Bad Case of Loving You

“Hey, babe,” he said when he looked up. “Chronic occlusive disease?”

“Pump them full of pentoxifylline,” I said without thinking.

“Want some more coffee?”

He shook his head and went back to peering alternately at his text, and his laptop screen. I left him to it.

Henry and I spent the day walking the Roman wall through London, detouring down side streets, finishing up with a raid on HMV on Oxford St. on the way home.

I left Henry slouched on the couch, alternately lamenting the amount of exercise he’d been conned into taking and gloating over his new DVDs, and went upstairs.

Matthew was exactly where I’d left him. The only way I could tell he’d moved at all was that there were two empty plates beside his elbow on the desk, and that he wasn’t in his bathrobe anymore.

He pushed himself back from the desk and took his headphones off when I opened the door, and stretched luxuriously. “What’s the time?” he asked, and I thought that he looked damn hot in a ‘Hello Kitty’ T-shirt and a pair of my sweat pants.

“After three,” I said. “Did you wake up feeling particularly gay this morning?” I asked, gesturing at his T-shirt.

He chuckled and wriggled his eyebrows at me. “Probably, considering where I woke up. My sister gave me this T-shirt as part of some kind of campaign to appall our mum, so I’m quite fond of it. If it’s three, then I can stop; I’ve done eight hours, and I don’t think I can look at another page of signs and symptoms without screaming.”

He stood up and stretched from side to side, with alarming crunching noises from his vertebrae, then wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed me.

When we surfaced again, he said, “So what domestic goodness do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

“Hmm,” I said. “Laundry. Food shopping for the week.

Goofing around with Henry. What about you?”

“Laundry, too,” he said, pouting. “Did you know that every single item of clothing I own, apart from this T-shirt, is dirty?”

I slid my hands under the sweats he was wearing, at the back, and found bare skin. “Oh, I approve,” I murmured. “If all of your clothing being dirty explains why you haven’t been wearing shorts, I don’t think you should do any laundry.”

“Not having any boxers is one thing,” Matthew said, and I had a really good grope while he was hugging me. “But, having no clean shirts or trousers for clinical is something completely different. Now, let go of my arse so I can go and load the washing machine.”

I let go of him and said, “So, you planning on telling your mom you’ve moved in with me?”

He pushed past me and disappeared into the bedroom, reappearing a moment later with arms full of clothes. “Rang her today,” he said, and he galloped down the stairs, dropping socks and shorts behind him as he went.

I followed him down the stairs more sedately, picking up his washing as I went, and he reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Your washing machine has buttons and dials and gauges and things.”

“I’ll show you how to use it.” I handed him the pile of washing when I got to the laundry. “What did she say?”

“’Have you met any nice doctors for your sister?’” Matthew quoted. “I told her about F, and the other doctors I’d met, and said you were the only sane one out there.”

“Your sister wants to date a mechanic,” I said, adding detergent to the machine and starting it. “They work decent hours and earn more. Hell, considering the hours I work, Kendra is better off than me. Mind you, she’s obsessive/compulsive about music.”

“I’m telling Mom you said that,” Henry called out from the living room, before appearing in the hallway. His eyes boggled at Matthew’s T-shirt, and I slapped him on the back.

“Get used to redefining masculinity,” I said cheerfully, and he groaned and went back to the TV.

When I’d lugged the first armful of groceries in, I dropped the bags in the kitchen and went upstairs to investigate the shouts of glee.

Henry and Matthew were in the study, Henry at the desk, Matthew on the floor, with cables snaking between his laptop and my PC. “Look out behind you!” Henry shouted, and the speakers on the PC boomed with gunfire.

Obviously, ‘Hello Kitty’ T-shirts didn’t interfere with Matthew’s eligibility as a fellow gamer. I went back downstairs to carry the rest of the shopping in by myself.

That night, when I was curled up under the quilt, my head on Matthew’s chest, listening to his slow deep breathing, our fingers entwined, he said, “Andrew?”

“Hmm?”

“I have a problem,” he said, and I could hear that he was trying not to laugh.

“Okay,” I said. “And that’d be?”

“It seems that I’m very good at negotiating having safe sex, but I actually have no idea how to ask if we can stop,”

Matthew said as he squeezed my hand.

“Guess you just did,” I said contentedly.

Chapter Forty Four

London Hospital didn’t have a cardiology special on the menu in the cafeteria, but they did do a killer omelette, thick and substantial, obviously filled with whatever was left over in the kitchen from the day before.