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Sif is driving right now, so Brunnhilde’s feet are kicked up on the dash, her wrist balanced against her thigh so that it’s easier to look at her phone. Cars were sincerely not made with thick thighs in mind for kicking one’s feet up onto the dash, but she does it anyway, as she always does. Sif never kicks her feet up when it’s her turn to take a rest, instead leaning across the center console to have her arm around the back of Brunnhilde’s seat. She’s caught up looking out into the big blue sky for hours at a time, her phone balanced between her thighs so she doesn’t have to hold it to charge. The sun is nearly setting by the time she and Sif speak to one another; they’ve always been better in silence.
“Are we lost or do you know where we are?” Brunnhilde asks, looking over some field in the nebulous space between Indiana and Ohio; she doesn’t know why they decided to drive back to New York. Well, she does know, just a little bit, but it’s not important. It’s nothing that she needs to think about. Sif turns to her, taking her eyes off of the road, and flashes Brunnhilde a grin that is something wild.
“Well, Bru, I think we might be lost,” she says, shrugging a shoulder like it doesn’t mean anything at all. She’s been a little weird since… well, since they left Asgard, which was borderline a cult as much as it was a family for them both, and Brunnhilde supposes that she has the right to be. She’s a little wild around the eyes like Loki used to be, less serious most of the time but more silent, but Brunnhilde still… she still loves her. As a friend. And, maybe something else. Doesn’t matter.
“Wanna park when the sun sets and figure it out in the morning?” Brunnhilde offers, shrugging back. They made an agreement on this road trip: never use phones when you could just use time. They’re sitting at a half a tank of gas and on some backroad in the middle of nowhere, so it’s not like they’re on a crunch to be anywhere. They don’t have to be back to New York for another four days.
She knows she’s said the right thing when Sif flashes her a grin that’s only half gone crazy. Some of the time, she’s like handling hellfire without gloves, without tongs, without aid, but sometimes she is a delicate thing, a flower without roots, drifting in the everlasting winds, and Brunnhilde does not know how to hold such a thing in her own two hands. She’s only glad that Sif occasionally lets her try. She wonders what it would be like, to truly hold something so fiery fierce, to actually think of Sif as her’s.
“It’s dark enough now, if you want to pull off. I think we have enough food to scrape together dinner, if you’re hungry,” she offers again a few minutes later. Sif, who had seemed to have zoned out while pulling through the old roads, immediately pulls into the next weird little dirt road that leads to a dead end not twenty feet out. She thinks that they’re meant for hunters, maybe, but Brunnhilde had only ever hunted with the other people of Asgard and… she doesn’t like to think about it. There’s no need to bring Asgard into the tiny, safe space of the van that only smells like Brunnhilde and Sif, no need to bring all that history into something that is meant to be new.
Sif almost died there. Brunnhilde pushes it away. There’s no need to linger on all of the things that burn in her throat.
They eat quietly sitting in the backseat, companionable in their silence even when it should be awkward. They keep some form of physical contact all the time, Sif’s leg against her’s, Brunnhilde’s hand resting on Sif’s knee, just anything to keep them both on the ground. Maybe it’s a little codependent, but it is what it is.
“Sleep?” Sif asks eventually, when they’ve eaten and all they’re doing is sitting. Her voice is quiet like she doesn’t want to break whatever is going on here, so Brunnhilde just nods. They get out and lay down the backseats, move their shit to the front seats and work out a palette to share in the back. It feels like a sleepover every time they do this, in a way, like they’ll tell each other secrets. Even if they’re the closest people to knowing all of their secrets that either of them have.
“Bru?” Sif asks when they’ve been lying down for a while, a good six inches between their bodies like they’re avoiding each other in a crowded cafeteria. Brunnhilde turns just enough for her to look Sif in the face, which is just enough for Sif to burrow into her chest, face against Brunnhilde’s throat. Brunnhilde has to swallow to keep it together. “Thanks for not leaving me,” Sif says. It’s almost quiet enough that it’s like she never said it at all, like it was the wind rattling through the windows that they left open, but it wasn’t. She said it and Brunnhilde feels warm.
“I never would, Sif. I’ll never leave you behind,” she promises into the other girl’s hair. It’s soft, and Brunnhilde feels just as soft, just as nebulous and strange as strands of hair, just as close to nothing as the big blue sky.
When Sif kisses her in the morning, it’s sudden and yet not completely unexpected, warm and electric. She feels like a fire in her hands, warm and yet not burning, she feels like a thousand wild things and a thousand tame ones, Sif feels like everything.
When Sif lets her in, she’s warm.
When they go home, when they get back to New York, Sif keeps kissing her. She keeps saying Bru, let’s go be alone for a while, yeah? with the pretty little wink that makes Brunnhilde blush. She keeps being Sif, even when there are people around, and Brunnhilde feels her feet touch the ground.