Chapter 3: Chapter 3

“Why are you so sappy?” Yazid asked.

“You started it.”

Yazid snorted and grinned again.

“What do you say,” Ali whispered, tracking his lips in little kisses up the side of Yazid’s face, “that we stay in, get the takeaway of your choice, say fuck your healthy regime for once, and pretend for one night that it’s just us, and it’s been six easy years, and cancer doesn’t exist. Just you and me and a clothes ban.”

Yazid laughed, and pushed Ali off to slide sideways onto the mattress. “You’re already halfway to a clothes ban,” he said, and heaved himself up off the bed. He was still leaner than Ali strictly liked, his skin still oddly naked from the way he’d lost all his body hair through the chemotherapy and it had grown back in—unlike his head hair—thinner than before. But he was finally better, and to Ali he’d never looked more beautiful.