dovand

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I awoke not with a start, but with the grudging knowledge that unless I were to shortly encounter a blunt object, I would be awake for some time. I woke also with a peculiar cold feeling in my chest—dread swirled around in there as water does from an emptying bath, round and round the plughole, making a terrible noise. I wanted to reach out and hold onto something. I was not sure what.

In a merciful turn of the hand of fate, I was not alone. I whispered to dear Corky, in a twin bed against the other wall, asking if he was awake. He was. I confessed I’d just awoken from ‘a rather…’—and couldn’t finish the sentence.

He gently filled in, “Nightmare?” at which point I, relieved, made my assent known. He pondered for a moment—as did I. Asked if I wanted to talk about it.

“No,” said I, still rather shaken by it.

We lay in stillness for a moment. I listened to him breathe, reassuring myself of his continued health. He started to tell me something inane about his day, I think, in an effort to distract me. He shortly trailed off. I attempted to make myself comfortable.

“You know what,” said he, of a sudden, and rose from his bed with a rustling of sheets.

“What are you doing?” I asked. For all I knew, he was leaving. But he made for my bed, and I understood.

He sat on the edge. Saw, I think, in the half-light, that I was ever so disarmed. Laid a hand on my thigh through the blankets. Then, by some chain of events which I do not precisely recall, invited me to partake in an embrace, an endeavour of which I was quite glad. I sat up, with my knees drawn up under the covers, resting against his back, and pressed myself against him. I sat for a long while with my face against the man’s collarbone and my rumpled form in his not-insignificantly-proportioned arms. It was a peculiarly lovely sort of thing.

Then, after a time, the strength of my embrace of him softened, and I fell away slightly. He made a discomfited noise—that of a man who has been holding such a noise in.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My back,” replied he, placing a finely-manicured hand to the offending portion of his body. “I strained it twisting to face you, I think.”

“Here,” said I, and presently shuffled back and to the side, supplying him with enough space to lay down beside me. “Stretch out. It’ll help.”

If he harboured protest, he did not present it to me. He obliged to do as I said, laying down next to me. I realised then that he was on top of the blankets and sheets, and prompted him to lift up his body slightly, so as to allow me to retrieve them from underneath him. Afterward, he resumed his supine position with a satisfied sigh.

I settled myself beside him, feeling terribly comforted by his solid presence. My dear man.

I adjusted my position such that I could rest my own back, and let out a sigh of my own. A little breathy noise of laughter emanated from my friend.

In a moment as spontaneous as it was wonderful, we started giggling with each other, each of us aching in the spine, our socked feet touching under the sheets.

Our laughter subsided, but the utter joy of our company remained. I did not stop grinning that night until I finally got to sleep—an event that was not presently occurring.

Once we were done giggling, I made what I believed to be a reasonable decision of shifting my leg somewhat. Of course, for reasons understood only by whichever cruel God deigns themself to be in control of this world, this provoked a searing pain in my knee which did not subside even with my highly medically apt technique of grasping at it.

Corky obviously noticed my distress (I would be surprised if he hadn’t, given my cry of pain!). One of his hands migrated under the cover to my thigh, and found it bare. It promptly retreated.

“You’re not wearing bottoms,” he observed.

“I’m not,” I agreed. “I had none clean. And you’re wearing your pair.”

“Ah,” said he—presumably making laundry plans in his head for the next day. “I don’t mind,” he added, belatedly, with that sort of ‘struck dumb’ quality to the words that acts, oddly enough, to endear him to me.

“Topping,” said I, and shifted around further. I straightened my leg again, and gasped.

“Stop shifting about!” admonished Corky—not, as it may read, in the manner of one who wishes not to be disturbed, but in the concerned tone of one who has just witnessed a pal act rather foolishly, and suffer the consequences. “You keep aggravating it!”

“I keep forgetting,” I groused, and turned onto my side.

I crooked my knee carefully—this time, though, I placed the bent leg where I knew it would stay: over Corky’s own.

He stilled. So close was I that I could hear his breath catch in his lovely, broad chest. Ah. No—a misstep, it seemed. Panic bloomed like a tiny fragile morning flower in me, and I lifted my leg off him. An awkward position, but one that I held—my leg hovering in the air above his, my forearms tucked up in front of me, nestled between my chest and his shoulder. Touching and not touching. Held fast and held away. “Sorry.”

“I,” said Corky. I got the impression that he was more surprised than scandalised. That, at least, was good. “I don’t mind,” he said, for the second time that evening. I felt there was more to the conversation, perhaps, but frankly speaking: I was tired, and my back was sore, and Corky was lovely and warm and laying next to me.

By instalments, I relaxed my leg. For a moment, even I thought I had rested it to the fullest extent, and found myself surprised when I encountered ever more weight to rest squarely on Corky’s shapely legs.

And so we both relaxed. And we lay there, quietly breathing, and I felt the weight of my leg on his, and we both—sooner or later—drifted off to a more restful sleep.