Chapter Text
i.
By 7pm on the Friday of the first week of Michaelmas term the dining hall of St Peter's college is always packed to the rafters with new students, dressed in black tie, amused by the novelty of their gowns, sparkling on a glass or two of prosecco, certainly whispering in corners of the ante-hall, where they gathered until it was time to be seated, always about the tutors they are about to dine with. The infectious excitement about the new academic year always got to Mary a little - and she'd been around long enough now to find the undergraduate body's prying interest in the university staff's personal lives almost charming (and easier to swallow than the posturing of the postgrads, all scholarly name-dropping and 'I loved your piece on-' before the white wine has even appeared). Besides, Mary has little to hide. Likes to lay her cards on the table early, hopes to encourage her students to do the same.
Amidst the glowing faces and polite chatter, Marisa sticks out more than ever as she stalks through the swarms of what are essentially teenagers, face like thunder. Despite a brief moment where a lanky boy's elbow nearly slammed into Marisa's chest, a move that may have made this welcome dinner his last, she finally weaves her way through to Mary and deposits a flute of prosecco in her hand with a grim smile.
"I swear they're getting younger," Marisa hissed, by way of greeting, "and more foul still, with each year."
Mary sipped at her drink to hide a smirk - it was only Marisa's second year in Mary's Oxford, and her first of these dinners, having only recently joined the science department as a full time member of staff. But Mary assumed it wasn't wise to point this out.
"Isn't it enough that I must sit with them in small groups several times a week for the next two months without reprieve - never mind having to spend my evening with them?"
At this, Mary did roll her eyes. "Come on now, they're not all that bad - they might surprise you, if you let them." It was an awful lot of melodrama for a woman who dazzled people on the regular even with her charm offensive on its dimmest setting. Marisa surely knew she could just sit at the table in silence in that red lace dress, one elegant hand on the stem of her glass, and still have the whole table dissecting her every breath by tomorrow morning's brunch. And besides, Mary suspected that Marisa was secretly quite taken with teaching, despite her languidly delivered protestations about tutorial planning and reports. She'd needed to teach the previous year to earn her doctorate, and to everyone's surprise (considering her icy approach to lunches in the staff common room) Marisa had been something of a hit with most of her supervisees. Only a handful left in tears, and the rest stayed in reverent and fearful devotion. Which seemed about right to Mary. She may have even won a small bet with Oliver about it, but of that, needless to say, she'd never tell.
"The way I see it," Mary continued, cheerfully, "all I'd be doing at home is be drinking a glass of something much cheaper and nastier, watching some horrible reality show. Much better to be here, drinking for free and trying to work out which of these idiots slept with each other after one of those ridiculous first year parties this week, and will live to regret it for the rest of their university careers."
This did seem to comfort Marisa and she scanned the increasingly cramped room with a fresh sense of pleasure, before turning back to clink her glass gently against Mary's. "I'll drink to that," she conceded, having to raise her voice slightly over the rabble. Finally the doors to the main hall opened and people began to push their way through, find their seats. Mary found herself already at the bottom of her glass, somehow as she drank again to appear too distracted to hear Marisa's sly follow up comment about Mary's view here being far better than anything she'd see from her sofa. Even if Mary now knew the ceaseless flirting to be a defence mechanism, a wall thrown up against the world, even as it looked like Marisa coaxing someone closer - it still caught her a little off guard now and again.
And it was obviously the prosecco talking when she allowed herself to admit, the other woman swanning ahead in her heels and that ridiculously form-fitting dress, the view was undeniably something.
*
Marisa didn't care for drunk people as a rule - she liked to work for her wins, just a little, while the intoxicated were barely worth playing with. Most tended to flop at her feet, defenceless, and where was the fun in all of that easy submission? It was barely worth her breath.
But, as per usual, Mary Malone was an exception to Marisa's rules. A continued, ceaselessly irritating exception. She was having to come reluctantly to a horrifying conclusion, almost a year into their strange, never acknowledged arrangement, that maybe Marisa not only tolerated Mary's company, but actually enjoyed it. It displeased her enormously.
She scowled into her glass, bringing her hand up to stop the server hovering behind her right shoulder refilling it with wine with one swift gesture. If she was being generous enough to think that, she'd clearly had enough. Opposite her, thanks to some sly rearrangement of the seating plan, when Mary had spotted that Marisa was due to be seated two seats down, with a particularly tiresome older, male lecturer and stepped in to prevent 'a bloodbath', the redhead was blathering away earnestly to the undergraduates. She didn't even notice her empty glass being refilled to the brim, but sipped from it enthusiastically as soon as she paused for breath, her cheeks pink - from the drink or from the bustling hall and heated discussion, Marisa could not tell.
