Chapter 1 #2
I really enjoyed this weekend, but then I adore every single second I get to spend with my Grumpy Cat <3
Jeffrey finished reading and just sat for a moment, basking in the words.
He never got used to this. Just when he thought he was accustomed to living with Tamlin, being mutually in love with Tamlin, having Tamlin an irrevocable part of his life.
Just when he started to get the tiniest bit complacent, something like this caught him unawares, and he fell in love with Tamlin all over again.
And he really should put that love into words.
Setting the book down on the coffee table, Jeffrey cast around for a moment, selected a likely box on a nearby shelf, and began rifling through the assortment of bookmarks inside.
He had to pull several out before he found what he sought, buried near the bottom: an identical Prince’s Pride bookmark, acquired when he had bought himself a pair of novelty socks—the right one had written on it Greetings I am Ignatius Morello, the left one continued you slew my sire, brace for your demise—from the gift shop, the cashier having slipped it into the bag as a freebie.
Perfect.
Next he needed a pen; there was an assortment in an old glass tumbler that had cracked but Tamlin liked too much to throw away, standing on an adjacent shelf—see, having all these shelves was useful.
Writing materials acquired, Jeffrey hunched over the coffee table, pausing a moment to consider what he should say. Then, with a fond smile as memories from that weekend replayed in his mind, he began to write.
* * * *
Twenty minutes later, just as Jeffrey was straightening in his seat and putting the cap back on his pen with a contented sigh of achievement, he was startled by the sound of the apartment door opening and closing.
“Hello?” he called out, experimentally. If a burglar had just broken in, they were about to get a heavy book to the head; Jeffrey usually tried to avoid mistreating books, but if it came down to having to defend himself, he needed to be alive in order to buy more books, so a sacrifice must be made.
Preferably he’d make it to his fencing bag in the corner and pull out a sabre instead; much more threatening, even if the blades were blunt.
“Hey, it’s me,” a familiar voice responded.
A moment later, the tall coltishly graceful figure of his boyfriend appeared round the corner of the hall table; which was actually a hall shelf, why have a mere table when a shelf could hold more books as well as the prerequisite bowl for keys and loose change.
Tamlin was back.
Jeffrey felt a goofy grin spread across his face—only Tamlin could make his characteristic scowl invert itself—and was powerless to stop it.
“Hey.” His welcoming smile turned into a furrow of concern. “You’re back early. Everything alright?”
“More or less.” Tamlin gave him a wry smile, dropping onto the couch beside him with a good-natured huff.
“Krystal and Tegan’s place doesn’t have power.
A truck backed into a power pole out front, taking out the electricity to their building and half the block.
I got there the same time as Nate; we took the stairs up and walked in to find a frantic Krystal on the phone to Tegan, who was trying to talk her through how to replace a blown fuse, both of them completely unaware it wasn’t just their apartment affected, we had to tell them that workmen had cordoned off half the street outside while they dealt with the fallen pole.
Marc and Adrian arrived before we could let them know that Gateways he was doing that smiley nose-scrunch thing he did when he thought whatever Jeffrey had just done was incredibly cute—Tamlin was the only one who ever used that word to describe Jeffrey, to his face or otherwise.
“I went and got Krystal and Tegan some takeout from Schooner so they didn’t have to bother trying to cook in the dim light.
And between them, Nate and Adrian managed to make a pot of tea on the gas stove.
I’m pretty sure Adrian nearly burned the bottom out of the pot; and the only reason they didn’t both end up wearing hot, unstrained tea was that Nate’s training with an epee allowed him to do a controlled pour through a sieve.
It wasn’t the best tea, but it calmed Krystal down, let us keep her company till Tegan got home, gave us a chance to chat despite not getting to play G the various shelves of their apartment held a scattering of G he used to host game nights back at his old apartment, but hadn’t since he’d moved in with Jeffrey. “I wouldn’t want to intrude upon your space.”
“I don’t mind,” Jeffrey assured him. “I know everyone in your group, some of them I’ve known longer than you have; it’s not like you’re inviting a bunch of strangers over.
And I’ve been meaning to sit in on one of your sessions anyway.
I wouldn’t mind listening, if it’s essentially a group of nerds collectively telling a story. ”
“Watch who you call a nerd,” Tamlin retorted, pointedly adjusting how his glasses sat on his nose.
Despite feigning annoyance, he scooted up the couch and drew Jeffrey into his arms. Jeffrey went happily, shifting sideways so he could lean his back against Tamlin’s chest, relishing the feeling of long limbs encircling him.
Tamlin pressed a kiss against his temple.
“Thank you, that would be wonderful. You’re welcome to join in as much or as little as you want.
You can ignore us while you read, listen to us play, or create a character and join in.
Maybe you can actually manage to convince Nate to not stab every single NPC we encounter. ”
“I’m not sure I disagree with him,” Jeffrey admitted, prompting Tamlin to playfully jostle him. “A fencer’s usual winning strategy is to keep stabbing until the other party surrenders.”
“It’s not just enemies though! Every single time we encounter anything even remotely sentient, straight away he wants to roll damage f—hey, were you reading that?”
Jeffrey looked where Tamlin gestured—he had loosened his embrace in order to point, dammit—at the book that sat on the coffee table, capped pen beside it.
“I was.” Jeffrey ran his fingertips idly along the one forearm Tamlin still had wrapped around his waist. “Not the book itself; I found a very interesting bookmark inside it, with an insightful account of our weekend in Wrenfield written on it.”
He felt the chuckle reverberate through Tamlin’s lanky frame at his back. “I wondered how long it would take you to find that.”
“And I didn’t wonder how long it would take you to find this, since I just wrote it, and I intended to show it to you once you got home.” Jeffrey sat up enough to reach for the book, flip open the back cover, and extract a bookmark that was near-identical to the one he’d found in the front.
This one was instead covered in Jeffrey’s printed handwriting: regimented, purposefully legible, and no-frills, as blunt and direct as Jeffrey himself.
He plucked the bookmark out and passed it to Tamlin. He reluctantly left his boyfriend’s hold, twisting around so he could watch Tamlin’s reaction as he read: