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“I’m always soft for you, that’s the problem. You could come knocking on my door five years from now and I would open my arms wider and say ‘come here, it’s been too long, it felt like home with you.” - Azra Tabassum
There were three bubbles in the white, crusty paint on Adora’s ceiling directly above her bed. Sleeping wasn’t her strong suit, as some ( Bow) might say, so she had dedicated more hours than necessary to counting those three. It was like her own personal sheep trick, a way to try to lull herself to sleep. Had it ever worked for her before? No . But that didn’t stop her from trying. One, two, three. Over and over.
It was the long nights, the ones where her head wouldn’t shut up, that made her contemplate putting another mark up there herself to spice things up. When she still lived in her dorm room with Glimmer, they had the shitty, stick-on glow in the dark stars that lost their luster a week after leaving the dollar store. She was halfway to grabbing her phone from the nightstand to look up the quickest way to order a new set online when she heard a crash. Her body froze, tensing like a rod, but she tried to shake it off. It was probably just Catra back from work or from someone’s house. Something or from somewhere that Catra had made abundantly clear was not Adora’s business.
It wasn’t like either of them were ecstatic to be living together, but cheap rent always came first. Catra’s former roommate had moved for a job opportunity in a different city, and Adora was tired of third-wheeling with Bow and Glimmer for a living. She could only handle walking in on them in compromising positions so many times before she had to consider bleaching her own eyeballs. Catra had posted on social media about looking for someone decidedly less serial killer than the norm, which was a box Adora dutifully ticked off, and Adora immediately bookmarked it. She checked the post every day, made it a part of her morning routine between the scrambled eggs and waiting for Glimmer to leave their shared bathroom, but waited two weeks before responding to it. It was a combination of anxiety of Catra saying yes and the possibility of Catra saying no. Both held their own promise of demise.
Their falling out had been brutal to say the least. A rift started forming between them before Adora had realized, and they had both managed to dig and dig until there was nothing left to salvage. At least, in Catra’s eyes and words there was nothing. Adora was heartbroken. Looking back on it, Adora knew what she had felt, how she felt about Catra, and in an effort to ignore it, she suffocated it. They were still in a limbo of how to be around each other again. It had been months since Adora had moved in, but she was still walking on eggshells. It didn’t help that she made a vow to herself that if those feelings came back, she would express them this time instead of suppress. She owed her own emotions that much. What she hadn’t anticipated was that feelings can’t come back if they never quite went away. It was like one of those murder mystery shows where the killer is standing in the crowd shouting, “ I’ve been here the whole time !”
She was working her way through a game plan of how to address it, but based on the last time Catra snapped at her, it was a box better left to be opened slowly. Admitting that you loved liked your roommate was not a task to take lightly. It deserved kindness and care.
Adora was brought out of what she had dubbed her daily love life spiral by the sound of Catra’s voice in the hallway. Her voice was low, but undeniably panicked. It set off a thousand sirens in Adora’s head. Catra didn’t just panic without reason. Yeah, sometimes those reasons were a rogue mouse scampering across the kitchen, but still, a reason. She rose from the bed, keeping her hands palm down to quiet the frame creaking, and stepped out into the hallway. She moved forward on the balls of her feet. The sound continued from the bathroom, a little sliver of light peeking out from underneath the door and shining against the hardwood floor. Adora took a few deep breaths, centering herself. She knew how to fight. She could do this. In one quick motion, she took a last inhale and swung open the door.
Catra was alone, sans any intruder or hookup, sitting in the center of the room. She was half on the shower rug, ass on the backs of her heels, hiding in the black work hoodie Adora often saw her come home in. “Catra, what the-” Catra turned quickly, fire in her eyes, keeping her left hand clutching the bottom hem of their shower curtain, and threw up her right one to stop Adora in her tracks. Her palm hit the center of Adora’s chest.
“Shh,” Catra loudly whispered. “It’s sensitive to noise.”
It was possible that Catra had entered the extra special stage of drunkenness to talk about herself like Gollum, but from the general alertness of her gaze and the fact that she was sitting away from the toilet and not hugging it, it didn’t seem likely. Adora took a couple more seconds processing time and asked, “It?”
