Symmetry

Piper and Jon stood in the entrance hallway of his apartment. Piper had her hands stuffed into her navy blue pea coat pockets. They held each other in a staring contest. She hadn’t said anything since they left the House of Blues. He felt like he could’ve handled the situation a lot better.

After what felt like an eternity, she smirked at him. “So Captain, what was so important that you asked me to come here for?” She took her hands out of her pockets and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Jon snorted, he couldn’t help it. He thought it fairly obvious that they had some things to talk about and told her as such.

She rolled her eyes. “Jon, what is there to talk about? We still dig each other but it’s not going to happen. I don’t know what more we have to say.” She shrugged, like this wasn’t a big deal. That made Jon’s heart sink a bit. Why wasn’t this a big deal to her? This was all he thought about (when he wasn’t thinking about captaining his team and such things).

“Why isn’t it not going to happen, Pipes? If we still…if we still are in love, which we clearly are, why can’t we just…happen?” He spoke plainly. He just wanted this. He thought he had a grasp on what his feelings were but obviously not. He wanted nothing more for her to set her purse on his island counter and crawl into bed with him whenever she wasn’t on tour after a long day on the ice.

She eyed him like he was insane. “It’s been a long time. I’ve learned how to function on my own. I’m not the naïve girl that thought we could take on the world together.” She uncrossed her arms and crossed her legs, speaking in a clipped tone. “Is this why I’m here, for you to try to fix things?”

He nodded because, duh. “So we did it a little differently. We each took the world on our own. We still did it just like we said we would. Now why can’t we have our cake and eat it to?” He’s pretty sure that the little speech he delivered was on par with the ones he gives to the guys in the locker room.

It seemed to work to because all of a sudden he had arms full of Piper. She slammed into his body with more force than he thought she could muster. She was clinging to the material of his shirt with her hands wrapped tightly around his waist. He put his arms around her shoulder instinctively. He raised one hand to cradle her head as she tried to burrow into his chest.

He couldn't tell if she was laughing or sobbing. When she spoke, he supposed it may have been a bit of both. “You don’t eat cake during the season” she murmured through her hysterics. Jon chuckled, mostly relieved that after so long he could actually feel her again.

He was suddenly exhausted. Now that he knew things were going to be semi-okay, he let out a deep breath. All the tension he had held in his shoulders seeped out of him and he wanted to slide to the floor to just sleep. He pulled back a bit from Piper, “Stay here tonight. We’ll get some sleep, yeah?”

Piper stifled a yawn, nodding. He took her hand again and led her to his room. He tossed her one of his t-shirts. When she came back from the bathroom, changed and ready for bed, he was already under the covers in plaid pajama pants.

She shifted from foot to foot, still kind of shocked and a tad uncomfortable that she’s in Jon’s room. In his shirt. About to crawl into his bed. She reached up to scratch the back of her neck, a sign that she was in desperate need of a smoke.

“Maybe I should just sleep on the couch…or in the guest room or something?” She inquired, trying hard to meet his eyes. Jon shook his head vehemently. “You know neither of us would get any sleep. C’mon Pipes. It’s just me.”He pulled the blankets back for her invitingly.

With one last glance at his bedroom door she crawled into bed, trying to keep a respectable distance between the two of them. In reality though, Piper just want to curl up into his side and maybe make out a bit. She reached for her phone on the bed side table and made sure her alarm was set for tomorrow. She had the interview with the kids tomorrow and had to be presentable.

They laid together quietly for awhile while Piper was lost in thought. Sleeping in an actual bed had never felt so wonderful. She was so used to bus bunks and couches that this feeling was borderline foreign to her. It was nice, especially on the no doubt expensive mattress Jon purchased.

She finally curled up against Jon’s side, selfishly enjoying the muscle he’d developed while they were apart. She was tired enough where she wouldn’t indulge in a little Jon lovin’. She looked up at his face, his eyes were closed but he definitely wasn’t asleep yet, no matter how much he tried to pretend. He smiled a little bit and squeezed her side a little bit.

She put her head back down and sighed before whispering through a quiet giggle, “Are we just going to ignore the fact that I wrote a song called ‘Toes’?” Jon laughed through his nose, so fucking ecstatic that she was even there with him, and smiled.

“You’re insane Piper Rudolff.” She nodded into his skin, and kissed one of the faint abdominal muscles visible that was wrapping around his side. He wrapped an arm around her more securely and planted a kiss on her temple in return before drifting off.

Jon may or may not have mumbled “I love you” several times, and Piper may or may not have said it back.