Archive of Our Own

Nine o’clock in the evening finds Ava reading, stomach down across the bedcovers. A storm rushes and batters the windows of their apartment, but she's wearing a cropped tank top and pyjama shorts. No units in their complex have individual control over the heating; for practically all of winter, the building stays stuffy and stiflingly hot.

Glancing up, Ava can see Beatrice through the open door to the bathroom. She wears long sleeves, long pants. After so many years of modest dress, she has a higher tolerance for heat. The runny nose and muted appetite she’s been steadfastly bearing for the better part of the week, however, tip Ava off to another possible explanation.  

She sees Beatrice blink hard after bending to rinse her mouth into the sink, and, when she comes into the bedroom, folds the book closed. She props herself higher on her elbows. With a teasingly knowing smile, she asks, “How’re you doing, there?”

“I’m fine, Ava.”

“All good?”

“That is what fine means.” She sounds so like Lilith that Ava almost laughs.

Being sick, Ava knows by now, upsets Beatrice. She hates the way that it changes all her plans, hates the way it fucks with her exercise routine, hates that her body and mind slip from her control and she can’t anticipate any of it. She gets tense; she gets quiet. This time, Ava has resolved to approach the issue like a game of Jenga, lightly poking until one of the blocks moves. She’s been trying it out for the past few days. 

She’s content to keep trying it, to weather the exercise in patience for as long as it takes to let Beatrice come to her. She is, at least, until Beatrice takes off her shirt. 

She faces the wall as she undresses. Ava watches, keen on enjoying the usual rippling of her back and shoulders as she lifts her arms. The neck hole pulls free of her head and the sleeves come loose over arms flecked with goosebumps, the fine hairs invisible in the dim light. Ava frowns, squinting. 

“Hey, is there something on your back?”

Beatrice’s fingers reach behind her without looking, landing on the rash that Ava had been looking at. “Oh– An allergic reaction to a mosquito bite, I think.”

“Huh.” Ava’s frown deepens. She pushes herself up to sitting.

Beatrice turns around. On her chest, the rash continues, clusters above and below her sports bra. Beatrice follows Ava’s eyeline down. “Or…heatrash?”

Recognition and dread coil in Ava’s stomach. “Shit,” she says, under her breath. She’d been expecting a cold, maybe a mild flu. Getting to her feet, she lifts her right hand to Beatrice’s forehead. 

Reflexively, Beatrice catches it with her left. 

Ava takes the wrist of the hand that caught it with her own left hand and holds it, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the soft skin, the knob of her ulna. Her lips parted, she searches Bea’s face, asking gently with her eyes.

Beatrice relents. 

Her forehead is desert-hot beneath Ava’s palm. She presses into the touch, shoulders slumping. Now that she’s stopped trying to hide it, exhaustion maps clearly onto her face, sagging her cheeks, emphasizing the puffy lines hammocked beneath her eyes.

“Bea,” Ava murmurs. She presses her spare hand to her neck, the side, the back, the underside of her chin; the skin there sears in equal measure.

Beatrice shivers. She shakes her head into Ava’s hold.

“You never had chickenpox as a kid?”

 She blinks. Ava can feel her brows crease under her fingers; she draws back her hand. “Chickenpox?”

Ava winces. She nods. “Hate to say it, but that’s what it looks like.”

“You’re sure? That’s– have you had it? I shouldn’t–“ She makes to move away.

Ava catches her by the hand and tugs her back. She threads their fingers together. “St. Michael’s,” she reminds her, wry. “Stamped my medical record like a passport. If there’s a sickness that kids get, I got it. On the plus side, I couldn’t feel any of the itching from my chest down.” She wrinkles her nose. “Couldn’t lift my hands to scratch any of the spots I could feel, but, like, that’s better in the long run anyway, right? So that’s quadriplegia one, chickenpox zero.”

It had been miserable, frankly, but her joking tone manages to eke a hoarse chuckle out of Beatrice, which is why Ava doesn’t make a practice out of letting the truth get in the way of a good story. 

“Basically, I can’t catch it again. So don’t worry, ‘kay?”

Beatrice meets her eyes. Hers are glassy, shining gold in the reflected string lights. She nods. “Okay.”

Ava squeezes her hand. “So, how are you feeling? Really.”

Beatrice pauses. “Cold,” she admits. “My head hurts.” She looks down at her still-bared chest. “And these are starting to itch.”

“Well,” Ava says, lips twisting, anticipating what she gets to say next–

“I’ll be a good little girl and won’t scratch,” Beatrice intones. She tries for a smile, but it comes out wan.

“Kinda taking all the satisfaction out of getting to tell you what to do for once.”

Beatrice’s wan smile stays fixed in place for another beat, before she can’t hold it and it washes away. She leans her burning head on Ava’s bare shoulder.

“Hey,” Ava says. She settles her hand on her back, on the band of her sports bra, mindful not to rub any of the sores. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“I don’t feel well,” Beatrice confesses. Her voice is small, clogged.

Fear ripples through Ava’s gut. “I know,” she says. “I know.” She swallows, blinking a couple times, hard. Beatrice not telling her hadn’t been personal—Ava can’t let herself slip into pitfalls about trust and burdens and Sister Frances’s sneering face. It’s not about her. It’s about Beatrice—Beatrice who still has such a maddeningly hard time slowing down, not being useful. Beatrice needs her. She can do this; she has to be able to do this. “But I’ve got you, I promise.”

Beatrice lets out a breath.

“Let’s get you into some PJs, huh?”

They get Beatrice’s arms over her head again. For once, Ava manages to work her bra off without a quip. She finds a soft washed tee shirt, the graphic flaking off the cotton front. It used to belong to one of the others, she thinks—Mary, probably. She passes it to Beatrice. She manages to pull it on dutifully, if sluggishly, while Ava tracks down a pair of the boxers she likes to wear to bed. She hands them to her. 

Beatrice looks up. “Could I have my sweatpants?”

Ava worries her lip. It really is warm in here. “I’ll get you a blanket,” she promises instead. She finds the soft blanket she’d thrown aside weeks ago as a tithe to the radiator, which at some point Beatrice had folded neatly and set on the chair that Ava keeps at her bedside, for bras and pants she’s only worn once. “You wanna pee?”

“Already did.” Her clothes abandoned in an uncharacteristic heap on the floor, Beatrice rolls under the covers. She closes her eyes and curls herself up, knees to chest.

