Chapter 55: Chapter 55

“Yeah, Nan?” he calls, and Alex digs his face into Ryan’s neck and shudders like he’s laughing silently. Which he probably is.

“If you’re not going to do the garden, wash up and run along,” she says, shaking her head fondly at him. “Go on, shoo. I need some peace to read my book anyway. And don’t track mud through the house.”

“It’s dry.”

“Don’t track it anyway.”

Ryan heaves Alex off him, and pins him for a moment in retaliation, before getting up and brushing the worst of the dirt off. Alex simply shakes his head, hard, to get it out of his hair, and ditches his shoes at the back door.

“I can’t tell,” Ryan says, as they head upstairs, still reasonably intertwined considering that they’re actually climbing the stairs without breaking their necks, “if she’s punishing us, or rewarding us.”

“Privacy,” Alex says, “and a bathroom.”

Ryan grins, and flattens him up against the bathroom door to kiss him fiercely again. “I like your thinking.”