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The plants lining the inner steps out to the porch crept their tendrils up to the tops of the windows, using the plastic frames as steps towards the sun. They reached for any glimpse of light amidst heavy rain and drank whatever sunlight cracked through the clouds before it could even consider lighting the insides of the house.
She sat just within that range of cool gray light and didn’t notice him enter the attached kitchen area, too focused on the last of it illuminating just her hands. She was folding paper with her fingertips, not creasing with her nails, but could set the frame firmly, pushing the finished flowers towards any vacant table space.
Forgoing heading back to his room, he sat across from her and poured half his freshly brewed afternoon coffee into a mug for her. She drank it without question, as if it were routine, not a fast twitch thing. His stomach rolled over so dizzily it was almost painful but he drank quickly over it, sure to look her in the eyes.
She slid him the last of the construction paper, stretching outside the reach of daylight. “If made with thin enough paper, the light will seep through,” she said, reaching across the table to cup his hands and move his fingers to fold.
After guiding him through those same meticulous, mathematical steps, she relaxed back into own work, shifting to a thinner medium.
As he folds something wrong, unfolds it, and folds it that same wrong way again, he realizes that her roses are made of cardstock and self-contain themselves in an infinite hold. He assumes holding her hands would be the same: as if time has stopped for the plants, the afternoon sky, they themselves- the skin thin enough to feel the thrum of one’s own blood in the fingers curled underneath.
Her other masterpieces wilt loosely with gravity and the table kaleidoscopes over the glass, even as the sun dies and the sky relights itself with snow. Her cranes were the most put together but his (even the messier ones) she said should not be wasted and were propped up in the bookshelves- her cubes and pyramids (made with heavier paper) decorating the tabletops.
He took one horrendously made, almost 2D crow, and taped it above his bed’s headboard so that if he lies down, its beak is just within sight. It’s dinky and uneven but is his favorite for those reasons and judging by her quiet laughter and sweet smile, it’s hers too.
When he returned to the kitchen, ready to make a second coffee and only consider eating something with it, he found her filing through the fridge, making note of its contents but not decisively enough to settle on something.
“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked, switching on the kettle.
“You make omelets well, don’t you?” she asks back, taking out their half-empty carton of eggs.
He nods and she whispers that she can’t cook, talking so quietly he can hear the wind rush over the windows, but looks at him so honestly it’s dull. He blushes as if she’s said something inappropriate.
Soon the sink’s overhead bulbs light the kitchen warmly in the same egg yolk color smeared on her fingers and across her palms. He snaps his wrist and the white bubbles out easily but for some reason she’s heavy handed with this- smashing the shell so that the outsides hang loosely off the membrane and fall into the yolk.
Perhaps it’s because it’s uncontrolled in comparison to origami- even with his expertise, it could always end up breaking, as an earthquake makes no even cracks- but he moves her hand with the same force and thankfully it’s a successful snap with the yolk perfectly intact.
He knows the exact heat level to cook it on, how long to cook it for, at what temperature the butter melts and when it starts to burn, and how to flip the solidifying omelet without using two spatulas. The kitchen heats up quickly despite the snow caking the porch’s glass door and the room’s high windows but she still closes the curtain- to keep that lovely glow in, to keep them suspended in this atmosphere for as long as possible.
As she sits down to eat, he swaps their plates and takes a bite of her cooking before she can say anything to stop him; he’s never seen her so surprised and she’s never seen him so spontaneous and it takes them both a moment to resettle. He finishes first and tosses everything into the dishwasher, whether it belongs there or not. She thanks him for dinner with a firm hand on his shoulder and moves to recline on the couch, asking him something without words.
He feels foolish as he stumbles over, so thrown by everything she does, no matter how intricate or simple. He nestles his head into the crook of her neck and it doesn’t feel at all unexpected, as if that’s all they’d been doing today and all the days previous. As if that’s all they would do now, past the known future and into the infinite. Maybe it was fine, he thought, as he noticed her ear piercings were a little uneven ear to ear: that her omelet crisped just a bit close to burnt, that his crows were flat and his cubes unstructured and collapsing, that neither of them were much for talking and to other people, whatever this is would always seem cold.
But he could feel her skin tighten just below her chin in a smile and that tightness was instinctively reflected back inside himself, forcing his nose closer to her veins: to feel her heartbeat and conceal his face.
Whatever this was, whatever this would become, was more than fine. Complicated, but he could crack it. Unpredictable, but he could calculate it: he knows what’ll happen if he moves from her shoulder, if he moves his head to look at her.
She kisses him through a smile and he’s already smiling back.