Archive of Our Own

ELLA

A hand touching my shoulder makes me jump out of my skin. It’s Aaron, of course, but I was so engrossed in the paperwork in front of me that I didn’t hear him come home at all. I look up at him from the dining table chair, he’s looking at me quizzically and slightly concerned. “Everything okay, love?” He asks. “You’re not usually this jumpy.”

I shake my head, “Yeah, I just didn’t hear you come.” Looking around the house, I ask, “Where’s that little traitor?”

Aaron walks around the table and pulls out the chair next to me. When he sits, he draws my leg into his lap, rubbing my calf up and down absent-mindedly. “I suppose you mean Dog?”

“Yeah, you know how he barks at the door when he hears you coming,” I say, spotting him asleep on his bed in the living room, his little chest rising and falling slowly. I point at him with a nod, “James came by to play with him earlier, he must be pretty tired if he didn’t get up to say hi.”

“Well you know him,” he says with a smile. “He gets too excited and then completely collapses.” Pushing my paperwork away, I ask, “ Anyway, how was your day? Finished everything you needed to get done?”

He nods, “It was a long day, but yes, everything should be taken care of.”

“Are we good for tomorrow then?” I ask hesitantly.

His smile deepens, a dimple appears on his left cheek. I want to get up and kiss him so badly. I haven’t seen him all day and it’s nearly 10 p.m. I shouldn’t be deprived from him for so long. 

“If nothing blows up suddenly, then yes, we should be good for tomorrow.”

I smile back at him, stretching my arms out in joy. 

Tomorrow is our anniversary. We will be married for one entire year in just a few hours. And the thing we wanted, above all else, was a day off. A day to stay in bed until noon or to stay up until the birds start chirping in the morning without worrying about being tired all day. To get as carried away as we want, make love all over our house, and not have to worry about being late anywhere.

We both put in extra hours of work—which were extra hours on top of our already extra hours—these last few weeks to get ahead on our schedule and be able to take the day off tomorrow. I’ve been here finishing off all of my pending paperwork since five in the morning, and he was gone even earlier than that. But now we’re both ahead and free for the next 24 hours, and if anyone tries to change that I might just rip their throats out. 

I jump to my feet and take his face between my hands and kiss him. 

“I’m going to jump in the shower,” I say. “Want to join?”

He smiles and kisses me again, a quick meeting of lips, as he tugs me closer. “Go ahead, love. I’ll pick this up for you,” he says, pointing at my pile of paperwork on the table. 

I pout, “Okay, I’ll be quick. There are leftovers in the fridge if you are hungry.”

He squeezes my hips gently. “Thank you, sweetheart. See you soon.” 

***

Aaron’s lying down in bed when I come out of the shower. I pat toward him, crawl onto the bed, and climb on top of him, straddling his hips. It feels like the most right thing in the world, to be on top of him like this, my bare legs against his sides.  With my hands on his chest for balance, I lean down to kiss him. I stop before I reach my intended destination, feeling something plastic-y crinkle under my right hand. I give his chest another light squeeze, feeling the material under his t-shirt.

I meet his eyes with an inquisitive look, “What’s this?” 

“Take a look,” he says with a smile. 

Regaining a seating position, I urge him up so I can take his shirt off. He lifts his arms automatically as I push the fabric over his head. When my eyes meet his chest again, I gasp with surprise.

Aaron lays back against the pillows, his hands running down my back as he does. My entire body flushes.

“Can I?” I ask with my fingertips on the edges of the plastic covering his chest.

When he nods, I peel back the material, slowly revealing the image under it.

There are delicate, intricate lines all the way from the bottom of his ribs up to his chest. The lines form a bouquet of flowers, but not just any flowers. I recognize the image all too well. “My wedding bouquet,” I whisper, tracing the petals with my fingers. I feel his muscles tense under my touch. “Does it hurt?”

He shakes his head, looking at me softly.

“When did you get this?”

“This morning,” he says, “I wanted to surprise you.”

I bite my lip at that. “And here I thought you didn’t like surprises.”

“Well there’s this very persistent woman who keeps trying to get me used to them so—“

“Ha-ha.”

“Do you like it?” he asks quietly.

“I love it, Aaron, this is—I mean it’s beautiful,” I say sincerely with a nervous laugh. “Do you like it?”

He simply nods.

