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My heart kicks hard against my rib cage, a violently fluttering bird that has nowhere to go, nowhere to escape to.
Russia looks at me, his eyes a darker blue hue, and we’re so close, we’re practically sharing the same air.
It feels inevitable, too, that we’ve both come to this very moment, like we were always meant to be here together even if I have doubts, even if I’m not sure about him a hundred percent.
But God, I want, and I want, and I want, and I’m tired of playing it safe.
Life is pain, in one way or another, you just have to learn to live with it, and I’d like to think I’m better at it than most.
“Would you let me call you meelaya, Sophie?” Russia moves even closer, close enough that when I lick my lips, I end up licking his lips, too. Russia groans deep in his chest, the sound chasing a wildfire across my skin.
“As long as you’re not calling me a bitch,” I whisper, my eyes trained on the spreading smile across his mouth, transfixed.
“No, no, never that, Sophie.” His eyes flicker up to mine, but he still looks to be waiting when I close that scant distance between our mouths and kiss him, nothing but touching our lips together in the briefest kiss before Russia wakes up and starts kissing me back.
I lose my breath, the pressure of his mouth against mine, a stark reminder of how very much I’ve missed being kissed, missed being this close where my body heat feels like it could melt all the remaining snow on the entire island of Montreal.
We kiss, giving each other tentative ones, still learning what it’s like to be this close to one another, and when I swipe my tongue along his bottom lip, Russia freezes for a split second where I think I did something wrong.
I feel the shudder underneath the hand I have on his other cheek, and when I start to pull back to ask if this is still okay, Russia surges closer, wrapping an arm around my upper back, pulling me closer until we’re a tangle of limbs and he’s falling backwards. My belly swoops in the same way it feels like doing a roller-coaster drop with my eyes closed, in the front cart.
“Okay?” he asks, pulling back for a second before I’m nodding quickly, wanting more of his taste, especially when his mouth opens under mine, sending the right kind of fireworks all over my skin, heat pooling in my lower belly.
I don’t even know how long the kissing goes on for, the kisses to his mouth blurring with the kisses to his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, moving up to kiss the crinkles at the sides of his eyes that I find so incredibly endearing and up to each fluttering eyelid, up to the middle of his forehead where he’s been holding a lot of stress lately.
“Sophie,” he murmurs my name against my lips, even as I’m sprawled on top of him, my body electrified for something more, more, more.
“Yeah?” I force myself to pull back, to check in with him, and end up sitting up, straddling his hips, hands on his chest, looking down at him. “What’s up?”
Russia blinks up at me, a flush along his cheekbones, mouth parted so he can catch his breath.
I grin down at him, my hands splayed out across his chest, wanting more kisses, a thousand more kisses, a million more kisses.
“I don’t want you to think that I invited you over so I could sleep with you.”
I snort. “Please, Russia, if you were gonna do that, all I gotta do is hurt your other foot and then I’ll be running away and you for sure would never catch me.” I pat his chest in a good boy pat. “I don’t feel that way, like I’m being pressured. But I also want more kisses, so are you buying or selling?”
His eyes flutter closed, and he pulls in a deep breath through his nose, my entire body practically rolling with the movement. Russia’s hands go to my hips, not bruising or anything like that, but just gently holding me in place, like he doesn’t want me to get away, but loose enough that I can make a run for it if I need to.
Not that I want to, I’m exactly where I want to be.
“Meelaya means my darling. Would that be okay with you, to call you that?” he asks, and my throat tightens up at the pet name.
It’s old school, for sure, but baby or babe was never really my preference, and I love love that he asks me for permission to use that particular term of endearment with me, for me.
I nod, feeling his heart race underneath the palm of my hand, like he’s just as enthralled by me as I am by him.
“More kisses now?” I ask, my watch lighting up as I twist my wrist to move over his chest properly, not feeling bad about copping a feel, moving slowly, though, and gently so I don’t freak him out.
Russia’s blue-blue eyes stare up at me, his dark-as-soot eyelashes framing them, making me feel like I’m looking into the blue sea, clear enough to lose my balance, to forget where I’m standing, where I am, who I am.
“You want to be my girlfriend?” he asks finally, and I nod at him again, then verbalize it.
“Yes. I expect those Greek pastries we had today every time you come and see me, or we see each other. Can you do that?”
Russia smiles, a flash of his white teeth, his hands tightening just a fraction on my hips. “Yeah, I can do that, meelaya.”
Ah, I didn’t know I would like the sound of that so so much. He’s gone and taken all the power back, and I’m going to be the weak subservient one, all by the sound of the Russian term of affection that has me wanting to melt in a Sophie-sized puddle of goo.
