Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 365. Natural

My breath caught in my throat, and my heart somersaulted; I didn’t really know how to react to such sweet words.

Being a protector naturally sounds better than being a murderer.

Still.

"Cringy," I whispered breathlessly, only to hear Henry chuckle deeply and smooch my cheek.

Cupping my face and showing his penetrating blue eye color, he looked at me as if he was my biggest believer, carrying a conviction that went beyond religious.

"It’s the truth."

There was a long moment when I stared at his beautiful eyes, spellbound, with my thoughts halting and time feeling nonexistent, before Henry closed in and kissed my lips in the most tender way.

To make things so nice and slow was neither my style nor his, but my body reacted with butterflies in the stomach and all this cringy stuff.

I hadn’t thought I had that in me.

Kissed into a daze, I also responded with slow and gentle movements, tasting the sweetness of cotton candy that should be long gone but somehow was still transmitted to my taste buds.

Henry seemed to agree with my thoughts, as part of him not only stood vigorously yet again but also because of the way he moaned hungrily yet also satisfied.

When all these cringy feelings were too much for me, I grabbed his shoulders and forced him away before taking a few steps away from him to gather my breath.

Henry ran his fingers over his lips in a deadly sexy way, delivering another critical hit to my heart.

"We should slow down in the future." He mumbled absentmindedly while I tried to regain my wits again.

"Go to our bathroom and take care of yourself," I told him, and his eyes fell from me, briefly glancing at my crotch, noting that I was just as excited as he was.

Still, I needed a moment without him—not to jerk off, but to break the spell that fucker had cast on me.

I was already ready to throw him out, but unexpectedly he nodded and left the bathroom, only to turn around, cup my face, peck me all over the face, and then leave for good.

I chuckled and let the lounge chair disappear, noticing that there was still water under it, and conjuring up a few towels.

I walked to the sink and washed my face for the much-needed coolness, then I walked around inside the bathroom and stopped again.

"Fuck." I covered my face and tried to get a grip.

This over-the-top giddiness and this scalding anticipation were absolutely new to me.

Now I understood why people lose it over someone they want, degrading themselves or paying a price higher than they intended to uphold certain relationships.

Not only because of possessiveness, obsession, and lust... there was also that other thing that got your hormones all over the place.

I instantly stopped my thoughts and sighed, allowing myself to fall back onto the lounge chair.

"Goddamn it." Yes, yes, another skid because I forgot that I had put the chair back into the past.

Very good.

Looking up through the open bathroom door into the room, I was relieved that at least nobody saw this fucking embarrassment I had mutated into.

And again I was lucky not to bump my head and render myself unconscious.

I cursed some more and put the towels away, only to conjure up fresh ones, and after this round, the bathroom was sparkling happily.

"I will never set foot inside this bathroom ever again," I left behind as a promise after going out to my next task.

This damn bathroom had been more of a challenge than the fucking parallel worlds, and now it became another reason not to move out from the green room and into this one.

Because I really won’t go inside there ever again.

I gathered the earthy and sandy pillows and the blanket in the middle and pulled the sheet out from under the mattress, making it into a big sack.

Though it was a good thing that the old mummy had enough conscience to give Henry and me each a room with a king-size bed/mattress, it was now also more annoying to clean up.

With the sack on my back, I left the room only to find Henry in the corridor.

He welcomed me with a smile.

"Santa?"

"Mhm, I am here to bring you beatings," I laughed, ignoring the sudden nervousness I felt in his presence, and walked towards the entrance.

"Where are you going?" Danny popped out from nowhere and ran to me, only for Henry to step in between us.

"Why are you constantly coming in between us?" Danny asked with a growl.

"Since when were you an ’us’?" Henry shot back while I stood with the sack on my back behind him.

"We were an ’us’ since we were friends MUCH longer than you two have been." Danny got so agitated that he sounded as if he would cry soon.

