If Only (GxG)

Chapter 33 Childhood

A/N
Hello, everyone... so, a few questions for you. What are you enjoying about the story so far? Anything not quite working for you? Anything you're secretly hoping will happen that I've yet to deliver?

Don't be shy.
—Lucky x

🎶Texas Sun by Khruangbin and Leon Bridges🎶

『 °*• ❀ •*°』
Alison's POV

It was a slow, honey-dipped Saturday—the kind where the light draped itself through the curtains like silk, golden and unhurried, warming the edges of the sheets and the bare skin tangled beneath them. Time didn't move properly on mornings like this. It meandered. Stretched. Melted into the kind of soft stillness that only ever seemed to exist in Blake's bed.

The duvet was a mess of linen and limbs, warm from sleep, and I was curled securely against her side, one leg looped around hers, an arm draped lazily over her waist. Her skin was cool to the touch, velvet-smooth beneath my cheek. She smelled like sleep and lavender and something distinctly Blake—familiar, grounding, mine. Her chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths, and I was content to stay there forever, drifting somewhere between sleep and morning with the soft exhale of her breath at my temple.

Rodger was curled at the foot of the bed, his little brown body a loaf of comfort and contentment, snoring gently in the glow of the early light. We were a painting. A tableau of comfort. And I was determined to keep it that way.

"I have to go to the gym," Blake said eventually, her voice still rough with sleep—deep and warm, like it hadn't fully woken up yet.

I made a small, wounded sound and burrowed closer. "No you don't."

She chuckled, low in her throat, and pressed a kiss to my hair. "I really do. Especially with all the pancakes you keep feeding me. It's the gym or I'll need a whole new wardrobe."

"I consider it a public service," I murmured into her collarbone. "Hangry Blake is genuinely terrifying. This is basic survival. Also, your curves are divine—I'm just doing my part to preserve the national treasure."

She laughed softly, the sound muffled by another graceful stretch beneath me. "You're dangerous, Alison Greystone. Utterly incorrigible."

"And yet," I mumbled, lifting my head slightly to peer at her, "you keep letting me sleep over."

She smiled, slow and fond, eyes still half-closed. "Foolish, I know."

We lay there a little longer, wrapped in our shared warmth, tangled and quiet and safe. The kind of silence that didn't need filling. But eventually, Blake shifted with that graceful care she always used when she didn't want to wake me fully—something she'd perfected over the many mornings we'd spent like this.

She moved with such practised precision that she didn't disturb the blankets, or me, or the small dog snoozing between us like a furry paperweight.

I groaned faintly. "How could you leave me and Rodger like this? It's a crime. And this is my one proper morning off. I have to study later and I'm working tomorrow."

Blake laughed quietly as she pulled open her drawer. "Poor baby. Neglected. Curled up in soft blankets, in my very expensive bed, well-rested and adored. However will you survive?"

"I won't," I said with a dramatic sigh. "I'll simply fade away from heartbreak. And Rodger will mourn."

"Rodger," she said, deadpan, glancing down at the sleeping dog, "is currently snoring and dreaming about eating bees. I think he'll manage."