Bad things only occasionally happen in bed
Author's Note
The other day was a bad day, and I sustained myself with awful NHS-grade instant coffee and basic, unrisky thoughts of fluff, here manifested in words outside my head.
Bad things only occasionally happen in bed
Outside it was dark, cold, and surprisingly foggy for the time of year.
Inside it was cozy, snug, and fog was pleasantly conspicuous in its absence.
Inside the inside there was a bed, and inside this bed (which was on the inside) were two gently snoozing lumps, one human-shaped, the other smaller and not-human shaped. All was still. All was cozy. All was well.
All continued being still, cozy and well until the phone beside the bed - on the side nearest the human-shaped lump - lit up and started to beep and buzz. After a second of confused snuffling an arm lunged from under the covers, fumbled, found the phone, and fingers mashed against it until it shut up. The arm then withdrew out of sight again.
A few moments of the same quiet from before passed.
The duvet was then shucked halfway aside to reveal a man who was plainly not happy to be awake but who had decided to roll with it anyway. He already had one leg out of bed and was all set to have the rest of his body follow when the not-human shaped lump moved and, from the other half of the duvet, a colourful and hoof-tipped limb extend, wrapping about his middle and staying his exit.
Which is to say, his ponyladyfriend stopped him in his tracks.
“Where do you think you’re going?” She asked, more of her emerging from the beneath the covers, mane a mess and face bleary but still determined.
“Up. Stuff to do,” he said, though he made no effort to keep moving.
What with it being a weekend she found his line about having stuff to do hard to believe. She was still mildly incredulous he’d even had an alarm set in the first place. Her expression reflected this. Had an eyebrow raised and everything. Her eyes might have been only halfway open, but her eyebrow was all the way up.
Somehow.
“Like what?” She asked.
“Well, got to empty the dishwasher for one,” he said.
This was a very feeble reason to leave the bed in her view. Her grip tightened.
“Oh no. The dishes aren’t going anywhere, so neither are you.”
“It’ll just take a second, then I can come back.”
Grip remaining tight she scooched across the bed, latched about his middle and did her best with her free foreleg to sling the duvet back over him again, covering most of him. She deemed this a successful slinging.
“Nuh uh, not leaving, not letting you,” she said, snuggling in his side happily.
His resolve wavered, but then he thought of the dozen or more tiny, trifling chores he intended to do. As easy and attractive as it would be to just slip back under the covers - and with a warm bundle of loving softness continuing to burrow into his side it was extremely attractive - the many things left outstanding burnt away in his brain, nagging him.
“I could just pick you up and take you with me,” he said.
“You could try, but I’m a wriggler and you know I am,” she said, not looking up.
“...true.”
She was. He knew.
Giggling in triumph she kissed blindly, catching him on the ribs. This tipped it, and his leg lifted back into bed and his arms went around her. Really, even trying to resist in the first place had been a mistake.
She put some of the infamous wriggling to good use as the both of them got into a mutually comfortable position again, he ended up properly under the duvet and she ending up halfway on top of him, head lying across his chest.
All, again, was well, and the two lay in cozy, comfortable silence for a happy while, she listening to his breath and heartbeat, he variously either staring up at nothing or staring at the back of her head as it rose and fell on top of him. He rather liked her mane messy, actually. It was poofy.
Eventually, she felt moved to ask:
“Why do you always have to be up and doing something anyway?”
It was a habit of his, she’d noticed. That he had been trying to do it on a weekend begged an immediate answer to this question. He’d disrupted what had meant to be a long stretch of snoozing and snuggling with his attempts to escape and do housework!
As best as he could while lying down he shrugged.
“Just don’t like not doing anything,” he said.
“Cuddling me is doing something.”
Doing something very important, too, in her book. Possibly one of the more important things anyone could be doing. So important that she only trusted him to do it! He gave her a scratch behind the ear and this was much appreciated.
“You know what I mean. It’s like that line I heard, uh, ‘My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter’,” he said.
She wrinkled her muzzle.
“Cheerful,” she said. He smiled.
“Kind of the style of the guy, really. I quite like it myself.”
“You would,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Not your kind of style?”
“No.”
Another silence followed, slightly less comfortable as she was clearly brewing a followup.
When it came it first involved her slithering out of his grip and, with some clumsy effort so she stayed under the duvet, mounting him so she sat astride his waist. This got his attention. Once she was properly seated and settled and with his hands on her hips to steady her she poked him in the nose with a hoof and held it there while she spoke:
“You’re getting a reward,” she said, grandly.
He stared at her. Then he looked her from top to bottom and took in where she was sitting and how she was sitting and where they both were when she’d said what she’d said. She picked up on this. She went pink.
“Not like that! Well, not right now, maybe later. I mean something else! Laziness! You do lots during the week and now the week is over and so that’s your duty done and now you’re getting your reward! And it’s nothing!” She said.
“You do lots too…” He said, feeling it wrong not to point this out. They were, after all, a team.
She just nodded.
“Exactly. We both do lots. Lots and lots. Which is why today we’re not doing anything. Because this is the day we get our reward. And our reward is staying in bed and not doing anything,” she said.
He wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Feels lazy,” he said, getting another poke in the nose for his troubles.
“That’s the whole point. It is lazy! We’re going to be lazy. Gloriously lazy. Together. We’re not going to achieve anything of note today. Today everything is going to take twice as long and we’re going to be slow doing it. We’re not even going to get dressed.”
“You don’t wear clothes,” he pointed out.
“Stop poking holes. It’s about the spirit of the thing, the true essence of a lazy day. It’s a state of being. I might even find one of your t-shirts to put on, just so I can look half-dressed and therefore even lazier,” she said, this idea occurring to her as she spoke and her eyes widening with the wonder of it. What an idea!
“Did you practise all this?” He asked. It did seem rather a lot to spit straight off the cuff, at least to him.
His interruption intruded upon her thoughts of which t-shirt of his she was going to snaffle and so she moved the hoof on his nose down to his mouth to muffle him.
“Shh, shh. Too much talking.”
“But you’re the one-” he said around the hoof, only to have it press more firmly.
“Shhhhh,” she hissed, making sure he’d got the message and had quietened his word-hole before leaning down and giving him a nice, big, ‘Talking time is over’ smooch. It seemed to get the point across as he didn’t say anything afterwards. Was just smiling like he’d won something.
“Glad we agree,” she said, wriggling some more (she really was a wriggler) so she could lay herself down on top of him, head tucked in under his chin, tail swished across his lower portions and his arms pulled supportively across her.
They stayed like this for some time.
As well they should have.