Ava lays the blanket down on top of her, tucking it beneath her side and at the bend of her arm. “Stay there,” she says. Unnecessary, probably, given that it looks like Beatrice would have a hard time moving for an earthquake, but still– “Stay there, and I’m, uh, I’m gonna grab you some medicine.”

“Ava, it’s–“

“I swear to god, if you say fine, I’m–” She takes a breath. Calm. Caring. Not scared. Not now. “Sorry. Sorry.”

Beatrice peers at her owlishly, a mix of confusion and concern, her head barely supported by her neck. 

“Be right back,” Ava says. She goes into the bathroom, where Beatrice has stocked the medicine cabinet like a battlefield medic’s kit—Ava’s watched an astounding amount of medical dramas, and even she doesn’t recognize half the words on the labels. She fishes out the paracetamol. In the kitchen, she fills a cup with water from the filtered jug Beatrice keeps on the counter.

“Here,” she says, bringing them over. She kneels next to Beatrice’s side. “This’ll help with the fever.”

Beatrice blinks heavily. She must’ve been putting a lot of energy into pretending to be okay, for her to be flagging so hard so quickly. Ava aches with it, even as Beatrice smiles at her. “Thank you,” she rasps. She pushes herself up, wincing at something—her head, probably. She takes precisely two pills from the cluster Ava spills into her palm and swallows them with a sip of water. Her throat bobs. She winces again.

“Does your throat hurt?”

Beatrice nods.

“Open up for me?”

“Can’t kiss you. I'm ill.”

She wants to laugh, despite everything—the earnestness of Beatrice’s rebuke, the almost indignation at the idea that she would ever consent to putting Ava at such risk. “Not like that, Bea. Like show me your mouth. Say ah like for the doctor. Ooh. Doctor Ava.”

Despite her bemused exasperation, Beatrice makes an ah face. Ava pulls out her phone light and peers past her teeth. Her suspicions are confirmed; inside her mouth and throat, Beatrice has a handful of raised bumps.

“You can close,” she says. Unthinkingly, she adds, “Good girl.” She flushes a second later. Not because she doesn’t mean it, or hasn’t said it before, but this isn’t exactly the time. “I didn’t–”

Beatrice snorts, a gross, amused snort. She rests her head back down. “Are you saying I’m not good?”

“No, you’re so good, you’re– I mean– You’re good. You’re the best.”

“I’m the best,” Beatrice repeats. Her cheek smushes into the pillow. “And I have chickenpox.”

“Yeah,” Ava agrees. “You do. And I’m sorry, but I think it’s really gonna suck.”

“I’m getting that feeling.”

Ava wakes up twice the first night. Once, Beatrice starts to snore, and Ava gently nudges her shoulder to get her to roll over. The other time, Beatrice misjudges the distance between her water glass and the nightstand, and sets it down a little too hard after reupping on her dose of paracetamol. Ava only manages to blink blearily before Beatrice is curling her back into Ava’s warmth. Frankly, it’s a pretty good sleeping night, by their standards.

But by the time sunlight falls through the window the next morning, clouds of angry red dots cover Beatrice’s face, her neck, the back of her hand where it has a slack grip on the sheets. 

“Fuck,” Ava mouths. She gets out of bed as stealthily as possible—which would still, under normal circumstances, never be enough to slip past Beatrice—and writes her a note on the back of a receipt. She sets it on the cap of the medicine bottle. Throwing on yesterday’s clothes, she pockets her wallet and keys and heads to the pharmacy on the corner. They jack the prices up there, far higher than they’d be at a bigger chain, but Ava can’t stomach the thought of leaving Beatrice alone for any longer than it takes to reach the most convenient possible location.

She asks the attendant for help, and ends up leaving with a big bottle of calamine lotion and packets of oatmeal bath. It’s not until she’s climbing the stairs of their apartment (the elevator has been broken all week, and she thanks the amorphous universe that her back hasn’t been flaring otherwise it would be a barrier instead of a pain) that she realizes—they don’t have a bathtub.

Well. It’s a good thing she shelled out for the jumbo bottle of pink.

She catches her breath by the window on their floor. The brief sun of the early morning has been stitched over; now the day is grey, blustery. People with flipped collars walk up and down the sidewalks. She takes out her phone and makes two calls, one to her own boss and one to Beatrice’s, calling each of them out from work for the next few days. She possibly doesn’t mention to her boss that she herself has had chickenpox before. She likes her, and trusts that she would want to give her the time off to take care of Bea, but better to give her plausible deniability of contagion if the higher ups come sniffing around asking her about it.

After that, she opens her text message chain with Mary, Lilith, Camila, and Yasmine, the one that was last used to plan Beatrice’s most recent birthday. 

hey guys, Bea has chickenpox

Three little dots appear just as Ava goes to pocket her phone. What??? Camila asks.

yeah :((

A few seconds later, Ava’s phone buzzes with a video call. She accepts and Camila pops on screen, in her soft bedclothes with her curls rumpled from sleep. “How’s Bea?”

“Hey, Camila.” And then her brain flips naturally, as it often does with Camila. “No ha despertado todavía, pero….”

“I knew it, she looked sick en la ultima llamada que tuvimos. Me dijo que estaba–”

“‘Fine?’”

Camila rolls her eyes. “Siempre con el ‘fine,’ like, dude.”

“I know. I saw the spots last night and she’s covered in them today.”

“Uff, poor Bea. Do you need anything?”

Ava’s face pinches as she considers. “I don’t think so? Not right now. I’ll let you know?”

“For sure. Give her my love?”

“Thanks. I will.”

“Okay. Cuídala. Y cuídate también.” Camila gets her serious, fierce look on her face.

“Como siempre, no?”

A little smile tugs at Camila’s mouth. “True,” she says. “Okay, chau.”

“Chau, tía,” Ava sing-songs.

Camila grins properly, round cheeks and dimples. “Chau, tía.”

They hang up. Ava feels a bit calmer, with Camila at her back.

Beatrice is still asleep when she walks into the apartment. In hindsight, she had enough time to pick up breakfast. But she doesn’t know what Beatrice has the stomach for, anyway. As quietly as she can, she sets down the bag on the counter. The grey-faced windows swaddle the tiles of their kitchen in a cotton-ball light. She opens the cupboard to poke through the pantry. The top three shelves hold Beatrice’s carefully arranged household staples; the bottom two are stuffed with Ava’s impulse buys, new snacks and nostalgia picks that make Beatrice roll her eyes and smile at the grocery store. It’s also where they have their guest stash—Mary’s Takis, Camila’s Chupa Chups, Lilith’s nut brittle, Yasmine’s Molto Strawberry Cheesecake, and some other favorites of the new friends they’ve met in peacetime.