Catra pointed and moved back to her position holding her knees, observing. Huddled in the back corner behind the toilet was a small ball of black fur. It had the statue of a Petsmart guinea pig with too long of legs. Adora could see the rage of a thousand suns hidden behind its crusty little eyes. She loved it already.
“What are you going to do with it?” Adora asked, her stage whisper rusty. She tried to lean her hand out towards it, and Catra smacked it away when the fiery thing spit and hissed. It reared back like a toy, and the sight made a sleep-deprived Adora laugh. She wondered if Catra had noticed the resemblance yet.
Catra paused and pulled the hood down from over her head, running her fingers over the short, freshly shaved section in the back. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“You? When has that ever happened?”
“Stop talking,” Catra grumbled. She stood and grabbed the fabric of Adora’s shirt and tugged lightly, leading her out of the room and into the dark hallway. They walked to the kitchen, flipping a few lights on as they went. Catra hopped onto the cabinet and reached into her back pocket for her phone, leaning to the right to reach it.
Adora stood awkwardly for a moment in the silence, uncertain if she was supposed to retreat to her room or become an active participant in whatever the fuck this was meant to be. “Well, do we have any cat food?”
Catra gave her a look, her eyebrows shoved together in a cute but obviously annoyed way, still typing presumably into Google. “Why would we have fucking cat food?”
“It’s like 3am, cut me some slack.” Adora turned and opened the fridge, rummaging around through the leftovers and protein shakes Bow told her would be a good idea to buy. “I think we have some milk left in the fridge?”
“Cats can’t drink dairy,” Catra said quickly, her voice strained, like Adora had just suggested they make it a dry martini.
“Wait, what?” Adora paused, hand on a carton of potentially expired 2%.
“I mean like technically they can,” Catra replied. “But it’s bad for them.”
That had to be a lie. “But Ben and Jerry?”
“Tom?” Catra said, voice tinged with a hint of disbelief. Adora hadn’t actually been woken up from a dead sleep, but she might as well have been. She had already been up for twenty hours, and her brain liked to stumble around the fifteen hour mark.
“Close enough. Why do you know that?” Adora asked, ignoring Catra’s correction. Neither of them were necessarily raised in pet families . She knew that Catra liked cats in theory, but she had never really acted on it much beyond waving when she thought no one was looking at the neighbor’s tabby that sat in the window.
Catra crossed her arms over her chest, and Adora smiled. She knew that look. Catra was hovering over the border of being embarrassed, but showing it would be infinitesimally worse than admitting it. Adora closed the door of the fridge, and leaned against the edge of the counter Catra was perched on. “I’m not answering that question.”
“I’ll give you one of my tuna packets from the cupboard if you do.”
Catra groaned and pushed against Adora’s shoulders. “I follow a lot of cat rescue accounts on instagram, okay? The kittens are fucking cute. Now, bring me the damn fish.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the light, Adora could see the water handing off the ends of Catra’s hair, dripping onto her shoulders. She nudged her elbow lightly against Catra’s side. “How long has it been raining?”
“Probably thirty minutes, give or take.”
“How long did you spend trying to catch the cat?”
Catra sighed and rolled her head around, stretching her neck. “I stopped looking at the clock after an hour.”
Adora reached over Catra’s shoulder into the cabinet with the shitty plates she had brought with her when she moved in. The child would be dining on a Scooby Doo plate fit for a king. The fork clinked against the hard plastic as she divided out what seemed like a reasonable portion of stinky fish. “You can keep him, you know? The apartment is cat friendly, and I wouldn’t mind.”
Catra scoffed, but Adora could see through it. She was scared and said, “You honestly think I want another responsibility?”
“It could be a co-parent household then.”
“But seriously, why do you think that I want to do that?”
“You like him, and I think he likes you,” Adora said, registering the way Catra’s eyes started to roll from the moment the comment tried to leave her mouth. “Don’t give me that look. You can be likeable. And I don’t know. You deserve it.”
“I deserve the perils of parenthood?”
“Shut up,” Adora sang back at her and turned her body fully to face Catra. “Whether you like it or not, I know you. You’re like me. You’ll deny yourself of something that will make you happy if you think for a second it will inconvenience someone else. This is me giving you permission. Take it.”
