Romance snippet. Domestic affection between Henry Coffey and Theophilus Essex.
Another short snippet! 450w, rated T, Henry/Theophilus.
Theophilus’ head was drooping.
It was a subtle movement, this much was true, but Henry could be quite attuned to the particularities of one detail or another, when the object of his focus was crucial to him, and Theophilus was very crucial indeed: watching him from the doorway, facing away as he was from the door, he could see the secretary’s head shift minutely forward, rocking slowly toward his desktop as some brunet tree in the breeze.
On silent, creeping feet, Henry approached, and slowly set his hands on the set of the other man’s shoulders, squeezing.
Jolting awake, Theophilus’ head raised, and as he let out a low, soft sound, too dignified by far to be labelled a grunt, Henry reached for his hands, gently taking the papers he had been reading from his grasp and setting them upon the desk.
Smoothing over their surface with his own hands, he murmured direct into the shell of Theophilus’ perfect ear: “Do you think, my dear, that it might be time for your bed?”
Theophilus’ head dropped back against Henry’s chest, a heavy, welcome weight, and Henry chuckled softly, pressing his nose into the curls of his untied hair, and Henry looked at his expression, at the set of his lips, his blank features, at the sweet sleepiness in his eyes.
“Perhaps,” he said at length.
“The hour is late,” Henry murmured. “Or– early, in truth. I didn’t notice the time until I thought to wonder why you had not summoned me to bed.”
“You were engrossed in your needlework, last I looked in on you,” Theophilus said tiredly, rubbing at one of his eyes as he rose from his chair, and Henry settled his hands upon the other man’s hips when came Theophilus to face him. “I so hate to disturb you when you are so happy as that at a task.”
Brimming with love, Henry said, “I do not deserve you.”
“You deserve more than,” Theophilus replied: with his fatigue, his heavily-lidded eyes were even more so, and Henry looked to him with impossible affection threatening to burst forth from his chest. “Are you ready for bed?”
“Very nearly. I have one more task to complete before I retire.”
Theophilus sighed, put-upon and adorable. “What is that?” he asked, in such long-suffering tones that Henry could weep with it.
Quick as a snake, Henry leaned and pressed his mouth to the hard edge of Theophilus’ jaw, recently shorn of the beard that had graced it for some forty years and left bare, thus a tantalising target for any number of kisses and bites.
“All work completed,” Henry announced sweetly. “Shall we?”
Chuckling, a subtle smile curving at his straight mouth, Theophilus wound one hand in Henry’s, and kissed the back of it as they retreated Theophilus’ office together, and made to bed.
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