Summary: After a fight, Kenji and Sutton talk and Kenji persuades her to be late.
Kenji is not a morning person. Sutton almost always wakes before him, usually with him completely wrapped around her. As much as she loves burrowing under the blankets, and Kenji’s warmth encompassing her, she can only lay there for so long before she’s restless and ready to get up for the day. She tries, every time, to inch her way out from Kenji’s embrace without waking him, but she hasn’t managed yet.
He always grumbles when he feels her move away, his grip tightening. He also usually convinces her to stay in bed, with warm lips and hands roaming across her skin, pulling her pajamas off, and whispers of why she shouldn’t get up quite yet in her ear. But this morning, he’s in a dead sleep, barely making a sound when Sutton lifts his arm up and slips out of bed. She’s still exhausted, but her brain is on overdrive, so she gets up.
She quietly makes her way into his kitchen, starting a pot of coffee and inhaling the strong aroma. Kenji teases her relentlessly about her coffee addiction, usually while he’s sipping his tea and she’s on her third or fourth cup.
One weekend when she stayed over, she found the new coffee maker in his kitchen. He actually flushed, just a little bit, at how profusely she’d thanked him and wrapped him in a tight hug.
“Now I don’t have to go out at six in the morning to get you coffee,” he said with a shrug.
“I never made you go out at six,” Sutton retorted.
“Oh, right. It was six thirty,” he said, grinning at her, until she tackled him on to his couch and wiped the smirk off his face with slow, deep kisses and her hips pressing into his.
When the coffee is ready, Sutton pours a cup and heads into Kenji’s bathroom, sipping the hot liquid and blasting the water until the room is full of steam, then strips out of her pajamas and climbs into the shower. The hot water feels good on her tired muscles, and she rests her forehead on the cool tile, letting the water pound into her back and shoulders. She’s pretty sure she falls asleep for a minute, startling when she hears the shower curtain pull open. Kenji steps in, his hands digging into her shoulders.
“Oh, that feels good,” she moans, leaning back into him.
He doesn’t say a word, just keeps kneading at her sore muscles. When she turns around, he doesn’t look irritated, but she knows him well enough by now to tell that he is, at least a little bit.
“Are you still mad at me?” she asks, hesitantly reaching her hand out to trace a water droplet across his clavicle and down his chest.
“I’m not mad anymore,” he says in a low voice. “But I’m not happy, Sutton.”
She chews on her lip nervously, glancing down at the water swirling down the drain. “I know,” she finally says. “I just-“
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Kenji interrupts her. “We fought about it all night.”
They did, and she hates it. They’ve fought before, of course, but this is probably the worst so far. She understands where he’s coming from, even agrees, to an extent, but she still hates it. He’s furious that she asked Caleb to work with them. It had been strictly out of a necessity to have more numbers, to have more manpower when Silas and Shrapnel inevitably come after them, but she knows Kenji sees it as a betrayal of sorts.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters.
Kenji tilts her chin up, looking at her sincerely. “You don’t need to keep apologizing.”
He leans in, brushing his mouth over hers and wrapping his arms loosely around her back. Kenji makes a face when he pulls back. “Do you know what time it is? How have you had coffee already?”
Sutton smiles, tapping him playfully on the nose. “It’s never too early for coffee.”
“Six in the morning is too early.”
“Never.”
Kenji shakes his head wryly, tightening his arms around her and kissing her again. “Hey,” he murmurs against her mouth. “I’m not mad anymore, okay? I don’t like this. But I don’t want to keep fighting with you.”
“I don’t like fighting with you,” she admits, looping her arms around his neck, sighing at the feel of his warm, wet skin against hers.
“I do like the making up part though,” Kenji says with a smirk, and Sutton narrows her eyes before nipping at his lip.
“Funny,” she retorts, but she’s smiling.
He motions for her to turn around, sudsing up a washcloth with the strawberry scented body wash she left here last time she stayed over. Her eyes close as he washes her back, gliding across her arms and down her legs, then spins her back around. Kenji smiles suggestively as he drops the washcloth, running his soapy hands over her chest and stomach instead.
Sutton laughs as he tickles over her ribs, then pushes his hands away and ducks under the water to rinse off. He washes off quickly while she shampoos her hair, lifting an eyebrow curiously when she grabs his shampoo bottle when they’re done.
She gestures for him to duck his head down, and he closes his eyes as she lathers the suds through his thick, dark hair. He sighs in pleasure as she lightly scratches her nails over his scalp and down the back of his neck, then cups his face with her soapy hands and presses her lips to his. Kenji grins slowly as she pulls away and he opens his eyes. She watches him rinse the shampoo out, eyes following the rivulets of soap and water as they make their way down his chest and stomach, then lower…
“Hey,” Kenji says in a playfully scolding tone, and Sutton jumps.
That damn cocky look he wears so well is on his face as he presses her back against the cool tile, his lips hovering over hers for a second before she impatiently leans forward and kisses him. Kenji grins against her lips as they kiss more insistently, his hands roaming up and down her sides, around her back, her eyes drifting closed as he glides his hands over the tops of her thighs.
“Sutton,” he rumbles against her, tilting her head to the side and running his lips over her neck.
He stills his hands, and she scowls as she opens her eyes. “What?”
“Is that your phone?”
“Oh, shit!” she exclaims, turning the water off and darting out to grab a towel.
Kenji yelps as the cold air hits him, snatching a towel off the rack and wrapping it around his hips.
“I promised Poppy I’d meet her this morning. I have to get ready,” Sutton says with a groan, yanking a brush through her hair.
Kenji watches her in amusement as she hurriedly gets ready, sauntering over and blocking her way when she tries to grab her clothes.
“Kenji,” she laughs. “I’m going to be late.”
“Tell her there was traffic,” Kenji suggests, tugging at the knot in her towel until it loosens and drops to the floor.
His lips on her neck are oh-so-tempting, his hands tickling across her hips before wrapping around her waist.
“She knows that pretty much means you distracted me,” she protests weakly, feeling herself giving in as he brings his mouth up to hers.
“So?” he asks, smiling when her hands wander down his stomach, seemingly of their own accord, until she drops the towel from around his hips.
“I was late last time I met her,” Sutton says.
Kenji shrugs, pressing his lips to hers again. “I believe we have some making up to do,” he murmurs, his tongue seeking entrance to her mouth.
She’s having a harder and harder time thinking about being on time for anything when Kenji is kissing her like this and his fingers are so easily finding the sensitive spots across her skin. He walks them backwards to his bed, and she groans when he lifts her on to it and climbs over her.
“And we’re both anxious,” Kenji says in a low voice. “We should probably burn off some of this energy.”
He’s very persuasive, kissing her deeply, pulling her thigh up around his hip.
“Have I convinced you yet?” he asks, kissing his way up to her ear.
“You got me back in the bed, didn’t you?” she grumbles, but there’s a smile on her face when he moves back up to kiss her.
Kenji chuckles, pressing her into the bed. “I always win that game, Sutton.”
Oh, she knows, but right now…she’s not complaining.