Tea and Toast by KD Heart

Chapter 1

He brought her breakfast in bed – toast and tea, because in five hundred years he still couldn’t cook to save his life, but he was learning to be human and she never complained about his little failings.

He set the tray on the nightstand and sat down next to her sleeping form. The sheet rose and fell with her breathing and he wondered how he could put than into words, if one of his characters were faced with such a sight.

She slept naked and usually fought her way out from under any cover by the time the sun came up. That was how she slept now, a picture of disheveled innocence.

She wasn’t his muse, nor did he intend to make her so, but she was perfect in every way that mattered for the present and she had chosen to stay. He wasn’t going to chase her and he wasn’t going to build his life around her. For now, he was just going to wake her gently, running his hand softly up her bare body until mumbled her protest in a sleepy grumble.

He leant in to kiss the shell of her ear and, when that didn’t work either, he caught the lobe with his fangs gently, just enough to annoy, not enough to graze.

She swatted at him and blinked her eyes open.

“Breakfast?” he offered and she pushed herself up against his shoulder before she was even half awake.

She had made a habit of waking up in his bed lately. Not that she had anything against it, but it felt strange to be with him without any barriers between them; though neither of them kidded themselves that the cluttered table of a coffee shop could count as a barrier for long.

She took his toast and watched him between bites – clad in a pair of red silk boxers she’d bought for him last Christmas as a joke. She’d never expected him to wear them and least of all to see him in them, but there they were, standing out brightly against his pale skin.

He was talking, tracing kanji onto her skin with one finger – time, and love, and home, but she didn’t notice, she was too busy trying to swallow despite the distraction. He was telling her about his new book, that he had nothing planned for yet, except that it was about broken people. She didn’t point out that that was what his last one was about as well.

Clutching her cup of tea close to her chest, she started telling him about the paper her students had to turn in the following week. She cringed at the thought of reading and grading all those essays and he kissed her shoulder to calm her.

She set her cup aside to kiss him back properly.

The sun was high in the sky and her abandoned tea had grown cold when she finally broke away with a sigh.

“I should go,” she said, scanning the room for her clothes.

“Stay,” he told her.

They looked into each other’s eyes in the silence that followed, both wondering how much the past few months had changed them.

Eventually she nodded and they snuggled back under the sheets. The world could wait a little longer.

This wasn’t perfect, they didn’t fool themselves like that, and it wouldn’t last, but it was enough for now and they didn’t need words.