Love Is Always Write Volume 4

her morning nap, slipped down the side of the bed and mrowed her way into the kitchen.
    "I really don't think you have anything to worry about," Jonathan said. "First of all, I haven't been straight since that one night in high school. And second—"
    Jonathan was cut off with a biting kiss flavored like toothpaste and coffee. "Good morning, husband," he said, smiling.
    "Good morning, husband," Stacy said, moving back just enough to speak against Jonathan's lips before diving in again for a throat-swabbing kiss, not noticing—or not caring about—Jonathan's morning breath that had only been slightly covered up by a cup of Earl Grey.
    "So what are your plans today?" Stacy asked, fixing his cuffs.
    Jonathan sighed languidly, stretching out on top of the duvet in a perfect imitation of the feline lounging in the doorway. "Well, I'll probably watch the latest TiVo-ed episode of Breakout Kings , and then I have to finish my strips for the next couple of weeks. My editor is screeching at me to have them in at least a week prior to publication now. Particularly since I have to earn an honest living, now, thanks to someone who shall remained unnamed."
    Stacy smirked at him from across the room, tying his red and purple tie in a full Windsor. "Well, far be it for me to be the stick in the mud, monsieur libertine , but there are only so many pieces of precious and infamous jewelry that one career cat burglar can thieve without getting caught. I was just lucky enough your number came up under my clock."
    "Hmm," Jonathan agreed, "though at the time I recall you not thinking on it so fondly."
    "Well, I was peeved that the boy I'd been dating for five months was the same thief that had my unit on its toes three nights a week," Stacy said with a grimace.
    Jonathan let a wicked smile seep over his face. He waited until Stacy was draining the last of his coffee to add, "Eye for an eye. You didn't mind having me on my knees the rest of the week."
    As predicted, Stacy half-choked as he breathed in a quick laugh and with it no small amount of coffee. He glared at Jonathan over the bath towel that he was using to cough into and keep his oxford and tie pristine.
    Jonathan flashed his pearly whites and slid to his feet, padding into the living room with an airy, "Kiss, kiss."
    By the time Stacy was done dressing in his blazer and boots, hair styled just enough to look un-styled, Jonathan was curled on the couch with a bowl of Magic Stars and Jimmi Simpson's sly psychobabble deconstructing federal cons.
    "How can you watch that? You're a real ex-con. Surely the romance has ended?" Stacy said, unable to bear the dramatic officers and the good-hearted, but darkly-damaged, cons.
    Jonathan shrugged. "Maybe I'm hoping to see our romance re-imagined by Hollywood's finest." He grinned up as his husband was grabbing the tidbits left for work. Unfurling from the couch, half-empty bowl abandoned on the coffee table, Jonathan leaned up against Stacy's winter leather jacket. "Miss you," he said, lifting his head for a final goodbye peck, "Don't go falling in love with any of your perps, you hear?"
    Stacy laughed, wrapping Jonathan close, enjoying the familiar, permanent feel of him. "I got all the ex-con I need right here. Lord knows, I can barely handle one of you, much less two."
    Jonathan grinned ear to ear, watching Stacy out of the corner of his eye as his husband slipped out of their house.
    The television only succeeded in capturing his attention for the one show. He had learned quickly at Livingston, his medium security home for eighteen months, that there was absolutely nothing worth watching on daytime TV. So when the con was safely re-incarcerated with a pretty five years topped on his sentence, Jonathan groaned his way to his feet and began his own workday.
    Nearly twenty years as a thief of one kind or another did not prepare one for functioning in normal society. But Jonathan had taken his time in prison to explore his childhood passion for drawing. He was no savant at it, and probably his comics wouldn't even become as syndicated as Calvin and Hobbes , but it pulled in a neat monthly allowance, more so in the last half-year. He was pulling in a full two to two-and-a-half thousand a month. It wasn't much, but since marrying and subsequently moving in with Stacy, he'd been able to squirrel away a few hundred every month in the hopes of one day taking his hubby on the honeymoon they'd never gotten.
    When Jonathan sat down at his drawing