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“Your collar,” Sophia says — whispers, really — in her ear; the hot breath curdles her skin and makes her feel reborn, but Manon ignores the shivers crawling down her spine in favor of throwing Sophia a confused glance. The aforementioned person steals another glance down, adding, “You keep tugging on it.”
Oh, yeah, she does keep doing that.
Manon doesn’t stop tugging, even though she’d usually (Sophia would disagree: “On occasion!”) listen to her, because it calms some of the anxiety sloshing in her stomach, but she does pretend she’s simply fixing the pointed bits when another group looks her way.
“It’s hot,” she whines. She’s about ready to complain some more, starting with the lack of AC and ending with her entire outfit being longsleeve, but is shut up real fast by Sophia smoothing out the top of her shirt; the tip of Manon’s nose and cheeks turn a splotchy red, and her mind’s turned blank past fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, but all in all, it’s, like, fine.
“I think,” Sophia declares, finally removing the torture device — her hands — she’d trapped on Manon’s body to breathe warmth into them, “It’s actually rather cold.”
Two can play that game.
Manon breathes into her hands and brings them up to Sophia’s cheeks. Sophia shivers and leans into it; for good measure, Manon fixes Sophia’s hair too, even though she knows Sophia doesn’t care all that much about her appearance — it’s the heart that matters, Manon — more for the sake of feeling the curve of her ear and the cold of it than anything else.
In all honesty, she’s right — Sophia, that is, but Manon’ll be damned before she admits it out loud.
She draws her hands away, because Manon won’t allow herself any more than this, stolen moments at stupid events, warmth shared for a minute, nothing more.
It’s because — she won’t let herself waste any more of Sophia’s time. Not when Manon’s, well, Manon, a ticking timebomb… and…
Anyway, it is kind of cold; it’s the 29th of December, and while planes take flight, harrowing a journey to a more tropical weather, Sophia and Manon stay here, right in the heart of a place that’s totaling a whopping 20 degrees.
And… another thing: they are far too close, for a party with a trillion other people, all who believe them to be just friends — because that’s what they are. It’s just, people might get the wrong idea, from how close they are right now.
“We should —” Manon starts, then stops, because she doesn’t actually know how to finish that sentence; all options feel awkward and wrong: We should leave? No. Leaving now, so early, would look too weird. We should find the others? Not in the mood. We should stop standing so close? The angel on her shoulder says, “That’s the right thing to do!”; the devil on her other shoulder vehemently protests, shooting out, “Who cares about the right thing to do?”
“Should what?”
Manon shrugs, and the silent stretches between them as Manon twiddles with her thumbs. Should… should… should… uh…
Sophia spins, suddenly saying, “I have an idea!”
“Uh…” Manon says, not knowing what to expect when Sophia’s looking at her with that sort of bright sparkle in her eye — she thinks this might be the moment to start fearing for her life. “Idea…?”
And then Sophia’s pointing toward the bar, filled with an array of drinks that will most definitely leave them long, long gone.
She lets Sophia loop their hands together and tug them toward the counter anyway.
It’s an honest-to-god miracle that neither of them fall and split their skulls open as they exit the party — one drink had become two drinks then had become five then had become a number Manon cannot count drunk.
But, for once, Manon isn’t the complete and totally stumbling drunkard between them; in fact, she’s half-dragging, half-carrying a haplessly inhibited Sophia along, and all she can do is silently thank god for her sudden strength and pray to that same god that it stays, because Sophia’s body weight was certainly not easy to carry over a 6-mile trek.
“Noooooo,” Sophia groans, when Manon tries to drag them toward her apartment, holding them in place — literally, finger by finger. “I don’t think so.”
“We should go home,” Manon says, but she’s laughing as she says it, watching Sophia stick a hand down to scoop up a handful of snow from the sidewalk outside her apartment.
“But it’s snowing,” Sophia protests. She’s right — fat flakes are drifting down from the sky, catching in her hair and on her eyelashes. The alcohol has made everything pleasantly soft around the edges, and Manon finds herself not caring that they’ve been out here for twenty minutes already, that her feet hurt from her shoes, that she should really, really insist they go inside and burrow under a mountain of blanket.
