#livan

The apartment is dark when Ivan gets home, which isn’t unusual. His job as a bouncer has him working into the early hours of the morning, and Lotus really should be asleep by this time. She isn’t always. Insomnia and hyperfocusing keeps her up, making her lose track of time.

Ivan gives his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, then navigates silently through the apartment. His bedroom door is nearly closed, slightly ajar, not open like he’d left it. He pushes the bedroom door open slowly, wary of what might wait within. 

He’s only mildly surprised to find Lotus asleep in his bed, the grey sheets tangled around her legs. Recently, for reasons he doesn’t entirely understand, she’s taken to sleeping in his bed when he isn’t home. He’s certainly not complaining. 

Despite being a completely silent person, Ivan’s entrance into the room manages to rouse her from sleep. With heavy lids, she blinks at him, then her eyes slip closed again. 

“Howas work?” she slurs, her voice thick with sleep.

There’s no way for him to answer her. With her eyes closed and the room dark, she won’t see him sign a response. Instead, he strips out of his clothes, crawls into bed, and wraps his arms around her. She nuzzles her face against his chest, making a quiet noise of appreciation as she sleepily kisses his bare skin. Then, she rolls over so her back faces him, and she pulls his arm close to her chest. Minutes later, she’s asleep, warm and still against him.

--

A snowball hits the back of Lotus’s winter coat, exploding into powder. She whips around, mouth slightly open in shock. Several feet away, skating in a slow circle on the ice, Ivan is suppressing a smile. 

The lakes froze over a couple weeks ago, and this is the first opportunity they’ve had to take advantage of it. As is often the case when they go skating, the cold air and the rush of darting across the ice has brought out a childlike glee in Ivan. His knee bends, and before he can start moving toward her, she speeds off.

“If you push me into a snowbank again, we’re not fucking for a week,” she calls out. She glances over her shoulder to see Ivan’s body shaking with silent laughter. 

--

“Okay, which color?” Lotus asks, lining up a row of nail polishes on the tile floor of the bathroom. 

Ivan taps his finger on the top of a pale blue bottle.

“A very seasonal choice,” she says with an approving nod.

Though Ivan feels mostly indifferent toward having painted nails, Lotus splaying out an old towel on the bathroom floor, lining up rows of colorful polish, and demanding he sit with her while she paints their nails has become one of the high points of his week. For an amount of time that’s too short, she holds his hand in hers, carefully dragging the brush over his nails. All the while, she tells him about her week. He can’t respond. If he tries to sign before his nails are dry, she’ll wipe the nail clean and start again. But, he’s content to just listen to her voice and watch the subtle changes in her expression as she goes over the highs and lows of the past few days.

A slight frown forms on her brows. “You messed up your cuticles,” she says. 

He can’t explain the fight he was in earlier that week; she’s holding his hand, examining his fingers. Not that it would matter. She’d give him the same angry-but-not-actually-angry frown, regardless of his excuse.

“It’s been a while since we did full manicures,” she says.