When Danny wakes up, he can feel Martin's finger on his spine, touching and lifting, touching and lifting. "What are you doing?" Due to his total lack of coherence in the morning, it comes out as "whudoi?", but Martin understands.
"Counting."
Danny opens his eyes enough to squint at the clock. 5:47. He has another thirteen minutes until the alarm goes off. He could go back to sleep, or he could ask Martin what the hell he's counting.
"whthhellayoconti?"
"Your freckles."
Of course he is. It's only 5:47 in the morning, so what else would he be doing? Sleeping? Nope. Wasted time when you could be counting freckles.
"hwmny?"
"Ninty-six so far." Martin's voice is a little lower than it was a minute ago. Apparently, he's counting from top to bottom.
Danny smiles against his pillow and reaches out a hand to blindly pet Martin on the head. He feels Martin's head tilt under his palm and kiss the side of his fingers. It makes him finally give up on sleep and turn over. He's halfway to licking the roof of his mouth for moisture when Martin leans in and does it for him. He smiles into it and pulls Martin to lay across him. When Martin pulls away, he can speak like a regular person.
"How many?"
"One hundred and twenty-six." Martin trails a finger along the inside of Danny's elbow. "And you've got more here."
"You're odd."
Martin smiles and kisses the inside of Danny's elbow. "You sleep with me."
"I love you." And those words weren't supposed to come out. Danny's trying to decide if he should play dumb when Martin looks at him and smiles in a way that makes Danny feel soft all over.
"Where'd that come from?"
"Just kind of came." And it had, because Martin had just been being himself, and Danny has been in love with that for a lot longer than the time they've been sleeping together.
Martin leans in and kisses Danny. "Love you, too."
END