Chapter Text
They never share a day off.
Sometimes Penelope wonders if her boss somehow contrives to do it on purpose, which is ludicrous, of course. Not beyond the pale of the occasional minor cruelties of which Miss Edmunds is certainly capable, but probably intellectually beyond the woman’s capacity. The reality is just that a paramedic works a great deal more than a waitress, and with Gordon’s tendency to pick up extra shifts, Penelope usually spends her days off alone, or out running small errands, doing laundry or getting groceries, or just at home by herself, bored and lonely.
But not today.
Today the only thing she’s woken up to is her boyfriend’s soft snoring, one of his arms still wrapped around her, and the warmth of his presence rather than the chill of his absence on his side of the bed. They’d both gotten home within hours of each other the night before, and gone to bed giddy with the realization that neither of them had an alarm to set for the next morning. There had been an intimate little celebration within the confines of the bedsheets, after which they’d shared a quick shower, then curled up together, spent but happy, and gone to sleep.
And here and now, drowsily drifting in the width and depth of these first few waking minutes—life seems idyllic. The one bedroom of her one bedroom apartment is small, but lately she’s made an effort to make it rather nicer than it was when she’d first arrived. It’s been two years since she came to this country, and while the strangeness of it has never quite worn off, she’s still found a way to make her small part of it into a home. She’s graduated from an air mattress on the floor to a real mattress and boxspring set atop a bedframe. She has two sets of sheets and a heavy quilt for winter, a lighter comforter for spring, and a box fan that gets propped up in the window in the high heat of summer. She’s hung a lace curtain in the window, scavenged a dresser and a chair to sit in the corner and catch her laundry, and tacked up pictures she cut out of a calendar she’d found and liked.
Her bedmate is another invaluable addition. Somehow he makes the place feel more like home than anything else she’s done. The mattress sags in the middle where cheap springs have given up the ghost in protest to the weight of an additional body, but the slight depression just means that gravity pulls the pair of them together in the middle of the bed, and when Penelope rolls lazily over, she can’t help but fit neatly into the hollow right beside him.
Whether he wakes just enough to do so, or whether he does it in his sleep, Gordon sighs softly as she cuddles close, and his arm around her pulls her closer still. It’s only just dawn, and an entire day stretches out ahead of them. The luxuries in Penelope’s life used to be diamonds and couture, day trips to Paris and impulsive flights to the tropics. Only a little more than a year later, and somehow the emptiness of the hours ahead seems more precious than anything she might’ve wasted time or money on, then. And another hour of sleep in the arms of someone who loves her is practically priceless.
He cooks as well, which is another minor miracle. Penelope, for her own part, can boil water for tea, and then also boil a handful of other things that are not tea, but being a good English girl from good English stock, the extent of her culinary skill basically begins and ends with boiling things.
But sitting at her kitchen table, wearing one of Gordon’s t-shirts, she’s made herself a cup of tea (he’s not allowed to do this for her, even if he offers) and watched him over the rim of it, as he’d raided her fridge, put on an apron (her spare from the cafe, worn cheekily over precious little else and too small besides), and somehow contrived to concoct a pair of omelettes, potato hash, and some sort of lovely sauteed spinach situation out of a handful of things that Penelope otherwise would’ve boiled. These two plates are both set, still steaming hot (something else Penelope somehow never seems to manage, even with all the boiling) on the tabletop before her, and Penelope is forced to make a confession.
“My darling, I’m afraid I have to admit that I’m only sleeping with you every night so that you’ll feed me in the morning,” she tells him, obviously lying, but the sort of playful lying that he likes to play with too, as he pulls out his own chair and sits down next to her, already grinning.
“Oh, that’s all right, babe. Makes me feel less guilty for how I’m only sleeping with you 'cuz it’s better than trying to share a bunkbed on rotating shifts with the rest of my family.”
Penelope smiles and spears a chunk of crispy golden potato on the end of her fork. “Well, so long as it’s mutual.”
“It’s so mutual.”
“Then we’re just fine.”