“Why the bouquet?” I ask.

His hands come up my legs and go under my shirt—his shirt that I’m currently wearing—to rest on my waist. “I wanted something from that day permanently on my body,” he says. “To carry it—you—with me, always.”

My entire body flushes at his words. It makes me so incomprehensibly happy that he’d want to ink the occasion into his skin. To carry the reminder of our love everywhere he went. It makes me happy too, how he seems to be making more active choices to be happier now.

A few short months ago, we were tangled up on the couch together after finishing some of the renovations in our house. I was laying on his chest, his arms wrapped around me, holding up an old book he was reading over my back. We were exhausted from the long day we’d had and I don’t think we had said a word in over an hour, but it was nice to be close to each other.

I felt the book fall open on my back as he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

I opened my eyes to look at him. “About what?”

He was spinning his mother’s ring on his finger—which he began wearing on his right hand so only his wedding band was on his left—, as he often did when he was deep in thought. 

“Your mom?”  I asked. 

“My mom. The ring,” he said. “I don’t know if I want to wear it anymore.”

My heart stopped for a second, understanding that that right there was a monumental moment. I had seen him toying with it recently, but I didn’t want to pry, I thought whatever it was—if he wanted to—he would share eventually. I had no idea he had been thinking about taking it off and wondered how long he'd been pondering about it. 

Even admitting to wanting to take it off must have been a great struggle for him.

I nodded, urging him to talk.

“It’s just…so heavy sometimes. It’s a constant reminder of the horrible things we both went through. And it’s the only thing I have left of her. But I want to move on. I don’t want to carry that anymore.”

Holding my weight on my elbows, I brought my hand up to his face, gently cupping his jaw. For a second I just looked at him as he held his breath. I knew I could just tell him to take it off and he would if he thought that’s what I wanted, but I didn’t want him to do it for me. I wanted him to make a choice that felt right for himself. To prioritize his happiness over what he thought was the right thing to do. 

“It’s not the only thing you have left of her, Aaron. You have all the other memories, the good ones. The love she had for you. That’s not going away and it’s not attached to a ring. You can take it off and keep those things close to you still. We’ll put the ring in a box and lock it away for safekeeping if that's what you want. Or if you want to wear it, I hope you can think of the good things instead. Or at least I hope you know that the weight is not for you alone to carry. I’m pretty strong, you know? I can help you.”

He smiled at me softly, a whisper of a smile. 

He twisted the ring back and forth, and after what felt like an eternity, slid it off his finger. He held it between his thumb and index for a second, then unceremoniously slipped it into his pocket.  

He kissed me on the forehead, picked his book back up from where it was laying open on my back, and went back to reading. 

“And I like the flowers,” he continues now, his thumbs drawing patterns on my stomach. “I thought it’d look nice. A happier tattoo, for once.” 

I bring both hands to my cheeks, still amazed at the sight in front of me. “It’s really beautiful, Aaron. I love it.”

His smile deepens on his face. 

Dimples.

I lean down to kiss him, careful with the skin where the tattoo is. I kiss each of his dimples, which only makes him smile bigger. My plan to pavlov him into smiling more by kissing him when he does is well underway. 

I sit back up, admiring him again. After a while, I sigh, “It’s really not fair, Aaron. How do you expect me to get anything done when I know you’re just walking around looking like this? I just want to look at you all the time.” I run my hands down his chest, following the lines of muscle. “I’m so obsessed with you it’s insane. ”

His gaze turns electric. He reaches out to grab my chin in his hand, grazing my lips with his thumb. Goosebumps break out throughout my whole body. “You know nothing of obsession, love,” he says low and slow, his hand trailing down my neck. “I can barely think of anything that isn’t you when you are near and all I do is miss you when you are not. You follow me in my dreams. All I can do is picture all the things I want to do to you when we’re alone like this.”

We look at each other unmoving, the air around us charged with feeling. 

After a second, I reach for the hem of my shirt and pull it off.

WARNER

She wants to kill me tonight, that must be it. Drive me insane at the very least. She’s sitting on top of me in nothing but a flimsy pair of underwear and I have to put all of my energy into not losing the last remaining bits of my sanity. She looks at me with all the love and lust in the world, like she wants to eat me whole. I feel it in my chest, my blood. Emotions radiate out of her as she takes my hands, and drags them up her body until they are resting on her breasts. 

