Free It's Not Shakespeare by Amy Lane

in. He wiped his nose for about the one hundred and fifty thousandth time, grateful for the Kleenex with the aloe in it. “Dis is doooo not texy.”
    At that point Rafael started to giggle, and he pretty much giggled through James’s directions until they drove up to James’s little house. Rafael pulled up into the driveway, and James looked at him, feeling miserable with embarrassment, as well as from achiness, headache, stuffed head, and general misery caused by the kind of violent allergy attack that only someone who hadn’t lived his entire life in the Sacramento valley could experience in the spring.
    “You pwobbly don’t want to ’pend the night now, do you?” he asked, aware of how supremely unsexy he had to appear at the moment.
    Rafael looked at him sideways, little crinkles in the corners of his eyes showing off for the moment that he wasn’t as young as he looked. “Nah, Jimmy. I’ll stay. Maybe no special sex or anything, but if you don’t mind dropping me off at Sophie’s again tomorrow, we can go in, watch a movie, cop a cuddle on the couch. I told you, it’ll be good.”
    James managed a smile. “Good,” he said, aware that his allergies had finally eased up enough to talk. “Becauthe I bought gwocewies. I wad goi’g do make you omelets in the morning.”
    Rafael’s expression was… hard to define. If James had to put a finger on it, he’d call it “luminous.” No matter what its name, though, James was suddenly supremely grateful that he had maybe a few other talents besides the one they probably wouldn’t use.
     
     
    J AMES fell asleep on the couch. He would have been mortified if he’d been awake, but as it was, one moment, he was leaning sideways, the better to support Rafael’s weight against his side (because Rafael was a natural snuggler) and the next moment, Rafael was nudging him gently.
    “You’re snoring, papi. You may want to go lay down now. I’ll stay here on the couch.”
    James must have made a hurt sound or a protest, because suddenly Rafael had turned in his arms and was placing a gentle kiss on his mouth.
    “We can do that later,” he murmured. “You get some sleep, okay?”
    “You can sleep next to me,” James mumbled, and he must have been more tired than he thought, because he actually begged. “Please?”
    There was a silence, and James woke up enough to realize that Rafael had already turned off the television and the light, and they were sitting there in the dark, eye to eye. For a moment, he thought he’d blown it, that he’d been too needy, and then he felt the whisper of skin as Rafael’s hand brushed his face.
    “You been lonely for a while, hah, Jimmy?”
    “Yeah,” he said, sleepy and vulnerable and unable to banter his way out of this. “How’d you know?”
    “I get laid plenty, baby. I don’t remember ever being asked just to sleep. There’s different kinds of loneliness, Jimmy. You ready to go to bed now?”
    “Yeah.”
    He did the usual things. Brushed his teeth, washed his face, put on a pair of sleep shorts and an old T-shirt, and was aware that Rafael followed him into the bathroom to do the same. But after he’d taken Marlowe to the back patio to run outside and have one last go at destroying the lawn (James fought back bravely, but sometimes, the dog’s input/output ratio seemed seriously skewed toward output), he knew that Rafael would be there, in his bed, waiting for him.
    He climbed into bed (he’d changed the sheets and everything) and murmured, “If you turn around like the little spoon, I’ll rub your back,” and Rafael widened his eyes and then rolled over on his side.
    James lay down next to him and slid his hand under Rafael’s tank top (he’d changed for sleep too) and began to simply palm the smooth skin of Rafael’s back, rubbing from the top of his neck, down his sides, to the waistband of his boxers. Rafael grunted in surprise at first—maybe he’d been expecting a muscle rub—and then let out a