for you

In the dark, seated at the edge of his bed, he waits for her.

He’s no stranger to this, waiting—waiting for her, specifically. For Sonya, Ian McDaniels is always waiting. 

Waiting for her to call. Waiting for her eyes to meet his across the table in the café where they always meet on nights like this. Waiting for her to sidle up to him on the walk to his apartment, her arm linked with his. Waiting for their bodies to clash in pleasure—once, twice, three times, on a good night. 

Waiting for her to pick up her stuff and sneak out before the sun comes up, on footsteps she thinks are quiet. 

Maybe they are.

Maybe Ian’s just become too in tune with them.

These days, for Sonya, Ian is—stupidly—always waiting. He’s begun to resent time, with the way it ticks and ticks and ticks away and seems to bring him nowhere closer to being something more to Sonya Williams, for whom his feelings are becoming harder and harder to mask. The depth of them has stretched far enough beyond friendship and casual sex that while he’s sure there are lines that have been drawn, lust and affection have blurred his vision so entirely he can’t quite make out the boundaries anymore.

Sonya is terrifying. Or rather, his growing feelings for her are terrifying. Sonya herself is incredible; she’s an intelligent, quiet storm, warm and kind and sexy and far better than the men she spends time with—the men she wastes her time with, in Ian’s opinion, while Ian waits for her hopes to be dashed yet again so he can be the one to piece her back together for a night. 

Casual sex that’s begun to feel less casual every time they meet, mixed with something resembling friendship. 

An unbreakable cycle. 

It’s what’s got him sitting here, on his bed, elbows digging into his thighs, hands clasped between parted knees as he waits for her to join him.

Ian breathes out a long sigh, the only sound in the quiet of his bedroom. He runs a hand through his brown hair, shoulders hunching as a chill shoots its way up his spine; he’s still shaking off the weather from outside, December alive and well and leaving him cold down to the bone. 

He’d been bundled up in his heavy coat with a scarf wound around his neck, but those were both abandoned in the doorway with the help of Sonya’s swift hands as Ian’s black-and-white French Bulldog, Fletcher, barked and barked at their ankles until they tripped their way, lip-locked, into his bedroom. 

Fletcher currently sits at Ian’s feet, strangely quiet. He must’ve snuck into the room after them, Ian unaware of the fact until Sonya disappeared into the bathroom and Fletcher came bounding out from his hiding place behind the opened bedroom door. 

Now, Fletcher’s cozied himself up against Ian’s calf, and when he sighs again, so does Fletcher, a large exhale for such a small dog. 

It gives Ian something to laugh about, leaning down to pat his companion on the head.

“You’re gonna have to clear out in a minute, Fletch,” Ian whispers, a smile in his voice as he thumbs at Fletcher’s perky ears. Fletcher’s presence is something of a comfort, a distraction from the nerves tying his insides in knots, but the last thing Ian wants is him hanging around while he and Sonya are…intimate.

Fletcher tilts his head to the side, studies Ian like he’s absorbing this information, and Ian chuckles.

“All right, out you go,” he orders, snapping his fingers and pointing towards the opened bedroom door. “Go on. Now.”

Fletcher studies him for a moment longer, then pops up onto all fours and skitters across the floor towards the door, and Ian watches with a grin until he’s disappeared into the darkness. 

Alone again, Ian’s eyes become trained on the floor, and he scratches at his bearded jaw, his mind racing as he thinks about how the evening unfolded. He took Fletcher out to take care of his business, and before he knew it, his feet had led him back inside to retrieve some things—his coat, his scarf, his gloves, Fletcher’s sweater and leash. 

Then he was pulling on his things, coaxing Fletcher into the sweater, attaching his leash, and making the short walk to Caruthers, a café near his apartment where he satisfied his late-night coffee cravings.

He’d been a frequent visitor in his college days, camped out in the corner at his favorite table cramming for finals until the early morning hours. Now, he ducks in on evenings when the desperation for caffeine is too great, still unbelievably incompetent at brewing his own coffee at home for a man nearing his thirties.

