Just a one-shot that came when I was wandering around my kitchen at night, looking for edible sugary things. Enjoy.

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It’s late at night and Zach’s eyelids are kinda heavy but he can’t seem to sleep. He’d love to, to be sure, but once again Kale’s keeping him up. Only this time it’s for a favor.

The soles of Zach’s feet are hot against the cold tile, padding soundlessly over the white surface, and his legs are taking him to the kitchen where he knows it will be hard to see and harder to find anything at all. There’s a rosy light, glowing opaque from a rock-crystal lamp somewhere around here in that little niche in the wall, shedding warm luminescence on the kitchen. Now it’s easier to see, but as Zach starts in front of the row of cherry-colored cabinets on the wall he’s still confused.

First a bowl, and his fingers open the cabinet on the far right and he’s greeted with shelves of cups and crystalline glasses. He blinks at them once, twice. He’s forgetful, that’s what he does: he forgets. And he knows the bowls are in the next cabinet over, so he finds them on the second try.

Now spoons, and his hands slide down the edge of the marble counter to drop lightly against the cool metal handles on a drawer that he tugs on expectantly. And there he’s faced with not the silverware he was expecting but knickknacks, odds and ends, random objects that no one could bring themselves to throw away. He remembers now that the drawer he wants is to the left of this one, and he opens that one and listens for the clink of metal against his nails.

The object of Kale’s desire came next, and that was one thing Zach could be sure of. He can clearly see the outline of the bulky refrigerator, stainless steel distorting reflections in its awkward hard-to-clean grain. Pale, fake light illuminates the inside of the fridge and makes him blink hard against the sudden brightness. When he squints he can see the boxes of ice cream through his lashes, and he picks and box and brings it to his face. Not the right one, he knows, and finds the correct choice on his third try.

His fingers are cold, chills spreading up his arms as he traces delicate ditches into the unmarred cream. He doesn’t spill anything, because he knows he’ll have to clean it up and he hates to clean. He likes everything the way it is, like the way the box leaves a faint rectangle of condensation when he picks it up and puts it back in the freezer-fridge.

Zach takes the bowl in his hands carefully, placing the spoon near the edge of the blue plastic rim, and pushes the door shut with his foot. Darkness floods his vision once more and he blinks again, his eyes adjusting quickly enough with the help of the fiery pink-lemonade light emanating from that lamp somewhere around.

Once again his feet are retracing the path back to where he’d come from, a bedroom that he knew well enough. And when his palm rests against a knob still retaining traces of warmth from when he’d closed it he knows he hasn’t made a mistake this time. Definitely not when his toes are buried into a pair of jeans that he remembers somewhat, although that makes him let out a murmur of surprise and at the corner of his sight something stirs.

"Coming, Zachy?" Zach barely shivers, sidestepping the mound of clothes he knows to be there and going toward a voice he knows, a voice he would never forget for anything in the world. When he sits down on the bed an arm circles around his waist, its twin taking the bowl now shimmering with arctic perspiration from his hands; arms Zach could tell you every last detail of, from what size rings those fingers wore or what scar was where.

"Love you," and it’s Kale’s voice, Zach knows, Zach feels, and he’s in love with that sound all over again. There’s a mouth pressing against his jaw, a mouth Zach has memorized, and that makes him smile.

"Love you, too."

And Zach falls into a sleep that’s pure exhaustion and memory and Kale, and Kale is one thing he can never forget.