I leaned against the counter behind me, while Em leaned against my center mass. It made it easy to wrap my arm around her and pulling her in even closer to me so she could share a bit of her body warmth as I didn’t have any hot beverage to drink. It was somewhat of a ‘lewd position’ we were in, as Ria would say.

I finished my juice just after Em had finished her hot chocolate. She had to drink two cups as she had made a bit too much for just one cup, and I wasn’t about to start drinking milk any time soon.

“Are we going to go back upstairs now?” Em turned her head around and looked me in the eyes.

“Yeah, let’s relieve Shima from her hostage position.” I joked.

As Em pulled away from me, I gave her a love tap on her bum, granting me the treasure of Em’s pouty face.

“Sorry, couldn’t hold myself. I’ve had to hold back the entire evening, you see.”

Em rolled her eyes, leaned in, now facing towards me, and gave me a kiss. “I’m sure Claire and Anya wouldn’t have minded a bit more kissing.”

“Well… That’s probably true, but still, we need to be slightly classy.”

Em rolled her eyes once more and chuckled. “Alright, Miss Boucket.”

I snorted. “Fair enough.”

Before we went, I quickly washed my glass out so we didn’t leave any forensic evidence, and put it in the dishwasher for good measure. We shut off all the lights downstairs and did one quick check to see if all the doors were closed shut and the draft excluders were all in place. The house was well insulated, but the draft excluders did still help, especially on freezing nights like this.

Ria had commented that she wanted to buy some cat-shaped draft excluders but sadly enough, we didn’t have those yet so I still had to do with the couple of regular gray ones that I brought along from my last place. It wasn’t really a high-priority purchase, although Ria thinks otherwise.

We make our way upstairs, checking everything all the way up, not wanting to waste any energy of course. Not that because it’s expensive but because, well, you know, the environment. Until we reach our room, where Ria is still snoozing happily along with a just-as-happy Shima in her arms. Em just lit the room up a little with the torch of her smartphone and walked over to the bedroom window before turning it off and beckoning me over.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered not to wake up our girlfriend.

“While it’s very unsafe outside, it’s just so mystically beautiful, don’t you think?”

I looked outside the window and now with the lights off in our room we could see the outside even better than usual. The snow had really piled up high, almost completely covering the benches in the square in front of my house. The roads were barely visible. Everything tinged slightly orange by the street lighting. “I’m not going to deny that.” I shook my head and kneeled down. “I could look at this for a couple of hours before getting bored, that’s true.”

“I like snow.” Em commented. “Maybe not just as much as it is snowing now. But still. I know some people don’t like it because of the inconvenience, but I’m not one of those.”

“Yeah, a little bit of snow to get that nice white layer would be plenty fine, not too dangerous, not too disturbing.”

“Mhmm.” Em nodded and continued looking out of the window for another couple of minutes before she had enough. “Okay. Time for bed now.”

“We can always admire the snow some more tomorrow.”

“That’s for sure.” Em nodded once more. “I doubt that it’ll melt that fast.”

“If it even stops snowing in the first place…”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

We took our clothes off and got into bed with Ria and Shima. Shima wasn’t bothered at all by our presence and continued to just purr in my girlfriend’s arms. At least she wasn’t taking as much space as cats usually do. It did mean, however, that for once I wasn’t sleeping directly next to one of my girlfriends but next to Shima instead. Oh well, it always had been just the two of us before, I won’t die not sleeping next to my girlfriends for once.

Em managed to doze off relatively soon, as for me, that wasn’t really the case. But then again, I also didn’t really want to sleep that desperately. From where I was lying I had a pretty good view of the snowy weather outside, and just kept looking at it while enjoying some purry noises coming from next to me. Just laying there, looking at the relaxing snowfall outside with a comfy soundtrack to boot, it worked very meditating. So much so that before I knew it, the sun was starting to rise. Which was the signal for the little catto next to me that it was about time for her to wake up. Cats were crepuscular predators, after all. She wurmed herself from underneath Ria’s arm and once standing upright, stretched her body out long. Once she noticed that I was looking at her, she gave me a tiny mew.

“Sounds like you are still a little bit tired.” I whispered to my cat with a smile and gave her a quick scratch behind her ear. Resulting in some more, somewhat louder, purring.

She then continued to walk off, directly on top of both Ria and Em, because cats really don’t give one single shit about stepping on humans, before jumping off the bed and walking out of the little opening in the door we had left open for her yesterday evening.

To my surprise, that didn’t seem to wake up Ria or Em at all. Well, yesterday was a pretty tiring evening for them. Lots of chatting and having fun, after all. And for Em it took even longer.

It took another hour and a half before Ria started to move a little. She started by wiping the sand out of her eyes.

“Hmmm.” She moaned softly.

“Did you sleep well?” I asked silently, running my finger over her cheek.

“Myeah…” She smiled and took my hand, pressing it against her cheek. “When did Shima leave?”

“Just an hour or so ago. She slept with you through the entire night.”

Ria squinted a little. “Didn’t you get any sleep?”

“I didn’t need any.” I smiled back. “I was content enough just looking outside and being close to my three favorite hu… uh… entities?”

Ria snorted before she quickly covered her mouth, glancing back at Em who just kept sleeping undisturbed.

I rolled my eyes and smiled at Ria who was now blushy blushing.

“That’s really something I still have issues understanding. Not needing any sleep.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s good to give my mind some time off, but sometimes I also really don’t need or want to.”

“Hmm. It’s still hard to imagine.”

“I know.” I leant in to give her a kiss on her forehead. “But I think it’s harder to imagine not being hungry at all.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” She smiled. “I would be so confused if that happened to me.”

“Mhmm.” I nodded.

We fell silent for a couple of minutes before I started up the conversation again, of course still rather silently. “What would you do if you never had to sleep again?”

“Hmm.” Ria hummed and turned so she looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe I would read some manga and watch anime, but after a while I would probably have read and watched everything I wanted to.”

“Why not watch and read the ones you don’t want to?”

Ria puffed up her cheeks. “I don’t know if I could do that, to be honest.”

“Are you sure, you might get bored after a while?”

“Hmmm…. but watching things I don’t like? I still want to have fun, you know?”

“Yeah, I get you.” I smiled.

Ria now seemed really confused. “Then why were you pushing it so much?”

“I once saw a comment on a question like this on an internet forum. The person who replied said that they even consume media they dislike so they can learn things out of it.”

“...” Ria’s confusion didn’t seem to go away, on the contrary.

“Yeah, I don’t really understand that either. You don’t watch a film or play a game because you want to learn things out of it right? You consume it to entertain yourself.”

That’s when I saw the proverbial lightbulb ignite above Ria’s head. “But what if they dislike the piece of media but they like learning about it…”

“...”

“...”

Ria and I just stared at each other for a couple of seconds.

“So… the act of playing isn’t fun, but learning about the medium is?”

“I think so, yes.” Ria nodded.

“... That still seems strange to me.”

“To me too.” She agreed. “People are weird.”

“That’s true, and so are we. Just in a different way.”

“A lot of different ways.”

I smiled and booped my girlfriend on the nose. “Exactly.”