Chapter Text
She feels like they’ve been doing an elaborate dance around one another for the past few months, and the suspense is killing her.
Feyre wakes every morning, in his bed, alone. Perhaps she imagines it, but she swears she can still smell him in the sheets. She sleeps on one side of the bed, never in the middle, on the off chance he might tire of the sofa. Sometimes, she imagines him climbing into bed with her. She’d never admit it, but what she misses most about Tamlin is having someone to sleep beside. The loneliness of sleeping alone in a double bed makes her stomach knot and twist and second guess everything that has brought her here. More often than Tamlin, though, it’s Rhys she longs for, remembering the way his arms felt around her that one golden night in the café. But he seems content on his sofa.
His elaborate array of hair products has been set aside to allow for hers, but she always showers alone, listening to him move around the flat as she considers drowning herself rather than continue with this little façade. (Often, she thinks about what he would do if she left the door open for him to join her. Often, she ends up with the shower cold rather than hot.) She never locks the bathroom door, just in case he changes his mind.
She never sees him until she joins him in the kitchen for breakfast. She reads the news, sneaking glances at him over her paper. He plays with his breakfast, waiting for her to be done with the paper so that he can read it afterwards, sneaking glances back. They both reach for the coffee at the same time.
Once, he catches her in the kitchen, singing to an old record when she doesn’t think he’s home. She can’t sing at all, and he retreats before she can catch his gaze on him. He tucks the memory away, reaches for it when he can’t focus on anything else.
They separate, for university or for work. He texts her, some graffiti he thinks she might like or stupid puns that make her giggle. She messages back when she needs to swear violently at current affairs, or if she creates something she is proud of. He is always her first critic. She is always grateful. Even if whatever this is never progresses past here and now, she is grateful for the way they ebb and flow, back and forth. They reconvene at work or in the evenings. Sometimes they’ll meet and take the bus home together, even though he has a car. She knows he doesn’t use it anymore because they both enjoy the way they have to sit pressed close together on old bus seats. They argue heatedly over his Netflix. She goes to sleep in his room. He watches her go.
Alone.
--
She goes home for the holidays, visiting with her sisters and her Father. She tells them very little about her new roommate, only that she’s no longer with Tamlin. The court date for that is fast approaching, but she doesn’t tell them about that, either. She sleeps in her childhood bedroom, and the sheets are soft with age, but she can’t seem to make herself at home. Not seeing him for a week is almost physically painful. They text a lot, but it doesn’t mitigate the way she longs to actually see him. Twice, she nearly goes to the coffee shop, in case he’s there, but she can’t quite bring herself to justify the hour’s drive into the city. So she lets herself glance occasionally at his facebook. As if that’s the same.
Though it’s nice to see her family, somehow the thought of having dinner with Rhys and his friends at their little apartment in the city is wholly more appealing. It’s a dangerous realisation.
--
It’s after Christmas by the time she goes back to his, in that dead space before New Year. It’s a physical relief to see him, and she can’t help but wrap her arms around his neck, burying her face in the collar of his shirt. They’re hardly ever physical, but the way that he lifts her up, arms strong and fierce around her, makes her think that he just might have missed her as much as she has him. He’s made dinner for her, and she tells him stories about her sisters as they eat, her animated expressions and gestures making him laugh aloud more than once. In turn, he re-enacts the game of monopoly which almost led to the burning down of the little flat.
Dessert is a smoothie made from cake.
--
The court date comes and goes. Though she isn’t technically involved, she goes for Rhys’ sake. It’s only him, at her side throughout, that keeps her breakfast in her stomach when she sees Tamlin. Rhys covers the fist she has made with her hand with his larger one, resting between them on the bench. He is found not culpable, his defence of provocation considered sound. Tamlin seethes, and it’s even more pronounced when she leaves with Rhys by her side, one of his hands placed lightly on her back. The case is dismissed, and Feyre finally lets herself breathe.
The restraining order is filed the following week.
--
They don’t have their New Year staff night until long after New Year, when their Christmas rush has died down. It’s mid-January, but mid-January still apparently requires them all to be wearing an assortment of paper crowns and tinsel tiaras. They start in the little café. Rhys seems to take up the whole room, his tiara askew, laughing with Azriel and Cassian as they prepare some bizarre cocktail using apple juice, whiskey and cinnamon syrup. Feyre sits with Amren and the assistant manager, Mor. Mor braids and unbraids Feyre’s hair as they sit curled up together on the sofa. They eat cake and they laugh as they boys use the milk steam arm to heat the apple juice, all of them pretty convinced this is the opposite of what it was intended for. There’s enough whiskey in the resulting concoction to set Feyre’s throat on fire, but they all grimace through it, the sudden liquid courage making everything just that little bit shinier.
Feyre’s eyes meet Rhys’, and neither of them can help their smiles. Tonight, Feyre decides, is the night she makes him stop waiting.
