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Though autumn swept a generous breeze through the trees and around their little inn, beads of sweat still dropped from Raphael’s forehead. He wicked away more with a shake of his head and hoisted his axe over his shoulder. Just a few more logs to go. Then he could move on with his to-do list.
“Looks like more than enough to me.”
Raphael looked over at Linhardt. “I thought you were sleepin’!” Linhardt was laying on a hammock lashed between two trees just behind where Raphael was working. He hadn’t moved much less spoken since setting up there earlier that afternoon.
Linhardt snorted. “You expect me to sleep with all this noise?” He indicated Raphael’s axe, the stump he had been chopping logs on, and, apparently, all of Raphael himself.
Far from sorry, Raphael laughed. “You could go inside, you know. We don’t got any customers until sundown. You’d have the whole place to yourself!”
“Maybe, but I’d much rather have you to myself.” Linhardt laced his fingers behind his head, kicking his leg to make the hammock sway. “Come nap with me.”
“No can do,” Raphael said as he crossed the clearing to grab another log. “I gotta finish this pile, then there’s–”
“We have more than enough firewood,” Linhardt repeated. “Come nap with me while the afternoon is still warm.”
It did look nice, sleeping in the sun. Linhardt made every spot look like the best spot to nap. Right now his hair moved gently in the wind, looking even more vibrant set against the reds and yellows of the trees around them. His cheeks were full– no longer hollowed by war but lush with the good food Raphael supplied them both– and his eyes half lidded as if already almost to dream land.
Raphael blushed when he realized he was just standing there staring at his boyfriend. He blushed more when Linhardt chuckled. “What’s the rush?” Linhardt said as he reached out a hand. “Just come lay down.”
Never had Raphael’s axe felt so heavy. Lifting it to return to work was surely impossible. So he propped it against the tree– not caring that it fell over immediately– and took Linhardt’s hand.
Grinning, Linhardt heaved himself out of the hammock. “Get in.”
“You sure it’ll hold me?”
Linhardt gave him a flat look. “Do you remember what you were always saying to me in school?”
“Uh, the thing about how you’re so smart or the thing about how pretty you look when you’re thinking?”
“The first one,” Linhardt said, though his face turned pink at the second one. “I’m smart. I wouldn’t offer to sleep on this hammock with you unless I was sure it would hold us both.”
Raphael grinned and sank into the hammock without further objection. Once he was settled, he opened his arms to Linhardt, who climbed into them and lay against Raphael’s stomach with a content sigh. His head fit perfectly under Raphael’s chin.
All thoughts of wood chopping vanished as Raphael stroked Linhardt’s hair, letting his eyes slip shut.