Work Text:
The nights were great to work in. Silent. Tranquil. Not a single distraction at all. No shouting, no horns blaring, no overwhelming brightness of the daytime to give Ina a horrible migraine. At night, it was just her, and her work. She would draw, lines and layers piling up until the sky turned bright, the offending rays telling her that her circadian rhythm was nothing but absolutely fucked up. Only then would Ina draw the curtains and crawl into bed.
The nights were great to work in. Were.
Until Amelia Watson turned up. At 3.00am too.
The doorbell goes off, once, twice, and then impatient, short knocks compete for Ina’s attention. Her tablet loses.
“Did I order any food?” Ina wonders, and maybe, maybe she did – oh no, wait, that was two days ago. Maybe she should get out. Touch grass.
She opens the door, and a cheery detective greets her.
“Hello Ina!”
“Are you the new TakoEats delivery girl? I didn’t order anything.” Ina cracks a shy smile, and her door cracks open wider.
“I know. I ordered for us!” Amelia raises two bags, and the delicious smell of fried food hits Ina. Her stomach murmurs.
“Red bull?”
“Of course!” Amelia grins. “I even made cupcakes, Gura’s recipe!”
“Wow, this worker is psychic. I better give her a tip.” Ina grins, and a bundle of sunlight spills into her house at 3.00 am.
“How about a kiss for the chef?” Amelia laughs while she kicks off her shoes, way ahead of Ina.
“I-” Ina bites her lip. “What brings you here anyway? You don’t really drop by unannounced.”
Amelia Watson turns around, and the look she gives Ina is … confusing. Unreadable, even. Ina stands in the doorway, trying not to scrutinise too much. Amelia moves to the coffee table, unloading the food.
“Well, Gura is asleep, and Calli and Kiara are busy. I don’t really want to intrude.”
Is that really so?
“Well, the truth, Miss Ninomae, is that I’m here to sweep you off your feet!” Amelia sweeps her arm in a grand flourish.
“At 3am?”
“Yeah, a little rendezvous, if you want to call it that. Heheh.”
“Well, I don’t mind.” Ina nudges Amelia, who falls onto the sofa. Ina herself follows, making sure their shoulders barely touch. “I haven’t hung out with you guys for so long.”
“Well, no better time than the present to catch up!” Amelia cracks open a red bull and offers it to Ina.
“That’s ironic coming from a time traveller.” Ina takes it, their fingers brushing.
It’s a comfortable sensation. It’s nice.
Ina doesn’t tell Amelia. Instead, she talks and listens until she yawns. She sends Amelia off, and she still doesn’t tell her.
But it seems that Amelia knows, without words. And she turns up at 3.00am. Again, and again, and again.
All with the stupidest reasons.
“Oh, I got red bull but don’t feel like drinking it. So here I am!”
“Calli and Kiara bailed on me.” (They did not.)
“Gura wanted me to pass this to you! She made it herself!” (At Amelia’s incessant requests.)
“Draw me. I’m a great model.” (They ended up watching a movie and falling asleep)
“Were you waiting?” Amelia asks, as Ina opens the door before the bell goes off a second time.
Ina has been. She notices that between 2.59am and 3.00am, time travels impossibly slow. She can’t focus, and she checks her devices, sets a stopwatch, but time cruelly inches by. She notices that Amelia comes at 3.00am, and time flows absurdly fast after. She notices that when Amelia shows herself out, she lingers at the door just long enough for a sleepy Ina to hug her goodbye.
They don’t say when they will meet again. But Ina does feel that the nights, although noisier, are much more pleasant. She crawls into bed, thinking of the hour hand pointing Eastward.
And when she wakes, she waits again.
“I wasn’t waiting.” Ina lies. “What are you here for this time? Perhaps to return a lost Takodachi?”
Amelia kicks her shoes off, and Ina places them neatly beside hers.
“Maybe I have a request.”
“A request from the great detective? How can I be of service?” Ina sits on the sofa, and Amelia falls across her, head on Ina’s lap.
“Sing for me.”
“You came all the way here just to hear my voice?”
“Mmhmm.” Amelia pulls her hat over her face.
“Oh.” Ina clears her throat. She’s tempted to knock the hat off, but she’s also glad that Amelia can’t see how red she has become.
Instead, she sings a lullaby, slightly past 3.00am.
“Why 3am?” Ina asks, threading her hand in soft golden locks. Amelia squirms, and it tickles.
“I figured you’d still be up.” Amelia flips over, staring at Ina. “Look at you.” She reaches up, and Ina’s breath hitches when Amelia’s hand cups her cheek. “You haven’t been sleeping well.”
