"WHAT DID I SAY?"
"You called me," he wheezed, "a beautiful refrigerator."
"What?"
"Kholodilnik. Refrigerator. The word you wanted is muzhchina. Man."
"Those sound nothing alike."
"No. They do not. Which makes this worse."
I stared at him, naked, on his side, shaking with laughter, and I thought: I will spend the rest of my life learning bad Russian if it makes him sound like this.
He finally stopped laughing. Wiped his eyes. Looked at me with an expression that was flushed and wrecked and so full of unfiltered happiness that it hurt to look at.
"Come back," he said. "We were not finished."
"Are you sure? Because if I try any more Russian, I might accidentally propose to a kitchen appliance."
"Come. Back."
I came back. He pulled me on top of him and guided me back inside and the laughter was still there, underneath everything, a current of joy running through the sex that made it better than anything I'd ever experienced. We moved together and it was messy and imperfect and real and when he came, with my hand wrapped around him and my body deep inside his, his face did the thing that I lived for. The complete openness. Every wall down. Every defense abandoned. Just Mik.
I followed immediately after, with my face in his neck and his name on my lips and the echo of his laughter still vibrating through both of us.
He held me afterward. His fingers in my hair. His heartbeat under my ear.
"For the record," he said, pressing his mouth to my temple, "I am flattered to be compared to a large kitchen appliance."
"You're never going to let me live this down."
"Correct. This is permanent. When we are old, I will remind you of the time you called me a refrigerator."
He was thinking about a future. Our future. A long one. One that stretched past this room and this season and this version of us into something bigger and further than I had dared to imagine.
I didn't say anything. Some things are too fragile to acknowledge directly. You just let them exist and hope they take root.
We lay in bed for another hour. Talking, not talking. His hand on my chest. My hand in his hair. The morning light moved across the room the way mornings do, slow and indifferent and perfect.
"Cole."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for waiting."
"You were worth it."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I know."
I grinned. "Did you just Han Solo me?"
"I don't know what that means."
"We are watching Star Wars tonight. This is non-negotiable."
"Is there hockey in Star Wars?"
"There's a Wookiee. Close enough."