He expected anger after he came out of the bathroom that night. Or an apology. He expected anything outside of what her reaction was. Nothing. She pretended nothing happened.
The next few days the event hangs over him like a dark cloud. But she doesn't bring it up. Nothing has changed in their routine. She wasn't even freezing him out.
Part of him wants to talk with her and confront her but mostly he is just happy. The precarious routine they have is precious to him and doesn't know how to even start that conversation. Maybe it was all in his head and he just read the situation wrong. Yes, that's it.
She crawls onto the couch with him one evening and stretches out and then, unceremoniously but self-consciously so, pushes her bare feet into his lap.
She becomes aware of his look, the weight of his eyes, and without any preamble she meets them.
She turns back to her book, smiling, and he to his, barely able to breathe. And for a long long time they sit in silence and stillness until she starts rubbing her flexing feet together so her cool heels press into his thigh.
"My feet are cold," she complains at last and he takes a look at her, not quite in her eyes because he hasn't got the courage up yet. But he folds his book over the arm of the couch and, not quite believing she'd wants him to do it, takes her icy feet in his hands. When she doesn't protest, he begins scrubbing them briskly between his palms until the pink comes back.
"Ooh, that tickles," she says after a minute, not exactly smiling.
His eyebrows jerk up. So he presses firmer, not scrubbing so much as rubbing, asking, "How's this? Better?" and her mouth tips up a little bit. And then he's digging his thumbs into the little arch of her foot, into the hollow behind her ankle, and when his fingers wrap around her heel and turn circles into the flesh there she actually squirms down a little bit into the couch and a warm, contented sound escapes her.
"Mmmmm."
He's acutely aware of her eyes on him. Eyes have such a weight, he finds, even when he's avoiding meeting them, and hers are particularly prickly, like she's assessing him, slicing him open, turning things over to get a look at their glistening undersides. But he's aware of her contentedness, too, and that, combined with the way her toes curl and flex in his large, warm hands, sends the warmth rushing through him.
She takes advantages of his foot rubs regularly after that, and he doesn't care that he's not getting any reading done or that she never reciprocates. She wants and he's eager to give, though he doesn't want to examine too closely what he gets out of it; he imagines himself folding her to his chest and – and it stops there. He settles down each evening on his end of the couch and waits for her to join him, for her feet to work their way into his lap. It's often enough that she doesn't need the cold-feet excuse anymore and she'll sink down into the couch and swing her legs over his, wiggling her toes at him, and he'll grin and twist his hands around her heel so she squirms and sighs.
Occasionally she'll settle down and pillow her cheek on his thigh, and the first time he was so hesitant to touch her that it almost didn't happen, but then he allowed his fingers to trail down to her warm back and she purred into his knee.
It's late one night and for once she's working on something in her room. So he's laid out on the couch, a book on Turian history propped open on his stomach, when she comes out and pads over sleepily. He glances up and tenses to make room for her at the end but she stops him with a hand on his belly and nestles in behind him.
John goes rigid from his jaw down at the sudden contact, as she stretches out in the nook between his long warm body and the back of the couch. She presses her face into the comfortable hollow where his ribs terminate, and she rubs her cheek into his soft blue shirt, tucking her chin down, bring her knees up a bit next to his strong legs. Her hands fold and tuck between her thighs.
He's stopped breathing by now. And for a long while he stays like that, the end of the book's spine digging into his ribs as he watches her fall asleep. She's sleeping and he's just buzzing with the contact, trying not to stare at her jaw hooked neatly into where his belt cinches over the jut of his hipbone and he wonders, pitifully, whether he could stretch without waking her, stretch and relieve the tension corkscrewing his muscles tight, and whether in stretching the hem of his shirt might ride up and press his hot skin to her cool cheek.
Instead, he folds his book and gently, very gently sets it onto the floor, hoping not to jar her with any sudden movement, and he folds one arm wing-like against his ribs and with the other reaches out to stroke her hair.
She doesn't jerk away. Her eyes don't flash up at him; her face doesn't turn down in a scowl. She actually turns her face into his hand, rubs her cheek against his belly. His heart does a little flip-flop as she curls next to him, her knee slipping over his ankle.
She squirms a bit and he's not sure, actually, whether she's really asleep and he hopes she's awake, that she's consciously allowing his friendly, gentle touch, because that would be progress for once. He lets his hand go still in her hair and she settles down again, her cheek pressed into his hip bone. If she stays that way she'll have corduroy print striped into her cheek. He chuckles softly at the thought.
It jars her and she's moving again and suddenly she's nuzzling into his groin, which stops the chuckle in the middle of his throat. It stops everything. For a moment he wonders if he actually felt what he felt but then she's pushing into him, wedging her cheek into the fold of his crotch, rubbing. It takes a long moment to get over the paralysis and it's only when his cock starts to beat, thickening up, and his face flares with heat, that he finds his voice.
"Janey... honey –"
Her face stills, her chin digging into the tender place of his inner thigh.
And then she's rearing up on one arm, wiping her mouth, eyes creased shut.
"Oh, sorry," she says as she opens her sleepy eyes. She barely sees him and then she's drawing away. "I'm going to bed."
He lets out a long, shuddering breath. "O-okay," is all he can manage.