(Untitled)

[m_pinocchio]

He wakes up slowly, and it takes him a while to realize that it isn't the first time, and longer to understand why the body draped over him and the limbs tangled up with his don't seem strange or out of place. Once he's awake enough to grasp that, he's awake enough to wonder what time it is--he can see light through the curtains--but he can't see

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[little_moons]

I wake up with my cheek still resting against his chest. He's already awake. Even though I haven't lifted my head to look, I can tell. His fingers slide through my hair and I nuzzle instinctively closer, letting out a low, sleepy groan and stretching a kick out of my spine.

We've moved in the night, but really only to tangle closer. Sticking together with sweat and dried come and it really should be kind of gross, but it kind of isn't.

Cracking open an eye, I lift my head to look at him and manage a bleary smile.

"Hey," I murmur, voice rusty and deep from sleep. Through the haze of sleep, I feel weirdly awkward and almost nervous. I've never woken up the next morning with the guy I fucked the night before. There's probably some kind of etiquette I don't know about.

[m_pinocchio]

"Hey, yourself." His fingers continue their easy slide as he meets Neil's gaze, and there... when the fuck did he last do this? When the fuck was he last able? So many of the evenings he's started with men have still ended with him alone. Which was fine.

Until now.

He leans up and presses a clumsy kiss to Neil's temple. "What the fuck time is it? Can you see?"

[little_moons]

Lifting my head, I blink until my eyes adjust enough to make out the clock, my stomach sinking when I see it's almost ten.

"Fuck," I breathe, scrambling off of him with a snort of laughter and practically tumbling off the bed and onto my feet. "I'm gonna be late."

Snatching up my clothes, I flash him a crooked smile, shrugging helplessly. "My uniform's back at the fuckin' apartment. I gotta go."

[m_pinocchio]

He rolls onto his side with a soft protest--no real firmness in it, because he's too sleepy still and because he knows it's pointless--props his head up on one hand and watches Neil move with slightly hazy interest. Part of him had been thinking about a long, slow, very hot shower, and maybe with company.

But maybe there can be another chance for that.

"Tell me where the place is again," he murmurs. "I'll come find you."

[m_pinocchio]

He stays in bed way longer than he has to. Longer than he probably should. But the sheets are warm and smelling pleasantly of Neil, and sex, and the two of them together, and he burrows into them and dozes into the early afternoon, drifting in and out of dreams, some of them sweet and some of them darker, vaguely threatening. He finally drags himself out of bed some time after one, feeling slightly unsettled by the loss of time and the lingering edge of the less pleasant dreams.

None of this is as simple as he'd like it to be.

He showers, slow and lazy as he's done everything else, shaves and dresses and wanders down to the street to forage for food. Then, more wandering, to the edge of Central Park, trees stripped and dismal-looking in the gray winter light. It's busy, even for New York, and he guesses the anticipation in the air is about New Year's.

But it's not what his is about.

Neil McCormick. Fucking hell.It's just possible, he thinks as he makes his way to a subway stop, that he's in a fair amount of trouble

[little_moons]

I'm checking out a group of snotty teenage kids when he steps through the door, and I feel really stupidly embarrassed in my day-glo yellow t-shirt, apron and hat. Pulling the brim down lower, I hand over the kids' change and wave him up to the counter with a roll of my eyes.

"I get off in like ten minutes," I tell him, waving him out of the way when someone else comes up to the register.

[m_pinocchio]

"I can wait," he murmurs, leaning back against the wall and not even trying to hide his amusement anymore. It somehow makes Neil look even younger, the kind of stereotypical surly teenager that tends to work behind those kinds of counters.

And he could, if he tried hard enough, probably find a way to make it perversely sexy.

[little_moons]

Rolling my eyes, I take a couple more orders, forcing myself to focus on the fucking stupid, brainless job instead of on him, even though the hairs on the back of my neck are prickling from having his eyes on me.

At exactly six o'clock, I disappear into the back, yanking off my apron and hat along the way and grabbing my bag from the employee lockers. When I make my way back out front, I'm in a faded The Cure t-shirt, bag slung over my shoulder and a Coke from the soda fountain in my hand. Chewing on the end of the straw, I weave my way through the early dinner rush lines, arching a brow and flashing him a toothy smirk.

"Come on, let's get the fuck outta here."