She reaches for the shelf where Beatrice keeps their breakfast options. There’s cereal, granola, Nutella—no, no, and no. She switches to the fridge—the zongzi from last week, the soup Beatrice made when her nose started to run, and a lot of yogurt. Sweet; Beatrice can have her choice of those. 

Ava, on the other hand, needs something crunchy. She grabs her nutrition-free cereal and sits on the table, reaching a hand in and grabbing a mouthful straight out of the box. Her chewing jaw works off some of her stress.

A few minutes later, from the bedroom, muzzy: “Ava?”

Ava pops her head around the wall. “Hi!”

At the sight of her, the apprehension in Beatrice’s eyes ebbs, some. 

“No baddies,” Ava confirms. “Except for me.” She wiggles her shoulders.

Beatrice lowers herself back onto the propped pillow. “Good morning.”

“Is it? I mean, how are you feeling?” Ava comes into the room properly, sits at the foot of the bed.

“Brilliant.”

“Okay, point taken.” Her eyes catch on brown, streaky blotches on the bedsheets, where the bedspread has folded down. She frowns. She’s no stranger to bloody sheets—her period, like the rest of her, refused to bow obediently to Sister Frances’s ministrations—but this is higher, near Beatrice’s chest. “Hey,” she says, and reaches out, lifting Beatrice’s dry hand. She pushes up the sleeve of her t-shirt and reveals deep parallel scratches on her upper arm, furiously red and crusted with blood. “Shit. Shit, that is not good.”

Beatrice wets her lips, eyeing the scratches. “Well, that would explain why it hurts.”

“Yeah, of course it would.” If the wind were to change, the furrow in Ava’s brow would stay that way. “You’re bleeding.”

“I must have done it while I was asleep. It’s not deep.” She shifts, trying to put a hand over it, and Ava blocks with her own. “Ava, it’s definitionally a scratch.” Her tone blunts. “I don’t need to be coddled.”

“Uh, you’re definitionally sick, which I think automatically precludes you from the scratch clause.” Despite her words, Ava changes her bearing. Bea can’t handle soft concern right now. Noted. She stands and grabs the grab-bag first aid kit from the wall—thanks, past Beatrice—and finds the sanitizer, some gauze, and the roll of bandages.

Beatrice’s tension doesn’t fade as Ava begins daubing her with stinging alcohol. “I don’t even know how this happened. Chickenpox? Where would I have gotten it?”

“Who knows?” Ava presses the gauze lightly to the scratches and starts to wind the bandage around Beatrice’s—ha—hot bicep. “Did you hug any speckly kids recently?”

Beatrice fixes her with a stare.

“Sorry,” Ava says. “Yeah, I don’t know. It’s like anything, right? Wrong place, wrong time.”

The muscle in Beatrice’s jaw jumps. “I don’t have time for this. I have multiple project deadlines this week, I already pushed meetings from last week to this week when I thought it was nothing more than a head cold, there are grant applications that have due dates soon, and I– I need to–”

“Bea, Bea. Hey. I promise– Look at me.”

Beatrice’s eyes have been flicking to the side table where she keeps all her work equipment, with that intensity that means she’s seeing onto a different plane that exists only in her brain. When they land back on Ava, they’re wide, a little searching.

“I promise, if you send anyone an email that says, ‘bro, I have chickenpox,’ they will understand. Honestly, they’ll probably send you flowers for moving your meeting in the first place.” A small, impish smile grows on Ava’s face. “And, like, depending on their feelings on vaccines, we might even be able to get a babysitting gig out of it, so.”

“Ava….”

“Win/win, am I right?”

Beatrice sighs. 

“You don’t have to worry about work right now. And I called Trinika already, so it’s okay.”

“You did?”

“I did. She sends well-wishes and, like, bans you from your work accounts.”

Beatrice swallows. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Ava sets a hand on top of Bea’s doonah-covered foot. “No repeats of two years ago’s flu, okay? I will sic Camila on you.”

“Mm,” Beatrice acknowledges. “Big threats.”

“And there’s more where that came from. You feel up for breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry,” she demurs.

“Too bad,” Ava confides. “Not a real question. Especially not because you are definitely still cooking with gas.”

“Cooking with gas? Doesn’t that mean doing something well?”

“Oh, does it? I thought it meant, like, burning up. Whatever. You, good lookin’, are definitely cookin’.”

Beatrice grimaces—less, Ava thinks, at her dazzling wit, and more as a reckoning with a fight she cannot win. “Fine. Do we have any more yogurt left?”

“Yes,” Ava preens. “We do. One non-frozen yogurt, coming right up.”

For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, Beatrice stays in bed and reads. She moves slowly from page to page, rearranging herself in tiny adjustments, shifting the book’s position as she turns. She loses focus frequently, which Ava judges by the tightening of the skin around her eyes. This means, of course, that Ava makes equally frequent passes by the bedroom door, in order to do the judging.

“Ava,” Beatrice croaks, on one such pass. She looks at her and sighs, beckons. “Come.”

Ava’s never been able to say no to that command. “Yes?” she asks, moving past the doorway. Anxiety tingles in her chest. She smiles best as she can.

“Keep me company?”

“Are you sure?” The last thing Ava wants Beatrice to do is prioritize comforting Ava’s worrying over her own suffering, and she should be resting, she really should be resting–

Beatrice nods. Strands of her hair that frame her face sway with the movement.

“Sure, okay,” Ava says. “Sure, yeah. Do you want to, um–” She casts around the room. A pack of cards lies on the desk, edges of the box wearing white with use. “Play some cards?”

Beatrice smiles, despite everything. “Yes,” she agrees. “Let’s play some cards.”

Ava grabs the cards, and comes to sit crosslegged opposite where Beatrice does the same, propped against the headboard. Ava deals out the ten they need for gin rummy and starts sorting her hand. Beatrice stares at hers intently, even more intently than usual, with furrowed concentration marked into her forehead.

“Easy,” Ava says. She lifts a hand, presses the pad of her thumb to Beatrice’s brow, and rubs the creases as she would a smudge. “No need to think that hard, okay? This is a no-stakes deal.” 