“You keep me awake too.” Ina chuckles, and hopes her heart is beating faster simply from 3 cans of red bull and nothing more. Nothing more.
“Yeah, the Watson charm always keeps the ladies up all night.” Amelia waggles her brows and Ina pinches her cheek. “Awawa!”
“Snoring is a charm?” Ina teases, and watches in amusement as Amelia’s nostrils flare.
“You don’t even know if I snore!” Amelia protests, trying to pinch Ina back, but the taller woman darts out of her reach. Curse these short arms! “Maybe you do!”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ina stretches Amelia’s cheek, and feels skin beneath her fingertips heat up. “Oh.”
“A sleepover!” Amelia brushes Ina’s hand away and rolls back to her original position, facing the blank TV screen. “We haven’t had a sleepover!”
Ina does wonder why not. Amelia has intruded so many times, and they are only human. They get tired. They have basic needs.
Ina presses on, “Maybe I’ll sleep better with you around, Doctor Watson?”
There’s a silence, and Amelia lets Ina continue running her hands through her hair. She could fall asleep like this now. She wouldn’t mind falling asleep like this more often. But can she?
“You have only one bed.”
“It’s big enough for us if you’re alright with sharing.”
Okay, how can Amelia say no? Ina hardly takes the lead like this too. It’s exciting, even though it’s just an innocent request for a friendly sleepover. She’s done sleepovers, no biggie! No excuses!
Okay, maybe one last excuse.
“Maybe I do snore.”
“We’ll have to find out.”
Ina flings the door open at 3.00am, as though she already knows Amelia will turn up.
She’s not disappointed. She’s very, very surprised though. She’s seen Amelia in various costumes, casual outfits, and even the occasional formal wear. But this?
Ina swallows.
“Come on!” Amelia waves her over, and Ina stumbles closer. As she approaches, she has to force her eyes not to wander all over Amelia’s body, her thighs, her slim arms, her very ample-
“Catch!” Amelia tosses a helmet at Ina, and watches as the priestess fumbles to get a proper grip on it.
“I’m- I’m not too sure about this.” Ina says, “my parents said that motorcyclists fall into a particular group – more dangerous, more daring, more risk-taking-” Ina gets distracted as Amelia shifts in her seat. Bless whoever invented leather suits.
“Then, fall with me?”
And so she falls, deep, hands gripping onto Amelia’s hips, helmet pressed against Amelia’s back. She screams as Amelia accelerates, laughing wildly. It’s liberating. It’s exciting. Once the thumping in her head disappears, she hears the air whistle as they zoom down an empty stretch of road, not a single vehicle in sight.
It’s breath-taking.
The road goes on forever, and there’s this calming sensation that comes along with the thought of a never-ending journey at one’s pace. Maybe Ina wants that, to just run away. She finally looks up, and Amelia grins when the pressure on her back is gone.
“So how’s it?” Amelia yells.
Ina opens her mouth to speak, but the wind carries her words away. She tries again.
Fwoosh.
“Scary, but it’s fun!” She shouts, and Amelia responds to her wavering voice with a gremlin-like laugh.
Ina strikes back. Amelia doesn’t expect it, but thin fingers creep across her stomach, sliding dangerously. Amelia takes a sharp breath.
Ina likes that. There’s no sound from Amelia, but the tense abs clenching beneath her hands is a perfect response. She dips her fingers lower, and the bike screeches to a stop.
“Let’s go home.” Ina smiles innocently, even though her fingers stay.
Ina’s house isn’t free of clutter, no, not with all her figurines, her art books, and her slowly growing collection of souvenirs from trips when the world is asleep. Pebbles from a beach. Photos of a lighthouse, two faces blurred from shaky hands. A preserved flower. A rock, covered in a bit of moss (that one is kept in a jar). Ticket stubs from an odd movie theatre. They’re all little fragments of memories captured in physical receptacles. And Ina treasures them so.
Below that is a leather jacket, one taken off in a haze, flung onto the floor without a care.
It’s the only thing that greets her into morning.
The right side of the bed is empty, the blanket messy, tossed aside hastily.
Amelia is gone.
It’s a norm, isn’t it? The time traveller always comes and goes as she pleases. She’s always so flighty, so reckless. She doesn’t know how slow time passes for Ina. Maybe the rest don’t feel it with their age, but Ina is only human after all.
A week passes, and Ina finds her attention stolen by her clock. Time doesn’t just crawl between 2.59am and 3.00am anymore, it freezes.
3.00 am does not come.
Time fast-forwards to 3.01am, and Ina barely makes out the time beyond blurred vision.
“Steal me away.” Ina whispers to nothing.