He and Fletcher had jingled their way through Caruthers’s main entrance and were in the process of shaking off the late evening’s snow when Ian’s eyes fell upon Sonya. 

She’d been sitting alone at a table—his table—with her trademark twists pulled up into a bun, a large mug cradled in her hands. Her eyes seemed to be lost in the swirling abyss of cappuccino he’d been more than certain filled her cup—her usual was an order he knew now like the back of his hand.

Ian had stopped in his tracks. Warred with himself in his brain. Then, against his better judgment, his feet had led the way to where she sat, and he'd slid into the seat across from her and held her gaze when her eyes looked up to find his. 

He looks up now as the door to the bathroom creaks open, steadying his eyes on Sonya as she slinks into view wearing nothing but her undergarments—a blush-colored set that pops against the brown of her skin—and a smile. She reminds him of a cat, feline in the way she moves, light on her feet with a graceful but powerful nature to the swing of her hips. 

He sits up straighter as she drifts into the shadows footstep by footstep, flexes his fingers, his hands already itching to clutch at the ample curves of her waist, her ass, her thighs.

He’s told himself he wouldn’t do this again, but ah, fuck, here he is, about to take her into his bed, his heart, again.

It’s been this way for some time now, this…arrangement they have. He’s known Sonya for a little over a year, the beginning of which they’d spent as acquaintances. She was part of a greater circle of friends from work. 

For a while, she was just Sonya, the wallflower of the group with this quiet intensity he didn't pay much mind to until one night, he'd noticed her, really noticed her, and then he couldn't stop noticing.

It was the briefest of moments—a quick locking of eyes, a timid smile. He’d just looked at her across the bar where they were hanging with their friends and it was like a light flickered on—a spark, and suddenly, Sonya Williams, this woman he barely knew, was someone he wanted to know. 

Gradually, he’d made an effort to talk to her more. Tried to pull that smile from her, a little less timid. She was quiet, but smart. Funny. As their friends got together for drinks or celebrations in the following months, they began to seek each other out. Shared a laugh over bottles of beer or moments of quiet while they watched everyone else. In the whirlwind of activity that was their friend group, it was nice to have a steadying presence like Sonya’s. With her, Ian felt frozen in time, like they were in their own little bubble as everyone else buzzed frantically around them. 

Soon, he realized—he was starting to like her.

And then Sonya met a guy named Brandon. 

It didn’t last long, her thing with Brandon—a few months, at the most—but Sonya had been crushed. The end of that relationship, however, was the start of a shift in the one between her and Ian.

They’d struck up a conversation about her relationship with Brandon a couple of weeks after the break-up, Sonya desperate for a listening ear as she tried to sort through what went wrong so she could put it behind her. With the way his last serious relationship had ended on a pretty sour note, Ian understood the importance of having a shoulder to lean on and had offered her his. 

They’d confided in one another, taking comfort in the fact that when it came to romance, neither of them seemed to have it all figured out. It was nice, Ian had thought, to not be the only one who wanted to share something with someone he hadn’t been able to find yet.

They spent a lot of evenings together after that, queuing up Netflix while Sonya curled into his side on his sofa, her head on his shoulder. Sometimes, they talked; other times, it was the silence and the drone of the television that filled the shared space of Ian’s living room.

One night, there’d been a lot of wine involved, which had led to Sonya sobbing through the ending credits of a romantic comedy and Ian reaching over to give her arm a comforting stroke, fingertips ghosting her skin. Sonya’s gaze washed over him as her tears subsided, and his breathing was labored as her hand fell upon his thigh. And then she was straddled across his lap, her eyes boring into his. And then they were all but fucking with their clothes on, Sonya writhing in his lap as he cupped her face and kissed her full lips while she wound her hips down towards his, a torturous grind that made Ian come in his pants. 

It’d been awkward afterward, a silence that seemed to stretch endless as the horizon as she slid from atop his thighs to sit beside him on the couch. There was more silence and Ian thought he might die from humiliation when Sonya finally broke the tension, clearing her throat and mumbling something about it being late. Then, she’d grabbed her things, patted Fletcher on the head by the door, and left without another word.