“I remember when you were shy,” I say, thinking back to the beginning of our relationship—how she’d prefer to keep the lights off to hide herself from me, blushing incessantly at every word I’d say to her. She still blushes easily, but the shyness behind it is replaced with pure love. 

“Do you want me to be shy?” she asks teasingly, squeezing her hands around mine so I grip her chest harder, pushing her breast together as she does. “I can be shy if you want me to.”

She’s teasing me. Pushing me to lose the control I’m holding onto right now like she knows she can. It’s not the first time she does this and it won’t be the last. 

And what can I do but exactly what she wants? 

I flip us over, stealing a yelp from her. When she’s under me, I sit up so I can flip her onto her stomach. She follows my direction like putty in my hands. Grabbing her by her hips, I drag her body up so she’s up on her knees, hands resting on the mattress as I kneel behind her. “No,” I say leaning down over her. “I don’t want you to be shy, I like you like this.” 

I press my lips to the skin on the back of her neck. I kiss it after I bite it, making her shiver. 

“Aaron?” she asks as I pull her underwear down her legs. I’ve hardly touched her, but I can see how ready she is, wet and willing under me.

“Yes, love?”

“I’m yours,” she whispers, her words sending an electrical current through my veins. No matter how many times I call her mine—how many times she calls herself that—the effect that the words have on me does not diminish. It’s just as unbelievable now as it was a year ago.

“Yes,” I say, working on getting rid of my clothes now, wanting—needing— to be joined with her. 

“And you are mine,” she says. 

“I am. Only yours,” I say, touching her with my fingers, slow and delicate.

She gasps at the contact. She reaches out for my other hand and I take her left hand in mine.  Our wedding rings glint together in the moonlight as she tightens her grip on my hand. 

I can help but marvel at her. She only gets more beautiful every day. A year of regular eating, sleeping, and murder attempts at an all-time low have done wonders not only for her mood and general well-being but also for her body. Her skin glows, her hair has grown thicker and shinier than it ever was. Her curves are fuller and her muscles more defined, soft skin replacing the sharp edges of where bones used to protrude from her body. 

It’s a miracle that I get to have her all for myself. That she willingly gives her body, her time, her love, her everything to me. 

“Only I can get you like this, right, love?” I ask, touching her deeper, feeling the wetness and warmth of her body spread through my fingers. 

“Yes, yes,” she sighs, her voice quick and breathy. 

“Good,” I say, nodding to myself. 

She twists her head to look back at me. “I love you,” she says. 

I remove my hand from her, moving to grab her by the hips again. “I love you, too, sweetheart,” I say, finally, finally, moving inside of her. The pleasure it’s so severe I go blind for a second and I have to blink several times to regain my vision. 

We keep a steady pace for a while, but I can feel her losing her patience. She starts to push herself back into me every time I thrust forward. As much as I would like to oblige, to take her as fast and as hard as she wants me to, I want her to ask for it more. I want to hear her say it, beg for it. So I grip her harder, keeping her steady as I continue to move slowly. 

“Aaron,” she gasps out when she can’t take the torture anymore. 

“Yes, love?”

“Please.”

“What do you need, Ella?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, pushing her forehead into the pillow. “Please,” she says again. “Just—I want,” she breathes in harshly, “harder.”

I hum in response, running up my hand up the skin of her back. “Is this not enough?”

This time, when she talks, it comes out like a choked sob. “Aaron, please. I need you—”

I push harder into her, the force of it driving her body upward, and she puts a hand against the headboard to find purchase. When I move again, even harder this time, she screams.

Waves and waves of her pleasure crash into me as we continue to move together. We get lost in each other, gasping and whispering words that should only be said in the dark. I kiss her everywhere I can reach, tasting the sweat on her skin. I course my hands through her entire body, taking handfuls of skin or hair at a time. 

Finally, she reaches her peak, coming around me as she moans my name. 

Slowly pulling out of her, I turn her around onto her back and hover above her. I feel her harsh breaths as her chest goes up and down, brushing into mine as it does. I claim her lips as she slowly begins to calm down, opening her mouth to me. 

Ella smiles when we break apart. “Jesus, Aaron,”  she laughs.

I love it when she laughs. I think her laughter is the most beautiful sound in the world.

