You sit on the edge of your bed. Your bunny girlfriend stands in the doorway to your room, backlit by the nightlight in the hallway and wearing her pink pajamas. She is clutching a stuffed manatee and staring at you.

"Well?" you ask, patting your lap. She shakes her head. "Come on. This was your idea, remember?"

She squeezes her manatee tighter. "I'm worried," she says.

You let your shoulders sag, fighting the urge to roll your eyes. "What are you worried about?"

Her eyes fall to your lap. She mumbles something too soft for you to catch.

"What was that?"

She mumbles again, still not loud enough to hear. You roll your eyes, then open your mouth.

"I'm worried that it won't feel as good as my friends say," she spits out, indignant, then shrinks back under your gaze.

You sigh. "Well, you won't know until you try, right? We can start slow."

"Promise you won't be mad at me if I don't like it?" Her voice trembles and your chest tightens. Lord, grant you the strength to take it slow.

"I promise."

She creeps into your room as though it is a unknown cave where any manner of dangerous creatures could be hiding. You do your best to smile encouragingly, patting your lap again.

"You've done this before you know," you say.

She stops an arm's length away, eyes downcast. "Yeah, but that was different." As if hearing the response in your head she looks up with a pout and says, "It is different. We were on your couch and watching a movie."

You shake your head and wrap your arms around her shoulders, pulling her to your chest. She makes a little sound of surprise, tensing up. You rest your head on top of hers, cheek pressed against her hair at the base of a fuzzy ear. It smells like vanilla with a hint of cinnamon.

"Are you smelling my hair?" she asks from somewhere around your collarbone. You blink, unaware of your obviousness.

"Uh—"

"Do I smell good?"

"Yes?" you reply, not sure what exactly she wants to hear. She presses her face into your chest hard enough for you to feel her voice when she speaks.

"You smell good too."

The two of you sit there, on the edge of your bed, and you wish for nothing more than to always remember this moment and the warmth of her body.

Then she squirms in your grasp, turning around and sliding up into your lap. You let your hands fall to rest just above her own lap but the stuffed manatee gets in the way. She hums and turns so that she's sitting side-saddle of sorts, shoulder pressed into your sternum. She twists her head to look you in the eye. Pursing her lips, she slides back a scooch to slip a leg through the gap between your bodies, then leans closer.

"So which way do you like better?" you ask, fighting back a smile at how serious she looks. Her face scrunches slightly in thought and you can't help but pull her closer.

"Away is more comfortable but I don't get to see your face, and sideways makes me feel like I'm a little girl."

"What if we lay down?" You let yourself flop backwards, pulling her down with you. She lets out another surprised gasp, then a muffled "ow" when her forehead butts your chin.

"You said you were going to take it slow!"

"Sorry." You kiss her forehead, lingering there to feel the fur against your lips. That feeling never got old. She relaxes after a moment, letting out a giggle. She shifts and her stuffed manatee falls out onto the bed. Her hands dig under your back, getting stuck at the wrist. She grunts before giving up a couple seconds later.

Laying her cheek against your chest, she says, "It's good, but I don't know if I could do this all night. It feels a little awkward up here."

You shuffle backwards onto the bed so that your legs aren't hanging off the edge. "That any better?"

"Maybe?" She adjusts her own legs. "I'm gonna flip over." In the process of doing so she puts an elbow into your stomach and you wince.

"Hey, watch it."

She slips a moment later and you grab her by the waist.

"Whoa," she says. "I don't know about this either."

"Yeah, I'm not really a back sleeper either."

You roll over, carefully to go slowly.

"Oh, this is pretty nice," she says, snuggling back up against your chest. "But I feel like I'm still missing something."

"Oh?" you ask. You feel her reach out and grab something. You groan when you feel her plush manatee press up against your forearms. "Really?"

You hear her stick out her tongue and make a petulant noise. She falls silent and you focus on the feel of the subtle rise and fall of her chest and the way it falls in and out of sync with your own. The smell of cinnamon is stronger now, with your face buried in the back of her head. You can't think of anything better than this, feeling as though you're wrapping up the warmth of her body inside your chest. You kinda get her holding onto the stuffed manatee, now.

Your thoughts slow and the world seems to slip away. A part of your mind realizes that you're falling asleep in a bemused sort of manner. You couldn't remember the last time you fell asleep so easily.

"Are you still awake?" your girlfriend asks.

"What's—huh?" you reply, feeling as though you are pulling the words from honey. Jerking, you smack your nose into the back of her head. "Ow."

She whines. "C'mon, don't fall asleep yet, we just got started!"

You shake your head. "This isn't good enough?" You tighten your grip on her, the warmth lulling you back to that point on the edge of sleep. "I'm too comfy."

"But there are so many other positions to try!"

"Oh yeah? Name all of them," you mumble. You'll just take a quick nap. Who knows how long she'll talk for? You can already feel that sweet sweet nothing taking you away.

"Don't you dare fall asleep on me. I know you're going to do it."

You don't say anything, because you want to be asleep. And she said you were going to fall asleep so why not prove her right?

She wiggles out of your arms. You feel the lack of warmth more than anything and grasp at her, but one of your arms has already fallen asleep and bats ineffectually at her shoulder. Now you are the one letting out a whine, having had your warm thing taken away.

"Geez, you're like a little child," she says, turning over to face you. You squint at her and prod her stuffed manatee.

"At least my stuffed animal can talk to me."

"Sometimes I think it's better that it can't."

