Chapter Text
Cotton has been hatching a plan for weeks. A great plan that must be a success with minimal chance of failure, and it all has to come together on Valentine's Day. It may be a bit of a cliché, but Cotton never was a man who didn't count on good kind of clichés.
The first and indisputably the hardest part of his plan is to wake up before Jerry does. That's nearly impossible because Jerry always wakes up before Cotton. He has already had the time to brew a pot of coffee and have a morning smoke and read half the newspaper by the time Cotton finally drags his sleepy ass out of bed. He can't use an alarm clock: Jerry will wake up to it, and Cotton will not. He considers all kinds of noises that are out of norm, like putting some really weird ringtone on his phone and asking Ramona or someone to call him when he needs to wake up, but he doubts it'll wake him up, and it will most definitely wake Jerry up, because the man is a light sleeper. There's the problem: it's very unlikely Cotton can even sneak out of the bed without Jerry waking up to the tremors in the mattress or shifting of covers.
He considers getting Jerry very drunk the previous evening so that he will be so out of it he won't wake up even if someone were to drop a bomb on their house. But that would be mean, and he doesn't want Jerry to be hungover in the morning during his great, amazing plan.
He thinks about coming up with some reason for needing to stay the night somewhere else, but he still needs to get back to their apartment before it's time for Jerry to get up, and Jerry really wakes up to the smallest of sounds, especially if he's waiting for Cotton to come back home. And if he's not expecting Cotton to come home that day, he might wake up still because the front door opening and closing would be a very suspicious sound and Jerry is usually very aware of sounds that shouldn't be there.
The only plan he comes up with is to just persistently stay awake the entire night without alerting Jerry to the fact that he is in fact awake. He needs to be in the bedroom and in the bed, and a possible target for unconscious nightly cuddling, otherwise there's the possibility that Jerry will wake up because something (that is Cotton not being in the bed) feels wrong. He can't have lights on because that might wake Jerry up. He would have to stay still without doing anything for six to eight hours while being very tired, so in the end the whole plan sounds horrible.
He goes with it anyway. He starts reading the first book of the Game of Thrones book series around bedtime, and when Jerry naturally asks Cotton why is he suddenly reading something (Cotton is really not the reading type), Cotton just replies with a wink that maybe it has as much sex in it as the TV series. Jerry chuckles, tells Cotton he is going to be very disappointed, and sets out to sleep.
So far so good.
The book actually keeps Cotton entertained for a couple of hours at least, but then he starts to get sleepy, so he reaches for his laptop, plugs in the earbuds and starts watching some action movie. He watches two, and during the first one Jerry wakes up wondering why in the world Cotton is still awake in the middle of the night. Cotton quickly alttabs to word processor and the file he had opened just in case this happened, and explains that he forgot he had some work-related stuff due next day, so he's working on it now. Jerry sleepily accepts the explanation and cuddles close to Cotton, falling back asleep. Cotton finishes the movie, watches another one and he still has at least an hour to spend deathly tired next to his boyfriend he really wants to cuddle back, but if he does that he is certainly going to gonk out immediately and so much for his great, amazing, awesome Valentine's Day plan.
He goes back to the Game of Thrones and prays to all known gods that Jerry won't wake up anymore. When the clock is finally half past six and it's half an hour to Jerry's alarm, Cotton closes the book and once again prays to all known gods that he can get out of bed scot-free.
He slides off the bed like he's made of jell-o , ending up crouching on the floor, but at least Jerry still seems to be fast asleep and so Cotton sneaks to the bedroom door he left ajar in the evening, and slips past it, closing it as quietly as possible. It wouldn't be nice if Jerry woke up to the sounds coming from the kitchen either.
Then he sets his plan in the motion. He lays the table: two plates, knives and forks, cups for coffee and glasses for water, two red roses in a vase he hid in the walk-in closet the day before so that Jerry wouldn't see them. He sets the day's newspaper next to Jerry's plate. He makes sure everything's spotless and clean and the carpet's straight and the curtains drawn, and then he sets to making breakfast. Nothing fancy, just eggs over easy and strips of bacon with some sautéed vegetables, although he's sort of apprehensive that he is definitely going to fuck something up: he has never been good at cooking and the eggs might prove a challenge. He also brews a pot of really fancy and expensive Colombian hand-ground coffee he had ordered online: should make a huge difference to what they usually drink.
He also makes sure that he has the most important part of the whole plan safely in his pocket.
It doesn't go exactly as planned, since Jerry wakes up before his alarm and before the eggs or coffee are done, and appears in the doorway wearing one of Cotton's shirts (which are always gigantic on him since he's such a stick of a man) with his adorably out-of-control bed hair, eyes half-open and looking confused.
"What are you doing?" he asks sleepily. "You weren't in the bed, I got worried. Where are my good-morning kisses? Why are you up before me? What's going on?"
"Whoa, babe, enough with the questions, everything's okay," Cotton says, offering Jerry a bright grin. "I'm just making us a nice breakfast!"
"It smells nice," Jerry notices, slowly waking up.
