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"Woah." Anne breathes, Marcy's glasses resting on her face – the bridge of her nose doesn't sit properly and the sides bunch her curls up by her ears, but that's just how normal glasses feel when they don't fit. What has her in awe is the lenses, orange tinted, coating everything in her sight in a honey-like colour.
"Right?" Marcy bunches up to her side, watching Anne marvel at the many fandom-related objects around their office, the lenses glazing everything in an orange hue.
Anne turns back to the textbook in front of them, the thing Marcy was originally trying to get her to focus on. The words are there, rather readable and fine, as far as she's concerned. Not too much different to black text on white paper, which it would be, if not for the glasses.
"Uh, not much difference here, Mars." She flicks the glasses up by pressing on the edges by her ears, letting them fall back down onto her nose to check the difference between the two colours. "At least not for me,"
Watching her fascination at the glasses, Marcy smiles and takes out some rulers from one of their desk drawers. There's many colours – grey, pink, dark and light blue, yellow, orange (like Marcy's glasses), purple, red and shades of green. There's so many that Anne's mouth opens in awe, viewing them as they pick out the orange colour and set it aside.
"Try some of these," They say, sliding the translucent rulers across the desk.
Taking one – the pink one – Anne places it over the text. Though, she doesn't even make a move to take off the glasses.
" Annie ," Marcy laughs, "C'mere, silly." As Anne turns to them, Marcy slips the glasses off of her face and push her curls back behind her ears, giggling as her expression shows her slight embarrassment.
In the end, however, she ends up laughing with them, shaking her head with a smile as she turns back to the textbook. The ruler sits over the text, coating it in a pastel pink overlay.
Still, nothing. The text looks the same. As a matter of fact, if anything , it actually seems… less readable.
The text seems sort of spacey and overlapped, and it's like the words blend together. Not much, but still enough to have her blinking a couple times as though overwhelmed.
"I'll take that as a no." Marcy says, pulling the ruler from beneath her fingers, having caught on to her blinking. "Here, try the blues. Blue seems to be your thing, after all."
Snickering slightly at that comment, Anne takes the light blue strip first and sets it out over the text. It's the same as the orange was. Not much difference. Dark blue is hellish , and she finds she can only keep it over the text for a couple moments before she's sent into another blinking fit just trying to read the first line.
"Another no," Marcy chimes in again, setting the rulers off to the side with the orange and pink ones. "Green or yellow, maybe? My gem colour. Shame they both hurt my eyes so much,"
Anne hums, taking the yellow. Surprisingly, it's… quite clear for her. Green is the same as dark blue as far as understanding is concerned, but yellow makes the text feel so much more legible.
"This one," Anne mumbles, having read through the full paragraph rather fast, "Yellow's pretty good."
Marcy nods, squinting as they look over at the text. "Augh, polar opposites, that one is waging a war with my brain," They groan, but nod regardless. "Wanna try the others anyway to see if there's any that're clearer?"
The two end up going through the rest – there's only a few more, but none of them stand out as much as the yellow one does for Anne. She can deal with black text on white paper, but yellow feels so much easier.
Marcy's dyslexic, and Anne knows that she could be, so she and Marcy have been going through symptoms they have to see if they reflect in her as well. So far, Marcy's pretty insistent that she does have it, having observed the similarities in some of their traits. At the very least, it'll help explain why studying was so hard for Anne during school (which is the main reason she wanted to see if she does have it anyway).
While Marcy experiences a lot of symptoms related both to reading, writing, and environment, Anne's deal mostly with reading and memory. Nothing sinks in as it should, and reading pages over and over does nothing to help or 'commit info to memory' as her teachers used to tell her it would.
"I could get you some yellow glasses, sorta like mine, but, well, you know… yellow ," Marcy laughs, letting Anne use the ruler to read through the page.
The book details a topic she couldn't care less about, but regardless, things are actually sinking in. Committing to memory. It's like everything is fitting into place, and god , she wishes she'd known this when she was taking her herpetology exams.
"I– I'd like that," A sweet smile forms on Anne's face, relief setting in as her cheeks begin to warm. Maybe this is what Marcy felt when they figured it out, the relief of knowing , finally, that it's not just your brain being difficult. It has a name , a label , something Anne can focus on. Something she now knows is responsible, and can learn to understand.
Marcy shuffles closer to her side again, their chair creaking ever so slightly against the floorboards. "I'm glad you found one that works for you," They take her free hand, tracing little hearts against her palm. "It's a relief, right? I know it was for me when I found out." They bring her hand up, pressing her knuckles to their lips like a silent prayer, just glad they could help another out after having dealt with misunderstandings and the trauma of the education system while unknowingly dyslexic, something they know Anne surely shares the experience of.
"It is, yeah." Anne even flicks to the next page, continuing to read. Even though she couldn't care less about Marcy's ancient architecture books, for once, she can read the information on the page and have it soak in, recognising the little things Marcy had told her and Sasha in their little rambles.
"I'm glad." Marcy moves to stand up, but not before Anne uses her hand to grab hold of their wrist.
Within a moment, Anne tugs Marcy closer, her other hand letting go of the ruler just to cradle their face as she pulls them in for a kiss.
It doesn't last long, but it's long enough to get across how grateful she is to them for this.
As they pull away, their breaths brushing against one another's cheeks, Anne watches as Marcy's expression turns from one of surprise to a giddy smile, the corners of their lips upturned.
"Thank you," Anne whispers against their skin, mirroring their flustered smile with a bolder twist, moving just to press a second kiss to their forehead as though that could somehow bring Marcy back down to earth.
"Uhm," They fumble, "No problem, I–"
To their side, there's a thump as some knuckles hit the wood of the door.
Sasha, leaning against the doorframe, wearing his kitchen apron still with a smug look on his face.
"You two need to get a room. Like, seriously ." He shakes his head, rolling his eyes in a failed attempt to conceal the small smirk on his face.
Anne tuts, leaning over the back of her chair enough to give him a light-hearted shove. " You came in here !"
" Well ," Sasha purses his lips, deep in thought for some sort of comeback. This time around though, there's nothing that springs to mind. "Okay, I've got nothing. Just– get out here, okay? I need you to taste test the cake."
There's a beat of silence where neither of them move, just still looking between each other and Sasha, still in the doorway. He jolts, as if asking what they could be waiting for.
Still, he knows how to do the trick. "It's red velvet, Marce. If you beat Anne to the kitchen then I'll ban her from the tray."
Before the 'what?' of surprise can leave Anne's mouth, Marcy's already up from the chair and making a break out towards the hall. Sasha, however, has other plans.
Of course he wasn't gonna ban Anne from the cupcakes – so as soon as Marcy's out in front of him, he wraps his arms around their waist and scoops them up, bringing forth a bout of laughter and yells about how he's gonna get flour all over their sweater.
Anne just listens, still sitting in her desk chair. She'll let them get a head start, if only to allow herself to listen to the voices of those she loves so much for a moment longer.
Everything fits together so perfectly, and it's like a massive weight has been lifted from her shoulders.
She'll have to write on her morning reminders to make sure she takes her yellow-tinted glasses to work with her once they arrive.