But the sounds of her heavy breathing, her moans, had echoed in Ian’s mind for many days.

He didn’t see her again for a couple of weeks, and then they’d run into one another at Caruthers. He’d bumped into her at the counter, as she finished her order and he stepped up to place his. He should’ve placed her, the long twists her hair was styled in as familiar to him as breathing, but he started in surprise as she turned and their eyes met.

Hers were wide, a mirror image of his own, he’d have bet, and she pressed her lips together for a long moment, her gaze searching his face before greeting him. “Hey, Ian.”

“Hey yourself,” Ian had replied, the response sounding as idiotic to his ear as he imagined it must’ve sounded to Sonya. Things had been so easy between them before, but one session of dry-humping on his couch had made them unable to speak to one another. “How are you?”

Sonya opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. She motioned behind herself, towards the counter, and finally said, “Buy you a cup and we’ll talk?”

Ian had agreed, and they’d sat at that favorite little table of his in the corner and talked. About that night—she’d been vulnerable, he’d provided her comfort, it had happened, but it wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t even sex, not really. They could get past it, right? Couldn’t they still be friends? 

The questions had danced across the hills and valleys of Ian’s thoughts, twining themselves around the wiring of his mind until he convinced himself that yes, they could get past it. They could still be friends. Even as Sonya relayed to him that she’d decided to try dating again, he’d shrugged off the uneasy feeling that began to settle in the pit of his stomach.

It was stupid, that feeling. He’d set it aside, feeling something for Sonya. Sonya, his friend.

Sonya, his friend, who, after a disastrous first date with some guy named Jeff, called him and asked him to meet her at Caruthers to grab a drink, then walk to his place to debrief. Ian had laughed until his stomach hurt as she recounted the evening’s less-than-satisfactory events that ended with a kiss she hadn’t wanted nor enjoyed once she’d been subjected to it. Lips like a fish, she’d said, though she’d wagered that even a fish could kiss better than poor Jeff.

Sonya, his friend, who’d leaned in during a pause in their conversation as they sat on his couch, her eyes dancing between his eyes and his lips. Sonya, his friend, who’d allowed him to close the remaining space and press his mouth to hers. Sonya, his friend, whose quiet intensity became less quiet and more intense as she crawled into his lap again and kissed him senseless, until he scooped her up and carried her to his bedroom and made her come—this time while inside her, without their clothes on.

And so began the cycle, one Ian’s come to know well—takes almost a strange sort of comfort in its consistency, in fact. Sonya puts herself out there, it crashes and burns. She calls him in need of company, they meet up and she follows him back to his place. She lets him screw her brains out, then they go back to pretending there’s nothing more than an easy-going friendship between them. 

As if the way they fuck and then disengage for a week or two, a month, is rational behavior between two people claiming to be friends. As if Ian isn’t well-versed in the language of her body and the birthmark on her hip that he traces with his tongue every time he has the chance to part her thighs. As if she hasn’t acquainted herself with his cock and his kinks so well that she’s figured out how to give him a blow-job that has him coming in her mouth in five minutes flat.

As if this stupid, stupid dance they’ve engaged themselves in isn’t destined to fuck Ian up far more than he’ll readily admit.

The shadows cast across the expanse of his bedroom play a game with Ian’s mind as they dance across the planes of Sonya’s deep brown skin, a stark contrast to his pale hands when they’re finally granted a chance to grasp at the curves of her waist. 

Ian thumbs at the elastic waistband of her lacy panties and thinks about leaning in, dragging them down with his teeth, dropping to his knees while she spreads her thighs for him and using his tongue to bring her to climax right there at the foot of the bed, with one of her legs hooked over his shoulder, while they’re both bathed in moonlight.

It’s been nearly a month since the last time she called him, and he’s craved her intensely since. 

