Chapter Text
part v
The only way of knowing a person is to love that person without hope.
- Walter Benjamin (One Way Street)
A tired sigh passes through her lips as she unlocks the door.
It’s late when Carina finally enters her dark and empty hotel room. As the automatic lights come on, she stops and stares at the equally empty bed, a painful twist in her chest at the loneliness that comes over her. The bedroom suddenly feels even colder now.
She closes the door and leans back against it before sliding right down to the floor. She barely pays attention to all her things cluttering out of her bag as she tips her head back against the wooden surface.
Today was a really, really hard day.
Carina wants nothing more than to go back to a few days ago when Maya had been here. She tries to recall how it felt to have Maya holding her like that again. Even though her stomach had felt a little off, she still remembers desperately breathing in Maya’s scent around her.
Her eyes fall to the mess of her things that fell out of her bag. She reaches for her phone. Carina lets out a breath of a whimper when she catches the now familiar sight of Maya’s voicemail waiting for her to listen.
Her thumb hovers over the screen, ready to tap on the voicemail. But Carina realizes at this moment that that's not what she wants tonight. A voicemail isn't going to be enough anymore to soothe this agony inside her.
She taps on the screen and brings the phone up to her ear.
Barely a full ring passes before her call is picked up and Carina immediately breathes out a sigh.
“Carina? What's wrong?”
Her eyes immediately flutter close at hearing the familiar rasp of Maya's voice. God, she misses her wife so much. Carina’s throat feels suddenly thick, rushing with everything that she wants to say.
She takes a deep breath then slowly lets it out.
“Why do you think something is wrong?” she asks instead of answering Maya's question.
She isn't even really sure where she'd start talking about her awful day. She just wants to get away from it all now, wants to seek comfort in the person she wants it from most.
“I—it's just—it’s really late and you called me,” Maya points out, stumbling over her words while clearly trying to get a sense of equilibrium. “Are you—are you okay? Are you safe? Where are you?”
She can hear a sudden rush of footsteps on the other end and it hits Carina instantly that it’s Maya that she's hearing. It is the hurried sound of Maya running down the stairs at the station.
“I am in my hotel room,” she quickly answers just as she hears the swing of the entrance door to the station. “I'm safe, I promise.”
A harsh breath of relief comes through the phone and while Carina feels guilty for worrying Maya like that, she also can't help but soak in the warmth that goes through her. Without even knowing why, Maya was running to her.
She wonders if Maya could hear it in her voice, the wretched yearning to feel the safety she used to feel with Maya.
“Go back inside, Maya,” she murmurs gently when she realizes from the lack of sound, that Maya hasn't moved from where she is. As if Maya is frozen by the indecision on whether to stay or to go.
She avoids telling Maya that she’s currently sitting on the floor of her hotel room with her back against the door. She avoids telling Maya that she's staring at the meticulously made bed and wishing that Maya is laying there, waiting for her.
For as much as she would love for Maya to come back here, as much as she would love to feel Maya’s arms around her again, this isn't a life-threatening emergency. She's not throwing up the whole content of her stomach because of a bad lasagna again.
And maybe there's a part of her that doesn't feel ready to see Maya so soon after that.
Maya sighs over the speaker. “Today wasn't a good day?” she quietly asks.
“It wasn't,” she softly confirms with a sigh. “I wanted… to hear your voice, and I wanted to hear you talk for longer than three minutes.”
Carina doesn't say that she already feels marginally better after a few minutes of Maya’s voice. She doesn't say how her heart flutters to hear that husky timbre in her ear. She doesn't tell Maya how her entire body breathes a little deeper.
“Is there…” Maya timidly ventures, the uncertainty so loud in her voice, “anything you would like me to talk about? Or something that you don't want me to?”
A heavy breath escapes her then. “Nothing about us. I don't—that is not what I need right now.”
“Okay,” Maya agrees easily when there's a sudden barrage of noise that drowns her out a little. Other firefighters climbing up the stairs, maybe. “Um, hold on. Let me just go to my bunk so you can hear me better.”
Carina decides then that she should make her own way to the bed so she won't wake up tomorrow with a sore back. Leaving behind the mess on the floor, she forgoes her bedtime routine and simply takes off all her clothes except for her underwear. When she slides in under the blanket, Carina shivers at the coolness of the sheets.
Within that time, she listens intently to Maya’s footsteps, calmer now as they make their way up the stairs and towards her bunk. The busy sounds of firefighters have now gone quiet. The solid thud of a door closing behind Maya is followed closely by the squeaking of the mattress.
All Carina hears now as she lays her head on the pillow is the reassurance of Maya’s steady breathing.
“Carina, are you still there?” Maya asks, her voice much quieter now than it was before.
“Yes,” she whispers in reply. “Please tell me something, Maya.”
“Okay.”
---
Maya stops talking when she notices that Carina hasn’t said a word for awhile now.
“Carina?”
The soft noise of Carina’s breathing is all that Maya gets in return and she realizes that Carina has fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of her story about the disastrous first time she and Andy were paired up for a training exercise at the academy.
It’s a shame really. It's a pretty good story, of an event that brought her and Andy much closer. Maya makes a mental note to bring it up to her friend when she sees her later.
But still, Maya smiles a little, her heart fluttering at the familiar sound of her wife sleeping over the speaker. It’s been so long since she has heard it and it might just be the best thing that Maya has ever heard in all her life.
She takes it to heart that Carina was the one who reached out to her this time, that somehow she has found safety in Maya again. She may never know what it was that drove Carina to make that call but this was still another step forward for them.
Attaching the charger to her phone, Maya places the device on the table next to the bed. There's nothing else that needs her attention and until they get called in, Maya decides that sleep seems like a really good idea. From the relative silence of the station, she thinks that everyone else reached the same conclusion.
She remembers to tap on the speaker phone so that she can still hear Carina’s breathing, feeling her own mimicking the slow and heavy cadence of it. Her body loosens and relaxes, sinking further into the mattress.
A part of her wishes that she can see Carina sleeping right next to her. So her eyes can track over her wife’s face, hopefully peaceful in her slumber.
But this is good too. This is good for the time being until Carina feels comfortable enough for them to share the same bed again, whenever that will be.
For now, she stares at her phone like it's a lifeline. She stares at it in hopes that all the ache that she has been carrying in her chest, the very same that carved out a space for itself when Carina left, will soon be gone.
She hopes that that ache will soon turn into something else, something better for the both of them.
“I miss you,” Maya whispers before she closes her eyes, allowing herself to finally go to sleep.