Ilya looks up from his book. Shane has his legs strewn over Ilya's knees, lying back on the couch they bought for the cottage's back patio. The chairs and loveseat that had been here previously hadn't allowed them to get comfy and close enough for long, lazy summer afternoons like this.
"How many hours do you think we have spent kissing?" he asks.
Shane scrunches his face. "Why?"
"A thousand?" Ilya suggests, ignoring the question.
"Maybe." Shane sets to actually calculating it. They're been married for three years, after three years of dating and about ten of... whatever they were doing before that. There are some days when they probably kiss for hours, slow makeouts that aren't even leading to sex. Other days, their sex is hungry and fast and they kiss through it, equaling at least thirty minutes of lip-to-lip contact. 3 years of living together is over a thousand days, so if you were to average it—
"Five thousand?" Ilya interrupts Shane's train of thought.
"Maybe. That sounds like a lot."
"Is not enough, though," Ilya shrugs. "We need ten thousand."
"Says who?" Shane laughs and moves his right foot to gently poke Ilya's stomach.
"Says me. And Malcolm Gladwell," he holds up his book and then reads directly from it. "In order to achieve true mastery in a field, you must dedicate ten thousand hours of practice to it."
Shane rolls his eyes. "You're an expert at kissing, I promise."
"No, science does not agree," Ilya sets the book down on the wicker table next to him and moves Shane's legs so he can climb on top of his husband. "Let's add one more hour now," he says as he brings their mouths together, and the promise of five thousand more hours of this glows like a ray of sunlight in Shane's chest.