"And? We are now best friends, so I am above you." Ah, Henry made a low punch there, not only regarding the closeness of friendship but also because Danny was the shortest in our friend group ... and in this whole house.

Even Emma was taller than him.

"Whaaat???" Danny screeched, and I got so annoyed that I bypassed them both and left the house on my own.

Back in the garden, I walked around the house, hearing both of them arguing and coming after me, Danny constantly demanding that I tell Henry the facts.

In the end, I was behind the house and asked myself why I walked that far even though I just wanted to shake off the sand, which I could have done in front of the door, but then I remembered that I was half fleeing from the two of them.

So I put everything down in the grass and opened my sack to take out the pillows first and shake them out.

"Henry saved me more often than you guys." After I said that, it went deathly silent, and Danny looked at me, ready to bite his nonexistent handkerchief with grief, while Henry’s imaginary tail waggled happily as he came to my side and hugged me from behind.

He did not really stop me from doing the pillow shaking, but he didn’t help either, just like a real, very obedient dog.

I chuckled at the comparison.

"You!!!" Danny pointed at Henry or at me, speechless enough to come up with something to say.

"I WILL REMEMBER THAT!" he screamed while running away like a third-rate villainous extra.

I laughed so hard that I nearly got a stomachache, while Henry stepped aside and took away the pillows from my hands.

"I won." He announced proudly, and I nodded.

"You won, you won." I assured him, instead of pointing out that winning against a kid isn’t really winning... though Danny should be older than we are, but he was still as dramatic.

Inside the back garden was a bit of space and even an old Hollywood swing that was perfect for two but also looked a bit like tetanus.

The sun was still standing high, but it wasn’t as cold.

With the clear sky, the good weather, and the old house in the midst of nowhere, this was the perfect setting for the beginning of a horror film.

The calm where everything was good and dandy, before the monsters jumped out.

I didn’t think so because I had one of my premonitory feelings, but it was just the good old paranoia. Everything peaceful seemed too peaceful, everything good seemed too good, and even the bright sunlight in a beautiful landscape felt as if it was foreshadowing threatening darkness.

What absolutely didn’t help was also the chemical smell that still hung in the air, albeit me not noticing any of it from inside the house.

"Why does it smell so chemical-like? It’s been there since we came back." I asked Henry.

"Ethan told me that the government tried to get rid of the rats with a chemical solution that they discarded from helicopters around the city. It didn’t work." He grinned with schadenfreude.

"And it doesn’t harm people?" I raised my eyebrows. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"They say no. And because of that, it shouldn’t have worked on the rats either."

"Huh."

Mystery solved, but it still smelled awfully toxic.

I looked down at the grass that was too high and should get trimmed, proof that not even plants had been harmed by the chemical solution, and by noting the overlength, I had found another way to get busy for now if I didn’t want to do the deal that would force me to go and hunt rats.

The blanket and bedsheet were soon also free from sand... mostly, so I pulled the blanket out of the cover and did the same with the pillows.

With Henry carrying the uncovered stuff and me the dirty covers, we walked back inside, and I put the covers in the washing machine.

It was somehow a high-end machine, and every time I put the program in, it didn’t take it, as if it had a grudge against me.

When I was short on smashing that thing, Henry came behind me and silently pressed the ’enter’ button after putting the program in; then it worked.

"I have lived too long without electronics; now I don’t know my way around them anymore." I grumbled, and Henry pulled me up to hug me from behind while laughing at me.

I had a good look at the mirror and saw our reflection in it.

Seeing two men hugging intimately would have been a turn-off a few years back, but seeing us both in the roles of these two intimate men didn’t seem as off-putting anymore.

It seemed somewhat natural, although it was anything but.

Henry also looked at our reflection, bending down so that he was at the same height as me.

"We look good..."

I could feel the word ’together’ he had omitted at the end of his sentence with every fiber of my being, as if he was transmitting it without speaking it out.

Hmm...

Maybe we really looked good...

Maybe it did not only seem but actually was natural to be...