“Sophia, what are you —” Manon doesn’t get to finish before a snowball hits her square in the shoulder. “You did not just —”
“I absolutely did!” Sophia’s already making another one, grinning wickedly.
She’s kind of sweaty and gross right now, stinking of alcohol too, so, objectively, a snowball to the shoulder should’ve made her feel pretty gross, but that’s the part of her shoulder that’s still nice and warm from when Sophia had smoothed her shirt out, like, hours ago, and all it does is send a little fizzling spark of excitement through Manon.
So… indulging Sophia it is.
“Oh, you're on,” Manon snipes back; then, she’s bending down, fingers clumsy as she packs snow together, and launches it at Sophia. It goes wide, missing by at least a foot, and Sophia cackles.
“That was terrible!”
Miraculously, her next one hits Sophia right in the knee, but she’s still busy laughing at Manon’s previous failure. “Shut up, I’m drunk!” she exclaims, palm hitting her face. “And so are you.”
“Ohhhhhh,” Sophia suddenly says.
“No,” Manon shoots back, shaking her head, “Don’t do it.”
“Blame it on the goose, got you feeling —”
“Stop, please,” Manon pleads, cupping her ears with her hands.
“Blame it on the a-a-a-a-alcohol —”
“You are more drunk than me,” Manon protests; she’s laughing now too, though, already making another one. This one hits Sophia in the leg, and the look of mock offense on her face is worth everything.
They chase each other down the sidewalk, throwing snowballs that mostly miss, slipping on ice patches and catching each other before they fall. Manon’s pretty sure they look like complete idiots, but she also can’t remember the last time she had this much fun, so she lets the idiocy slide.
“Truce!” Sophia finally calls, breathless from laughing. “Truce, I can't —” She bends over, hands on her knees, still giggling.
Manon considers hitting her with one more snowball, but decides to be merciful. “Fine. Truce.”
Sophia straightens up; then, without warning, mainly because she loves giving Manon an aneurysm, lets herself fall backwards into a patch of undisturbed snow on someone's lawn. “Snow angel time!”
“We’re on someone’s property —”
“Live a little, Manon!” Sophia’s already moving her arms and legs, creating the angel shape. “Come on!”
And because Manon is tipsy and happy and completely, hopelessly in love with this ridiculous person, she lies down next to Sophia in the snow. It’s cold against her back, seeping through her coat, but Sophia’s laughing beside her and the snow is falling on her face and everything feels a little more than perfect — it’s like a movie, but it’s actually real life, and she’s not sure how to process that.
“Look,” Sophia says, pointing up at the sky. “You can’t even see the stars because of the snow.”
“That doesn't make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s pretty.” Sophia turns her head to look at Manon, and there’s snow in her hair and on her eyelashes; Manon wants to lick it off — she’s, like, drunk though, and it’s the alcohol speaking, and if she says it enough times, she can convince herself it’s true, right? “You’re pretty.”
Manon's breath catches. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m drunk and you’re pretty. Both things can be true,” she declares, before sitting up and brushing snow off herself. “Okay, now we should actually go home before we freeze to death for real.”
So.
To the apartment they go.
They stumble up the stairs — well, Manon stumbles, and Sophia sort of floats, humming a god-awful song under her breath — and it takes Manon three tries to get her key in the lock because her hands won’t stop shaking. From the cold, she clarifies. From the cold.
“You’re bad at this,” Sophia observes, leaning heavily against the doorframe.
“You’re not helping,” Manon shoots back; she’s smiling anyway, and when the door finally swings open, they practically fall inside in a tangled mess.
They should change, or drink water, or do literally anything responsible, but instead they collapse onto the couch — Sophia first, then Manon half on top of her because there’s not really enough room for two people to lie down like this, not really.
“Manon?” Sophia says, all soft and mumbly.
Manon lets her fingers brush Sophia’s hair back from her face. “Mm?”
“‘m glad we went,” is what she says next, slurring, clearly already falling asleep.
“Yeah,” Manon agrees — even though her feet hurt and she’s pretty sure (like, ninety-five percent sure) she’s going to regret every single drink in about six hours. “Me too.”