You arch an eyebrow. After a moment she scrunches her eyes shut and sticks her tongue out.

"Who's the child, now?" you ask, sleep now nothing but a vague memory.

"You are," she says. "You fell asleep immediately!"

"Is that not the whole point? Why else would you want to do this?"

"Well, because I want to know what way feels the best, duh. And how am I supposed to find that out when you fall asleep after two positions? You're always picking the first thing you see and just going with it."

You feel a headache pulse at the edges of your temples and awkwardly cross your arms. "Can you not?"

"Can I not what? Is it too much for me to ask for you to treat this seriously?"

You stare at her. She stares at you, arms wrapped around her stuffed manatee. You pointedly glance down at it. It takes a moment but a glint of understanding lights up her eyes and she tightens her grip on the plush and sucks in a breath.

"Okay," you say, reaching out. "I'll take this seriously."

She deflates. "You promise?" she asks, voice trembling ever so slightly. You gently pull her into a hug.

"I promise to take this seriously," you say. "Even if I fall asleep again."

She squirms in your grip. "You better not, or I'll—"

"Or you'll what?"

She stills. "Or I'll never sleep with you again."

"Well you better hurry up then or this will be the last time we sleep together."

She tenses up and you wonder if you pushed it too far again. The seconds tick by like drips of paint running down a wall. You focus on the parts of your body touching hers, straining to feel anything that might betray what she's thinking. You worry that she might be serious about never sleeping together again.

She mumbles something that you don't catch.

"What was that?" you ask. She squeaks. "Use your words."

"What if... what if you got on top?"

You have the play the words back in your head several times to understand what she means. "Are you sure?"

You feel her nod.

"Okay," you say, mind whirling. You were not expecting this when she first told you about wanting to try sleeping together. "So, uh, how do you want this to go?"

The waiting this time is somehow even worse. Any hint of sleep is thoroughly erased from your body, replaced with a buzzing nervousness. You surreptitiously pull your head back a fraction, straining your eyes to make out as much of her face as you can. All that you can tell from this angle is that she is deep in thought. You hope that she is deep in thought working out how she wants to get into the next position and not whether never sleeping again with you was an actual possibility. This was the best position yet, chest to chest like this, and if there wasn't a prickly ball of anxiety sitting in the pit of your stomach you were sure you would have already fallen asleep again.

She pushes away from you and you let go, reluctantly. There's a beat where the two of you lock eyes, and then she rolls over onto her back. She sucks in a deep breath.

"Do it," she says. You wait a moment for further instruction before realizing that it isn't coming. You're just gonna have to wing it and hope for the best, so you carefully maneuver yourself above her body. She rocks from side to side, eyes shut, from you moving around. You look down on her, hands and knees sinking awkwardly into the bed, wondering what the hell you were doing. She barely weighed half of you. There was no way she would ever find this comfortable but she wanted you to do it, so do it you must.

Your arms shake as you go down and you pray for them not to give out. You owe it to her to give the position a fighting chance, and suddenly flopping down onto her wouldn't be fair. The two of your chests meet. She cracks her eyes open for a second.

"This isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," she says.

You pause, despite the screaming in your arms growing louder by the second. "You thought this was going to be bad?"

"I mean, you're not exactly small but—"

You take the rest of the weight off your arms and she squeaks. The sensation of lying on her body is a strange one. It's not as soft as you imagined, but in hindsight you don't know why you would expect anything different. You can feel her breathing against the hollow of your neck and in the motion of her chest. You're not sure what to think of the position. It almost feels like it's missing something.

"Hey!" she says, voice muffled.

"Well?" you ask.

"Well what?"

You roll your eyes. "Do you like it or not?"

She shifts. The stuffed manatee is pressed awkwardly between the two of your stomachs, and you can feel her arms adjust their grip on it. Without thinking, you do the same with your own arms with her. You also wrap your legs around the backs of hers. You squeeze, and she lets out another squeak.

Maybe there was something to this position after all. Being on top made it so much more easy to hug her tightly.

"I don't think I like this position," she says, sounding as though her face was smooshed up against your chest.

"I think I do," you say with a squeeze. "Maybe I'll just fall asleep like this."

She whines and struggles ineffectually. You press your cheek into her hair and rub the top of her head.

"This way I also get to have something to hug for emotional support."

"You were hugging me in all the other positions!"

"Yeah but this time it's different."

She makes an indignant noise but stops struggling. "Get off me."

You release her and roll off to the side. Her eyes are wide open and staring daggers at you in the gloom.

"You promised," she says.

"I'm being serious," you say.

"Liar."

"I'm not, it does feel different than the other times. When I'm on top it's like I'm shielding you from anything bad." You snap your mouth shut. You knew you had panicked a bit from her tone but you weren't expecting to blurt that out. Hell, you weren't even sure where that had come from.

Her eyes soften and you can breathe freely again.

"That's so silly," she says, inching closer. "You're so silly."

"Yeah?" you ask, weakly.

"But I think I prefer being on our sides."

"I understand."

She snuggles up against your chest. "But maybe we can save that last position for special occasions."

You're not sure how to respond to that. Instead, a tsunami of tiredness crashes over you. The last ten minutes have been an emotional roller coaster and it's all you can do to droop an arm over her side. "Sounds good," you say, slurring the words together.

"Goodnight, mister serious."

"Goodnight, stuffed bunny."

The last thing you hear before falling asleep is the distant sound of her giggle.