Beatrice lets out an acknowledging breath. “Right.”

Ava glances to the nightstand. “Have you had some more paracetamol?”

Beatrice nods again. “A little while ago.”

“Want another layer of calamine?”

Beatrice’s lip tucks, amused. “And you call me a worrier.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have the monopoly on both the worrier and the warrior. We share.”

Beatrice purses her lips. Her glazed eyes drop to the covers. “We do.” 

“Hey,” Ava says. She turns over the top card, lays it beside the deck. “I dealt, so it’s your turn to start.”

Beatrice considers, and picks up the one Ava laid down.

They play two rounds, but call it when Ava gleefully crows gin! only to find Beatrice’s gaze fixed to a point behind her, unregistering. Tiredness bows her back, has her hands drooping.

“Okay, enough,” Ava says, firm. She plucks Beatrice’s cards out of her hands. “You are done.”

Scarily, Beatrice doesn’t so much as make a noise of protest. “Okay,” she says, pliant, bleary.

“And you’re gonna eat some more food.”

Now, a ripple of resistance: Beatrice hesitates. But she knows better, so she nods. Ava fetches some soup. Beatrice spoons it into her mouth with slow, mechanical movements. By the time she sets it on the nightstand, it’s empty enough that Ava takes the win. She goes to the toilet—which she is capable of doing on her own, thank you, Ava—and when she returns, closes the door behind her to have a lie down.

Ava, after five minutes of sitting on the couch feeling useless, calls the advice nurse at their local doctor’s. She notes down everything she says in her best print. Then she paces. Then she sorts through the fridge. Then she turns on a video game, mutes it, and plays it until her own stomach starts to growl.

Some time in the evening, after she’s eaten and washed up, Ava hears Beatrice talking mutedly with someone. One of her sisters, probably, or some combination thereof. The talking doesn’t last long; by the time she taps the door to tell her it’s probably a good time for her to shower, her phone lies dormant on the nightstand, and she’s staring grimly at the wall. 

“Hey,” Ava says. Beatrice glances to at her, her eyes taking a long second to focus. “You feel up for a shower? The advice nurse says it’ll help. I can change the bedsheets while you’re in there.”

Beatrice frowns. “I made the bed on Monday.”

“Apparently changing it regularly helps prevent infection.” Ava diplomatically doesn’t remind her of the bloodstains from this morning. “And it might make you more comfortable?”

“Oh.” Beatrice processes this. “I can help change them.”

“Bea,” Ava says. “Have a little faith? I know it might seem hard to believe, but I can make a bed.”

“But I’m the reason–”

“Nope.” Ava reaches up and plugs her ears. “Can’t hear you.”

“Alright,” Beatrice says. “A shower…a shower would be good.”

“That I can hear.” 

Beatrice takes Ava’s arm and she leads her into the bathroom, where Ava’s unfolded the shower chair they keep against the wall for Ava’s flares. Ava braces Beatrice as she slowly peels off her clothes, then levers her down onto the seat. Beatrice’s chin judders with cold. Spatters of angry pox have blistered, starring her skin with no respect for the boundaries of her tan lines. 

“Babe,” Ava murmurs.

Beatrice looks up at her through hooded lids. 

Gently, Ava tucks the strands of hair that her shirt collar pulled loose behind her ear. “Okay, let’s get you washed up.”

Ava tugs the removable shower head from its clasp and passes it to her. She pushes her shirt sleeves up so they bunch at the elbows.

“I can do it,” Beatrice tells her, as the water begins to spray against the tile, warming. “I can manage.”

“What, no co-showering?”

Beatrice raises her eyebrows. There’s something behind her look, though.

“Got it,” Ava agrees. “I’ll go fit that sheet. You are not going to stand up until I get back.”

Beatrice smiles at her, crease-eyed and close-lipped. 

Ava reaches out to cup her cheek, but doesn’t. The hand hovers there, the gesture unsaid. Clear ribbons of water twist around their bare feet.

Beatrice nods, and Ava leaves her to wash.

“Ava, would you stop–” The sharp, harsh note to Beatrice’s voice breaks off. She takes a controlled inhale through her nose—a little more noisily than usual. 

Ava bites her lip. She straightens, from where she’d been cleaning out the storage closet. “Sorry, were you trying to sleep?”

“How could I, when– I would appreciate it,” she tries again, still clipped, “if you could….”

Ava looks down at her sprawling project. “Stop?”

“Please. I don’t know how much more of it I can take.”

“Sorry, Bea. I didn’t mean– I’m sorry.”

There’s a tense moment of stillness. Beatrice curls and uncurls her fingers. “No, I’m– I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ava.”

“It’s cool.” Being snapped at always gouges into Ava a little bit, but she’s being very brave about it, because Beatrice’s crankiness has pressurized and pressurized since her first spots bubbled into vesicles. Now it’s a relief, almost, to watch it pop.

“Thank you. My skin is just–” She closes her eyes, takes a counting breath. “It’s not your fault,” she emphasizes. 

Beatrice, sensitive to textures on her skin at the best of times, has spent the past two days stiff and lockjawed. Each brush of cloth has worn into her patience, irritating her skin and temperament both. 

“That’s okay,” Ava says again. “I get it.”

“But it’s not fair to take it out on you.”

Beatrice cares about fair—cares about it in other people, and cares about it doubly in herself. 

“Uh-uh, cut yourself some slack,” Ava says. “I’ll just– I’ll go for a walk, or something, okay? Give you some breathing room. I know how, I, uh, get.”

Lilith has previously remarked that Ava needs to be walked daily, like a dog, otherwise she gets impossible to be around. Ava genuinely resents the phrasing (she spent twelve years being an absolute pleasure without any possibility of a walk, thanks, and since the loss of the halo, generally has a few weeks a year where she uses a chair), but there’s a kernel of truth to it. Now that she can go out in the world, spending any period of days spent lying around watching TV, as she has been with Beatrice for the last couple, do make Ava antsy, restless.

(Incidentally, she could argue the same of all of them. It’s not like demon-hunting attracted couch potatoes, is all she’s saying.)

So she should go out, bounce down the street and back. She should go get the ingredients for Beatrice’s smoothies. Be a good little doggy. Run around, play fetch.

