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They never did get the blinds shut in the end. Which, prickling awake in the thin dawn light, he does absolutely regret. Right.
His forearms ache. His mouth is vile. It seems likely he’s done some real damage to the bad knee.
Soft and warm, though. It is soft and warm. And there’s a lovely rustle of rain, ploughing down the windows. Could be worse.
Next to him, Alex twitches. Asleep, he looks like flotsam. The swell of breath in his chest, when he snores, sounds like sea-foam: that rasp as it drags on wet silt.
Greg gazes, enchanted, at the little pervert.
With his mouth open, you really notice the craggy teeth, the silly chin. A Quentin Blake scrawl of ostensibly man-shaped lines, is what he is, the very best of which– the moon of bruises Greg bit into his shoulder last night– has already begun mottling horribly.
He’s still not sure why he did that. He doesn’t bite people. Nibbles, sure: who doesn’t like a bit of a nibble? Not actual damage, though.
But it’s all a bit different, this. How he's allowed to do genuinely whatever he wants. And whatever he doesn’t, just to prove that Alex will let him, and like it. Just because he can. It's weird, though it shouldn't be, god knows he should be used to it by now. But it's different in bed.
Not that Alex isn’t a glutton for it. He'd known he would be: man's a nag. Greg’s always liked that, the bit of him that pushes. And the way he keeps it hidden, too, dressed up in the distant, the awkward, the extremely nice. Please would you– I think, perhaps– I’m sure you don’t want to, but– Could you– Would you– Do you mind if–
That’s always been funny. Irritating, sure. Insulting. Fucking unbearable. But funny, and god, it’s a lot funnier now.
Right now, even dead to the world, he’s got a greedy arm flung across Greg’s gut. It’s making his heart feel about three times too big, instead of the one and a half it actually is, so he puts his thumb over Alex's, rubs the wedding ring for good luck. Then pushes his hand away.
He needs a piss.
The flat face in the bathroom mirror leers a bit. Awful, normally. Not so much, today. He turns away. Empties his bladder. Flicks the tap, fills a cup, drinks a bit, heads back to bed.
He must've woken Alex somehow, though, because the snores have stopped, and his eyes are open. But glassy, in a way that means he’s not quite there: off inside the software of his skull, floating over all his little worlds, taking stock, making notes.
“When you sleep,” Greg tells him, half mad with longing, “you look like you’re made of sticks.”
Alex startles, laughing.
It’s like watching him wake up, the way he washes back into himself, the laugh crinkling into wrinkles, folding the corners of his mouth. He props himself on one elbow, prim, teasing.
“Yes. Good morning, Greg.”
Still easy, he thinks, a little smug, throat flayed raw. Still friends. Still got him. Good.
When he flops back into bed, Alex skitters to the other side of the mattress like a startled minnow, then carefully comes shuffling back. After a moment, Greg shoves his freezing feet between the man's shins, hoping to nettle him. His face doesn't even change. Fucking oddball.
“Shoe sizes,” he says instead, over the snickering of the rain, “are measured in barleycorns.”
“Fuck off,” says Greg flatly.
They will be, of course, if Alex says so. But he’s happy to bite, since it’s Alex.
“Yeah, even now.” He shifts to lie on his side, face smushed up in the pillow, watching Greg. “It's a barleycorn-based system.”
“Yeah?" Greg touches the skin under his right eye, where it's creased up and much paler than the rest of his face: when he presses the pad of his thumb there, Alex sighs, leaning into it. God. He can't be completely sure, now, that that's not genuine. "What’s a barleycorn, then?”
“Third of an inch,” he says, then shakes with funny noiseless laughter when Greg huffs, galled. “And then there’s poppyseeds.”
“No.”
“One fourth or fifth of a barleycorn.”
“Or?”
“Or, yes.”
They fall silent. He drags a thumb over Alex’s hip, down the furry flank of his thigh, drawing a twitch, a giggle, a scuffle for possession of Greg’s hands, and swift and glorious victory to Alex. He pins Greg to his ribs. Technically his ribs, if he weren't getting soft. Between heart and belly: not bad. Very warm, in fact.
