They woke the same way, the following morning.
Or at least Ben did; he lived with a person who often didn’t awaken until several minutes after freshly brewed tea had been waved under his nose. He wondered on occasion how Simon had ever survived morning classes at that starched-collar boarding school. Unsolved mystery of life, that one. But not one he minded living with. For all the mornings.
He lay unmoving for a moment, appreciating the view. Watched his husband sleep, face squashed into the pillow in a fantastically inelegant fashion, hair sticking up in mischievous night-spikes. Simon asleep looked like dawn, he decided: pale sunshine curls and fair skin and careless contentment, a miniature masterpiece painted in gold that’d collided with a pillow and learned how to very quietly snor
