Alec Hardy was not a cuddler. That's what he told himself anyway. He must have been overtired. And a little tipsy. He wasn't meant to have more than two drinks at a time due to the pacemaker, so he couldn't have been drunk. Evidently, though, tipsy and tired was just as dangerous as drunkenness when one had a Tinder date.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Laying half-on-half-beside him was you. The Tinder date. Why had he let Daisy make him a profile on that bloody app again? He vaguely remembered inviting you home last night, and somehow the two of you had made it into bed together—fully clothed, he noted, so at least that cliche wouldn't play out. But alas, there was still the problem of you being in his bed and pinning him down. And him being cold.

New problem: Why was he cold? He knew he was skinny and chilled easily. He kept a weighted blanket so that he couldn't throw it off so easily during nightmares, for Pete's sake. He finally cracked his eyes open and discovered that the blanket had miraculously moved to cover only you. Great.

He started gently pushing you in an attempt to bring you back to the land of the living.

"Hey. Blanket thief. Wake up."

Nothing.

"Come on, time for sleeping lassies to wake up," he coaxed, trying to be gentle like he'd been when Daisy was little.

A groan. Maybe. Okay, enough was enough.

"Look, woman, you've infiltrated my bed, stolen my blanket and probably fought me for it, and at some point, you decided that I was the pillow. Get your arse off of me!"

He was done being nice. If you were this much of an octopus at night, this relationship wasn't going anywhere anyway.