Sophia makes a small noise — agreement, maybe, or just sleep — and then her breathing evens out, and Manon lets herself close her eyes too, just for a second.
She’s awake, but she’s also not really awake when she hears Sophia say her name.
Manon hums — she hadn’t realized Sophia had woken up. “Sophia?”
Sophia shifts a little next to her on the couch, and Manon immediately misses the comforting weight of Sophia’s head resting on her shoulder; when Manon looks away from the ceiling to face Sophia, there’s an odd expression on Sophia’s face that she can’t name. Alarm bells start ringing. “Uh,” Sophia starts, which is already unnerving on its own, because Sophia rarely hesitates, “I know you like me.”
The alarm bells in her ears are full-blown shouting now.
Silence.
“Oh,” Manon says, at length. She sits up, puts her hands on her knees, and mentally rifles through her list of books to pick which one to hide inside until Sophia leaves and she can wallow in self-pity for the next several years — it’s going to be Twilight, because it’s always Twilight.
“Don’t you have anything else to say?” Sophia prods.
“No,” Manon snaps; then, there’s that age-old regret filling her to the brim as Sophia flinches — tiny, almost imperceptible, but not for someone like Manon, who’s grown used to the tiniest twitches, and she hurries to speak again. “No, I, ugh — I’m sorry,” Manon stammers, tearing her gaze away from the bright eyes flashing at her to look back down at her shaking fists clasped in her lap, “that I had to — I didn’t want to… but —”
“Manon —”
“I understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore,” Manon babbles, trying to sort out her thoughts as quickly as possible; except, her brain’s blank, so all that’s coming out is nonsense. “And if you don’t want to ever see me again, if you want me to leave, I understand, I’ll find somewhere,” she breathes, trying and failing to keep her voice from cracking, trying and failing to fall back into her teenage habits of pure yuck, “just leave now if you hate me, because I don’t —”
“Manon,” Sophia says, firm but gentle, because Sophia’s never been anything but gentle, before reaching out to lay a hand over Manon’s own trembling ones. “Won’t you listen to me for a second?”
“But —” Manon worries on her lower lip. “Still, I didn’t mean to fall in love with you. I just… it’s hard not to, alright, not when you’re here, and you’re you, and, and—” She swallows and tries to breathe, calling it a success when she feels the air rattle down her windpipe and come out as a choked exhale. “And I’m, like, someone unworthy. So, if you —”
The only warning Manon gets is the brief flicker of irritation in Sophia’s eyes — and then she’s kissing her, just like that, and all the words Manon had been about to say next die in her throat.
It’s soft, and it’s everything she’s ever dreamed of — plush lips, light breathing, the smell of Sophia cloaking her — but it ends just as fast as it began, just a brief meeting that Manon barely gets to appreciate before Sophia pulls away, face flushed.
“I told you to listen to me,” she sighs.
Manon blinks dizzily. “Oh,” she manages, “you… you did. Right. Yes.”
“But I guess I don’t need to say anything anymore, for you to know what I feel.”
Manon feels a pout twitch onto her face, before the protest slips: “Wait.”
Sophia frowns. “What?”
“I’d like to hear it anyway,” Manon murmurs, feeling the heat creep up her neck.
Sophia stares at her, then grins and leans in closer, practically crawling onto her lap and settling in comfortably. “Manon, what a sneaky devil you are,” she coos, pressing a kiss to a sensitive spot on Manon’s neck; Manon chokes back a gasp and tilts her head further back, baring her throat for Sophia to nip at more. “As long as you promise to actually listen this time. I love hearing your voice, but let me do the talking this time.”
Manon wakes up to the sunlight.
This isn’t exactly a strange phenomenon — the curtains in her apartment are thin, so early morning sunlight always filters through, often waking her up more effectively than an alarm clock would. She’ll lie in bed a few minutes longer, go over the list of things she has to do that day, and then get up and get ready.
And then everything flits into her head, the kiss, the couch, Sophia, before she registers that it’d just been a dream.
There’s something strange, though — someone else is with her, arms wrapped around her middle, which may be why the bed is much warmer than usual.
Someone else is with her.