He pauses, already halfway through his omelette, and clarifies, “Also because I love you, though.”
“Oh, well. Yes, of course, darling, I know. I love you too.”
“Okay, good.”
The table is small, and so she doesn’t have far to reach to take his hand, squeezing his fingers. The kitchen isn’t any less shabby than the rest of her (their, really) apartment, but with him here it feels so uncommonly like home that she can almost forget that the kitchen faucet is currently dripping a static tattoo into the sink, and there’s mildew beneath the linoleum and paint flaking from the walls, and in another not so long ago life she hadn’t even known places like this existed, let alone that people lived in them.
“So what’s the plan for the day?” Gordon asks, pushing his emptied plate aside, derailing her train of thought before it can gather steam, and switching her onto a new track, and unnecessarily stating the obvious, “We’re never both off for a whole day together.”
The question of the day is the question of the day, and she’s forced to shrug and admit that she isn’t sure. “I’m afraid I don’t quite know, pet. I hadn’t seen your schedule for the week, or I’d have thought something up.”
“Laundry? Groceries?”
Penelope makes a face and kicks him lightly under the table for daring to suggest such mediocrity. “We’re not wasting today on laundry or groceries.”
Gordon shrugs, untroubled, moving on from his breakfast to a cup of instant coffee. “Well, I dunno! I’m never around here during the week, I figured I’d make myself useful. I can fix the sink?” He glances over his shoulder. “Dunno how that’s not driving you crazy, I feel like my brain’s being waterboarded.”
Penelope sighs. “Don’t fix the sink. The landlord’s meant to fix the sink.”
Gordon scoffs indignantly at that. “The landlord’s a grade-a thoroughbred horse’s ass, Pen, and it’s a stupid horse. He’ll give you the runaround for a solid month over a stupid leak that’d take me three minutes, a new washer, and a bit of plumber’s tape to put right.”
Despite his attitude, Penelope stubbornly sticks to her guns, and insists, “It’s the principle. It’s his responsibility, he should take care of it. And it won’t take you three minutes, it’ll take you however long it takes to walk to the hardware store and back, cost you the price of a washer and a roll of plumber’s tape, and then the minor but not insignificant labour of needing to pull the faucet apart and do it yourself. And on your day off besides? You shouldn’t have to, darling.”
This is a sound ethical and economic argument, which doesn’t change his mind even slightly, and he rolls his eyes at her, fondly exasperated. “Principles are for rich people,” he points out, “Poor people need to get shit done without handwringing over the ethics. We can walk to the hardware store. We can spend three dollars on a bit of tape and a washer. I can probably sweet talk us into getting the washer for free. No big deal.”
Penelope still hasn’t quite settled into the identity of a poor person, though with the bulk of her paycheck devoured by her rent, and the remnants snapped greedily up by the cost of the other basic necessities, she has to admit that he’s probably got her dead to rights there, and she frowns to herself about it, and concedes the point with a trace of disappointment in her tone, “Well, if you’re going to be so bloody stubborn about it.”
He winces at her displeasure, softens slightly, revising his proposal, “But…maybe we could go for a walk to the park that just happens to be by the hardware store, instead. Popping in to grab a couple things we happen to need can be, like, incidental to the fact that we’re gonna go for a walk in the park on our day off. Just on principle. And I’ll only fix the sink if we don’t come up with something better to do. Because principles.”
This is mollifying, somewhat, and Penelope certainly wouldn’t object to a walk. She walks to catch the bus every day, and it’s gotten to the point that her day feels incomplete without at least a couple blocks worth of walking. Besides that, it’s properly spring, and the park he means is near the college campus, with well-maintained pathways crossing throughout, and dotted with butterfly gardens well and truly on their way into bloom. It’s a satisfactory offer, on the whole. “Might we feed the ducks in the park? Just on principle?”
“Only on principle. No other reason.”
“Such an indulgent little luxury, principles,” she teases lightly.
Gordon finishes off his coffee. “Love that you have 'em. I can’t afford 'em. Finish your breakfast and we’ll go see some ducks about some bread, and then a guy about a washer.”