The impossible thing about Mary was that drinking never made her cruel. Marisa had known spades of men and women in her world, who grew harsher by the glass. From the murmurings on campus about the wrongdoings of privileged boys and their silly clubs, it was evident that this was not exclusive to the world Marisa had left behind. But this logic did not apply to Mary, whom two glasses of wine seemed to effect like cat stretching out long in the sun, pliant and golden. She sank deeper into herself - but where inside Marisa there only ever seemed to be darkness and bile - inside Mary there were endless reserves of light, easy conversation. Gesturing with her hands so widely about heaven knows what that she nearly sent her own water glass flying. Marisa reached out impatiently to slide it out of harm's way just as Mary realised her own clumsiness, their fingers reaching the glass at the same moment. Mary sent a wobbly smile over the table that somehow conveyed both her thanks and a general sense of gentle bemusement: it was a smile that included Marisa in the joke, that said, look at us, what are we doing here, the both of us, together. It made Marisa's chest squeeze uncomfortably and she looked away quickly, bringing her hand back to her own lap.
Sometimes she couldn't bear to look at the open expression on Mary's face. It reminded her of a long fall, of bottomless depths. As a distraction she tuned in to the conversation Mary was so expertly holding together with the young people sat around them, and was surprised when all at once their attention was turned back on her too.
"Sorry... you were saying, Dr Malone?" Marisa faltered, narrowing her eyes a little under the scrutiny of these children, all bright eyed and alert.
"Just how important teamwork is in the labs, was all. Having other people to hold you accountable - I'd never have gotten through last summer without me and Dr Coulter's ice cream breaks on the lawns." Mary beamed, chin in her hand. Marisa too often thought about those long drawn out months between June and August, the blackberry sorbet staining Mary's lips a deep violet even as they worked into the night in the Cave.
The children looked at Marisa in the way that one might if you'd just been told a venomous snake loved a good scoop of vanilla ice cream on a balmy August afternoon. Somewhere between appalled and alarmed.
"It's true, without me to hold her accountable Dr Malone would be going into another year of wearing socks and sandals unironically in the science building from mid-May," Marisa snipped back, embarrassed but not entirely sure why. The whole table laughed with Mary, not at her, as Marisa realised she'd been aiming for humiliation.
Later, when Mary clumsily slid the strawberries from her dessert onto Marisa's plate, clearly thinking she was unobserved, having somehow retained the knowledge that Marisa liked them best, she was left with no choice but to excuse herself to the bathroom. With no intention to return.
Sometimes small kindnesses still felt like small cruelties.
ii.
It had been a long week, and Mary wanted nothing more than to go straight home and lie in the dark silence of her tiny house. It is fourth week - and even she is tired, of the ceaseless smiling, the small talk and marking, of the slow creep towards winter. Science department tradition demanded a pub trip to celebrate the midway point - small wins - but, never the conformist, this alone wouldn't have been enough to keep Mary from her dressing gown and an oven pizza. However, Marisa was there, one drink almost drained, and still there. For the first, and perhaps only, time ever. And Mary wouldn't miss this, daren't disrupt or draw attention to this one attempt the other woman had made so far of trying to immerse herself with her fellow academics.
Well, perhaps immerse is a generous word for what Marisa is actually doing, which is watching disdainfully as the boys debate 'bitcoin' or 'NFTs' or the like, concepts Mary knows Marisa has no real grasp on, while nursing her final slither of straight whisky on ice. The only table the group could find big enough for all of them was outside, and despite the creaky overhead heating system, the night is already growing chilly. Marisa's usually pale face is flushed with cold along her nose and those high cheekbones, though she does not seem to shiver, even though her pale blue silk blouse looks so flimsy. Not that Mary takes stock, usually, of how flimsy women's shirts are. She knocks back the rest of her cider and shuffles out of the bench, rattling her wallet in a way that gestures that she's got the next round. Her eyes meet Marisa's with a question - they have started to communicate like this, at some point in the past few weeks, without a single word - and the brunette hesitates, before lifting her glass ever so slightly. The same again.
The pub is old, the passageways narrow and crowded with after-work punters, locals and students alike fogging up the windows and clogging up the bar. Mary patiently waits her turn in a throng of football fans, shedding her outside layers as she adapts to the indoors, scarf first, then unzipping her practical jacket. Perfect for a hike in the woods or something, but not that nice for a drink or really even to wear out to work, she thinks, for the first time since buying it maybe five years ago. She usually chooses her clothes like she chooses the people she keeps close to her - dependable, versatile, low-maintenance.
Soon she can place a hand on the sticky bar top, at least, claiming her turn in the queue, no mean feat on a Friday night in a pub like this, and certainly not for a woman of her height in this kind of crowd. The man directly to her right is stood a little too close, swaying slightly - she can smell the beer on him, with them all pressed in like this. He keeps turning his head, and she thinks, maybe, he's trying to get her attention. But Mary's very good at strategically not engaging, choosing not to see things. He orders a tray of shots - and slides one down to Mary. Immediately, she's a little suspicious. She is not the sort of woman to whom men conventionally present drinks at the bar. A fact that has never troubled her much.
"Oh, I'm grand without actually, but thanks," she nods, still not really meeting the man's persistent gaze.
