a tuesday morning

you wake up early; there's no sun yet. just a dim glow through the windows, a room melancholy, almost, in its grey quiet. the air's cold—you feel the bite of it with stinging cheeks.

but it's okay.

you're under the covers, mostly, if you don't think about your freezing leg thrown over the bedside. he's wrapped around you like a leech and you tilt your head down to brush his tangled hair across your chin. you swallow against the morning stickiness and lick your lips, chapped.

you want to stay like this forever.

you want to trace the expression on his face with your eyes, slow, deliberate, like you plan to recreate it into some material art piece. but you can't see it from this angle, so you settle for brushing your thumb across the dips in his shoulders instead. his skin is soft and, when you press down gently, pliant in a sort of vulnerable way. it makes you wonder, distantly, at how delicate the human body is. how precious.

i love you, you say with the press of your lips at the crown of his head. stay, you say with the loose way you try to wrap your hand around his bicep. you feel his brow minutely scrunch against where he's pressed into your chest but think nothing of it. you close your eyes and focus on the sweltering heat trapped inside the blankets and sniff with a burning nose.

yeah, you begin again with a hum, you want to stay like this forever.

"marry me," you whisper, eyes still closed. it sounds like an embrace, not a question but a reassurance. your lips tingle, but otherwise you feel normal; like it's just another thought, mild and passing, like it belongs there so naturally you don't need to spare a single question on it.

his breath is so close it's wet on your skin when he speaks. "yeah, okay." your heart swells and you pull him closer, but he doesn't do anything else so you figure he conked out again. a smile pulls at the corners of your mouth, a little too lax in the early hours to do anything more, and everything feels perfect.

"yeah, okay," you repeat after them. "okay."