There was a time, when this first became a habit between them, that Ian had tried to date. He’d slept with other women, on-and-off, chasing after the high that came every time Sonya made him come. But after a while, he began to realize that it made him feel a bit empty. After a while, he began to realize that the only woman he really wanted to sleep with, the only woman who plagued his thoughts, was Sonya.

That realization was fucking terrifying.

Ian has never been one to let himself need anyone the way he’s found himself needing Sonya—hell, even Fletcher’s grown attached, having taken a liking to her presence faster than any other woman Ian’s brought into their home. The time that stretches between her calls has started to wear him thin, and the irrational jealousy that clouds his judgment every time he has to endure another story of her latest attempt at dating a man who isn’t him is, well, absolutely maddening.

Back and forth, back and forth, they swing like a pendulum, and Ian is sick with desire now—for her body, yes, but also the one thing he reckons he’ll never gain if they continue to carry on like this:

Her heart.

Being with Sonya, in this space, is so fucking easy. They don’t have to get personal, even though the sex—recurrent, habitual sex—is intimate and begs for personal. It’s easy, in the shadows, where he can pretend she won’t leave him before the night’s end, that she’ll stay through the night simply because he asks, because in the haze of moonlight there’s an air of deception that whispers to him, says, there’s no harm in asking. 

He trails a hand up from her hip, grazes her side, enjoys the way she trembles before he reaches around for the clasp of her bra and unfastens it. 

As it drops to the floor, he imagines her undergarments in a spare drawer in his dresser, her clothing in his closet, her toothbrush beside his in the cup on the sink. Her coming home to his place after work some nights, or staying over on the weekends—a visit longer than the meager hours she spends with him now, with the lights off, with her walls up. Getting to know her little quirks beyond the snippets she shares in conversation or the sounds she makes when she comes. 

He wants more. 

Stupid, probably, to want more when he’s unsure of how to read her feelings towards him, but he wants more. He can’t help himself.

“You all right?” Sonya asks, piercing through Ian’s contemplation. 

He blinks and looks up, into her eyes, rich brown irises meeting the green of his own, and studies her expression with furrowed brows. Absentmindedly, his thumb slides along the juncture between her pelvis and thigh. 

“Fine,” he replies. “Why?”

Sonya shrugs, reaching up to push her fingers through his hair, damp and wavy from the snow. It’s surprisingly tender, her touch in his hair—the only time she’s ever had hands in his hair is when he’s had his head between her thighs—and Ian fights the urge to let his eyes droop.

“Just a look you’ve got,” she says, “like your mind’s elsewhere.” She arches both brows at him in question. “You good?”

Ian nods slowly, refusing to give himself away, and slides both hands to rest in the curve of her back. Then, he pulls her closer, into the space between his thighs. Tilting his chin upward, he stretches his neck to swirl his tongue around her nipple, and then he manages a smile. “Sonya.” 

It’s soft, the way he says her name. The sigh that comes from her mouth as he teases her breast again is softer. 

“Hmm?”

“Kiss me.”

She gazes back at him for a long moment, then fulfills his request, leaning down to meet his mouth. Satisfied, he eases her into his lap, kisses her good and unhurried, until they’re both breathless and his arousal is obvious beneath the weight of her ass, his cock thickening in his lap, and she’s tugging at the waist of his pants. 

“Undress,” she says, her voice hoarse.

It’s Ian’s turn to oblige as she climbs off of him. He stands, yanks his shirt over his head. Pulls down his pants and underwear in one go. Kicks them off his ankles before hooking his thumbs in the waistband of her panties and tugging them down.

Both of them, naked now. Nothing between them.

Well, nothing except a heft of feelings weighing heavily on Ian’s mind and heart, but he’d rather not get into that now.

Besides, there’s no time for it, with the way Sonya lowers herself to her knees and knocks the wind out of his lungs when she takes him in her hand without warning. She thumbs at the head of his dick, eyes cast upward towards him all the while, and strokes him until he’s fully hard, then she takes him into her mouth.