That wakes her up faster than any sunlight or alarm clock could; Manon nearly leaps thirty feet in the air, but several deep breaths later and she can at least manage to open her eyes all the way instead of keeping them squeezed shut out of fear of who she’ll see.
Manon is greeted with Sophia’s sleeping face.
So… maybe last night was not as much a dream as she believed?
She shuts her eyes, taking several deep breaths again, because absolutely nothing could have prepared her for that.
Her first thought is to nudge Sophia awake and ask her how real last night was, but she runs through what she remembers about Sophia and mornings, and decides she’d rather not be kicked off her own couch.
She tries to move, as slowly as she can, but Sophia snuffles — in her sleep, like Manon isn’t insane — and nuzzles her neck with a soft, breathy sigh. Manon keeps her eyes closed and briefly wishes for God to take her right here and now, just so she doesn’t have to be stuck trying to decide between feeling guilty and feeling elated.
There’s probably no way Manon can get out of bed without disturbing Sophia, so she stays still and tries to pretend everything is perfectly fine. It’s unexpectedly (or perhaps expectedly; it’s Sophia, after all) nice, being in bed with Sophia — not in that way — and she’s sure Sophia is smart enough to know that Manon hadn’t done anything to her — or had she? Jesus Christ please say she hadn’t — in her sleep, so there probably isn’t any harm in staying like this a little longer until Sophia wakes up by herself.
And Sophia really is good at giving warm hugs — so Manon lets herself relax, and dozes off thinking vaguely about the future, and Sophia, because all roads lead to Sophia, or whatever the Wizard of Oz said.
When she wakes up again, it’s to sunlight reflected in Sophia’s eyes. “Morning,” Sophia says — Manon barely gets to appreciate the half-asleep quality of her voice before Sophia is leaning in and pressing her lips to Manon’s chin. When she pulls back, as though nothing happened, as though the half-second of contact hadn’t burnt Manon’s skin alive, it’s to nonchalantly ask, “What’s for breakfast?”
Okay. So. Last night’s looking less and less like a dream, and more and more like reality; or, maybe, this is an alternate reality; or, maybe Manon should file for clinical insanity.
“What?” Manon squeaks.
“What’s for breakfast?” Sophia repeats. She snuggles in closer, sighing against Manon’s neck, and then kisses her there too; Manon tries not to pathetically fucking squeal. “I want something sweet, okay? Nothing boring like toast. Do you have cereal?”
“I — yes,” Manon stammers, “but — why are you — Sophia,” she says, shrilly, when Sophia inches upwards to brush her lips just below Manon’s ear. “Why are you… um —”
“What, kissing you?” Sophia’s brow furrows, and she draws back; Manon instantly mourns the lack of contact and nearly chases after her so Sophia’s lips are latched back onto her skin. “Something wrong with that?”
“It’s, like, out of the norm… I guess…?”
“But you like it, don’t you?”
Manon flushes. “Um…”
She’s really eloquent today, huh?
Sophia hums, and the light vibration against her skin sends a shiver down Manon’s spine — all in all, it serves as nothing more than a way to make her a tad needy, until the brief realization that it is entirely too early to be feeling like this flickers into her mind. “Whatever,” she says. “I know I like doing it. Just tell me when you want me to stop.”
Manon swallows. “Only if you’ll…”
“Mm, what?”
“Only if you’ll do it every morning,” Manon says, all in one breath. She shuts her eyes and prays this won’t backfire.
There’s a moment of silence before Sophia shifts a little — Manon can’t tell what she’s doing until she feels a kiss right above her right eyelid, and then her left. “Sure, as long as you make me cereal,” Sophia mumbles.
Manon bites back a smile and does her best to memorize the affection in Sophia’s voice.
The thing is — and Manon’s trying really hard not to think about this too much, because thinking about things has historically not worked out great for her — it’s the 30th now, which means tomorrow is the 31st, which means tomorrow is Sophia’s birthday, and Manon has no idea what she’s supposed to do with that information.
Like, what do you get your… girlfriend?
