While He Sleeps
by Angela
07-29-04
He looks young—not so much in years as in experience. Untarnished. Even his breathing is untroubled. Not a hair out of place even as he sleeps. When he wakes up, his suit will probably be wrinkle-free and his eyes bright and he'll be ready to go as though he'd never slept at all.
I lie down beside him, careful not to jostle the bed or make the springs creak. He doesn't stir, not even to change his breathing or open his mouth. From my new vantage point, he looks different. Around his eyes are the barest traces of lines—crinkles from twenty years of smiling, no doubt—and along his jaw are the tiny pinpricks of newly shaved shadow. Evidence that he is a grown man.
I wonder what's wrong with me that I find it arousing. I can smell the soap on his skin, the faint tang of shaving cream, and a certain something else that I recognize only as Eiji. Until now he's seemed a boy to me—someone to hang out with, to care about and protect. Someone I didn't have to be wary of, or react to.
But the adult scent of him, that evidence of his maturity, sends me reeling. I feel my breath quicken. I close my eyes, expecting the familiar lurch of disgust in my stomach as my body reacts as it's been trained to.
But it doesn't come. I'm hard, uncomfortable and almost panting as I lay beside him, but for the first time, the nausea doesn't come. Instead, my stomach flip-flops and a hum of anticipation and excitement makes me shiver.
I roll onto my side and stare at him, wondering why it's suddenly different with him, and why I'm aroused at all if it's not going to be the same as it always has been. His lips part, a sigh escaping, and my heart lunges in my chest. Every little thing he does is beautiful. His lashes twitch, then open. His dark eyes look into mine.
He smiles, the tiny lines crinkling into tiny ridges. "Ash," he says. In his sleepy state his accent is thicker. "I had a dream about you."
I close my eyes as he talks, feeling the warmth of his breath against my face with each word. It doesn't matter what he's saying, I realize. It doesn't even matter that his body makes mine come alive. All that matters is that he stays near.