It’s—Jesus Christ, it’s more than he can stand, the slide of her tongue along his erection, the graze of her teeth, the warmth of her hand and mouth around him. He gathers the hair falling into her face together in his hand while he places the other atop the mattress to brace himself, groaning as she works the length of his shaft with her tongue and hollowed cheeks. It seems she’s determined to make his knees buckle in an earth-shattering orgasm but he pulls her up before she does, muffles her complaints with a hard, desperate kiss before he pulls her into the bed with him.

Ian is always waiting, but he doesn’t wait now. He doesn’t wait to lay her down, to part her pretty thighs and return the favor with his tongue until her hips are bucking up against his mouth. 

He doesn’t wait to roll on the condom, to help her climb astride—to fill her up, again and again until she’s crying out his name, his mouth crushed against hers to muffle the sound, his hand curled around the back of her neck, her nails clawing at his chest. 

He doesn’t wait for her to make the full come-down before he’s flipped her over to lie beneath him, pushing back inside and coaxing her into another orgasm. The second one comes quickly, and he comes, too, sweaty and spent as they both collapse against the mattress.

The quiet sets in afterward. 

Ian dreads this part. 

Many times, the words to ask her to stay have tingled on the tip of his tongue. But he knows the weight of implication if he says them, if she does stay—that this back-and-forth means more than both of them are playing at. That he’d be admitting he wants more than her body on the nights when she’s willing to share it with him. It would make things…real. And while the more Ian thinks about it, the more he wants it, it’s not entirely clear if Sonya does.

Breathing heavily, Ian pulls out, discards the condom, and returns to the mattress again, on his back, fumbling with the covers and wrestling with his thoughts while he waits for Sonya to do the inevitable. 

He’s watched this film play out over and over, knows the upcoming scene by heart. He waits for her weight to leave the mattress as soon as his eyes have grown heavy, listening as she shuffles around in the darkness of his bedroom to pull on her clothes. Then comes the easing open of his bedroom door before it’s pulled shut, and the distant sound of the door to his apartment opening and closing follows. 

Into his bed and out she climbs, another hit to his ego as she takes yet another piece of him when she goes, like a thief in the night.

The only things Ian wishes she’d steal is more time. More kisses. His heart, perhaps, but quietly, over time and without either of them fully realizing, he’s already begun giving her that.

After several moments of too-much-silence, Ian allows himself to glance her way and is surprised to find her eyes waiting for him in the dark. Passing headlights beyond his window offer a sudden burst of light, and in her eyes, he finds a look he’s not quite sure he’s seen before.

It’s unsettling, but oddly comforting all at the same time, and there’s a surge of confidence—of courage—that settles upon him when the night gives way to darkness again. Before he loses his nerve, he moves closer and lets her name and his desire dance right off the tip of his tongue.

“Sonya.”

Her eyes seem to answer before her mouth does. “Yes?”

On an exhale, he lays his heart out in one word. “Stay.”

He’s met with silence. In the dark, it’s hard to make out the expression molding her beautiful features, and the quiet makes him nervous, so he begins to ramble. “Only if you want. I mean, I know you…you probably have to go, and I can get you a Lyft. Whatever you want. Stay. Or don’t stay. But I—what I want is—”

“Ian.” Sonya closes the remaining space between them, presses her mouth to his, and any remaining words on his tongue are effectively swallowed.

Her body tangles with his own as the kiss deepens, and Ian sighs into her mouth as he wraps his arms around her, fingertips clutching at the curve of her spine. 

“I’ll stay,” she breathes, when their mouths finally part, and the thrill that floods Ian’s veins makes him delirious with pleasure. 

Trying to play it cool, he nods and kisses her again. “Okay.” A pause, then another kiss. “Good.”

As he continues to pepper light kisses to Sonya’s mouth, enjoying the way her body feels against his with no barriers between them, she murmurs against his lips, “What the hell are we doing?”

Ian pulls back to meet her eyes. Hers are focused and questioning, and all he can offer her, right now, without scaring the shit out of both her and himself, is a shrug. 

“Fuck if I know,” he replies. “Just go with it, yeah?”

