A mental snap occurs as you wake; barely enough to urge you to move, yet plenty to help you recollect. You are still soaked in the half-abandoned remnants of sleep, but as your vision fills with the pale blue of the ceiling, you concede with a groan—it’s morning.

It’s morning and there’s an entire day ahead of you.

You squint at the mere thought of various activities threatening to hold your attention in the next twenty-four hours, already pining for what you love most in this world: rest. Recently, you’ve found it difficult to cope with the stresses of being in school—you are young, reluctant, and can name several places you’d rather be, if provoked.

With a proper, peeved sigh, you shift to your side and shut off the alarm clock sitting atop your bedside table—no need for it now.  Just before you prop yourself up and drag yourself out, freeing yourself of the crease-filled sea of sheets that is your king-size, there is a grab at your wrist.

You turn, automatically, to the figure lying beside you.

Honestly, you find it would be a shame to disrupt the state he’s in, wrapped up in your lamb-printed (gift from Mother) blanket, eyes still stubbornly closed. His long fingers are gripping your wrist, nevertheless, with much force.

“What?” You ask quietly, as if he wasn’t already awake.

He doesn’t answer for a while and keeps squeezing his eyes together, harder each time. He his thin yet sufficiently full lips and lets out a thinned down groan. It’s always a little different, how he speaks in the morning. “Where you going?” He finally asks, his voice raspy and hoarse.

“I have school.” You answer plainly, setting your hand down on the cover.

He scowls, pulling it off perfectly as though it was you who’d done it, as though he were fully awake. He begins to open his eyes, revealing tiny black orbs. Set against the dark brown of his hair, they look sharper, even in the light. “You don’t want to go to school.” He tells you lazily, the combined calm and husk of his voice slowly inviting you.

“You don’t have to state the obvious,” You answer and attempt to shake off his clingy hand. “Now, I have to go get ready. Go back to sleep.”

He raises his eyebrows, still clutching you by the wrist. Suddenly, he tugs on it, pulling you a few inches closer back into the bed—back to him. “You don’t want to go to school.” He repeats, before scattering kisses along the length of your forearm. “You want to stay here. With me.”

It takes a second for you to feel warmth building underneath your skin; it takes less to convince you to agree with him.

Before you know it, you’re underneath the same, tacky blanket, allowing Cho Kyuhyun’s regular breathing to feed sleep back into your system—which you’re not supposed to mind. And you don’t. With him, there’s not really much of a choice.