That brings another string of questions: Is that what Sophia is? Is that what they are? Is she, like, violating consent by assuming they’re already together? Is that a thing? They haven’t actually discussed labels, and Manon’s not about to bring it up and make things weird. So, what do you get your ‘person’ when you’ve only been together for, like, two days, and also, you’re kind of terrified of messing it up?
“You’re thinking too loud,” Sophia says from where she’s sprawled across the couch, a book curled up on her stomach. “I can hear it from here.”
“I’m not thinking,” Manon lies; her brain, evil, proceeds to keep thinking, and it mainly goes like: Sophia, Sophia, Sophia.
“Uh-huh.” Sophia doesn’t even open her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Manon.”
Manon sighs and sets down her phone — she’d been scrolling through gift ideas for the past twenty minutes and getting progressively more anxious about all of them. “It’s your birthday tomorrow.”
In hindsight, telling Sophia that the reason she’s stressed is because she doesn’t know what to get her for her birthday feels a little stupid; she thinks, though, Sophia has a tendency to make Manon a little stupid anyway, somehow, someway, so, it’s really not all that bad.
“Oh, yeah.” Sophia cracks one eye open. “It is, isn’t it?”
All Manon can say, baffled, is, “You forgot your own birthday?”
“I’ve had other things on my mind,” she protests; then, a grin appears on her face and her voice dips as she adds, “Much more interesting things.”
“Shut up,” Manon mumbles, face burning. “I just — I don’t know what to get you.”
Sophia shrugs. “You don’t have to get me anything.”
“That’s not how birthdays work.”
Sophia finally sits up, placing the book on the counter and brushing non-existent crumbs off her outfit. “Okay, fine. You want to know what I want for my birthday?”
Manon blinks. Is she serious? “Yes, obviously, that’s why I’m asking —”
“You,” Sophia says, simple as that. “Just you. And maybe those pancakes you made last week, but mostly you.”
“That’s…” she trails off, utterly lost; it’s insane. That’s what Sophia is. She thinks it: Sophia’s insane. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s true,” she declares, laughing. A moment later, she’s tilting her head. “Unless you’re planning on going somewhere?”
“No, I — no.” Manon takes a breath, shaking her head. “I’ll make you pancakes.”
“Perfect.” Sophia flops back down, looking entirely too pleased with herself. “Well, that’s that, then.”
The next morning, Manon wakes up before Sophia — on purpose this time — and slips out of bed as carefully as she can. The apartment’s quiet, too early for another but the birds to be chirping, and it makes her feel like she has to be even more quiet than usual as she pads to the kitchen in her socks and pulls ingredients from cabinets.
She’s whisking batter when arms wrap around her waist from behind.
“Cheater,” Sophia mumbles into her shoulder. “You weren’t there when I woke up.”
“It’s your birthday,” Manon protests, turning to shoot her a disgruntled frown; and maybe shoo her away while she’s at it, but Sophia’s the birthday girl, so. Kindness. “I wanted to do bed and breakfast.”
“Mm,” says Sophia, mock-conciliatory, still not letting go in favor of standing there with her chin hooked over Manon’s shoulder, watching her pour batter onto the pan.
“This is nice.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she repeats, biting Manon’s neck; she lets out a small, shaky no at that, because there’s a hot oven right in front of her, and this is most definitely going to drive her crazy, but all Sophia does is laugh and bite again. “Hey! I’m the birthday girl. If I wanna bite you, I should bite you.”
Manon flips a pancake. “I hate you.”
“Stop worrying so much,” is all Sophia says, pressing a kiss to her neck — full-blown shivers leave Manon, and she thinks, maybe, that Sophia either has a thing for risking their lives or for that spot. “About everything. About me.”
“I’m not —”
“You are.” Another kiss, softer this time; ants crawl down her neck all the same, but that’s just because it’s Sophia. “I can feel you thinking from here.”
Manon sets down the spatula and turns around in Sophia’s arms, meeting her eyes. She’s still a little sleepy, hair mussed from the pillow, and Manon’s… never seen anything more beautiful.
“Happy birthday,” she says quietly.
Sophia grins, bright and warm as the sun filtering through the curtains. “Best one yet.”
And then they’re kissing again, and it’s perfect — nothing, because this is normalcy now, and everything, because, oh God, this is normalcy now, all at once.