The last time Becket had woken up alongside someone had been his brother when they were both still boys. They’d shared a thin reed mattress and a pile of furs and blankets in the loft of their parents’ tiny cabin. As often as not they got into fights over who was hogging the favorite blanket of the hour and get too hot to need the blankets.
After that, he’d ever slept alone. Or gone to bed with someone close – though never touching – but woken alone. Even now, the memories stung.
Not for long, though.
He’d gone to sleep on his stomach, head buried in a pillow, with an arm settled firmly across his back, wicked-soft pelt pressed along his side, soft hair just teasing along his neck.
It filled him with barely-contained joy to realize he woke the same way. Glendan murmured sleepily in his ear, the griffon still sleeping sort of half on Becket, half on the bed.
Becket opened his eyes and looked around what of his cabin he could see from his position. It was humble, dusty because he hadn’t really felt like cleaning after he’d come home a miserable failure.
The blankets had wound up on the floor…he rather suspected that had happened well before they’d gone to sleep, but couldn’t be certain.
If Glendan was always this warm, he couldn’t imagine he would ever need blankets again.
Shifting and nudging and pushing, he slowly managed to turn until he was on his back, still sandwiched between the bed and his griffon. Glendan was still dead to the world, and Becket felt a brief pang of guilt – last night would not have helped the exhaustion Glendan had already felt by pushing himself so hard through the quest and then to get here.
Which reminded him he still hadn’t figured out how Glendan had found him; he’d only mentioned his home briefly in one conversation.
Becket smiled faintly as he studied and memorized the lines of Glendan’s face, nestled against his shoulder, prettier than ever as the griffon slept. He brushed one finger lightly over dusky lips, then trailed his hand down Glendan’s neck and along his shoulder, stroking where pelt turned into feathers, then moved down his back, smoothing the so-soft feathers.
Glendan twitched and murmured in his arms, and Becket eased off, not wanting to wake Glendan from the rest he so badly needed. Instead he curled his arms around his mate and settled more comfortably into the pillows, content to doze lightly in the warmth of his lover’s body and the early morning sunlight spilling in through one dusty window.