I kiss the tip of her nose and her eyelids flutter. She presses one of her fingers against my cheek, pushing down on one of my dimples. “Pretty boy,” she whispers, almost to herself.

With a sigh, she looks down between us. Her expression turns into a frown. “You didn’t—”

“I’m not done with you yet,” I say, resting fully on top of her so she can feel all of me. “I want to see your face, pretty girl.”

She exhales happily, wrapping her legs around my waist. “Well, you are looking at it now.”

My smile further cements on my face. 

I push inside her again, determined to take it slow this time. She wraps her arms around my neck, pulling me to her. Kisses me all over. Tiny pecks high on my cheeks. Slow languid kisses against my lips and she tells me she loves me over and over again.

My heart is too full, my body too tight. I can only go on for so much longer before I fall apart, but I want to feel her explode again before I do.

I bring my hand between our bodies, touching her softly as we continue to move. “Oh, god,” she gasps, sinking her teeth into my shoulder. 

When she comes this time, I let myself fall after her. 

We stay like that for a moment, unmoving until she pushes me off her and into my back. I fall back without struggle, my body gone loose and all my thoughts burnt to the ground.

Ella climbs over me, laying down on my chest. She pushes the strands of hair off my face and buries her face into my neck, groaning. “How do we keep getting better at this?” I laugh breathlessly at this, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I keep thinking that’s it,” she continues. “That there’s no way it can feel any better. And then we just…”

“It’s probably just because you love me more every day,” I say, grinning at her.

She smiles back at me. “That I do,” and after a pause. “Also it doesn't help that you get hotter every day. Such a turn-on.”

I laugh at that, throwing an arm over my eyes, which makes her laugh too.

“You’re going to drive me insane one day, Aaron.”

“You’re beating me to it, love. Trust me.”

She runs her hands down my chest, over the newly inked skin. “I still can’t believe you did this.”

“Why not?” I ask, dropping my arm, curious. 

She shrugs. “It just continues to amaze me, the things you do for me, for us.”

I laugh again, planting my hands on her slender waist. “I’ve killed people for you, love. Is a tattoo the most unbelievable thing?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

I sigh, letting my eyes fall close. Ella hums happily, tracing patterns on my skin. I feel her lips press against my chest, then the scrape of teeth. She continues her downward path, kissing and biting as she goes. When she passes my navel, it’s clear to me what she intends to do. I stop her before she can go any further.

She looks up at me, frowning. “No?” she asks.

“I’m sorry, love. I think your mouth would kill me right now.”

She comes back up to my eye level. “Poor baby,” she pouts before kissing me quickly on the lips and flopping down  unceremoniously on top of me.

We talk well into the night. The whole time she continues to tease me, running her hands up and down my body, rubbing our feet together, sliding thighs inside mine. When I’ve regained enough energy, I lift myself up, bringing Ella along with me. She kneels on the bed as she straddles me, which brings her breast to the perfect height to bring them into my mouth.

Her head falls back as I kiss and suck her sensitive skin. 

“Aaron,” she gasps. “Can I have you inside me again?”

I nod, and without losing a second, she sinks onto me.

I know her well enough to always know what she wants in bed. To notice the sometimes subtle differences in her energy that tell me exactly what she wants me to do to her. The bright heat that courses through her veins when she needs me hard and fast. The gentle warmth that sinks deep into my bones when she wants us to take it slow. Or the all-consuming passion that tells me that it doesn’t matter how we do it, it just matters that I take control of her, that she wants me to tell her what to do. 

Right now though, her energy is mischievously electric. She wants control. She wants me to let her do whatever she wants to me. So when her hands on my shoulders push me back into the bed, I let her. I let her wrap her fingers around my wrists and pin my hands against the mattress. And I let her move on top of me however she wants until she exhausts herself, breaking apart with a gentle gasp. 

Too tired to stay awake for much longer, we settle on the bed next to each other. “Turn the other way,” she tells me when I face her, so I turn around onto my other side. Pressing herself against my back, she places a couple of kisses along my battered skin. The nerve damage makes it nearly impossible to feel the press of her lips like I would anywhere else on my body, but I still feel the intention behind them. The love that radiates from her as she kisses her way through my scars.

