It Starts Here / 𝗯𝘅𝗯 (✓)

22: Reading and marriage

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Twenty-nine years old

"Are you still writing—Ares, it's one a.m." 

Ares looks down at Felix who is blinking rapidly up at him to get accustomed to the light from Ares' computer. Ares is impressed that he could even tell the time on the screen with his bangs and all the eye boogers in the way.

Ares reaches over to clean Felix's face with his thumb and remove the hair, as he whispers, "Sorry. I woke you?"

Felix rubs his nose before stretching like a cat, Ares eying the ridden up shirt suggestively, but Felix doesn't seem to notice. "Yes, Ares, you keep making sounds matching your writing." He pauses and mimics Ares by groaning dramatically followed by giggling, gasping, awing and humming in satisfaction. 

Ares hums. "I thought you liked it when I'm loud." 

Felix sends him an unimpressed look. "You're funny."

"Thank you."

Felix responds by humming unimpressed. Ares chuckles as Felix curls up beside him, his head resting on his arm so his hair tickles Ares' skin. Felix's hand comes to rest on his torso like he's attempting to hug Ares to sleep, but instead Ares hears him clear his throat and when he sees him narrow his eyes, he knows that he has started to read the chapter on his screen.

Ares waits patiently until he sees Felix frown and then turn his head to which Ares grins at him. "Are you about to write a sex scene? Right beside your sleeping boyfriend?"

"You didn't read it correctly. You're not wearing your glasses."

"Mhm."

"See, the sex scene has already begun." 

Felix groans and rubs his face, rolling away from Ares just to roll right back to him, his head now higher on his arm. "You're a creep."

"Do you want me to read it aloud?"

"No, I really don't want you to read aloud your smut for me," Felix says sternly and when Ares laughs, he does, too. "But you never did finish reading me the eleventh chapter, did you?" Ares hums and Felix rubs his forehead on Ares' arm, probably because it's itchy. "What chapter are you writing?"

"Twenty-two."

Felix yawns. "Then we have a lot of chapters to catch up on."

Ares smiles down at him after checking the time on his laptop. "We should go to sleep," he whispers, though he is wide awake and it seems like Felix is slowly getting there, too, despite the yawning.

"We should find out why Makani didn't show up to their date." Felix closes his eyes. Then he opens them. "But first I need to piss."

Ares chuckles and pushes Felix out of the bed when he still doesn't move after a minute. When he gets back, he curls up beside Ares like before, as if he'd never left to begin with.

Twenty-nine-year-old Felix still asks twenty-nine-year-old Ares to read him his stories. Even the first drafts that are messy and illogical and he knows are self-indulgent and nothing else. He reads those, and when Ares goes through his month-long phase of writing poetry, Felix also listens to him read those—Ares doesn't understand how he manages to do it with a straight face because if there's anything Ares is not, then it's a poet, but he does. 

(Luckily he got out of that phase fast enough for no one but Felix to hear any of the poems he wrote. When he told Felix he'd given up on poetry, Felix looked at him and said, "Oh," and Ares said, "It's okay that you hated it" and Felix sighed relieved and said, "Thank god. Now write a short story about a queer person going back in time.")