“What do you want to be called? What should I do for you?”
Russia closes his eyes, trying to hide the brief look of surprise I caught on his face. But I caught it all the same and saw it for what it was.
“Has no past girlfriend of yours ever asked you that before?”
Russia shakes his head, his eyes still closed, and one of his hands moves up to my upper back, applying some pressure and oh—he wants a hug.
I don’t quite stifle the laugh until I’m flopped on top of him, and then we’re both laughing, Russia’s arms like steel bands around my back and waist, squeezing me close.
“Is this what you wanted? All you have to do is ask, you know. I love giving hugs, as long as you want them.”
“You could not be in the mood one day,” he muses.
“Russia, that doesn’t mean that I’m never gonna hug you again, or that same day. Maybe I need to recharge my ‘hug’ batteries and I’ll get back to you with a rain check or something. Were you not hugged as a child?” I ask, trying to make a joke out of it, but I feel him tense up underneath me.
“Well, I’ll hug the crap out of you every day if you want. I’m sure Josh and Elias and Alex wouldn’t say no, either.”
“It’s different with them,” he says, and I just nod, rubbing my cheek against his shirt. I really could fall asleep like this, and it’ll be the best kind of nap, the one where you feel energized rather than the kind where you wake up feeling worse than when you went to sleep in the first place.
“It doesn’t have to be. You know Dean will hug you hard enough until you actually fart.”
Russia laughs underneath me, and I lift my head to look down at his face, eyes roving over his features, memorizing the way his face looks when he’s laughing, when he’s happy—all because he’s with me.
Fireworks burst in my chest, and the world seems a little brighter in the face of all the stuff that’s going on in the world because I happen to be here, snuggled up against him, watching him laugh.
“Why are you laughing? He’s super strong! Montreal’s very own Thor, if you hear Katie talk about him.” Russia leans up to press a kiss to my mouth, dropping his head after kissing me three more times in a row, like it’s all for good luck, and a girl can find herself wanting good luck kisses all the time.
“Yeah, Dean would hug me if I asked.” Russia goes quiet, rubbing my back up and down, and we’re quiet for a time, still getting used to being this close with one another.
I like him just as much in the quiet moments as I do in the moments when we’re talking, when I’m tattooing him, when I’m meeting his friends.
It’s where you find the measure of a person, when they’re quiet, I think, reading their features like you would pages in a book, reading between the lines at what’s implied but not seen explicitly.
“Sophie?” he calls, and I rouse myself enough to lift my head to look at him, and at this angle, we’re still super close, close enough to purse my lips in a silent demand for a kiss.
He smiles and obliges me, before wriggling underneath me to plant his elbows into the couch, leaning back on them, and by default making me sit up properly or else my spine’s going to bend in a way it’s definitely not supposed to.
“Yeah? Ah, what time is it? You’ve got work early tomorrow, huh?”
I don’t know how Russia does it, working in an office for a dumb number of hours a day, working hard and long hours, but at least the commute isn’t shit, which matters so much during the winter.
“Yeah, I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing? I didn’t mean for the time to get away from me like that. I gotta go get my car.”
“Wait, you left it at the shop?”
I nod. “I’m not going to drive six blocks and try to find parking around your building when I had a guaranteed spot. Like I would willingly shoot my stress levels through the roof. No thanks.”
“All right, let’s go.”
“Wait, what are you doing? You plan on hobbling over to my car?”
Russia nods, pushing me a little until I flop back on the couch, discarded as he gets himself upright and hops towards the kitchen, leaning against the wall to put on his boots. “Yeah, you can drive me back, so I don’t slip and kill myself.”
“Hey, that’s not funny. I could save you all this trouble by going by myself, you know that, right?”
“And you know that I care about you enough not to let you walk alone at this time of night. Just let me walk you. I’ll have my crutches as weapons.”
I shake my head at him, knowing he’s being dumb, but still it settles my heart rate enough at the prospect of the both of us walking together to my car. Montreal’s a city with crime like anywhere else, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.
So I’m grateful for the walk to my car, but it takes three to four minutes for Russia to get into my car and for it to warm up completely, sitting in idle while I crank up the heat and beg my car to hurry up to get all of the engines fired up and the heating system to be working like, right now.
“How’s your foot? We nearly went down like the Titanic right before we got to the shop.”
Russia snorts a laugh and turns to look at me. “Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you?”
“Yup, I just got thwacked by your crutches and I have to say, they’re not really that much of a weapon with how light they are.”
“Jesus, Sophie, I’m not going to hurt anyone,” he says, and I take it to mean hurt in all ways—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
Don’t hurt me, Russia. Don’t hurt me, please.
Please?