She can’t, though. A roiling mass of claustrophobia and restlessness rages through her chest, steals her breath, numbs her limbs. She gets out and onto the landing and finds her breaths shaking. Her back burns, and burns, and burns.

“Fuck you, Lilith,” she mutters.

She braces herself against the window. The touch of it, cool, grounds her.

Cool. It’ll be cool outside.

She makes it down the stairs, gripping onto the banister. Chill seeps in through the exterior door. She touches the metal handle. She can’t push it open. She can’t leave Beatrice.

She starts to climb back up the stairs. Each one requires effort, the affirmation that she does have control of her legs, the jolt of her searing spine. She can’t make it. She reaches the first landing. She sits. The stairs expand and contract around her, like an accordion.

“Ava?”

She looks up. Her downstairs neighbor, Samara, stands below her on the stairs. “Hi.” Ava tries to grin.

It doesn’t change Samara’s expression at all. “Do you– Are you–”

Ava struggles to take a deep breath. “No, I’m– You don’t–” She swallows, and waves a hand. “I’m good.”

Samara bridges the distance between them. She crouches on a step. “Do you need me to get Beatrice?”

“No,” Ava shakes her head. She wants Beatrice. And she doesn’t. “No.”

“What can I get you?”

“Uh… Ice?”

“Ice?”

Ava nods. She lists against the wall.

Samara disappears, then reappears. She has three icepacks tucked under her arms, wrapped in teatowels, and a cup of ice cubes in her hands. “Ice,” she proffers.

Ava takes one ice pack and sets it around the back of her neck. Not enough. She takes another, one with a strap, and wraps it so it settles onto her back. Not enough. She takes the cup and slips an ice cube into her mouth. It clacks against her teeth. She holds it just off her tongue, so it doesn’t hurt. Not enough. Then she takes the last icepack and holds it flat on her hands, pressing it to her face.

It feels like breaking the surface. The cold shocks everything, strikes her crisply, splits the cloying like a knife.

It’s the opposite, opposite of the desert.

She breathes out.

In the middle of the fourth night, Ava wakes up. It’s a night and a day after Ava since to explain herself to Samara, ice rivers dripping down her spine and her fingers onto the stairs. She’s done the trick herself at home a couple times since, when she goes to put the ice into the smoothies it’s increasingly difficult to get Beatrice to drink. It helps. It’s one of the few things that does.

At first, Ava doesn’t know what woke her. She glances at the window: dark. At the door to the apartment: silent. At her phone: only a couple of hours have passed since she fell asleep. Then she turns to Beatrice.

Beatrice sits, awake, against her pillows. Faint ambient light catches her tearstained cheeks. Ava sits up to get a better look. Her jaw is locked. No, all of her body is locked, down to her wrists, under the cuffs of the socks she’s worn each night since the first to stop herself from scratching in her sleep. She’s rigid, restraining her own body like she hasn’t for years now.

“Bea,” she whispers, her mouth chalky with sleep.

Beatrice’s eyes squeeze shut. Her teeth grind together. A sob chokes in her throat.

“What’s wrong?” Ava flips on the lamp.

“I can’t,” Beatrice manages. Her eyes open, and they’re bugged, slightly. “I’m–”

Ava’s heart hammers.

More tears spill. “My skin,” Bea says. “It hurts.”

Ava has only felt that pain a couple times. She knows far more intimately the pain of feeling too little. But she recognizes it here, now—how could she not recognize it, with every nerve of Beatrice’s body screaming at feeling too much? 

“What do you need?”

Beatrice says nothing.

Helplessness surges in Ava’s chest, a devastating impotence, like when she used to have to watch Diego struggle from across the room and couldn’t do anything, could only lie there and try to talk until he heard her through his tears; only it compounds, because she can move, now, she has the use of her arms and her legs and her stupid bladder, even, but she still feels rooted to the spot, unable to string together an idea of what to do. And it’s Beatrice.

“Shit.” She stands up. She takes two steps away from the bed. “What now,” she mutters, entirely to herself. The edges of her phone press into her palm. “What now?”

She calls Mary. “Mary?”

“Wh– Ava? What time is it?”

“You have a bathtub, right?”

The line is quiet for a minute. When Mary answers, she’s clearly more awake. “Yeah, we do. How’s she doing?”

Ava sneaks a look at where Beatrice sits hunched, her eyes closed again, tears still running down to dampen her nightshirt. “Not good, Mary, like really not good. Like, fuck–”

“Hey,” Mary says. “Ava. Breathe.”

“Breathing. I’m breathing.”

“You sure?”

“Dude.”

“It’s gonna be fine.”

For a moment, Ava almost asks something painfully childish, like promise? Instead: “You’ve had it, right? I mean, foster care, orphanage–”

“Chickenpox? Yeah. I’ll ask if Lilith has, but you two head over now. Worst comes to worst, she teleports away to stay with Camila for a while.”

“So I can bring her?”

“You should. Do I need to make a run for the oats or whatever?”

“No, I have it. Thank you, Mary. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s Beatrice.”

“Yeah.”

Ava doesn’t hang up.

“Want me to stay on the line for a minute?”

“Please, thanks. I’m just gonna– You’re coming with me to talk to her.”

“Cool. You’ll come with me to find Lily.”

Ava walks back over to Beatrice. “Mary says we can go to her place. We can get you in a bath that’ll, like, make the itching not so bad.”

Beatrice slowly opens her eyes to squint at her. 

“Can you get up for me, Bea? So we can go get in the car.”

“I shouldn’t drive,” she grunts.

“Well, duh–” Ava freezes. “Fuck.”

Ava’s been meaning to get her license. Really, she has. But she doesn’t love cars as a means of transport—hello, dead mom and severe spinal trauma—and they live in a walkable town. When they need to get somewhere farther, they take public transit, Beatrice drives, or Lilith drags them through a fiery rip in space.

Beatrice can’t get on a bus, or else she’ll be the next patient zero. Rideshare, too. Ava usually has a whole rant prepared about the capitalist, ableist, anti-environmental nightmare that is a society built around individual car ownership, but here—well, she’s never been madder at herself for being a poster child for the gays can’t drive stereotype.

Ava lifts the phone back to her ear. “Ma–”

“I heard.” Mary had been walking up steps; now Ava hears the thumping of her descending them quickly. “I’m on my way. Be there in fifteen.”

“Mary?” Beatrice must hear her voice, tinny, through the phone.

Clumsily, Ava thumbs at the screen until it comes on speaker.

