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It’s over burnt egg white omelettes and pulpless orange juice and the radio tuned to a pop station Angel didn’t even think Lana knew existed that a stunning realization crosses her mind.
Precisely, this understanding occurs right at the moment that the young Ema Skye, leaning over the kitchen island to reach for the jam, tips herself off the barstool- teenage limbs and grace as she is- knocking the spoon in the jar out onto Angel’s furry white slippers and Lana- scout’s honour!- Lana snorts. She throws her head to the side, long, still unbrushed hair flying, sticking to the crumbs on her face, and snorts.
Angel could laugh too. Any other day she’d be at her side before either of them could blink, hand on her arm, ready to ground the two of them into that rare moment. But today for some reason her face is stone, and she feels just a couple goosebumps raise on the back of her arm.
How did she miss it? Angel is living with a stranger.
She shakes her head quickly, her momentary lapse in belonging going unnoticed by the sister duo, the younger of whom is now preoccupied with chasing said imposter around with a glistening finger she apparently stuck right into the jam jar.
“A- Angel-!” Lana manages to get out between gasps of laughter, cornering herself on one side of the island while Ema stalks her from the other, each switching directions as the other does. “Listen, I’ll dry clean tho-O-AH!” A shriek, and she’s tackled to the ground, trapped under Ema’s legs as a citrus flavoured smiley face is painted on her forehead.
“They were ten bucks on Amazon, hon. Was that a snort, a second ago?”
But for the moment, the slippers, the breakfast spread (the one Angel hadn’t been allowed to assist on, no, no, Ema’s in town, this is a sister’s duty) have been forgotten, as has the Skye sisters’ war as they now lay side by side on the floor Angel knows hasn’t been mopped since last week. Ema holds her phone above them as they return to scrolling through the list she had crawled into bed and woken her hosts up this morning to address.
“Well we have to see the Space Needle, that’s a given, do you know how silly it would be to show up back in Germany without a picture in front of the freaking Space Needle after flying all the way here? Oh, oh, look the science centre’s open today too! And the aquarium— Ohmigosh! There’s a ballet, Lana have you been to the ballet here? Well it obviously won’t be as good as the one we saw on our field trip in Berlin but,” an exaggerated sigh, “if I have to be the one to expose you to some culture..”
“My love, you say to the only one in the room with an undergrad in Art History. And that you have less than a week here to fit all this in. ” Lana’s eyes crinkle as she smiles, sending Angel halfway back to her realm of familiarity. She knows those crinkles. She, too, can induce those crinkles.
Angel’s eyes crinkle back involuntarily as she watches.
“Gals?”
Lana hums in acknowledgement, but her eyes are glued to her sister’s phone.
“I’m gonna take a shower, just let me know if anyone needs the bathroom.”
Angel is a morning showerer, and she already knows Lana is inclined toward the evening. The question, albeit sounding general, is more of an attempt at accommodation she feels too out-of-place to be direct about right now.
“Oh! Actually, Angel?” The younger girl in question pipes up.
“Hm?”
“Could you throw me down my omelette? Hands are fine.”
Apparently, Angel is the only one feeling that way.
————
It’s been six weeks since the move up here, almost eleven months since that trial.
Their first spring together in damp, chilly Seattle.
Sure, Angel would be crazy to say it had been easy, moving to a new state with a woman who just under a year ago she had been trying to have imprisoned on murder charges, but.. all’s well that ends well, she’s come to suppose?
It hadn’t been bad by any means. Every month saw Lana coming out of her shell bit by bit after years of its self-imposition, and it was all Angel could do half the time to hold back from scooping her up in her arms, desperate to make up for those years of mutual wrongdoing.
It hadn’t been easy. Angel had known going into this that healing (for the both of them) would be a slow, steady process that if this had a chance in hell of working out, couldn’t be rushed. And she was fine with that, if it meant she was working through it all with Lana at her side.
The last thing she had suspected was that they had been moving too fast.
————
Lana sits on the ground again now, her legs stiffly tucked to the side. Ema crouches opposite of the board game between them, and Angel in the arm chair just behind.
The sky is dark now; the threesome hadn’t ended up managing anything off Ema’s list today, part of their time being taken up by shopping for some essentials Ema had forgotten back at school in Germany, but most of it really spent lounging around the apartment.
“Eugh. This testimony on its own would not hold up under scientific investigation you know.”
Lana smirks at her sister. “Are you sure? What if I know Mrs. Peacock wasn’t in the library, because I, Miss Scarlet, was dining with her at the very moment it happened?”
“Gay.”
“Oh hush, you.”
“Well!” Ema huffs, uncrossing her legs as if she were about to stand up, then crossing them again. “Well if my guy’s such a great professor then I should be able to investigate the library scientifically, shouldn’t I? No crime would ever be solved guessing like this, the game makes no sense.”
