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“We should get a dog,” Billy mused, reaching up to press a hand to Cornelius’ cheek, savoring the prickly feel of his facial hair growing in.
Cornelius scoffed. “Why? So it can slobber and run about and make a mess of things in a way we’d never tolerate from a man, then?”
Billy smiled lazily at his boyfriend, refusing to let Cornelius’...Corneliusness dampen his mood. He was laying in the grass with his lover on a warm spring day, his head on Cornelius’ chest (the reverse of what the position should have been, really when Billy had a good few inches on Cornelius, but Cornelius was known for being wary around any situation where he wasn't completely in control. Physical affection at all was rare enough that Billy was savoring the treat, drinking it in like the fine wine Cornelius always teased him for enjoying (but never complained when he was tasting it on Billy’s lips after.)) “So we have something to cuddle. Something to play with,” he murmured instead, pressing a soft kiss to the underside of Cornelius’ jaw. Billy caught the little hitch of breath Cornelius tried to mask and smiled.
“We're cuddling now, aren't we? And we do plenty of playing,” Cornelius shot back, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “‘Sides, dogs take up too much room.”
Billy couldn't argue with that. Their living situation was…cozy, if one wanted to be polite. Incredibly polite. A level of polite that moved past mere tactfulness and into sheer delusion. A less polite (more honest) person might call it crowded. Cramped. Claustrophobic. Billy wasn't sure what it said about him and Cornelius that they both called it cozy until their biweekly screaming matches came around.
“It would force us to cuddle closer together on the bed,” Billy tried anyway, knowing full well Cornelius, who had slept with a knife under his pillow until nearly a month into their cohabitation and still slept with his shoes right by the bed (“you never know what can happen, Billy. You're pretty enough someone might want to take you. Gotta be ready to protect you.” What a ridiculous, paranoid notion, Billy had thought, but he had kissed him anyway, overcome with sentimentality.) would not be receptive to the thought of letting his guard further down.
As predicted, Cornelius' eyes met his in an expression of abject horror. “You'd want the beast,” he began slowly. “To sleep in our bed? With its filth and its ticks and its unwashed arse?”
“We could stand to allow a bit more mess into our bed, Cornelius,” Billy murmured, tracing a line down Cornelius’ chest with a single, long finger. “Maybe not wash our sheets daily?” He suggested hopefully, knowing he would have no more success this time than any of the previous dozen he’d asked.
“You want to bring all the diseases the world has on offer into our sheets and then…let them marinate?” Cornelius asked, his eyes betraying genuine confusion, and Billy almost laughed.
“Just a thought,” he said with a shrug.
“We could redecorate, if it's change you’re after,” Cornelius offered. “I can nick some paint next time I go into town.”
Billy did laugh at that, tickling gently at Cornelius’ nose, causing it to twitch adorably. “How do you plan to make off with paint cans? Those things are a kilo each and larger than your head.”
Cornelius shrugged. “I’m resourceful, aren't I?”
“No one’s that resourceful,” Billy insisted, then immediately regretted it. Cornelius was going to commit the crime now, and it was going to get him arrested. Billy briefly wracked his brain, trying to remember how much was in the Cornelius bail fund. Which he'd started drawing from the Hawaii fund a few weeks back, hoping to inspire Cornelius to get his shit together and stop committing fucking crimes.
He hadn't, of course, stopped committing crimes, he'd just reduced the intensity of them. But Billy considered it a romantic gesture nonetheless.
“We’ll see about that, now won’t we?” Cornelius hummed, a twinkle in his eye that still made Billy go weak in the knees, when it should have made him roll his eyes. He did roll his eyes anyway, but it was all for show and they both knew it.
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“Close your eyes, Billy,” Cornelius called through the door the next morning, and Billy swore under his breath, listening intently for any sounds of sirens that may have followed his boyfriend from the scene of whatever crime had stuck his fancy that morning.
“They’re closed,” Billy promised, eyes wide open and locked on the door.
“No they’re not,” Cornelius scoffed. “I can come in there and blindfold you if need be.”
“Promise?” Billy had intended to make the snide comment under his breath, but based on Cornelius’ little snort, he’d been overheard. Someday he’d get Cornelius to relax enough to stop paying attention to every little thing all the time, but today he was just worried about talking them both out of jail.
“Close your eyes, Billy, and put out your hands.”