“Aren’t you a font of grain-based knowledge,” Greg mutters, largely as an excuse to nuzzle the hairs of his jaw. It makes his breath hitch, which is a delight.
“No, not much grain in fonts. Water, it’s mostly water in f–”
Greg nips his ear and tugs a hand free, purely for the pleasure of slapping the half of his face not sunk in the pillow. Not hard. But not soft, either. Alex smiles, pleased.
“Grain is different,” he says, tracing with his fingertips where his beard meets red skin. “A grain is a weight.”
“Is it.”
“A twentieth of a scruple.”
“Right.”
“Which is a third of a dram.”
Another thing that’s different with Alex: Greg’s loved loads of people. He knows what it fucking feels like. It’s not generally like he’s actually got the flu.
“Or one point two nine six grams. A scruple. If you prefer.”
“I do not.”
Alex nods, pretending solemnity. He’s having fun, underneath it, of course. God knows how or why, but he is. And under that– it makes no sense, but about Alex, Greg is never wrong– he’s just a little bit twitchy.
“Nine hundred and sixty," he says, slightly too carefully. "Or one thousand two hundred.”
Greg frowns.
“What?”
“You. In poppyseeds. Roughly.”
Oh. Well. That’s almost sweet, for him. He’s still searching for a proper reply when something goes bzzzzt.
Like a magic trick, Alex is on his feet, phone in hand. Greg blinks. Admires his legs a bit. Genuinely lovely. He wants to get his hands back on them.
The man's got bruises absolutely everywhere, though. Jesus Christ.
Did Greg really do that to him? Probably not. Some of them look old. Football, probably. Hedge-trimming. A night out. Probably.
Alex, apparently unbothered by having become a six foot two human contusion, smiles at the screen. There’s a look about him now that he keeps for about six or seven people, though it’d genuinely irritate him if Greg told him so.
“Boys?”
“Boys,” Alex confirms. “They have–” he scrunches up his nose, scanning the words– “a difference of opinion about which of them first, uh, first began to call the Ratatouille song ‘hoopla de shmoopla’.”
About as serious as their father, then. Greg swings to sit up, starts hunting out his slippers. Breakfast is suddenly on his mind. Alex has to leave soon, and the day looms, grey and rainy and laden with emails. He can at least meet it well-fed.
“Do you know?”
“‘Course I don’t know.” His fingers fly over the flat keyboard. “I’m lying to them.”
“Yeah? How much do scruples weigh again?”
Alex’s glance down at him is sharp and bright: unsmiling, with just the slight glitter that means he really liked it. Well, of course he did.
“Not a lot,” he breathes, looking away again, tapping out his reply. “Not… about… Ratatouille.”
He presses send; grabs Greg's spare dressing gown, and ties it; sets the phone down with a clunking little flourish.
“All yours,” he says, too sincere.
He means it. He really shouldn’t, though. Doesn’t have to. Greg picks the phone back up. Slips it into the borrowed dressing gown pocket, just in case.
“I’ve got a lot of scruples,” he admits.
“One million seven thousand seven hundred and ninety eight,” Alex says, far too quickly. And then, after a heartbeat, “rounding up. I think.”
Of course he had that ready to go.
“No.”
His eyes flick wider, an involuntary twitch.
“No?”
Right, thinks Greg, none too gently. Idiot really thinks I’m going to laugh and say well, that was all a big fucking mistake. Let’s stay friends, hey? My love to Rachel.
Another beat, and he takes pity, clears his throat.
“Lost a few pounds lately,” he says. “It’s, uh. It’s less than that now.” Alex eases. Nods. Greg watches him draw irony around himself like a dressing-gown.
“Yeah.” He mugs slightly, insincere and irritating. “Uh. Yeah, you look great.”
Just because he can, Greg lets it drag out a second. He's pretty sure the awkwardness hasn't always been funny, but it definitely is now. The cotton covering Alex’s shoulder, he reminds himself, has a purpling crescent moon under it, unignorable, undeniable.
“Breakfast?”
“Yes please.”
It's all a bit different, this. He still has a lot of scruples. But they should at least have some breakfast first.