Sonya nods slowly and closes the distance between their mouths again, lets him kiss her breathless, until exhaustion pulls them both under.

---

In the morning, Ian greets sunrise with empty arms.

It takes him a long moment to process it, his mind and his eyes both heavy with sleep, but then the loss of her socks him square in the chest, and he grimaces. 

Across the room, his bedroom door has been pulled closed. Beside him, the bed is cold, feels as if it has been for a while, and as the weight of truth sinks into Ian’s entire being, he groans and pushes the bedsheets off, crawls from the mattress and trudges towards the bathroom.

A shower revives him, if only marginally, and as he stares at his reflection in the mirror while brushing his teeth, he frowns around the toothbrush in his mouth, feeling foolish. 

He’d asked her to stay, she’d said she would, and he’d stupidly believed her. He could hear the uncertainty that trembled in her voice when she asked him that question—“What the hell are we doing?”—and still he held onto the hope that she’d remain in his bed until morning. Grasped at that wafer-thin chance with desperate fingertips, only to be disappointed.

At his first request of a stay for longer than it took the pair of them to carry out their usual coital dance, she’d bailed, and the other question that’s been nagging at Ian’s mind—if what he’s feeling, if what’s growing inside him, bigger than friendship and sex, is reciprocated—has been answered.

He doesn’t like the answer very much.

Brows pulled together, mouth still set in a disheartened frown, Ian rinses his mouth, then trims up his beard and finishes the rest of his morning routine, the splash of cold water on his face that he saves for last providing a more sobering effect than usual. 

Solemnly, he rummages through the basket of clothes from last weekend’s wash that he still hasn’t put away, pulls a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt free from the tangle of items and puts them on. He makes his way towards his closed bedroom door, grasps the knob, turns, and then…wait—is that—?

Ian stops in his tracks, the sound of a percolator greeting his ears, and the smell of coffee follows.

With furrowed brows, Ian opens the door and steps through, makes his way to the kitchen, and the sight makes him stop again.

Leaned against his counter, next to a busy coffee maker, is Sonya.

Her back is to him, her hip leaned against the countertop. She’s draped in one of his t-shirts, warm brown legs long and lovely beneath the hem that skims the tops of the back of her thighs. He smiles as Fletcher comes clattering into view, his little nails making a ruckus on the floor as Sonya drops to a crouch to greet him, patting his head while he cranes his neck to lick at her wrist.

Then, Fletcher looks Ian’s way and offers a bark, his way of saying good morning.

Sonya’s eyes follow.

Ian doesn’t know what to say at first. He’s overwhelmed by the sight of her in his kitchen, as if he’s never seen her in here before, as they made popcorn or popped the cork off a bottle of wine (or two) for a Netflix marathon back when she was freshly broken-hearted after things ended with Brandon. 

It hasn’t been that way between them in a while. After that first night of crossing the line, the most Ian’s seen of Sonya in his apartment has been on his couch or in his bedroom, under the cover of shadows, and seeing her now in his kitchen in broad daylight, feels…he can’t describe it, exactly. 

Right. It just feels right. 

“Good morning,” Sonya finally says, straining to be heard over the sound of the percolator finishing its job, loud and boisterous in its announcement that the coffee has finished brewing.

“I thought you left,” is Ian’s reply, which is hardly an appropriate response to someone’s “Good morning,” but it’s the first thing that comes to his mind. He thought she left, spent the first half hour of his morning wallowing in self-pity, and she was in his kitchen all along.

“I did, actually,” Sonya says, and confusion sets a deep crease in Ian’s forehead until she clarifies. “Walked to the corner store a couple blocks down. Couldn’t sleep. Bought some coffee and filters after I dragged this thing out from your cabinet and realized you had none.” 

It’s now that she pats the top of the coffee maker affectionately—the coffee maker that once belonged to Ian’s former roommate, Ritchie. Ritchie accidentally left it behind when he moved out after accepting a new position an hour-and-a-half away, and when Ian, a loyal customer to Caruthers and embarrassingly quite shitty at brewing his own coffee, moved into his new place, he’d stowed it away without a second thought.