“Plum is a professor under the study of French literature, my love.”
“No he’s not.”
“I’m afraid so. I’m not sure how much help he’d be.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. I know everything.”
Ema jumps to her feet, hands in exaggerated fists, and Lana fakes a flinch at the movement, both their eyes shining.
She turns and walks in the direction of the kitchen, and the sound of cupboards flying open and shut carries over.
“Yo, Lana? Where do you guys keep the snackoos?”
The book in Angel’s hands is heavy, but she hasn’t turned a page since she’s opened it. Her eyes have been trained on the pages as she spent the past hour listening to the sisters’ game, but she lifts them now to rest her gaze on Lana.
It’s subtle, the way a slight blankness returns to her eyes, the minute but familiar furrow of her brow, but Angel sees it.
“….Love, I’m sorry. I haven’t found a place here that sells them yet, I was absolutely supposed to figure that out to grab you some before you flew in.”
A pshaw as the younger girl reenters the room, and Angel points her eyes back down at her book, shuffling further under the throw blanket she has wrapped around her.
Ema had slept under it on the couch last night, neither of the women realizing until her arrival they didn’t have any proper extra bedding for her, but Angel knows already she’ll offer to take it tonight, let the sisters share the bed.
“Oh shit! Lana it’s almost nine, they’re rerunning the second Steel Samurai trilogy tonight, remember?”
“Ema Akane Skye, language.” Lana sprawls out towards their coffee table, the one with plastic still wrapped around the legs, patting the top to find the remote.
Huh. Angel didn't know Lana sprawled.
“I never took you as one for those old cartoons, Lan.”
A genuine gasp from Ema. “Lana, you snake. Angel, has she really never shown you her Pink Princess Halloween saga? She used the same costume every year of high school, just added on more and more, it was a pink monstrosity.”
“Lana? In pink?”
“Well,” A tight-lipped but genuine smile from Lana as she side-eyes her sister. “Truthfully, I wanted to be the Zappy Samurai, but I could never quite work up the courage for all the cut-outs.”
"Oh man." A cackle from the teen. "Ange, you better start treating my sister right because you are not getting the good goss out of her the way things are now."
The drone of the TV turned up louder than it probably should be in such a small apartment drowns the conversation out, and Lana and Ema end up curled up on the couch. To Angel, they look just round and sweet enough to be two peas in a pod.
She stretches out a kink in her neck, thinking to herself that it’s likely the first of many over the coming week.
————
Ema is dropped off at the airport the following Friday morning, and Angel returns home that evening after scouting possible locations for a cafe opening to an eerily still apartment.
She kicks off her heels and tiptoes in, holding her breath when she spots a head of caramel brown hair peeking over the arm of the couch, but her heart rate quickly settles as she rounds the corner, spotting the novel in her girlfriend’s hands.
Lana is curled up under the throw, just as she had been into Ema but cornered off into the arm of the couch now, as if trying to shrink into it.
Angel sits, and after a moment, gently puts a hand over the unidentifiable lump.
“She get on her flight easy?”
Lana nods, shutting the book over her finger to mark the page.
“C’mere.”
A pause, then Lana turns herself over, position the same, but head over Angel’s lap now instead of the hard arm of the couch.
Angel’s fingers absentmindedly find their way to Lana’s hair in habit, but as her eyes close ever so slightly under the touch, Angel threads them in more deeply, massaging her head.
Like that, the two of them sit for a minute, but the persistent stillness of the air compels Angel to break it.
“It’s not a home yet, is it, hon?”
Lana doesn’t respond, but a hand slinks up from under her blanket to rest on her knee, fingers tapping back and forth, a sleepy rhythm.
“You’ve been holed up in here all day, haven’t you? If we move quick, we can probably make it to that place on the waterfront you like before the dinner rush.”
The tapping stops, and Lana cranes her neck to look those big eyes up at Angel.
“I like your cooking better.”
She shifts again, this time onto her back, so she can reach up and tuck the bang that usually covers half of Angel’s face behind her ear.
“You know it’s.. It’s not too late, Lan? We can go back. Neither of us has to stay here, you wouldn’t be losing or anything if you realize this wasn’t the right move all along, or it was too much too fast, or-”
“We’ll make it a home, Angel.”
“Oh.” Angel looks to the side, always feeling more exposed than she really should with her hair pushed back like this, but she soon follows the soft hand leading her face to align back with the gaze on her lap.
“If you want to.”
“Well of course I want to.”
“Then you’re going to hunt me down a snackoo seller by the end of the week.” That same tight-lipped but true smile, before Lana closes her eyes and turns in, burrowing into Angel’s warmth.
Before Angel knows it, her eyes are falling shut too.