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He could have given Harley her gift at anytime. He could have waited until Christmas morning, which would have made sense, given the nature of the gift, but instead, Zeke had chosen the night before Christmas, on a whim, in the middle the night. While Harley was asleep in his bed, curled up warm beside him. He couldn't have said why exactly. The idea had struck him, and he'd acted on it.

Like the year before, Zeke had done his shopping, what littler of it there was, early. He had everything ready to hand out when the time presented itself, and Harley's gift was no different. It was stashed in a little box in a desk drawer, and he had to slip out of bed to grab it. Thankfully, the girl was a heavy sleeper once she was out, so he could have damn near knocked her to the floor and she wouldn't have woken up. It meant slipping out from under her arm to grab the box from the desk, and slipping back in again without her doing so much as sighing in response.

Settled again, Zeke took the little handcrafted ring from the box and reached for her right hand, ready to slip it onto her slender ring finger so she'd find it when she woke up. Instead, at the lats moment, he reached for her left hand, a wicked sort of grin cutting across his lips. She was bond to make jokes regardless, he knew her well enough to know that, so why not just take it to the next step?

Pressing a kiss to her temple, he slid the tentacle ring onto her finger, sank back down beneath the sheet beside her, and drew her lithe frame back in against his body, drifting off to sleep only moments after.

Zeke awoke to a less than gentle palm landing on the side of his face. It pulled a grunt from the Mist, sent him retreating into the pillow with a turn of his head a low, unhappy grumble as she groped at his shoulder. Always a heavy sleeper, and always tired, he never seemed to wake very gracefully.

His name made him sigh, and after a second shoulders rounded in defeat as he turned his head so he could peer up at him out the corner of his eye. The majority of his face still buried in the soft plush pillow.

Not entirely awake yet, he forgot for a moment what he'd done the night before, so her comment was puzzling in a way that rugged at something unpleasant at the pit of his stomach. "What are you talking about?" His voice was gruff, and punctuated with a yawn as he pushed himself up on his elbows.

It was a challenge to collect his thoughts through the fog of lingering drowsiness that persisted upon his waking, and it showed. Brows pinched, breath leaving in a grunt of a sigh, he stared blankly up at her for a long moment before just shaking his head and rolling onto his side.

As her hand moved he caught a flash of metal, and he remembered then the gift. Again that uncomfortable tug, but now he wondered if maybe he'd taken things a touch too far with placing the ring on that finger. Or hell, if it was the ring itself. They weren't dating. They were something, definitely, but it was undefined and free, and maybe giving her a bunch of jewelry was just a little too much for her comfort zone.

Not that any of these thoughts crossed the Mist's bleary features. He continued to stare mutely up at her for a long handful of seconds even after she'd finished speaking, letting his mind wake up a little more fully before actually responding with some level of intelligence. "And why is that?"

Vague wariness turned into all out exasperation, his expression melting from curious to somewhere close to irritation, and as she moved to leave the bed, he was already pushing up in preperation to loop an arm around her waste to drag her back to him.

Instead she asked about him being her mistress, and the Mist paused, if for only a moment. The grouchy frown softened, smoothing into something thoughtful. "Wouldn't bother me."

With that he reached for her, strong arm curling around her waist and dragging her back in against his side. "So, who's the lucky man?" A pause, brief, then an addendum. "Or woman."

Now that they were on familiar ground again, and he was more or less awake enough to keep up, his mood was significantly better. It also could have been the warm weight of the slender girl cuddled up against his side again. He stroked his fingers along her thigh in a light brush, chuckling softly.

"You know, you probably know them." With his free hand he reached for her's, holding it up so the metal caught the dim light. "Pretty fancy. Do you like it?"

"Only one, huh? Do I know them?" There was a lazy, knowing sort of smile on the man's fast that was lost somewhere between smugness and the lingering grogginess of having been so rudely awakened.She shifted, and his hands moved in a slow slid across her sides, until they came to a rest on her hips as she leaned in to kiss him.

"Not sure he'd care," he answered honestly. It wasn't like anything would have changed with the dynamic between any of relationships, if he ever did get married. And that was a very large IF. He wasn't going to put much effort into arguing the semantics with her though, since ultimately it didn't matter. It was a Christmas present, but a wedding band, no matter how much that joke might get tossed around.

His warm fingers found her chin as she giggled, thumb sliding up along the edge of her jaw as she promised to make it up to him, and he smiled up at her, brows arching in obvious interest. "Oh, can you? And how do you intend to do that?"