“-ey, girl, it’s me. You hang in there.”

Beatrice swallows thickly. Tear stains shine like snail tracks down her pockmarked cheeks. “I will.”

Keys jingle. A door closes. “Fifteen minutes.”

“See you then,” Ava says.

The call disconnects.

She tries to coax Beatrice into drinking water and one of her disgusting electrolyte gel packets she keeps in the cabinet for long runs. 

“Nothing this texture should taste like caramel,” she tries to joke. It’s what she always says.

Beatrice closes her eyes, parts her lips by a matter of fractions like it’s a surrender to a firing squad. She’s still too warm; hasn’t been able to shake the fever. A spot of blood wells into the crack of her chapped lower lip. She gets the liquid down, but only just.

Ava ghosts a hand over her oily hair. “Should we get some shoes on you?”

Soft, scraped thin: “I’m so tired, Ava.” 

“I know. I’m sorry.” She swallows. “I wish–” She stops herself, looks up into Beatrice’s face. Her stoicism stands battered behind the buckshot spray of blisters, the chalky facepaint of lotion, and the localized flush of fever. “You don’t have to be, like, tough. You know that, right?”

Her voice cracks. “Forgive me.”

A plea of repentance; it cracks Ava down the sternum. “No, hey. There’s nothing to forgive. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Beatrice shakes her head.

“You’re sick and it sucks.” She tries again. “Beatrice. You don’t have to be tough about this. It sucks.”

She swallows. “It really fucking does.”

“Yeah.” Ava nods. “Yeah.” She sighs, tries to infuse more levity in her voice. “But you’re gonna go play, like, Goldilocks in Mary’s bathtub, which will hopefully make it suck less for a bit, okay?”

“Goldilocks?”

“Goldilocks? Porridge? Oatmeal bath?”

“…Ava.”

“I bet she’ll even let you steal her bed.”

Beatrice lets out a little breath. “Or Lilith’s.”

Ava grins. “Yeah, probably Lilith’s. She’ll let you, though. Total baby bear.” She pauses, musing. “Hold on, she doesn’t sleep upside down from the ceiling, does she?”

“She’s not a bat.”

Ava dimples her chin, pretending to consider it. “That’s debatable.”

Beatrice doesn’t laugh. “Ava,” she grits out instead. “I don’t think…I don’t think I can move.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I move–” she presses her eyes tighter, takes a breath– “I’m going to scratch.”

She says the word scratch like it’s a sin. One of the deadly ones. And to be fair, the last thing they want is for her to get one of the scary infections that can happen when grownups get chickenpox—the rare kinds that Ava’s been doomscrolling about on her phone, the ones that can be deadly.

“That’s what these bad boys are for.” She pats at the socks.

Beatrice cracks open her eyes, slitted and glassy, and gives her such a pained look that it seals Ava’s throat.

She’s ex-Sister Beatrice. If she wants something, the only thing strong enough to hold her back is herself. 

Socks don’t stand a chance.

“Do you want to go to the hospital? Maybe– Maybe they can help you, do things I can’t.”

“No,” less a word than a raw sound at the back of her throat. 

It surprises her, the strength of it—Beatrice has never struck her as skittish around doctors. Overly prepared and a bit tense, maybe, a little more tightly wound, but–

But maybe it’s less the doctors and more the idea of being sent somewhere away.

“Okay, okay. Got it.” Ava takes a breath, measured and soothing. “So you won’t move. We’ll move you. When Mary gets here, we’ll carry you down with us to her car.”

Shame freezes Beatrice’s face. “That’s–”

“Bea.” Ava adjusts herself on her haunches, her hands wrapped around Beatrice’s covered ones. There’s something bizarrely worshipful in this—crouching before Beatrice as she smells of calamine and sweat. Ava grew up bathed in shame for the limitations of her body and she refuses, here and always, to sit by while Beatrice continues soaking for the limitations of her mind. “Nobody could do better. Look at me. You think you wouldn’t have had to straitjacket me by now?”

A tear builds at the corner of Beatrice’s eye.

“Nobody could do better,” she repeats. “And you don’t have to.” She wants to wrap her in her arms and hold her until it sinks in. You don’t have to, you don’t have to. “Mary’s gonna come up here, and we’re gonna take you down, and if you need to scream? Fucking scream, babe. Scream and curse and bite and kick. Total permission to lose it.”

The tear spills. It hangs at Beatrice’s chin. 

Ava wipes it away with the backs of her fingers. “Yeah?”

She nods.

Ava drops a kiss to her socked hands. “Thank you.”

Mary knocks on the door a few minutes later. Beads of water glint along her braids. She’s not quite out of breath, but something about her gives the impression that she arrived at pace.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” Ava replies, and neither of them wastes more time than that, Mary following her into the bedroom.

Beatrice sits where Ava left her, still clenched, taut. She’s trembling, now. Fever or strain?

“Alright,” Mary says, kneeling at the side of the bed. “What do we got, huh?”

“Mary.”

“Yeah, I’m here. Lay it on me, mission report.”

Beatrice cracks open her eyes. “Not as bad as Naples.”

“You were stabbed in Naples. That supposed to make me feel better?”

Beatrice closes her eyes again. “Mm-hmm.”

“She still got a fever?”

“Yeah,” Ava replies. “Thirty-eight-point-seven last time I checked. She took some Panadol a few hours ago, so, uh, we should be able to give her another dose soon.”

“Good,” Mary says. “That’s good.”

Ava could cry, then, because Mary is here. Mary is here and solid and in Ava’s mind she still knows way more about being a person than Ava, even with three years distance from the nineteen-year-old kid who’d never been in a kitchen before, feels like she’ll ever catch up to.

Mary must sense it, because she gives her a look that roughly translates to keep it together.

Obediently, Ava does.

“Okay, Beatrice,” Mary says. “Tell me the plan.”

It takes Beatrice a moment to string the words together. “You’ll carry me…down to the car. Then….” Her attention wanders.

“Then?” Mary is patient, firm. She lays the agency like a barbell in Beatrice’s hands and spots her as she lifts it.

“We’ll go to your apartment. I’ll play Goldilocks.”

“Goldilocks.” Mary frowns at Ava.

Ava half-grins, pleased with herself. “I made a joke. She’s going to your house, you know, to try the porridge.”

Mary rolls her eyes, but her lips quirk into a smile. “Sure. Well, should we get going?”