--
They go dancing, to Mor’s favourite place. Feyre’s never been here, but she knows immediately why they all like it so much. It’s early, and mid-January, so they almost have the place to themselves. They have an unspoken agreement that this is their New Year. It’s empty enough that Feyre sees the way Mor pulls Azriel towards her. Empty enough that they all see it. Rhys has seen it, too. Suddenly, finally, it feels like she’s the one that’s waiting for him.
Instead, she dances with Amren, with Cassian, and even Mor when she pries herself from Azriel, who has somewhat of a dazed expression on his face. They are unadulterated. Feyre has always hated this sort of thing, hated standing out, but Rhys’ gaze makes her feel bold. They scream when the clock strikes midnight, whooping together as though it’s still January first. Feyre finds herself in Rhys’ arms, finally, and laughs giddily as he lifts her up. His hands on her waist, hers on his broad shoulders. There’s a second when she thinks he might kiss her. Something in the way his hands linger on her waist even after he puts her gently down. She bites her lip, and she sees this tip of his tongue sweep out to wet his own nervously. She’s immediately swept away by Cassian, with his pointed questions about Feyre’s sister. She thinks about smacking him, and somehow restrains herself.
They dance until the early hours, beg the owner to lock the doors and let them stay.
--
They’re still draped over the front steps as the January sun rises. Feyre is wrapped in Rhys’ jacket. She can still feel the music moving through her, ringing in her ears, making her bold as she sits between his legs, leaning back against his solid warmth as they all hold hands and pretend the sun is rising on the new year for them all.
--
They pile into a neighbouring café for breakfast, suffering the faux-hostility as staff members of a rival establishment. Loudly, Cassian proclaims that his flat white is too frothy and nearly gets them kicked out, but Feyre sees Rhys slip the other manager a couple of apologetic twenties along with the bill, and the whole thing is good-natured in any case. They lounge about, digesting their greasy bacon sandwiches. Mor sits in Azriel’s lap, licking her fingers. He stares at her like she’s the sun itself, even with sauce on her face. Feyre’s legs are draped across Rhys’ lap, and he grips her calf as they both silently claim the other, without either of them realising it. None of them seem to be willing to let the night end.
Eventually, Azriel carries a half-asleep Mor home on his back. Cassian, who lives with him, follows, swinging Mor’s shoes about as they leave. Amren disappears too, going via the café to leave a handwritten note in the window that they’ll be closed today. Rhys and Feyre take the bus home, sat on the back row seat surrounded by commuters. She wears his jacket to cover the fact that she’s still in a dress that’s too short to be generally acceptable at this time in the morning. Her head comes to rest on his shoulder.
Feyre watches his arm as it braces on the pole to his left. His shirtsleeves have been rolled up at some point, baring the tanned skin of his forearm, and she can’t seem to look at anything but that. Their silence is companionable, neither of them seeming able to break the quiet that rests between them. They might as well be utterly alone.
Too soon, the bus reaches their stop and they jerk out of their individual reveries, darting to the front of the bus just as the driver is about to pull away. He rolls his eyes at them as they half-fall off the bus, laughing together. She can’t seem to stop smiling at him. The early sun reflects in her eyes. Her smile is so wide it breaks his heart, just a fraction.
--
In the hallway he stops, latching the door behind him. She waits just inside. She sees the way his eyes trail up her bare legs as he turns to face her, and for just a moment she thinks he might kiss her. His throat bobs.
Instead he smiles in a way that’s a little forced, tugging her forward and pressing a kiss to the top of her hair, “Happy New Year, darling.”
--
She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. All traces of her make up are gone now. She’s back in his pyjamas, which might as well be called hers now. She wonders what exactly it is she has to do.
--
Across the hall he leans against the door of the living room, desperately trying to scrub away the image of her, hair askew and eye make-up smudged as she’d waited for him inside their flat.
He hears a cough. It’s pointed. Later on, he’ll convince himself she might have been unwell, or sick, or that she might have needed him for something. Whatever it is he assumes in the moment, he knocks gently on the door of his former bedroom, and then opens the door.
--
She smiles at him gently from the far side of the bed. The covers on the side he’s stood by are pushed away invitingly, “Come to bed, Rhys?”
He only stares at her. Then smiles, his bravado only a little strained by how much he wants her, “I thought you’d never ask, darling.”
She returns it. His eyes can’t look away from the sight of her in his bed, and for the life of him he can’t think why he’s slept on the sofa for so long, when this creature has been here, like this, waiting for him.
“Will you turn out the light?” The simple intimacy of the statement has his mind reeling again. Outside it’s daylight, but the shutters are closed, and in here it might as well be midnight again. He does as she asks, until all he can see is the outline of her, illuminated in the soft glow from the window in the hallway.
Still, he can’t make himself move.
“Rhys?” she sounds concerned now, in the dark, as if there’s any earthly possibility he might be able to refuse her, “Rhys… Are you going to make me wait?”
He smiles. And then he obliges her.