Amelia doesn’t.
Amelia does, at 3.00am.
Ina opens the door, speechless.
Amelia grabs her, and Ina practically clings onto her, no teasing, no shameless groping, but a desperate latching onto the time traveller. As if she’s preventing Amelia from ever leaving.
As if she can.
They speed past familiar sights, each a spot of their extended rendezvouses. The beach that no one goes to, the lighthouse that really needs a paint job, a shabby building hiding a strange cinema, all of them their spots. It’s a sightseeing tour, but none of them want to slow down or stop.
It’s a desperate ride without a destination in mind.
And like all journeys, all must come to an end. The motorbike sputters, coughing out the last fumes it can, before Amelia and Ina are stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Amelia tries revving, but the motorcycle is truly dead.
Slowly, Ina unplasters herself from Amelia.
“I have to return you.” Amelia whispers.
“To what, an empty home? An empty bed?” Ina mutters bitterly. Her hands come to rest on the back of the seat. “I want to return to someone.”
“I’ll call a cab for you.” Amelia replies, no louder than she was before.
The sun is slowly rising, but there’s no heat to be felt.
Ina wakes up to a bed that’s done up neatly on the right side.
There’s no Amelia.
There was rage this morning, in scratches, merciless clawing drawing blood, fangs piercing skin to leave a mark, and lips ravishing skin, burning both of them alive.
It’s somehow even more infuriating to know that Amelia Watson decided to tidy things up after this morning. It’s absurd, and it frustrates Ina to no end.
She doesn’t know when Amelia Watson will turn up again.
So she looks for her.
The detective agency isn’t a necessarily well-guarded place, but not any regular civilian can step in. So when a furious priestess nearly breaks the door down, alarms go off, sirens blare, and a very grouchy detective pokes her head up from behind her desk.
“You’ve been caught in a trap, so just surrender!” Amelia cackles. Ina sees through the feint and marches straight to the desk.
“Amelia Watson.”
“Miss Ninomae, what a surprise.” Amelia brings herself to at least sit on her chair. She straightens her tie, shrugging her coat over her as though it covers the hickeys and bite marks littered all across her neck.
“I have a mystery for you to solve, detective. You see, someone I cherish dearly keeps running away after we get intimate. Why is that so?” Ina slams her palms on the table.
She tries not to wince.
“Ina…” Amelia sighs. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You already have.”
“I-I’m sorry, but I’ve seen how bad things can get, and I’m afraid of hurting you, and being hurt.”
“They’re not us. I’m your Ina.”
“My Ina, do you even want me?”
“Amelia Watson.” Ina grits her teeth. “Have you been keeping yourself at an arm’s length because of what you’ve seen from other Inas and Amelias? Are you such a coward that you won’t even give me or yourself a chance? Amelia Watson, I want you. Not just physically. Let me show you.”
Ina reaches for something in her pocket, and it glints when she takes it out. Uh oh. Amelia doesn’t react, thinking that oh well, this is how it is, she really screwed up, but that’s fine. It’s okay even if Ina is a menhera yandere girlfriend- eh?
“Amelia Watson, this is how much I want you.” Ina flicks her wrist, and the item clatters onto the table. “I’ve seen how you look at me. If you really, still want me, come and steal me away. Sweep me off my feet at 3am.”
3.00am comes.
And 3.00am goes.
Ina stares at the clock, feeling a tug in her chest. She probably overdid it, but she really didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t know what to do. It was probably all that adrenaline pumping in her blood that caused her to be so rash. And now? It’s shame and a stubborn hope that’s making her hold on, even as the minute hand plunges down.
It’s one of those nights when it would be amazing to dive into work, to forget everything. Silent. Tranquil. Not a single distraction at all. No shouting, no horns blaring, no overwhelming brightness of the daytime to give Ina a horrible migraine. Just her and her work.
That’s not what she wants.
She wants sunshine at 3.00am. She wants noisy, gremlin laughter and the sound of two cans of drinks being opened at the same time. She wants the door to swing open and –
Sunshine. Red, flushed, sweaty sunshine.
“It’s 5am.” She says blankly, but stands up from her sofa, breaking into a run towards the door.
“I know. I was on my motorcycle, and it broke down, and-” wheeze “-I just ended up running here-”
Ina grabs her by the collar, and they crash, fervently, fingers latching onto hips as they stumble into the house. It’s not graceful, and they nearly bash their teeth together. It’s what makes them break apart, and they laugh, laugh at how silly they have been, laugh with relief as their tears start flowing down.
“I’m home.” Amelia says, placing her key beside Ina’s. Two of a kind.
“Welcome home.”