Chapter Text
The lighting of the restaurant is dim and makes Agnes’ hair glow like an ember in a dying fire. They’re tucking into a booth in the cave-like basement of their favorite Himalayan place, surrounded by news clippings featuring grinning Sherpas and photos of red pandas and Nepalese flags. She’s holding an index finger over one of the little tea lights scattered over the tabletop in colorful glass jars, letting the finger melt into wax that drips onto the flame and makes it sputter.
“Do you have to do that at every place that has a candle?” Gerry grouses. “We’re eating.”
“The food’s not even here yet,” she replies without looking up, softly to not disturb the candle, which is also way too close to her face.
“Somebody’s eating,” Gerry insists. “Look.” He nudges her and nods to the old couple across the aisle from them.
Agnes rolls her eyes, then asks, absent-mindedly: “How long have they been together?”
“47 years, next May, but the one on the left proposed when it became legal last—” Gerry cuts himself off and gives Agnes a dark look. She’s grinning to herself. She gets a big kick out of tricking him into Beholding.
“You know,” he says conversationally, “I always wondered what it would be like to have a little sister.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” He winds a piece of her hair in his fingers and gives a hard tug. “‘S annoying.”
“Ow!” Agnes protests, flickering her waxy fingers at him.
“Oh, gross!” Gerry cries, as flecks land on his leather coat. “That’s your body!”
Agnes cackles and stretches her hand out to try to wipe more of her finger on Gerry’s coat and he grabs her wrists to keep it away. They’re both giggling like teenagers when the waiter returns with their momos.
Gerry quickly pulls Agnes’ dripping hand under the table and looks up politely at the waiter, lips pressed together to keep from laughing in his face. He can feel Agnes shaking with laughter next to him as she wipes her finger on his jeans.
He kicks her in the shin. She kicks him back.
The waiter raises their eyebrows and leaves them to their enormous spread of Tibetan dumplings and various dipping sauces.
“The green ones are spinach, right?” Agnes asks.
“Yeah; is this sauce peanut or sesame?”
Agnes reaches across Gerry’s plate to pluck up a chicken dumpling with her chopsticks. “Peanut; that one is the sesame.”
Gerry bats her chopsticks away. “Hey, don’t take them all! Eating a vegetable one won’t kill you, you know.”
“You’re the one who ordered them, you eat them.”
The lesbian couple across the aisle is eyeing them and hiding their smiles at one another and Gerry gives them a big grin. Agnes takes advantage of this distraction to steal the last chicken dumpling, licking it before putting it on her plate.
Gerry rolls his eyes and tugs the peanut sauce to his end of the table.
"I'm gonna run away," Gerry blurts out, when their curries arrive.
Agnes carefully schools her expression to neutral. "Oh?"
It isn't good enough. Gerry scowls. "Don't 'oh' me."
She puts a hand on his forearm, which is tense. Her eyes dart to his clenched fist, then back to his face.
"I just meant, tell me more," she says quietly.
Gerry lets out a long breath. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I guess I'm kinda defensive about it the half dozenth time around."
"6th times' the charm though. Maybe?"
Gerry’s mouth twists. “God, it better be.”
He hunkers down into his food then, eyes intent on getting the rice-to-curry ratio perfect on his plate. Agnes waits it out. She’s more patient than he is. Had more time to practice.
“It’s just. It’s too much. She wants too much from me.”
“Heir and whipping boy,” Agnes comments.
He makes a face. “Better or worse than on-hold messiah?”
“Different, is all.” She turns to face him. “I think you can do it,” then, at his expression, “No, I really do.”
“Maybe.” He forces a smile. She leans her head against his shoulder until dessert comes, willing her warmth to seep through the leather of his coat. The tension in his shoulders relaxes a bit, so she thinks it probably worked, at least a little.
When the paneer pana comes, she picks the pistachios—his favorite—off the tops of each and pours them into his hand. He kisses the top of her head and tips them back into his mouth, all at once.
They’re both impulsive and greedy with things they love, hoarding like dragons, burning into ash.
***
Gerry taps a finger against his chin, holding up first one bottle, then another, to hold against his hand and compare. Ange’s entire collection is spread out over her kitchen table, which is saying something. Some of them are from the ‘90s and she needs to hold them and think fire thoughts to make them melty enough to use.
“This is taking you entirely too long considering that you’ll only bite your nails and chip it by tomorrow anyway. And probably choose black again.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gerry says, waving hand at her, which, to her credit, does already have chipped black nail polish on it. “It’s an aesthetic.”
“Yes, it’s very spunky of you.”
Gerry makes a face. “Roguish, please.”
“I’m making another cup of tea,” Agnes announces. “And when I get back, whichever bottle is closest to your hands is going on your nails.”
Gerry sighs dramatically, but when she gets back, he has his choice and has even taken off the old polish.
“Okay, I want this one.” He pulls a deep midnight blue from the pile and places it in front of her.
“How bold of you! I’m so proud.”
“Just wait! I also want this,” he pulls a burgundy out of the pile, “as one of those diagonal stripes you do sometimes.”
“Done!” says Agnes, pleased, and takes a sip of her tea, pushing up the sleeves of her blouse.
As she unscrews the cap of the midnight blue and arranges Gerry’s fingers, she adds, “So I saw your boyfriend yesterday.”
Gerry looks at her, expectant, but she just gives a serene smile back.
“You are the worst. Fine. Which one? And whichever it was, he’s not my boyfriend. I don’t do boyfriends.”
“Yes, yes; you’re a free agent. Well whatever you want to call him, it was Mike. He and Jude went out to celebrate the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.”
“They did not.”
“Okay, no, they just went out for normal reasons, but wouldn’t it be funny if they did?”
“Fine, yes it would, but only because neither of them were actually alive to cause it.”
Agnes finishes the final finger and Gerry shakes his hands to dry them faster.
“So…” she says, voice changing on a dime. “Genoa?” Gerry had been back a month and they still haven’t talked about it.
“I lasted longer than any other time,” he offers, clearly trying to keep the bitterness out.
“16 days.” Agnes’ voice is quiet.
“You missed me.”
She shrugs. “Always do.”
“Me too.”
He wants to tell her about the Lonely. Thinks about what he told that girl: to think of her mother. How he always does that when he sees the fog coming, how it’s his strongest connection to people, his worst connection to people. How much he hates that it can’t be Agnes.
“C’mere,” she says, voice still soft like she’s talking to a skittish horse. “Let me do your stripes.”
She hums while she’s painting, just tuneless nonsense, and Gerry lets himself be soothed. She’s been so much calmer these last few weeks, like she’d been about to boil over and then someone reached out and turned down the heat, reduced her to a gentle simmer.
She’s seeing Gertrude, he knows. Can almost taste the lingering sense of the Eye in this apartment, on Agnes’ skin. He’s happy for her. He’s jealous Gertrude could do what he couldn’t, not really, not in any lasting way.
But still she counted the days, all 16 of them.
“Wanna watch the Bachelor?”
Gerry nods and makes the popcorn with the tips of his fingers so he doesn’t smear the polish. Agnes piles a mountain of blankets and pillows on the couch for them to burrow under. They yell and throw popcorn at the screen and when Agnes falls asleep with her head tucked under Gerry’s chin, the burnt cinnamon scent of her hair in his nostrils and the warm weight of her sinking him into the sofa, he closes his own eyes, cocooned and safe.