hypnomicimagines:

“Look who turned up on my doorstep again.”

You’re surprised you even managed to get a word out before Rei crushed his lips against yours, the feeling of his facial hair rubbing against your face swiftly bringing you back to reality. You grabbed ahold of his black fur coat and pulled him into your apartment away from your nosy neighbors potentially prying eyes, not needing to answer their questions about your ‘gentleman caller who’s always dressed quite extravagantly’. You also never knew how long Rei would be around, learning to cherish every single moment you had with him while you had it. He purposely left out why he disappeared for weeks at a time but you didn’t know if you wanted to be privy to that information and he wasn’t exactly offering it up on a silver platter.

“What were you up to?” His eyes slid over to the half-decorated tree in your living room, the lights blinking erratically as you had plugged something in wrong; you were in the middle of solving that problem before more trouble came literally knocking upon your door and here you were now, your two problems staring each other in the face.

“Decorating for the holiday season,” You sighed as you wiggled out of his arms, reaching into the tree to unplug the lights, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing apparently. They’re supposed to just be one color but I’m not doing something right.”

Rei is staring at the tree with a distant look in his eyes and you were almost tempted to ask him if he remembered the days where he’d decorate a tree with his family but a gut feeling stopped you. The unreadable expression on his face was also a sign that any question you asked now would either go in one ear and out the other or would be blatantly ignored without a care for your hurt feelings in the process. You had learned when to pry, when to ask questions, when Rei was telling you the truth or when he was concocting some made up fairy tale to cover up what his past actually consisted of. It’s not like he was your boyfriend, you really didn’t have a right to know, right?

So why did it bother you so much that this man could sleep with you yet he couldn’t give you one truly personal detail about himself?

“Since you’re taller than me can you at least put this on top of the tree? I can’t find my stepladder to do it myself.” Rei stared at the angel Christmas topper in your hand for a moment too long and you worried for a second you had offended him, pulling it away from him but finding your movements stopped by his hand on your wrist. He took the topper from you and carefully placed it on top of the tree, amusing you with how determined he was to set it straight and assure it was in its proper position.

“…I had kids before. Decorated with them once or twice.”

You almost got whiplash from how quickly Rei let out that little detail and you stumbled over your words as you tried to come up with something to say in response; you knew he was old enough to have kids but you hadn’t expected someone like him to have actually stayed with his family. You wondered how different he was now than he was back then, you wondered where his kids were now and if they knew anything about their dad (or if he was an enigma to them like he was to you) but Rei is quick to distract you from these thoughts. He had never meant for that to slip out and though it felt good to tell someone something genuine about himself it also filled him with paranoia, knowing it was stupid to think back on those memories while he was around another person.

“I’ll help you finish decorating later…” Rei murmured against your lips, a promise he did intend to fulfill as he was in the Christmas spirit, having fully planned on spending the night here with you. He hadn’t let you in on that quite yet as he wanted to get a feel for how welcome he was in your home but from how needy your kisses were and how your fingers dug into his shirt, he had a feeling you wouldn’t be kicking him out anytime soon. “Why don’t you have a seat on my lap? We can practice how you’ll ask for your presents.”

“You’re a dirty old man, you know that?” You asked as though you weren’t straddling him right away, lower body tingling with excitement at what was to come (you, hopefully, multiple times if he was in a giving mood). “You’ll really help me decorate my tree after?”

“Have I ever not followed through on a promise?”

It was a fair enough question, Rei didn’t often promise you anything at all, every thing that he did promise coming to fruition sooner or later even if it didn’t seem like it would.

“I will,” Rei smirked as he leaned back, beginning to unbutton the rest of his shirt, “But you’ll have to earn my hard work first.”