He swore quietly as the key
got slightly jammed, and he had to rip it out of the lock and start again.
Normally, he wouldn’t have been so irritable, but it was four in the morning,
and he was just getting home from work.
The lock was just lucky that he had the next day off, or he might have
just kicked the door down in anger and desperation to get to his bed. This second time, though, the key slid in
smoothly and the lock turned without a hitch.
The house wasn’t as quiet
and dark as he had expected. Coming from
just off the entrance way was the flashing lights and repeating forty five
second audio track of a DVD title screen.
He locked the front door behind him, and then followed the sound to the
living room. Decked out in a pair of
sweat pants and a tank top, his angel, Emily, was sound asleep on the
couch. Logan looked up and watched the
DVD title a couple of times. He
couldn’t remember what the show was about, but he remembered Emily telling him
about how she used to watch it in fifteen minute intervals when she was trying
to stay up to finish an assignment in school.
“Something about it seemed to wake me up better than a shot of
caffeine,” she had said, “It’s hard to explain.” The fact that the show was on coupled with
the fact that she wasn’t covered in a blanket despite the fact that the room
was freezing meant only one thing to Logan.
Emily had been trying to
stay awake to see him.
Instantly, all his anger
from work, his drive home, even the sticking lock, just melted away into
nothing. He flipped on one of the small
lights on the desk that Emily used to write by, and then walked forward and
turned off the television. Making his
way back to the couch carefully, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the
forehead. She woke up slowly, blinking
at him in the dim light. “I’m awake?”
Her voice was soft and cracked just slightly as she asked the question.
“You’re awake.” He assured
her.
“Oh good. I was having the strangest dream.” Her voice was a little bit stronger as she
woke up a little bit more.
“Oh?” He invited.
“Yeah. Daniel Jackson and
Mal Reynolds were trying to convince me to go out dancing, but I knew I had to
stay home and cook a birthday dinner for Neal Caffery.”
There was a moment of silence
before Logan smiled. “Stargate, Firefly and White Collar.”
“Ah, but which Stargate?”
Emily teased.
Logan hesitated. “SG-1?” It
was more of a question than an actual answer, but Emily smiled sleepily and
raised her hand to pat him softly on the cheek.
“Oh, he learns. I’ll make a
TV geek out of you yet.” She let her
hand drop back to the couch. She shifted
a little as she laid there, pushing her shoulders back a little deeper into the
cushions.
Logan made a face. He knew that look. Emily wasn’t nearly as awake as she was
pretending to be. “I’m not going to be
able to convince you to get up and walk to bed, am I?”
Emily raised her hands half
heartedly, her eyes already shut again. “You can carry me if you want me in bed
so badly.” There was half a dirty joke
behind her words, but he decided to ignore it for now.
“Alright then. Budge
up.” Logan grabbed a blanket off the
nearby armchair, and crawled into the empty space Emily had made on the edge of
the couch. He covered them both with the
blanket. Almost automatically, Emily
turned and curled into his side, which he used to scoot her back towards the
cushions, and give himself a little bit more room.
“I love you,” Emily muttered
against his chest, more so that he felt the vibration of the words than heard
them.
He leaned down and kissed
her gently on the top of the head. “I
love you too.” In that moment, Logan
thought he wouldn’t mind working nineteen hour days for the rest of his life,
as long as he got to end every single one of them like this.
My wonderful friend, Gwen,
legally thieved the opening line of this piece for yesterday’s post on her blog,
http://apprenticenevermaster.wordpress.com/. Check out her blog today to see
what I thieved from her.
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