by Trisky
He's gotten better at this game, seizing the sheet between his legs and not letting go. How many times have I done this in the last three years? We're like Laurel and Hardy without the comedy.
He says something unintelligible, his mouth full of pillow. I swear I could blow dynamite up his ass and he'd just roll over and go back to bed.
I tried my nice approach, pinching the tiny hairs behind his ears, using my breath against his neck as leverage and in return all I got was slapping fingers stinging the bridge of my nose and the corner of my eye. One of these days he's going to cause serious damage with those sharp little fingernails.
I tried the annoying whine of the alarm pressed right up to his ear, and he just buried his face further under the covers.
I tried threats of physical harm, threats of neglect, but in the end the only tried and true method that's ever worked with Justin is to physically disengage him from his comfort zone. Once I see his frame, buck and bend with shivers, I know I'll be getting his patented early morning pissy attitude, and he has the nerve to tell me I'm difficult. Well Sunshine isn't so bright this early in the morning either. But it's as much a part of our morning routine as showering and the first cup of coffee. My day isn't quite as complete when I haven't raised my blood pressure ten points trying to rouse him from the waking dead.
I count to three, give him one more "wake the fuck up" and I pull, count to five. One. Two. Three. Four. Five...
"Leave me alone!"
And he's up, reaching out for his security blanket, but my fist is gripping it so tightly my knuckles have gone paler than the sheet. "Rise and shine, it's your big day. You're supposed to be hung over *after* it's over not before it's even begun." I peek over, in amusement, he makes it way too easy.
"Shut up old man! Am I not entitled to ten more minutes of sleep? I just spent the last two days throwing up."
"And I just spent the last two days cleaning it up, but I'm still wide awake. This is the respect I get for all my hard work?" I sink into the two day old sheets, thankful that his alabaster skin no longer paled in comparison to the stark white beneath him.
"Be forewarned, I can probably still projectile vomit at will, so don't piss me off." He's cute when he's a brat, always has been.
"Try it, and you'll be licking it up," I smirk.
"Ugh! Briiiaan!"
Ah, the lovely timbre of that particular brand of whine, that always managed to stretch my name to six syllables. "Briiiaaan, can we please... Brriiiaaaan, are you listening to me... Briiiiaaaannn I looovveee youuu" To everyone else it sounds like white noise, to me it's the music of my life. Depending on the lilt, I can always tell his mood just from the way he pronounces my name.
I rest my cheek on his forehead, rubbing against it, feeling for any remaining fever. It'd been a long two days after he'd come home Thursday night looking as white as one of his blank canvases. I hate the sound of retching. I especially hate hearing it from him, and all I'd heard for two days were alternating sounds of throwing up and his particularly defeated "Brian". There wasn't really much I could do for him, other than ride it out and clean up the mess. It all had to come out eventually, in its own time. He's pretty tough, he held up pretty well. "Do me a favor, next time you decide to get sick, do it on one of the days Lucia is here to clean up."
"Yeah, I'll be sure and schedule it accordingly," he rolls his eyes at me. "And will you stop pretending not to feel my forehead, I'm sick, not stupid. I don't run from thermometers like some people I know."
His head settles into the white pillowcase cocked into the space between my neck and shoulder, eyes resting, hands reaching for my arm, trying to wrap it around him. I pull it away, rolling onto my back, he follows, he always does, laying alongside me. "I think there are parasites on these disgusting sheets, eating away at your intestines, that's why you're sick." Little fucker, teeth digging into my shoulder hurts.
"I'm not getting rid of my sheets." He's firm on that, moving away and wrapping himself up in a cocoon of tattered white.
"Forget the sheets, just get up, we've got things to do. It's not everyday you become legal."
"No, not until you apologize."
"For what!?" I consider tying the sheet around his mouth as a gag. Briefly.
"You know what for... Briannn..." he taunts me with that promise of taking away my favorite toy, him, if I don't oblige. Fuck no.
"Fuck no, you must still be having feverish delusions if you think I'm apologizing for insulting your sheets."
"It's not the sheets you're insulting, it's me, you still hate the fact that I make you sleep on them, admit it."
He eyeballs me, from his side of the bed and I groan audibly. He's so much worse when he's sick, every defense down and his lip stuck in a permanent pout. "I can't believe we're having this conversation at this hour in the morning, can we save this fight for later, after you're awake?"
"You're the one who woke me up!"
Oh god, it's going to be one of those days when every little thing I say and do will get on his nerves, and he'll take these damn sheets, fucking ugly sheets, and lay on the couch until I pace around him enough and piss him off to get him into bed. He feels like he's won at that point, like my footsteps have worn him out and begged and pleaded with him to return to bed and he has no other choice because I'm just so aggravating and he can't get a moment's peace. And with all the dignity he can muster, wrapped in his homely sheets, he'll stomp with a huff and throw himself onto the bed. I let him win that one, all the time. It's how I got him back, period. He doesn't know that, but it is. I suppose it really is his victory, because I'm the one doing all the work. Little shit.
"Let's call a moratorium on the sheet discussion, until the next time I insult them."
"Brian..." I know, I know, I'm not getting the point. I know you want to grind the discussion into the ground. I know, I'm a terrible boyfriend, so terrible I just spent the last two days practically staring up your nostrils to make sure you were still breathing under all those blankets, and dumping the puke that didn't quite make it there, into the toilet. I know, you love your sheets because they're yours and you love that you can strangle me with them in this bed, force me to share them and I'll let you, because you're you and eventually I let you get away with everything, anyway. I know all of that.
"Justin, enough. Please?" I silence him with that last second addition, another trick of the Justin trade.
"So what was so important you had to wake me up?" He asks quietly, with only slight interest in the proceedings.
"It's not everyday you turn 21, you want to waste it spending your time in your sickbed?" I lean over him, my elbow holding up my head, hand flat on his stomach, and give him the look that clinches it all, hooded eyes, staring up at him. He has yet to learn how to resist me, when I lead him down the road to perdition with one glance.
He eyes me warily, with good reason, my birthday gifts are legendary. Legendary fuck ups, that is. But this one is good, and he has no idea.
"What do you have planned?"
"Let's just say it starts with a red bow and ends with your fantasy man," I tease. His eyes flash letting me know if I don't pull this off, I'll be sleeping on the floor, with the fucking sheets for a week, and if I think I'm funny, I'll be lucky to see the inside of his ass for the next six months.
"Briaaaannn..."
"Don't worry Sunshine, remember never the same tricks twice."
I kiss him quickly, bitter leftover retch and all and get up from the bed, smiling as I watch him scramble out of the white sheets and hightail it to the bathroom.
I pick the smelly sheets up and roll them into a ball, stuffing them in the back of the closet, until he finds them again, next time. I can't escape them, when I die they're going to lay them over my coffin and Justin will wail at the injustice of having to lose the sheets too, as they lower my body into the ground.
Next year, I buy him new sheets.