When she’s done, she wraps an arm around my waist and promptly falls asleep with her head against my back. I let her sleep like that for a while, but the need to wrap my arms around her is too strong, so I turn back around and hug her to me. Even in her sleep, she furrows deeper into my chest, and not for the first time I wish I could carve a hole in her shape there. Get rid of my insides to make space for her inside me and have her live there forever. 

With her slow, even breaths against my chest, I fall  into a gentle sleep. 

ELLA

It’s barely morning when I wake up, and Aaron isn’t in bed already. I think planning to stay in bed late was just wishful thinking on our part. I get up, stretching my limbs as I go, trying to alleviate the light soreness. I grab Aaron’s shirt from the floor and a new pair of underwear, get dressed, fix my hair as much as I can, and head out into the living area. 

The smell of coffee hits me as soon as I step into the hallway. Walking into the kitchen I spot a bowl of cut-up fruit on the counter and something baking in the oven. But most importantly, Aaron standing in the middle of the room, shirtless, pants hanging low on his hips. The skin of his chest is in full display, and so is his new tattoo. It looks even better in the daylight. “Show off,” I whisper as I walk closer. He laughs, wrapping his arm around my neck and pulling me in for a kiss.

“I had a whole plan, you know?” I ask when we break apart. “I was going to get up and make you coffee and breakfast—”

“You can’t cook, sweetheart,” he cuts in.

I gasp with fake indignation. It’s true that my various attempts in the kitchen have not been entirely successful, so I’ve mostly kept to washing the dishes and helping with cutting up. “I can make oatmeal and toast just fine, for your information! And, as I was saying, I was going to get up first and make you breakfast and bring it to bed for you. It was a whole thing.”

Smiling, he says, “Well, you’re going to have to get up earlier next year.”

“It’s like six in the morning,” I groan.

“Five thirty would do.”

I drop my head against his chest, defeated. 

He kisses the crown of my head and wraps his arms around me. I shiver in response, my body immediately enveloped in his warmth. “Happy one year, love.”

My eyes well up with tears in an instant. I tried to rein in my emotions before coming out here, I really did, but as soon as I hear him acknowledge our anniversary, I am overcome with them. This year has been busy and exhausting and sometimes so frustrating I have to look very hard to find a reason to keep going, but I’ve been happier than I have ever been. I get to wake up in his arms and tell him about my day at the end of it before falling asleep next to him. I get to have coffee with him every morning and take our dog out for walks and fix up our home and decorate it however we want to; it's simple and domestic and at the same time the most extraordinary thing in the whole world. 

I wipe the tears that have started to fall down my face away and wrap my arms around his neck. “Sorry,” I laugh. “It’s so dramatic of me to cry.”

He lifts my chin up so I look at him. “I am very fond of your dramatic inclinations.” 

I laugh again. “Happy one year,” I say, standing on my tiptoes to reach his lips. “Can you believe we’ve been married for a whole year?”

He shakes his head no, not breaking away from me. “It went by too fast. I feel as though we just got married yesterday.” He lets me press my lips against his, just applying pressure to his mouth at first. Then moving slowly, opening up his mouth with my tongue. 

When I nip on his bottom lip, he lifts me onto the counter, stepping between my legs as he sets me down. 

“Haven’t you bitten me enough, love?” he asks. “I have your teeth marks all over me.”

I lean away from him frowning. 

I take a closer look at his exposed skin, where I spot the faint marks I’ve left peppered on his chest. My body flushes with both embarrassment and desire.

“Oh come on, Aaron” I tease. “I only bit you like…four or five times. That’s hardly all over, don’t be dramatic.”

“I’m dramatic?” he asks, leaning towards me again. I lean down backward, slowly inching away from him as he inches closer. My eyelids flutter at him as he chases me down. 

“Mhmm. I’ll show you all over so you see how dramatic you are being right now.”

“Is that so?” he asks.

My back hits the counter. I’ve run out of places to go. Aaron’s nose grazes mine, and just as he’s about to close the gap between our lips, Dog—coming out of his slumber—barks at us. 

“Keep it friendly in front of the kids,” I whisper, pushing us back up.  

Standing in two paws, Dog leans against the counter by our legs, trying to get our attention. “He probably wants to go outside,” Aaron says. Then, to Dog. “Come on, then.” And to me, “Stay right here.”

I go stiff, pretending to be paralyzed by his command. He shakes his head, amused, and heads down the hallway to let Dog into the backyard. Dog runs after him, tail wagging in excitement. 

