Stan and Isolde stumbled through the door to their apartment, kicked off their shoes, and flopped down on their sofa as it groaned in protest.
“I’m not cooking tonight,” Stan mumbled, voice muffled by the sofa cushions.
“I could do a stir fry,” Isolde said emptily, staring listlessly at the hanging light neither of them had bothered to turn on.
“You’re not cooking either. We’re ordering takeout and we’re not moving until the world’s about to implode.”
“I love you so much.”
“Love you too.” Stan forced himself up on his elbows, looking up at his fiancé, haloed by the early light of a November moon peaking through the window, and in spite of the shitstorm of a day he’d just had he was forced to acknowledge he was one of the luckiest men in the world. Possibly the universe. “What do you want?”
“Hmm.” Isolde cocked her head to the side, placing a finger to the corner of her lips the way she always did when she was thinking something over. She was going to tap it once, twice, and then-
“How about Pad Thai?” Not what Stan himself had had in mind, but Isolde shot a glance at him as she suggested it, smile on her face, and that was the most compelling argument he could’ve been given.
“Yeah,” he said, now sitting up properly and drawing his phone from his pocket. “From the place down the road, right?”
“Mhm.” She was smiling at him now, dark eyes glowing – a reflection of the moonlight, but they looked like they were lit from within. “Do you wanna watch a movie?”
“Yeah, totally. You got one in mind?”
“I picked dinner, you get to pick the entertainment.”
“… we’ve still got Clueless rented, right?”
“Mhm.”
“That’ll do.”
Isolde giggled to herself as she began to search their digital gallery. A beautiful sound, like a river cascading into a tiny waterfall, but also a highly suspicious sound.
“What.”
“Nothing~”
“Genuinely what.”
“Well, you know, it’s not like this is the third time you’ve suggested Clueless this month or anything.”
“Ohhh, so it’s funny that my favourite movie is a chick-flick because I’m a guy? That’s kinda misogynist, Is.”
“You immediately assume I’m laughing over the genre of your favourite movie? You assume there’s something inherently worthy of ridicule in a chick-flick? Perhaps the call is coming from within the house.”
“So what are you laughing about?”
“Do you remember when we first started dating, and you told me your favourite movie was Citizen Kane?”
“And you went out on a second date with me anyway.”
“Third date.”
“I’m pretty sure it was our first date.”
“Does it matter?”
‘You’re the one who corrected me’ is what Stan would’ve said if Isolde wasn’t full on beaming now, dimples in her cheeks, eyes twinkling with mirth in a way you wouldn’t have thought possible had you seen her half an hour before, after the shift from hell. He found himself smiling too, an easy smile of the kind he hadn’t really thought himself capable of for the first twenty-two years of his life. He moved in closer, under a mind of magnetic attraction, wanting to drink in that look on the face of the woman he loved.
“I guess it doesn’t,” he said, and he pressed a kiss to the crease of her mouth. Isolde giggled again, sending a warm thrum through Stan’s body, then turned her head and locked them into a kiss proper. Stan brought a hand up to caress her cheek, marvelling at the feel of her skin beneath his, so familiar yet still so fantastical, every crease and pore lovingly mapped again and again by his fingers. Isolde’s own hands interlocked around his neck, one thumb idly flicking the tail end of his hair. She complained every time he got a haircut, when his hair was too short for her to reach like this, and in moments like these he felt like he was a madman for ever paying to have it shorn from him.
He pushed, she pulled, and then she lay beneath him and his free hand wandered to her waist, holding her securely. She pulled him in closer, their bodies interlocking, her breath tickling his eyelashes, her stomach rising and falling beneath his palm, one of her legs raised slightly, her foot rubbing against his thigh.
It was intoxicating, how alive she was. He’d spent the first few months of their relationship admiring her from a distance, barely working up the courage to hold her hand, like she was goddess to be worshipped. Now he couldn’t believe that he’d ever been able to do so, couldn’t believe even more that he’d ever thought that worship was truly a form of love. Devotion, maybe. Obsession, definitely. But not love. Standing unashamedly beside her, holding her, being right where she was, that was love.
Then there was a knock at the door, and they broke off the kiss.
“Goddamnit,” said Stan, reluctantly pushing himself off Isolde to answer.
He opened it to greet the very nice food delivery guy with his best and most polite expression on his face, as though he hadn’t just been pulled away from his very beautiful fiancé, and to his credit he was pretty sure he pulled it off up until when it was time to shut the door, which he probably did too quickly and too eagerly. Whatever.
“I got you your regular,” he said, manoeuvring past the sofa and into their kitchen, “and I got myself a vegetarian, but we can swap if you want.”
“Oooooh, can we go halfsies?”
“Totally. You want a water?”
“I think I need something stronger. Hang on-” – she started to get up from the sofa – “-let me help you out.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout-”
Isolde pressed a kiss against his cheek, quick and fleeting, before squeezing past him to get to the glassware cupboard, and Stan had no more complaints.
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