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“What should we watch?”
Jon immediately regrets picking up the remote. He leans back on the sofa as he clicks through the movies. He doesn’t read the titles. He waits a few seconds before replying: “I don’t know, what would you like to watch?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Daenerys replies dully. She is sitting at the opposite end of the sofa, phone in one hand, glass of wine in the other. Her eyes flick between a text message and the screen. “How about a movie?”
“Sounds good,” Jon agrees and, before she can beat him to it, adds: “What movie?”
Daenerys grimaces. “I always pick. It’s your turn.”
“No, I definitely picked last time.”
“You did not.”
“Anyway, I asked first.”
Daenerys doesn’t reply. Her lips purse, and her eyes narrow, and she silently sinks further into the pillows. When she stares at him, Jon groans, because he knows that look - defiance. She is not going to be any help.
Then again, Jon thinks, turning back to the telly as he scrolls down the categories, neither am I.
It is Friday evening. Nine o’clock. The scent of dinner still hangs in the air: baked fish, sweet potato chips, broccoli. They’re trying to eat healthier. The bottle of wine is excused as a necessity. The living room is lit up by candles. It could be romantic. They’re both too tired to think of sex.
Jon chooses a random category. He pauses at the first movie: Miss Congeniality. “What about this one?” he says. He lingers long enough for the trailer to start playing. “It looks fun.”
Daenerys quirks her brows. “Are you serious?” she asks.
“No,” Jon lies and moves on. Mean Girls. Legally Blonde. 13 Going on 30. He hates them all. He loves them all. He’d never admit it. He has a sip of wine. Daenerys’ eyes have not moved away from her mobile screen. “Are you even looking?”
“Yes,” she says, quickly putting her phone down. Her hands close around the glass of wine as she feigns interest in the screen. Her lips part in a pop. “Oh, I’ve seen that one,” she says and points, “Mary Queen of Scots. It’s good.”
“You’ve seen it?” Jon asks in a tired voice. When she nods, he frowns and clicks onto the next one. “Then I don’t want to see it.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll know it already. You won’t be surprised!”
“Why does that matter?”
“I want to watch something neither of us have seen before.”
“Right.” Daenerys says. He thinks he sees her frowning into her glass, but he’s not certain. He does see the notifications popping up on her screen. Her fingers move restlessly. The moment he turns back to the telly, she picks up her phone and resumes texting.
It’s like living with a teenager, Jon thinks before bitterly realising: I’ve become an old man.
The comedies are too stupid. The historical dramas are too long. The classics are too old. The new movies are too new. Jon thinks there must be a better way to choose what to watch. Then he remembers: they’ve tried them all. They used to keep a list of suggestions. Somehow, it got binned. Then they tried to fill a jar with titles and randomly picked one each night. But the chosen movie was always either a) not available to stream, b) not as good as remembered, or c) just not right for that particular night. The jar ended up in the recycling box.
Jon pauses. Crime. It looks good - an unsolved murder, two clever detectives, a lot of tension. “This-” he starts, but Daenerys interrupts:
“-is a series. The Bridge. If we start it, we’ll never finish it.”
“That’s not true! We finished Breaking Bad.”
“Yeah, that only took us two years.”
Jon bites down on his tongue. She’s right, he knows. Between work and drinks at the pub and cleaning and grocery shopping and walks in the woods (for pleasure, they say, but he knows it’s really just to justify the weekly takeaway), they’re too exhausted to keep up with a storyline split across several episodes. The thought alone gives him a headache. He clicks on without commenting further.
Daenerys pours them another glass of wine. Jon hadn’t even noticed that he’d finished. He has a sip. He smacks his lips. He clicks through the movies with growing desperation. “Men in Black?”
“You know how I feel about aliens. How about Bridget Jones?”
“We watched that last week!” Jon clicks. Jon sips his wine. Jon sighs. “What about Fifty Shades-”
“Don’t even bother. The Nun?”
“I’ll have nightmares.” He pauses. “And so will you. Ratatouille?”
“About a rodent? Now you’re really taking the piss.”
Jon has reached the end. He’s forced back to the first category again. Miss Congeniality greets him once more. He braves himself, turns and is about to suggest it when Daenerys throws her phone aside with a frustrated look on her face.
She sneers: “My boss is a dickhead.”
Jon lowers the remote. “What’s up?”
Daenerys has a big gulp of her wine before speaking: “He pulled me aside today. Congratulated me on my report. Said I do a good job and deserves recognition for it.”
“Oh, that’s nice?”
“It was. But Missi just texted me. She did minutes at today’s board meeting, and guess who claimed to have done the work?”
Jon scoffs. “That’s ridiculous. Surely you can confront him?”
“And get Missi in trouble? Forget it.” Daenerys empties her glass of wine and reaches for the bottle. When she turns it upside down, only a drip escapes the neck. She glares at it.
Jon hands her his glass. “I’m sorry,” he says, brushing his hand through her hair as she accepts his drink. “No wonder you’ve been distracted.”
“Yeah,” she mumbles, looking down. She’s quiet for a second, then says: “Let’s just watch Men in Black.”
“No,” Jon shakes his head vigorously, “we’ll watch something you want. You’ve had a bad day.”
She lets go of a short laugh. “That’s just more grief!” she moans, but she’s smiling. When she meets his eyes, her face is no longer scrounged in annoyance. It glows soft in the dying light from the candles. They have mostly turned to wisps of smoke. “Thanks,” she says.
Jon twirls a lock of her hair around his finger. “What for?”
“Just being here.”
“Of course.”
Daenerys scoots in. Jon’s arm drops down around her shoulders. As she nestles to his chest, he can smell her; shampoo, and perfume, and wine. He could get drunk on the scent of her. He pushes his nose into her hair, and her hand dips into the fabric of his shirt. They’re close, and warm, and a little tipsy. The room is almost dark - just the flickering light from the telly is making shadows dance across the walls.
Daenerys reaches over. She grabs the remote. She turns it off.
“No more movies?” Jon mumbles. The moment the whirring from the telly stops, he feels tiredness kick in. His body aches. His head aches. His arm aches, stuck in a weird angle around Daenerys’ body, making it go to sleep. But he doesn’t care to move.
“It’s late.”
“It’s only nine.”
Daenerys chuckles. She glances up at him. He can see her eyes twinkle in the blackness. “Yes, when we started looking for a movie,” she says slowly. “It’s half past ten now.”
“Half past ten!” Jon shakes his head in disbelief. “That’s an hour and a half.”
“Great maths.”
“That’s the length of a fucking movie.”
Daenerys chuckling turns to laughter. She crawls closer to Jon, her glass of wine swinging precariously in her hand as she settles in his lap. “Forget movies,” she says, “can we just sit for a bit, you and me?”
Jon breathes in. He closes his eyes. He feels her hands, and her breath, and the flutter from her lashes against his neck, and her lips hovering his Adam’s apple. He is tired and happy. He nods: “Sure. Just for a bit.”
As the last smoke from the candles disappears, Jon decides: he doesn’t need a movie to have a good night. Although he will make a note of Miss Congeniality. Just in case.