Work Text:
“You know New York like the back of your hand,” said Bing. “I don’t even know the back of my hand.”
“Boston is…” Darcy began, and she was going to say, A lot to handle in its own right—but she didn’t. It seemed condescending, somehow. Anyway, there was no use pretending that any other city was like New York.
Bing had come to the City before. She had field-tripped to Museum Mile in both high school and college—that was what had jumpstarted her passion for fine art, after all.
But this—this week of winter vacation, interrupted only by Darcy’s meetings with the family financial advisor and her unrelenting law review footnotes—was the first time that Bing had tried her hand at living in New York.
Christmas was over…only by a few days, but that meant that most of the frantic cheer and frippery had already been carted away. What remained, one had to look for, in between black glass and grey skies: slush, weary afternoons shining with the fitful sun, golden lights on the stripped branches of the trees near Lincoln Center and as far south as Battery Park.
When they went out together, Bing wrapped herself in a scarlet coat, tempting the city wolves from hiding. She sipped hot chocolate while Darcy sipped hot coffee. Bing had insisted on introducing her to a hazelnut roast, and Darcy pretended to turn up her nose at it, at first—but not for long.
They walked and rode and found cast-iron-bound overlooks, where the tourists did not go, along the rivers: Hudson and East. Bing preferred the East. So when she said,
“Take me somewhere peaceful,” Darcy knew what to do.
She bit her tourist-hating lip, drove them across town, and slid her old metro-card through the turnstile twice at the tramway.
Roosevelt Island was the best peace she knew, sometimes.
“I love it here,” Bing breathed, her breath frosting the air. She had walked down one tree-lined lane and up the other, turning her face towards the flowing water on either side whenever she could. Manhattan’s spine curved along beside them, a spiked sea creature frozen in time, caught in eternal repose from this distance. You could hear the churn and chime of traffic, but it was so very far away.
“Yeah,” Darcy said, ineloquent as always, because the silver color of the sky was making her feel something (a pain, really). “Yeah, it’s not bad.”
Bing crossed the distance between them. Against Darcy’s better judgment, she had bought mittens from a street vendor, and was wearing them now, twists of bright, cheap acrylic yarn clashing with her coat.
“Hey,” she said. “It means so much to me, that you’ll show me your world.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Darcy’s hands, ungloved, were thrust deep in her pockets. “You wanted to see it.”
“I want to see you. And the places you love.” Bing’s face was apple-cheeked in the cold, her hair like a cloud beneath her hat. “I can tell you love this place.”
The silver color of the sky stopped hurting.