"It's the coffee, wait until you get to taste it," Cotton says excitedly and turns the eggs and, whoops, that's a bit burned. Of course he was going to screw up at something. He frowns at the eggs. "Sorry babe, the eggs might not be perfect."
"Oh, I'm sure they're fine," Jerry says a bit absent-mindedly as he gets out his pack of cigarettes while taking a good look at the kitchen. A suspicious look falls over his features. "There are some shenanigans afoot," he points out.
Cotton looks a bit guilty and lifts the pan off the stove so that he won't ruin the eggs any more than he already did. The coffee also seems ready. "What an astute observation," Cotton says. "Can you guess what it is?"
"Not just a normal Valentine's Day breakfast, I'd wager," Jerry says and looks thoughtful, tapping the end of his unlit cigarette against the tip of his nose. "You haven't done anything that warrants an apology and either way I think apologies like these are way overblown because just saying 'sorry' is enough. We're not celebrating anything. But it's not just for the heck of it?"
Cotton shakes his head, setting the eggs, bacon strips and sautéed vegetables on their plates and pours them the expensive Colombian coffee that smells heavenly and rich and delicious (he also pours water for Jerry and orange juice for himself).
"I'm at a loss," Jerry says and closes his eyes, letting out a sigh.
Cotton sees his moment, gets the small velvet-covered box out of his pocket and falls to one knee in front of Jerry before he opens his eyes. It takes only a second, and when Jerry opens his eyes he blinks once in confusion at Cotton's apparent disappearing act before he realizes to look down and sees Cotton on one knee offering the velvety box and the ring inside and wearing a sheepish grin he's so known for.
For a moment Jerry just stares, then throws the cigarette away to cover his mouth with both hands and then just nods like crazy, his brown eyes shining.
"So, a yes?" Cotton makes sure, still a bit sheepish, still in the same position, and Jerry just tackles him onto the floor in a tangle of long limbs with a laugh that always makes Cotton feel like the sun is shining no matter where he is.
"Of course it's a yes, you wonderful man!" Jerry replies, showering Cotton's face with tiny kisses and finally sitting up on Cotton's hips and taking the box from Cotton to look at the ring properly. He takes it out and turns it in his hands before handing it to Cotton and holding out his left hand. Cotton slides the ring into Jerry's ring finger and it's a perfect fit (thank God). "The whole setup is a bit of a cliché," Jerry says but smiles warmly still," but I really don't care, I love it. I love you. Of course I'm going to marry you. I was waiting for you to pop the question."
"Not for long I hope?" Cotton grins.
"My darling man I would've married you the second I met you," Jerry laughs and stands up, offering his hand to help Cotton up (which really does not help at all because if Cotton would seriously take Jerry on his offer, he would instantly pull him off balance. Their size difference is, after all, remarkable). Cotton takes Jerry's hand but stands up on his own and dusts off his pajama pants before stepping close to Jerry, taking his left hand into his and giving the ring a look before he gives Jerry a long and sweet kiss.
"I'm sorry you had to wait for so long, then," Cotton says with a slight grin. "But now, the breakfast before it gets cold." He gestures towards the table. "Did I tell you that you're going to love the coffee?"
"You might have mentioned it's good," Jerry says with a chuckle and sits down, letting Cotton pull him a chair and everything.
"It's better than good, it's divine. It will ruin all other coffees for you," Cotton says and bites into his breakfast the moment he's sitting down.
Jerry gasps. "I can't drink it then, imagine only drinking one kind of coffee for the rest of your life," he says and starts eating as well, much slower than Cotton who's basically wolfing down the eggs and bacon.
"But that coffee is worth it," Cotton says with his mouth full of food.
Jerry chuckles again and takes a sip of his water, waiting for the coffee to cool down a little before actually tasting it. "How did you wake up before me? You didn't stay up all night, did you?" he asks, and immediately remembers the one time he woke up during the night. He narrows his eyes a little at Cotton, all feigned. "You clever bastard, you lied to me about the work thing."
"Sorry, babe," Cotton grins at Jerry apologetically over the table. "I had to."
Jerry sighs melodramatically. "Well, maybe I'll let it go this time. Because I got such a nice ring and everything," he says and pretends to admire the ring on his finger. It's really just a regular white gold ring, there's absolutely nothing special about it. Cotton could have gone really special, but he thought Jerry would like a simple ring the most, not some tacky monstrosity with a 12-carat diamond in it. He had almost considered these old Green Lantern themed rings he saw in the window of some comic store while passing by (he doesn't really read comics anymore), but he didn't know if Jerry is familiar with Green Lantern from his childhood or if it has any meaning to him whatsoever (he needs to ask about that: it's important to know what comics and cartoons, if any, Jerry was into when he was a kid), so he gave up on that particularly nerdy alternative.
"And hey it's a perfect reason for you to stay in bed for some extra after breakfast since I'm really tired and I need a nap before I'm going anywhere," Cotton grins at Jerry.
Jerry smiles back at him. "Very good."
Thank God neither of them has to be anywhere before noon.