fast.
“What’s wrong?” John asked, suddenly right next to Lukas. “Why are you scowling at your roll?”
Sighing, he set the two pieces of the roll he’d ripped in half on his plate. “Nothing. I just… Are you sure it’s okay I stay here?”
John lowered himself carefully into the chair next to him, his white tee sticking to his still-damp skin in a few places. “Of course. If you’re uncomfortable though, you don’t have to.”
He shook his head and reached over and snagged one of John’s big hands. “It’s not that. I went and grabbed my stuff, and then thought maybe you really just meant tonight and that I was being an idiot to assume I wouldn’t have to go back tomorrow night.”
“And here I was trying to come up with arguments in the shower to convince you to stay the rest of the trip…”
Lukas’s gaze shot up, and he carefully looked over John’s smiling face. “Oh yeah? What was the best one?”
“The best argument?”
Lukas nodded and threaded their fingers together.
“Well, the most logical is that you’d continue to get better sleep, but the best overall, in my opinion, was the idea I had to try and convince you that I was scared of the dark and needed you to stay so I wasn’t alone.”
Laughing, Lukas leaned over and gave John’s smiling mouth a quick kiss. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to be afraid.”
John chased after him as he pulled away, using his free hand to cup the back of Lukas’s head and reel him back in. He kissed Lukas slowly, but not as deeply as before, then lifted his head and smiled at Lukas.
“Excellent. Now finish eating while I check my emails so we can go to bed.”
As he went back to his dinner, he watched closely as John grabbed his laptop and phone. There wasn’t Wi-Fi at the resort, so he’d have to use his phone as a hot spot to use his computer. John’s movements were measured, though not too slow. He was being careful without going overboard with babying his back.
He finished eating while John was still typing a response to someone, so he threw away his plate and tossed the plastic utensils in the sink to wash later. He had zero problem reusing them but a big problem with the way the group generally just threw the plastic stuff away. He spent half the week fishing plastic bottles out of trash cans.
“You can just rinse them and put them in the bag under the sink. I forgot to bring soap to wash stuff,” John muttered, squinting at something on his screen, then hitting backspace a few times and retyping.
When Lukas opened the cupboard door under the sink, he found a bag half-full of water bottles and plastic utensils. His heart flipped over as he looked back at John, who was scowling at his computer. He didn’t say anything, just rinsed the knife and fork and tossed them in.
He grabbed his stuff and headed into the bathroom to change and brush his teeth, pausing to run the back of his fingers lightly over the back of John’s neck. Once in the bathroom, he shucked off his shirt and jeans, then rummaged in his suitcase for his sweats and a sleeping shirt. Right before he was going to pull on his sweats, he paused, a thought forming.
Grinning, he stripped off his briefs as well before tugging on his loose sweats. He shoved his dirty stuff into the side of his suitcase and put the sleeping shirt back in too, setting it aside. As he was brushing his teeth, he rifled through his toiletries until he found his lotion.
Once finished in the bathroom, he stepped out and found John still on his computer. Frowning, he put his suitcase in the corner of the room, placed the lotion on the nightstand, then went over and wrapped himself carefully around John’s shoulders and nuzzled beneath his ear.
“Jeez. How many emails did you have to return?” he asked as he ran his hands over John’s chest.
John grunted as he finished what he was typing, sent the email, then closed the laptop. He gripped Lukas’s wrists and brought each of Lukas’s hands up to his mouth, kissing his palms. “I was going back and forth with this land developer who wants me to help him with this job. I ignored his contractor’s offer because it was shit, so now Singer is trying to convince me himself. It’d be a week’s worth of work, at