It seems, however, that Sonya has found it and dragged it back into the light and Ian’s thoughts, and shit, right now coffee sounds good, coffee smells good. He aches to pour a cup.

But he aches for something else a bit more.

Ian takes slow steps towards Sonya, who waits for him beside the counter, frozen in place. As he closes in, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands—well, he knows what he wants to do: he wants to clutch at her hip with one, curl the other around the back of her neck, and drag her in for a sweet good morning kiss that never ends.

It’s absurd, how seeing her in his kitchen like this has made it easier to admit what he wants to himself—he wants her. In the mornings. Afternoons. Late nights. He can’t stomach another night having to recap her latest date, knowing it wasn’t with him. He wants to feel worthy of more than just her body—he wants her heart and her mind and her laughter and the look in her eyes that seems to settle him, steady him, level him, every time. 

Sonya is a quiet storm, all right—quiet in the way she moved in, a storm in the way she overtook his thoughts and his senses with commanding presence, all without warning. He never saw her coming.

He doesn’t stand a chance now.

Sonya’s eyes are intensely brown in the morning sun that fills his kitchen with light. The warmth in them is matched by the soft smile that plays at her lips while Fletcher barks for attention down by her ankles.

“Hush,” Ian says, directing the comment at Fletcher, who barks again before Ian shoots him a stern look a father might give his son, then shoos him away with a hand. “Give us a sec, Fletch.”

Sonya laughs as Fletcher barks and barks and barks in protest, but eventually gives in, flattens his little nub of a tail and spins around to run off in the direction of Ian’s bedroom—to burrow into the sheets on his unmade bed, Ian would wager, as he often does on the mornings when Ian isn’t quick enough to pull the covers up.

With Fletcher gone, there are no more distractions. Nothing between them to offer a buffer. Ian, still trying to figure out what to do with his hands, finally shoves them into the pockets of his sweats and picks incessantly at the lint lining the inner seam.

Sonya tugs at the hem of the t-shirt she wears, fingernails adorning a sparkly, chipped blue polish that pops against the white of the shirt. 

A memory flashes through Ian’s mind, of those sparkly, chipped blue fingernails clutching at his back, and he can feel his eyes glaze over. Jesus. He’ll never tire of it, of sleeping with Sonya. But it strikes him fully now, that his heart is as open to her as his door, and sleeping with her just isn’t enough anymore.

Sonya’s question flashes through his mind again. What the hell are we doing?

Standing close, Ian thinks, but not close enough. 

He takes another step forward. 

Sonya wrings her hands tighter in the hem of the t-shirt, further exposing her thighs. 

Ian’s pulse races. He steps forward again. 

“Do you want coffee?” Sonya asks, her eyes on his for a moment before skittering away as she turns towards the cabinets, pulling open a few doors until she finds the one that houses Ian’s large collection of mugs. She brings down two—a white one with Santa Claus wrapped in colorful Christmas lights (he got it in a gift exchange one year), the other plain and black, with a chipped handle—and sets them on the countertop, then moves to reach for the coffee pot.

“Yes.” Right. Time to stop fucking around. Ian’s feet pull him towards her, like opposite poles of a set of magnets, and he’s practically tripping over his tongue as he sputters out, “And I-I want you.”

Sonya’s hand halts midair, hovers, then settles down upon the countertop. She presses both hands to the surface, smooths them across, and Ian watches as her shoulders hunch with her slow intake of breath, then lower on her just-as-lengthy exhale. 

Behind her, Ian fidgets and fumbles to find the words to say next. He reads her posture—the tension in her limbs, the way she won’t turn around to look at him. Her body language says he’s already fucked this up royally, but hell, may as well go down in a chariot of fire, right? 

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” he says, the words tumbling out so fast they’re practically on top of one another—hardly a decipherable statement at all—but he’s laying down all his cards on the table now. “I don’t know what this is, Sonya, but I know that I—I want you. And not just for—well. I want you. I think—I’m sure—I have for a while now.”