“I’m sorry I hit you though, while I almost lost my balance.”
“That’s okay,” I say, throat a little tight now as I glance down at my wheel, having forgotten my gloves in the shop, and refusing to touch the icy steering wheel right away before the heat starts kicking in. I want to feel like I’m living inside of a volcano before I even think about driving Russia back to his place.
He yawns, covering it with both hands, and it’s what decides me to get him home earlier. I don’t have to be at the shop until 11:30 tomorrow, and I’m an early riser anyway, and I’ll head to the gym after Elena leaves for the day, getting my morning errands out of the way before heading into the shop to do my work.
Russia’s gotta be in the office early-early and I want him to get as much sleep as possible.
I drive us back to his building, taking a whole lot longer than expected when I hit a red light that takes a whole entire two years to turn green, and only then am I able to pull up in front of his building, turn on my hazards, and move to open my door to help him out.
“No, no, it’s fine, it’s fine. You don’t need to take care of me so much.”
“And if I want to?” I hit back, leaning close and looking down at his mouth for a second too long.
“Then I’m going to have to do something drastic,” he says, eyes pinned to my mouth.
I lean in close and press a gentle kiss to his mouth, my bones nearly melting at the sound and feel of his sigh against my lips.
“Please be careful driving home,” he says, pressing one last kiss to my mouth, then two to my cheek, always in threes, which a girl can come to expect after having it done a few times, you know?
“I will, I will. Now go inside before you freeze your ass off. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Count on it, Sophie. Good night, meelaya,” he says, making me flush red hot.
I nod, trying to stifle the gurgle that wants to come out of me, somewhere between a half-coo and an aborted giggle that’ll sound worse than it is, but Russia just laughs, kissing my cheek one last time before opening the passenger door, the light in the car nearly blinding me with its brightness.
I wait until he has his crutches pinned underneath either arm, closing the door behind him, locking them up, and he waves at me one last time from the lobby when he notices that I’m still waiting by the curb.
The drive home is done on automatic, my brain knowing which direction to go in, the trek the same one I do five times in a given week, and I can let myself think about what happened tonight, after freaking out all day, I’m definitely wrung out, a rag left out to dry, limp and wrinkled.
I had a good time, and I feel hopeful about Russia and me.
When I get into the apartment, Elena’s yawning at the TV, sitting in the middle of the couch, phone pressed to her ear. She waves at me when I come in, and I wave back, like we’re little kids again, unable to use our words to say hello. I toss my keys in the catch-all bowl we have that’s full of change, and a thimble of all things, a few hundred or so safety pins because you never know when you’re going to need one.
I hang up my coat, toe off my boots and pad into the living room, plopping on the couch and allowing myself to sag sideways, leaning on Elena, my head pressed close to the phone by her ear, too. I can hear Beckett clear as day.
“So I’ll see you when I get back in town, three days from now.”
“Yeah, of course. We have Zoe’s birthday to go to, and I need you to help me pick out a present. Well, ‘help me confirm my present choice’ is a better phrase for it.”
“As long as it’s not Habs-themed then she’ll love anything you give her, baby,” Beckett yawns on the line. “All right, I’m calling it a night. Sweet dreams, sweetheart. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Safe travels and don’t do anything stupid. Be safe.”
“Always. Good night.”
“Good night.” Elena pulls her phone away from her ear, starts rolling her shoulder backwards and forwards so it’s no longer a comfortable perch to rest my weary head on, the jerk.
“You guys are so stinking cute, my teeth are hurting. My teeth, Elena. Shit.”
Elena shrugs her shoulders again, and I have to forget about leaving my head on her shoulder for a second longer; I don’t need my brains scrambled, thanks.
“So...how did it go?” she asks, the question loaded.
“Let me rest here and I’ll tell you all about it,” I say, not wanting to move right now, not wanting to do much of anything.
We both stare at the TV, some kind of show that has monsters and shit and a jump-scare that makes my entire body jolt into a standing position and has me halfway into my bedroom, Elena closing the TV behind me, running into my bedroom with me.
I tell her the story in fits and starts while running through my night routine: skin care after removing my makeup, pulling on my pajamas with the polar bears on them, reading socks pulled all the way up to the knee even if I don’t plan on doing any reading whatsoever.
“So it’s all good, right? You had a good time? He was sweet?” Elena nods, because that’s exactly what I’ve been talking about all this time.
I nod slowly, carefully, crossing my fingers while I get into bed, and Elena moves to the doorway, closing it behind her after wishing me a good night.
I don’t know why I stare at the ceiling, blinking at the shape-shifting shadows playing across it, a sliver of waning moonlight dancing across the surface.
I just don’t know why.