Beatrice nods.

They get her up into Mary’s arms, bridal style. Ava wishes she could be the one to take her, but her back could never manage it. Beatrice moans, shifts her weight, changes her arm positions, seeking friction, face caught in a stiff grimace.

Ava lays a hand between her shoulderblades. “Let go, Bea.”

Beatrice buries her face in Mary’s shoulder. “I want to scratch.”

“Almost like you have goddamn chickenpox,” Mary says. She carries her out into the living room while Ava hurriedly stuffs the last few things into a tote that already holds lotion, pills, face washers, and the thermometer.

“It hurts, Mary. I didn’t know it could hurt–” She hiccups, then, a sob stifled in the thick fabric of Mary’s coat. “Please, please. Please, I can’t– I’m losing my mind.”

“Shh,” Mary murmurs, soft. She creases her face at the swooping deja vu, three years and a tomb ago. “Shh.”

“I’m losing my mind, I’m losing my mind–” The words start to blend together, lose meaning, tear-gummed in Beatrice’s mouth.

“You good?” Mary asks Ava, as she flicks off the lights and grabbing Beatrice’s set of keys from the very intentional little hook on the wall. (Her own keys are somewhere safe, but nowhere presently remembered—which is maybe the point of Beatrice’s pointedly installed little rack of hooks, but not so relevant right this second, as Mary waits for her to open the door.)

“Yep,” she says, breathless, and lets them out into the hallway, locking up behind them.

They head towards the stairwell, but Mary goes left instead of right at the dust-covered artificial plant.

“Mary. The stairs are this way.”

Mary frowns at her. “I’m not carrying her down the stairs like this, are you serious?”

“But– The elevator’s broken?”

“Uh, no, it’s not.”

Mary prods the down button with her hip. It lights up red. In a matter of seconds, it dings.

Ava stares at the opening doors. “Motherfucker.”

Later, Ava will have questions. Where’s Mary’s motorcycle? Who’s car is this? Did she really leave it blinking hazards in the middle of the street?

That’s later, though.

In the moment, she’s only grateful they don’t have to go the twenty minutes to the lot where Beatrice keeps the van. 

(The holy war is over. They’re not fighters anymore. But there are fears that choke Beatrice, still, sometimes. In the bank, or on the sidewalk, or at nine PM when an action movie comes on TV. If giving her some peace of mind means allowing themselves to be extorted for a parking space in a European city so they can keep a fully-stocked escape vehicle on hand, then Ava will happily be extorted until the next day she dies. 

She hopes, though, for Beatrice’s sake, that a feeling of safety sinks in first.)

Anyway, Mary leads them through a freezing misting of rain to this unfamiliar car, headlights flashing yellow against the uneven paving stones. Ava pulls open the back door and slides in. Carefully, Mary sets Beatrice in beside her, lying her flat across the bench seat. Ava pulls Beatrice’s head into her lap.

Beatrice sobs in earnest, now, in a way Ava has very rarely heard her cry. It’s a terrible sound. It comes from her chest, from her head, messy and crumpling with each heave. She radiates heat into Ava’s stomach as she presses her face there, wetting the cotton of her shirt. Her teeth chatter and stutter.

Ava’s vision blurs, too. She strokes her fingers over Beatrice’s hair. “It’s– It’s gonna be okay,” she whispers. The car starts; they pull away from the curb. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She makes eye contact with Mary in the rearview mirror. 

A buzzing sounds from the passenger seat. “My phone. Can you?”

Ava leans forward, mindful not to squash Beatrice. She picks it up. “Hello?”

“Mar–“ A pause. “Ava?”

“Lilith?”

“She’s with you, then. I got her message. Do you need me to come get you?”

Ava jostles into the door as Mary takes a turn. “We’re, uh, in a car. On our way to your place.”

“Be there in five.”

“Mary says we’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Good,” Lilith says. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.” A pause. “How is she?”

Beatrice’s sobbing has faded to occasional whimpers, now. “We’ll, uh, see you then.”

“Fine.” She doesn’t sound upset by the brush-off. “Bye.”

As the car pulls up to a row of terrace houses, Ava’s eyes fall on a slender figure, lit like an oil-slick under the streetlights. Lilith stands on the curb with her arms crossed over a sweatshirt, her cheekbones to her forehead studded with scales. (To her and Mary’s neighbors, she’s an eccentric costumer, or she works at the children’s theater, or she’s a generally polite young woman with a strange fashion sense.) In the dark, her gaze is piercing, the edge of her jaw severe. Black, glossy hair ripples around her shoulders.

Mary sets the car into park, levers the brake up, and gets out. She yanks open the curbside back door. Together, they maneuver Beatrice back into Mary’s arms. 

“’M losing my mind,” Beatrice mumbles into Mary’s neck—less as a cognizant statement, at this point, more as one more repetition of the phrase her mind has latched onto to mean I’m hurting more than I know how to process.

Lilith steps forward. “What’s she saying?”

“She’s delirious. Says she’s losing her mind.”

Lilith’s eyes flash. “Why?”

“She’s sick, Lilith.”

Lilith moves forward, closer. Her hands hover over Beatrice’s body, not touching. “You’re not losing your mind.” Her words are crisp, enunciated, but not cold. “Beatrice, I swear. I swear, you’re not.”

Her head lolls so she can peek through her lashes. “Lilith?”

Lilith nods.

Beatrice’s lip trembles. “Make it stop?”

Lilith sucks in a breath. Ava bites her cheek so hard she tastes blood on her tongue.

Mary speaks first. “Let’s get her upstairs.”

Lilith wraps her arms around Mary’s shoulder, her hand landing on Beatrice’s back. With her other hand, she reaches out and grabs Ava’s. Her nails bite into the flesh of her hand.

Flames wreath around them, filling her nose and throat with the smell of campfire, and there’s the terrible ripping feeling through Ava’s chest and then they’re upstairs, in Mary and Lilith’s bathroom.

Beatrice starts crying again. “Make it stop, please, please, I’ll be good–”

Ava barely gives herself time to figure out where she is in space before she drops to her knees, fiddling with the knobs of the bathtub. Water gushes from the tap, slamming into the porcelain base. She casts around for the plug and, finding it, sticks her hands under the sputtering flow, stopping up the drain.

“Tell me where the oatmeal packets are.” Lilith is at her elbow, imperious and without room for argument.