“No,” Billy shot back immediately. He had no problem giving Cornelius a handy when the time called for it, but this was not the way to approach it.
“Relax, I’m not going to have congress with it,” Cornelius scoffed, as though the very idea were ridiculous, though just last week he had done exactly that. “Honestly, you should probably see someone about all those dirty thoughts you have.”
Sighing in defeat, Billy closed his eyes and opened his hands. “Eyes closed, hands open,” he deadpanned.
Silence met him, followed by a small click and a few, faint shuffling noises, and then his hand was being licked.
Billy screamed, jerking his hand away. “Cornelius, what the fuck?” He gasped. “You licked me.”
“Assumptions, assumptions, Billy,” Cornelius tisked, and Billy could hear his fucking smirk. “You know I don’t like to use my tongue.”
That was a bold-faced lie. Billy snapped his eyes open, prepared to lay into Cornelius, outraged, only to see Cornelius grinning proudly, holding a lump of fur and fat out to Billy like a cat presenting a mangled bird to its owner.
“What is that?” Billy asked, peering cautiously closer before realising. “Cornelius, you got me a bunny.” A disbelieving laugh bubbled up in his chest. He reached out for it, then stopped. “And he’s had all his shots and been checked for everything? You didn’t just pick him up off the ground?”
“What do you take me for? No, he’s the most sanitary bunny there is. Extra clean, just for you,” Cornelius promised in his best salesman voice, the one he used whenever the idea of starting a pyramid scheme got a bit too appealing to ignore (though they always ended up with extra merchandise because Cornelius got bored of it too quickly to sell it all. That was why they had no plates or spoons but a full set of knives and eight separate skillets).
Billy took the bunny gently into his arms. It was surprisingly soft, fluffy and perfectly warm, a comforting weight in his arms, its nose twitching the way Cornelius’ always did when spring came around, causing his allergies to act up. It was always fun, the springtime, with Cornelius constantly sniffling and sneezing while insisting he was fine.
“You like it, then?” Cornelius asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hope shining like sunbeams from his eyes, and Billy resisted the urge to pat him on the head and call him a good boy. It wasn’t until Cornelius spoke that Billy realised he’d been smiling.
“I love him,” Billy promised, kissing the bunny gently on the top of its head, stroking its furry body.
“Her,” Cornelius corrected. “She was called Carrots on the sign, doesn’t matter to me if we keep it or change it.”
“Carrots is perfect,” Billy decided, playing with her fur as he snuggled her closer to his body. “Is that what we should be feeding her, then?”
Cornelius shrugged. “Fuck if I know. I just got the bunny.”
Billy let out a deep, weary sigh as he wondered, not for the first time, if he was actually prone to migraines or if he had just been dating Cornelius for too long. “You didn’t ask for any kind of care instructions? Like what she eats, or how much water she needs, or if she should be given a crate or a bed or a litterbox?”
Cornelius scoffed at that. “What would we need a litterbox for? We’ll just pop on a leash and take her to the yard.”
There were a large number of problems with that idea. The first being that they did not have a yard. The second being that bunnies, Billy was fairly certain, were not meant to be walked like dogs. The third being that even if bunnies were meant to be walked like dogs, Cornelius and Billy did not own a leash.
But Cornelius had listened to his request for a dog (sort of. He’d done as close to listening as Cornelius was capable of) and Billy didn’t want to dissuade him for future attempts at listening and gift-giving. So he sighed, smiled, and let the bunny nuzzle into him more.
“Why don’t you look it up for me?” he suggested genially. “And then we can go out shopping together for her. A proper domestic outing, like.”
Cornelius’ face twisted at the use of the word ‘domestic’, but then he caught himself and smiled at Billy, and it almost looked genuine. “Sounds lovely,” he said, kissing Billy on the head, sneezing gently as he turned away, scrunching up his nose and brushing it with the back of his wrist. “Let me just wash my hands first, in case the bunny has anything.”
“I thought you said it was the most sanitary bunny ever.”
“Yeah, but you never know with animals. Tricky beasts, full of diseases you’ve never even heard of,” Cornelius said, waving his hands like he always did when he got grandiose and paranoid. By the third date, Billy had learned the only way to shut him down was to placate him. Attempts at distraction only led to Billy finding himself on the receiving end of that paranoia, and attempts at reasoning only led to worse.
“Might as well be cautious, then,” Billy murmured, smiling down at Carrots. He had a feeling he was going to like her very much.