Catra didn’t respond, but simply stared at Adora. There were bags forming under her eyes, and the longer pieces of her wet hair were sticking against her forehead. Across her left cheek was a streak of something that resembled dirt. She looked like she had been literally dragged through the mud, but still, she was so painfully beautiful to Adora. Everything about Catra was exactly the same from the moment she opened that bathroom door, save for one small thing. As Catra looked at Adora, it left her heavy with the feeling of being observed but being seen . Like Adora was a puzzle where some piece just clicked into place. Like whatever Catra was looking for, she found in that moment.
Catra held out her hand for the plate and left the room. As she often did, Adora followed.
They sat with their backs to the side of the tub. If Adora reached out her hand, she would hit Catra’s thigh, so she sat with hands close together in her lap, twiddling her thumbs. They watched as the feral little thing chewed away at the food, letting out a little growl if either of them inched too close. The pitiful sound made Catra laugh, and Adora couldn’t stop herself from making it happen again, gently tapping her finger along the kitten’s spine. When it finally licked clean every morsel of flaky fish, the kitten curled its tiny body into a spiral in the space between Catra’s knees. Adora would make out the sound of a small purr against the tiled floor.
Neither of them had said a word since returning, and the lull of night crept up slowly. The only sounds left in the room were the rain pinging against the shower window, and Catra's breath slowing its pace and becoming deeper and deeper. Adora could see Catra’s head begin to droop, and her chin knocked against her chest as she started falling asleep in place. “Hey, hey,” Adora said, placing her hand on Catra’s left shoulder to steady her.
“I’m fine,” Catra murmured.
“Stop being stubborn, and go to bed.”
Catra shook her head. “They have this weird little rattle when they breathe.”
Adora had noticed it earlier in the night and already had the numbers for four different vet clinics within a five mile radius plugged into her phone. “And?”
“And I can’t just leave them alone.”
Adora smiled, knowing it couldn’t quite reach her eyes with this little sleep. “I’ll watch them for a bit.”
Catra pushed at Adora’s shoulders in a failed attempt to get her to move, trying hard not to jostle the kitten by moving her legs. Adora used the wall on the other side to jam herself further down into her spot. “No, no. You are relieved of duty.”
“We can sleep in shifts,” Adora responded, and she could see a small nod from the corner of her eye. She could feel Catra settle back down in the space beside her. All at once, Catra’s head flopped against Adora’s shoulder, and her heart thumped louder in her chest. It was uncomfortable exactly, and it sure as hell wasn’t new. There was familiarity in the racing sensation. The ends of Catra’s hair had dried enough to leave no mark on Adora’s shirt, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyways. The world could have ended, the entire building crumbling down beneath them, and Adora wouldn’t have moved.
“Why are you doing this?”
Adora rolled the question over in her head, the tiredness in her bones keeping her from scrambling with any answer that would throw Catra off the scent of the mushy feelings laying not-so dormant in her chest. The glimpse of something , be it knowing or acceptance, she saw in Catra’s eye in the kitchen flashed across her memory. “I think you know why.”
“We can talk about it tomorrow.”
Though she couldn’t believe it was possible, Adora’s heart kicked it up a notch. “Hmm?”
“The cat. I’ll call the landlord in the morning.”
“Oh, okay,” Adora replied, the dejected tone of her voice betraying her.
“And anything else. We can talk about anything else that’s on your mind.”
Adora was hesitant. She knew. Catra knew. And she knew that Catra knew. But none of that meant that Catra was okay with knowing, or that she was okay with what she knew. It all made her head hurt and her nerves spike in the deepest pits of her stomach. “Are you sure you want that?” she asked.
“I’m sure,” Catra said and moved her hand towards Adora’s, untangling them from where Adora was gripping them together in anxiety. She gently laced her fingers through Adora’s, and the weight of her head settled stronger against the side of her neck. “Have been for a long time. This is me giving you permission.”
Adora’s voice caught in her throat as she tried to speak, and she stopped to take a deep breath. Another emotion filled the space as her anxiety vacated. Excitement. So, she slowly let her own head fall against the top of Catra’s. “Go to sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”