt, still anchoring me in place.
I shift carefully until I’m comfortable without waking him, then tip my head back against the couch. His hair brushes my jaw every time he breathes.
I close my eyes and fucking stay.
12
George
I wake to the smell of coffee and Lance humming something out of tune from the kitchen.
My neck protests the moment I try to sit up on the couch, a reminder that his two-seater was never built for someone my size. There’s a blanket over me I don’t remember pulling up. I check my phone. It’s past seven.
Cabinet doors open and close. Something sizzles in a pan. I text Carter I’ll be at the shop around ten.
I push myself up and look toward the kitchen, then I stop moving entirely.
Lance is standing at the counter with his back to me, cracking eggs into a bowl. He’s wearing my old Navy hoodie, the gray one I left here months ago and keep forgetting to take back.
The hoodie swallows him completely, sleeves hang way past his hands, cuffs flopping loose every time he moves. The hem drops all the way to mid-thigh, leaving his bare legs exposed in one long stretch from the edge of the fabric down to his feet. He’s got nothing beneath but dark green boxers, the thin material hugging his ass and clinging just enough to show the muscle of his thighs.
Every time he shifts his weight, the oversized hoodie rides higher on his thighs, showing more bare skin than it should. The contrastbetween the loose fabric swallowing his frame and the muscle underneath does something to me. It looks casual as hell, but the way it leaves so much of him uncovered feels unintentionally hot, like he has no clue what he’s doing to me standing there half-dressed in my clothes.
He shifts again while whisking eggs, completely unaware I’m awake and staring at him like he’s the entire fucking breakfast menu.
This is normal. Lance has borrowed my clothes before. I’ve got an entire drawer of his shirts at my place that migrated there over the years through the same process of casual exchange, and I’ve never thought twice about it. It’s normal among friends. It doesn’t mean anything.
Right now, watching him move around his kitchen in my hoodie, I can’t convince myself it doesn’t mean something else to me. I know he grabbed it without thinking because it was there, but it makes me want to cross the room, put my hands on him. Keep him exactly like this, in my clothes, with no one else close enough to interfere.
Lance turns around with the bowl in his hands and sees me sitting up on the couch, and his whole face lights up. “Morning, Big Guy. You want coffee?”
I grunt.
“You slept okay?” he asks, not looking at me, focused on the eggs.
“Yeah. Fine.” My voice sounds wrong. I clear my throat and try again. “Couch isn’t bad.”
“Liar. Your neck’s probably killing you.”