"Go on," he slides it a little closer, "you can consider it a little payment for when you pop the phone number of your dark-haired friend out there in the back into my contacts." And with this, a phone appears alongside the shot glass. Mary finally looks at him, confused for a moment by the use of the word 'friend', not one she'd ever heard said aloud to describe her proximity to Marisa. The man winked conspiratorially, which made Mary feel vaguely repulsed.
"Oh, sorry mate I don't actually think you're her type-" she smiled in faux apology, and was given a brief moment's grace from this increasingly awkward conversation when the barman finally took her order. Enough of a beat for Mary to realise she didn't really know and couldn't claim to assume, beyond speculation, what exactly Marisa Coulter's 'type' was exactly. She hadn't given it much thought really. (Well, perhaps not entirely true, because it had crossed her mind that first day Marisa had appeared in Mary's office, sleek with that cruel smile and all that hurting right behind it, barely hidden - but she'd quickly put that thought aside, never to be revisited, because of Lyra and Will, and the horrors of war waged by Lyra's father, and everything Marisa had lost and all the other things that they had silently agreed to never speak about again). It seemed important again to Mary right then. Very much so.
The man had been dragged out onto the pavement with his friends, their brazen laughter leaking out onto the cobblestones. Mary bought herself a shot after all, tipped it back and enjoyed the momentary distraction of a burning sensation from the outside in, the immediate warm fuzz that she suspected must be mainly a placebo. She paid and began the slightly perilous journey back to their table with two hands full of drinks, every body a moving obstacle. Someone had returned from the bathroom and stolen her seat, but Marisa wordlessly, without even looking up, slid along, further into a corner, to make room for her. A few sarcastic cheers went up as the drinks hit the table, sloshing slightly, and Mary made a noise close to a grunt in response as she sank back, overheating again, so short on space that she was aware of her thigh pressed entirely up against Marisa's.
*
"You're like a furnace," Marisa muttered, shifting about a little restlessly, and though it was only an observation, she was painfully aware she didn't know how to deliver it in any way that did not sound like a criticism. If it had truly been a dig, she would have mentioned that the liquor evidently on Mary's breath was strong enough to start a fire by itself. (Mary frequently smelled like tea, like the plastic of new equipment, like grass just after rain, but never liquor). But she kept her mouth zipped tightly on that little observation, did she not.
"It's just as well, really, seeing as you look like an icicle," Mary countered, unwinding her chunky knit scarf from around her neck and - after what seemed like a visible breath of consideration - offered it to Marisa, in such a way that it perhaps might have been possible to pretend she hadn't been. Marisa snatched it, incapable of taking something nicely, and simply held it in her lap for a little while, absentmindedly running the soft grey wool through her slender fingers, grateful for - and a little heartsore at - the feeling of something warm and almost living in her palms, almost like fur.
"There was a man, at the bar," Mary continued, unprompted, and Marisa paused when she realised that Mary was watching her hands carefully, face neutral and without judgement. She wrapped the scarf around her exposed neck instead, one end over her shoulder with a flourish. Mary's lips quirked ever so slightly. There was a rather long pause.
"A man at the bar, Dr Malone? Was there really, how riveting."
She scoffed, brushing her curls out of her eyes in a way that she only seemed to do self-consciously. She had the expression of a woman who clearly wished she'd never opened her mouth, which only made Marisa want to tease her more - see what had crawled its way under Mary's skin, the way so few things really seemed to.
"A man asking for your telephone number."
Marisa huffed, performatively bored by the predictability of this answer, but interested really, in the strange shape of Mary's expression, quite unlike anything Marisa had seen on her face before.
"I hope you told this man I'm an ancient crone without any mobile device to my name-"
"I told him, that he wasn't your type."
At this, Marisa really did laugh - a dark bark of laughter, a knee-jerk reaction to how ridiculous it felt in that moment to have any kind of choice in such things, to have something as simple and naive as a 'type'. "And what exactly makes you think you know what my type is?" She drawled it, enjoying just a little how Mary looked unsettled by the question.
Mary sipped her drink thoughtfully, and eventually responded. "I didn't think you went for meathead types who clearly forget to shower."
A sinister little smile spread over Marisa's face, unabashedly delighted by this side to Mary that couldn't even try to be cruel with any real commitment behind it. "Dr Malone," she intoned, barely above a whisper, pretending to be shocked, "such meanness towards a stranger for such a good little nun."
Mary's hand instinctively came to rest on the inside of Marisa's elbow, squeezed her arm in a collusive manner. "Ah, there's where you're getting yourself muddled, I'm afraid. Was never a very good nun." Despite the touch being over two layers of fabric, her hand on the thick material of her coat and not her bare skin, being touched so casually, so carelessly still came as a surprise to Marisa. They both tensed, as Mary seemed to remember herself - but neither moved, for a breath. A suspended moment. And then Mary's hands returned to the table, palms flat as if in surrender.
They do not stay much longer, as the sun is setting and a frost settling over the city. Though while they do, Marisa can feel Mary's leg vibrating fretfully under the table - and the heat still radiating off her, like the centre of the sun.