Ian’s eyes drop to his feet, and he’s digging for the patches of lint lining his pockets again as the quiet settles thick and heavy between them. He can’t think of anything else to say, the words he’s managed to rustle up—ineloquent as they are—leaving him feeling raw and exposed enough as it is. 

“Anyway,” he says, after what feels like an eternity with no response, “I’ll take that coffee.”

There’s a chorus of sounds that follows: the open and close of the refrigerator door, the pouring of coffee, a drawer opening, sugar being shuffled about in its container, the clanking of a spoon against the ceramic of a mug. 

When Ian chances a look upward, Sonya’s back is still to him. She’s busied herself with stirring sugar into the Santa cup that sits in front of her on the countertop. 

He watches with attentive eyes as she screws off the top on the carton of half and half sat beside the mug, serves up a heavy-handed pour that turns the coffee from the shade of Sonya’s dark brown eyes to a soft, milky brown.

Just the way Ian likes it.

Ian feels his brows pull together as she turns to face him, the mug of coffee cradled in her hands. She steps close, offers it to him, watches him take a sip. 

His eyes flutter closed in delight, then open again to find hers. It’s perfect.

Ian lets the coffee burn a path through his chest, pleasant and warm, and studies the warmth he finds in Sonya’s eyes, too. Unexpected and quiet, just like her.

She slides the mug from his hands. Sets it on the countertop. Closes the space between them again. Curls both arms around his neck, making the shirt she’s wearing ride up. Bites at her bottom lip as Ian’s hands settle upon her waist. 

She looks into his eyes for a moment. 

Then, unmistakably, hers fall to gaze upon his lips.

When her mouth meets his, Ian lets out a satisfied groan and chases after her tongue when she pulls back to whisper against his lips, “I want you, too.”

“Sonya,” he whispers back, catching her mouth in another kiss, then taking her bottom lip between his teeth. He smiles, enjoys the laughter in her voice when she’s pulled herself free.

“Ian,” Sonya mumbles against his mouth, her breathing heavier now.

“Stay?” He pulls back, searches her face. Reaches up a hand to glide fingers against the edge of her jaw. “Stay, please. As long as you like. We can talk, figure things out. I’ll make you breakfast.”

A pause. Like almost always, he waits.

“You have bacon?” Sonya inquires, a comical arch to her brow that makes Ian chuckle. 

He nods, gathers her up in his arms to pull her close again. “I have bacon.” 

“And eggs?”

“Ran errands yesterday. I’ve got eggs.”

“Bread for toast?”

“You’re easy to satisfy.” He chuckles again and presses a kiss to her nose, the purest kiss they’ve ever shared. “Yes, bread for toast.”

“We could fuck this up,” she says suddenly, deviating from the topic of breakfast towards the issue that hangs over them like a storm cloud. “Making more of this. Of us.”

To say that Ian is not terrified of the same would be an outright lie. Both his and Sonya’s track records with dating are dismal, a how-to guide on taking a chance on someone and coming out worse than you went in. It’s the reason their arrangement worked so well, or so they’d convinced themselves—it was enough for them, reaping the physical benefits without those troublesome hearts getting in the way.

Both have been playing the fool, it seems, long aware but in denial of the fact that their hearts were in the way all along. 

“We could,” Ian agrees. They could, but maybe they won’t. “Will you stay?”

Sonya sinks into him, until her body feels melded with his own—they’re pressed so close that if he closes his eyes, he’ll never be able to tell where her skin ends and his begins. 

The feeling is insatiable. Why didn’t he say something sooner? Fuck, they’ve been wasting so much damn time dancing around one another. Dancing around their what-ifs and could-bes. But that’s over now.

When he pulls back, just enough to take in her face, the sincerity in Sonya’s eyes is unmistakable, and this time, he believes her entirely. 

“Yes, Ian,” she mumbles, leaning back in to kiss at his jaw, his chin, his lips. “Yes. Yes. I’ll stay.”