Chapter Text
The best thing that had ever happened to Lynette was the scholarship money that, after a couple years of work, got her across the country, and far from everyone she knew, one way ticket and all. She was pretty sure, even if her mother had been sober, she wouldn’t have remembered where she said she was going, even if she’d told the truth. No mailing address. She was gone.
In her little college town, Lynette was new, she was free, and she was broke as all hell. She didn’t have a car. She didn’t have uni residence after her first year, and that was what lead to her having to look for somewhere else to live.
It started with a post in a residence Facebook group: ISO roommate/place to rent close to campus. She specified that ideally, it was some cheap, terrible broom closet of a place that she could afford, and put a ballpark figure of the most rent and utilities her loans would cover. She, predictably, didn’t hear back until the day before her move-out date. It was a miracle anyone had anything to offer.
Another student messaged her, telling her she had a shitty broom closet, but it was far from campus, and bus routes that lead to campus. She offered to drive her whenever their schedules matched up, and Lynette briefly wondered how shitty the place had to be for the other person living there to offer free rides, and rent that cheap. Or how weird living with her was, if she couldn’t get a roommate. She didn’t think she’d seen her in class—her profile pic was blurry, but she had deep auburn hair that was plainly visible, and Lynette didn’t remember anyone with hair like it.
Either way, she agreed to meet her there, and took an uber to it—at least 10 minutes outside most of civilization, some tiny little basement under a suburban house that looked a tad dilapidated.
It wasn’t good, but Lynette had lived in worse.
She knocked on the door, and messaged that it was her, come to check it out. She was hardly done knocking when it opened. The girl’s profile pic had been blurry, and it didn’t prepare her for what she saw. She had deep auburn hair, and green eyes, and was wearing a loose summer dress that flowed down her body in an effortless sort of cascade of fabric. Quite likely, she was one of the most beautiful people Lynette had ever seen. Otherworldly came to mind. “Lynette, right?” She asked, “pleasure to meet you. I’m Neferet.”
Lynette was proud of herself for sounding like a regular human being when she responded, “Nice place you got here, it’s only about half as far from civilization as we know it as you said,” she laughed.
Neferet shook her head, “just wait until winter. It makes up for it then,” she quipped, opening the door. They descended a set of stairs into a small room with wooden floors, and a couch that separated the entry from the living room. Another couch—this one blue, the other black—sat pressed against the wall. There was a small TV propped up on a wooden table at the front of the room, and a rug in the middle. To her right was a kitchen, behind a strange wall with a window-like hole cut in it, and then two doors, adjacent to the kitchen, and a door on the end of the hall. “It isn’t much. This is all common space. The bathroom is at the end there, and your bedroom would be the second.”
The place was small, but clean, and had functional appliances, which was more than Lynette expected. The only mess she saws a flood of papers strewn across the couch, with a laptop sitting atop them. “The landlady is upstairs. She’s very old, very hard of hearing, and very willing to bring her cooking down when she thinks we aren’t eating enough,” Neferet explained. “What do you think?”
“Where do I sign?” Lynette asked.
Neferet began to sift through the papers when her phone started to buzz, and she picked it up, not saying any kind of greeting into it, “did you get them to at least increase it?” She asked, voice somewhere between terse and tired.
There was a long pause and, “Jessica, I’ve been waiting almost three years. What am I paying you for?”
She hung up before she got much of an answer, and thrust a paper out to Lynette to sign, “if you want a lawyer to check it out, I can recommend you a shitty one.”
Lynette signed with no hesitations, and Neferet even drove her to pick up her things—tomorrow was move out after all, but tomorrow, Neferet had something to be doing. It suited Lynette just fine. Neferet loitered in the parking lot while she threw her bags into the back of her car. Lynette got into the passenger sear after dropping off her keys, two teas from the campus cafe in tow. “It was the least I can do. You drove all this way,” she explained.
Neferet smiled, and took a sip. “I think I’ve made an excellent choice of roommate,” she appraised, setting her tea down and steering them out of the parking lot.
Summer was normal enough. Lynette got a job at a bookstore she could get to by the one bus nearby, and Neferet was out a lot of the nights, but neither did anything Wednesday nights. Lynette had labelled it roommate night, in which one of them would try and/or fail to make dinner, and half the time they’d order takeout. The first week, Lynette learned that Neferet was not the most adept at cooking, but stomached a couple bites of burned chicken, before Neferet scraped hers into the garbage, and ordered something better. It was endearing though, seeing her try. Lynette got the impression that she hadn't really learned to cook before moving here.
By the end of their first month living together, Lynette liked to think that they were friends. She also liked to think that Neferet liked her, at least in the enjoying her around kind of way. She didn’t seem to be seeing anyone, so Lynette could hope. It was mid-May the first time it happened.
Lynette had just gotten home from work when she first saw her. She was carrying a tea latte of some kind, something cinamonny that one of her coworkers brought back from the Starbucks for her, when she’d entered the living room. When she opened the door, Neferet turned around, but quickly returned to the concert-livestream she was listening to. When Lynette entered the room to ask what the band was—hard rock, female singer, not one she’d ever heard, she stopped cold and spilled lukewarm cinamonny tea latte down her shirt, and then stumbled back. “Neferet,” she blurted.
Neferet was completely naked. The kind of completely naked where the way she was lounging on the blue couch against the wall, Lynette couldn’t not see the sharp thorned roses that started on her sternum, then wrapped along her ribcage. And, of course, obviously also her chest, which she didn’t want to stare at, but, wow. She tried not to look there, but that was worse, because her eyes found the tattoo, slung low across her hips that read, in a curling font, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. Between her hipbones, as though they held it like a banner. She was not going to look past the tattoo, she promised herself. She looked back at Neferet’s face, trying to figure out what was going on.
Neferet didn’t cover herself or behave as though there was anything amiss. She just lowered the volume on her music, and looked over to Lynette, “Halestorm,” she explained, pointing at the screen, as though that explained anything, “I could turn it down if it’s interrupting anything.”
Lynette looked at her blankly. Those were words she’d said. She did know she was naked, right? She seemed aware of her surroundings. She probably wasn’t on a break from reality. Maybe she was just a nudist? “Uh, no worries. I’m just gonna call it a night, and go read something I picked up at work, or something.”
Neferet shrugged, “alright. There’s soup on the stove if you want any. I left it out for you,” she said. Lynette helped herself to some, while Neferet turned the volume up again. The singer introduced a song—Lynette wasn’t really listening until Neferet was singing along, her voice low—not like she was trying to hide that she was singing, but in this sort of tantalizing way like the singer did.
You don’t know that I know you watch me every night, and I just can’t resist the urge to stand here in the light. Your greedy eyes upon me, and then I come undone. I could close the curtain but this is too much fun…
Exhibitionism was definitely her theory. It was her own fault, however, that she stood in the kitchen and listened to her sing, sipping her soup. That song was going to be burned into her brain, along with the image of her roommate.