As soon as they are both out of view, I scramble off the counter and dig into the cabinet where I had previously hidden my anniversary gift to Aaron. I had insisted on gifts, mainly so I would have more excuses to give him something every year apart from his birthday and other holidays. Of course, he tried to say that he didn’t need anything and that I didn’t need to feel obligated to give him things. But then I mentioned the tradition of giving each other gifts made out of certain materials corresponding to the year of marriage. It’d be nice to have something traditional about our marriage , I said to him. So he accepted.

Once I grab the gift, I hop back onto the counter, sitting in the position he left me in. Aaron returns wearing a shirt. He takes a look at my lap where the wrapped package is, heads towards the cabinet next to the one where I hid my gift, and pulls out his own. “You’re kidding me,” I say, pointing at the other cabinet, “I put mine in that one.”

He comes to stand between my legs again, “I guess we just think alike.”

Smiling, I hand him my gift. “One year is paper.”

He hands me his. “You go first.”

He still gets flustered receiving gifts, so I spare this time and take his gift. I undo the delicate ivory bow first and wrap the ribbon around Aaron’s neck, to which he gives me a raised-eyebrow look. Ignoring him, I tear through the brown paper, which reveals a cloth-bound book. The title, which I don’t recognize, is stamped on the cover with gold. 

“You told me about this book you loved reading when you were in the asylum,” Aaron starts, removing the ribbon from his neck and setting it down on the counter. “You mentioned it didn’t have a cover and many pages were missing, so you didn’t know what it was called. I thought I recognized it from the plot and the characters, and Nazeera helped me confirm that this is indeed it. Unfortunately, most copies were destroyed and the ones remaining were in terrible condition. So I had this one made for you, the complete text this time, so you can read all the parts you missed.” I flip through the pages—recognizing the story as I look over the text—, finding small details throughout, like flowers decorating the borders of the pages and illustrations around the chapter numbers. “And I wanted it to be special so I asked them to add some decorations to it.”

I look at him amazed. Everything he does is so thoughtful, and I suppose I should be used to it by now, but it always catches me by surprise just how amazing he is. “This is so beautiful. Aaron. Thank you, I love it.” I lean forward to kiss him again. “Now you.”

He smiles shyly at me, sighing before he opens his gift. My heart starts beating widely inside my chest when he takes the photo album out of the wrapping. He looks at me hesitantly before he starts flipping through the pages. For the last few months, I’ve been collecting pictures of us together, from the ones when we were children, to the ones we’ve taken now. I had someone send the ones in my old house back in New Zealand, and Nazeera had a few more from our childhood. Some of the new ones are from our wedding—the ones we don’t have displayed around our home—, and some others are just pictures I’ve taken with an old camera we found; pictures of us working around the house, attempted portraits with Dog where he refuses to look at the camera no matter how hard we try, a picture of Dog covered in paint because he fell into a bucket of paint while we were painting the living room, pictures with our friends on my birthday and his. He squeezes my leg as he looks at them, emotion hardly contained in his eyes. He flips the album closed once he’s done and takes a deep breath.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says. “These are very special.”

“Hold on,” I say, jumping off the counter. “We have to take another one now, for our anniversary.”

He looks down at us, “Shouldn’t we put on something nicer?” 

I wave him off and go to retrieve the camera from the living room. “We’ll get dressed later, let’s do one like this first.”

Coming back with the camera, I set it up on the counter and set the timer on. I wrap my hands around Aaron’s waist and look at the camera. “Smile,” I say to him. 

The flash goes off, and a few seconds later, the polaroid picture comes out from the slit in the camera. I take it in my hands as I wait for it to reveal. When it does, the picture shows me smiling at the camera and Aaron looking down at me as he smiles. 

“It’s cute, it’s going on the album,” I say, opening the album back up and putting down the picture on one of the empty pages. 

I feel a kiss against my temple, and then the oven’s timer goes off. “Help me set the table?” Aaron asks.

We have breakfast and clean up, and by the time we’re done Dog starts whining from the outside to be let back in. I go get him, and we all go together into the living room. Dog lays down on his bed, chewing at one of the toys Kenji got him, and Aaron and I lay down on the couch, our legs intertwined. “Let’s just stay like this all day,” I sigh, burrowing into his chest. 

He nods, running his fingers through my hair. “Let’s do that.”