thinking about what shouto would make of you being in a romance book club.
i think when you bring your first couple books home and start reading more, he mostly just takes it an opportunity to press his face in your lap and doze as you read, absently stroking his hair between turns of the page. he likes the extra time with you, luxuriating in it like a cat in a beam of warm sun.
eventually though, he gets curious and wants to know what you're reading. he occasionally props his chin on your shoulder and peers at the pages, and sometimes you watch, smothering a laugh, as his eyebrows all but shoot to the moon.
a particularly bad passage in a 70s bodice ripper gets a disapproving frown, when the hero locks the heroine in a tower and bears her down to a scratchy straw pallet, enjoying the way all her struggling is in vain.
"i thought he was meant to be wooing her," shouto says, almost accusingly, as though the romantic hero stood just beyond the turn of the page, able to hear his reproach.
"sarah picked this one," you say by way of explanation, "to her, this is wooing."
shouto turns his face into your shoulder, rubbing his face there absently. "you do not find it romantic," he says.
you laugh. "not really. i like to be listened to, especially in tense situations like theirs. but i see the appeal of the strength thing."
you feel shouto's lashes on your skin as he blinks, feel the slight pull of his full mouth into what is undoubtedly another puzzled frown. "the strength thing," he echoes.
"yeah," you reach up and give his bicep and appreciative squeeze. "i've been known to enjoy a little bit of muscle every now and again."
shouto huffs against your skin, his breath warm. "not like that."
you grin. "certainly not with that guy, no. he killed her brother like three pages ago and doesn't listen to her and its like the eleven hundreds. i don't even want to know the last time he bathed."
shouto is quiet against you, and his breath on your shoulder slows. for a moment you think he means to let you get back to your reading, until he slowly echoes again, "not with that guy."
another grin pulls at your mouth when you realize what he's fishing for. "well you can bear me down to a moldy straw pallet any time."
you can just see shouto's ear out of the corner of your eye, and you're gratified to see a watercolor brush of pink creeping over the shell.
"i would find you a more suitable pallet," he says, turning his head. his hair tickles along the underside of your jaw, his soft mouth trailing over your throat.
"you'd be a perfect gentleman, i expect," you say, smiling, resisting the urge to twitch at the ticklish sensation.
the press of shouto's mouth grows firmer, the soft rumble of his voice carrying into your own throat as he speaks. "i would ask if you wanted to see my strength thing, in fact."
you can't help the laugh that escapes you over the insistent inflection in shouto's tone. you know he means it genuinely.
"and i, of course, being an individual of sense, would eagerly consent to your strength thing," you say. "no locked towers needed."
shouto's mouth opens over your throat, and a large hand finds its way to the hem of your t-shirt. "we happen not to be in a locked tower," he says, and his voice has suddenly deepened, made even lower with insinuation.
you laugh again, and just manage to deposit your book on the side table before shouto rolls you underneath him. his fingers gather up your wrists, as the hero's had done the heroine's. but his grip is gentle as he pulls your arms above your head, lowering his mouth to where the movement pulls up your t-shirt.
even stronger than his grip, you can feel the love and reverence in his touch. and that's the real romance, you think, the true pleasure to take from a man's strength. genuine love had been the element that your bodice ripper had been missing so far, you think—before shouto gives you several other things to think about, and no coherent sense to think them with.