“Bag,” Ava says, even as Lilith has already pieced together the only possible answer and has half-disentangled the straps from her arm. “Near the bottom.”

“Can you pass me the painkillers, too, if you find them?” Mary asks Lilith. “I don’t give a shit if it hasn’t been four hours, she needs more Tylenol.”

“Here.” Lilith hands her the bottle of Panadol capsules.

Mary lowers herself and Beatrice to the cool tile. She unscrews the cap with her teeth.

“Make the water lukewarm,” Lilith instructs. She has the packet in front of her and is reading off the back. “Not hot.”

Ava adjusts the knobs. 

“No,” Beatrice says tearfully, from behind them. “Please, don’t make me.”

“C’mon, I know, but it’ll help.” Mary has Beatrice propped against her chest, the pills in one hand, Lilith’s toothpaste cup in the other.

“It’s her throat,” Ava explains. “She has a bunch of blisters in there, too. Haven’t been able to get her to eat anything, either.”

“For how long?”

Ava bristles at Lilith’s tone. She’s exhausted and terrified and the idea that she’s fucked up in some way to hurt Beatrice burns inside her to the point of suffocation. “I’ve been doing the best I can.”

“We know,” Mary says, with a pointed look at Lilith. “And you’ve done good. Has she been drinking water?”

“Yeah,” Ava says. “I’m, like, super scared of all the dehydration stuff I’ve been reading about, so I’ve been making her drink a lot.”

“So this is just like all those other times,” Mary tells Beatrice. “It’s just gonna be water, and we’ll do the pills one by one.”

“Please,” Beatrice tries.

“This is not an acceptable amount of pain,” Lilith says. “She needs–”

Ava glares at her. “Shut up.”

“I–”

“We’ll talk about it in a second,” Mary says, which is the much more use your big girl words version of what Ava meant. If Lilith says doctor and Beatrice panics more, Ava will hit her in the face, halo-less and all.

Stony, Lilith purses her lips.

“One pill.” Mary places it at her lip. “You want it to stop? This’ll help it stop. C’mon, baby girl.”

After a long moment, the four of them on the cold tile in the too-small bathroom, Beatrice gives in. 

At Mary’s careful cajoling, she swallows. Once, then twice.

“Now the water. Just a few more sips.”

Beatrice manages a bit more, then turns her face away.

“Ava,” Lilith says. She juts her chin toward the bathtub, nearing full.

“Shit,” Ava says, closing the taps. “Can you–?”

Lilith nods, slitting the packets and dumping the colloidal oatmeal in. They stir it together until the water is cloudy.

“Bea?” Ava asks. Her fingers drip milky droplets onto the floor. “Can we take off your clothes?”

Beatrice tenses. Slowly, she nods.

Ava gently works the loose cotton over her head and down her legs. As a team, Mary and Lilith lift her into the tub.

“Okay, Miss Muffet,” Mary says, “in you get.”

Ava crinkles her nose. “It was Goldilocks.”

Mary looks up at her, wry. “I said what I said.”

As Beatrice’s body sinks into the bath, she lets out a breath. She closes her eyes, sinking her head back, letting the water run over her eyes and nose. Only the lower half of her face stays clear, scabbing chin and mouth, and the twin islands of her knees, bent.

The room grows quiet. Ava, Mary, and Lilith look at each other.

“I’m sorry,” Lilith says. “But I truly think she needs a doctor.”

“I called the advice nurse,” Ava offers. “But that was before she got this bad. And tonight I asked her if we could take her to the hospital, but she really didn’t want to.”

“Too bad,” Lilith rebuts. She pauses. “I suppose we could have her do a virtual appointment.”

Ava blinks. “That’s…a good idea.”

Despite everything, Lilith’s lips crook.

Ava feels her own twitch.

“Agreed,” says Mary. “We’ll suggest it when she gets out.”

“The instructions say we should only leave her in for fifteen minutes,” Lilith says. “Maximum.”

Ava wipes her hands dry on her top. She’s still wearing her pyjamas, she realizes. She digs out her phone from the tote bag. “Set a timer for fifteen minutes,” she instructs it, pressing the button for the voice assistant.

“Timer set for fifteen minutes,” it confirms.

Amusement colors Mary’s voice. “Is your Siri British?”

Lilith smirks properly now.

“I– Pff, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.”

They split up, then, much to Ava’s relief. Mary goes to prep some broth that she hopes Beatrice will be able to handle, while Lilith goes to wash the sheets on her bed. (“It’s fine,” she’d said, with only the slightest hint of her put-upon mask. “She can stay in my room.” Then, as if either of them were gonna talk her out of it: “It’s the closest to the bathroom, it makes the most sense.” 

Like Ava said. Total baby bear.)

Ava, for her part, sits watch beside the tub. As the adrenaline fades, the cold of the tile and the lip of the porcelain start to leave her chilled. She curls her knees up to her chest.

After a few minutes, Beatrice pokes her head out of the water. She leans the back of her head against the wall of the tub and tries to clear the water from in front of her eyes, but her fingers are equally as silty as her face.

“Here,” Ava says. “Let me.” She leans forward, lightly swiping below her waterlines with her thumb.

Beatrice blinks. She smiles at her, small, clearly an effort.

Ava smiles back, bittersweet. “Bea…we were talking about setting up a virtual appointment with a doctor tomorrow morning. Like, online, you don’t have to go anywhere. Just to see if there’s anything they can do, because Lilith’s right, you shouldn’t have to feel like this. Would that be okay?”

After a moment, Beatrice nods. The water ripples with the movement. 

“Cool. I’ll set that up.”

“Th–” She clears her throat. “Thank you, Ava.”

“Hey, this is what we do, right? Who looked after me when I got crazy food poisoning last month from that place down the street?”

Beatrice grimaces.

“Exactly. Okay, you stay soaking. I’m gonna make an appointment.”

Or, Ava tries to. She has trouble finding anywhere that can fit Beatrice in within the next three days. Frowning, chewing on her lip, she ends up texting Camila. Camila responds far too quickly for the hour of the night. When she gets the lowdown, she, angel that she is, manages to work them in to a slot for nine in almost less time than it had taken Ava to relay the situation.

camila, she texts. i would DIE for u.

You tried that already. Don’t do it again!! Then: Send Bea my love and let me know if there’s anything else I can do!!  <33333

Ava laugh reacts to the first message and heart reacts to the second. will do <3

A faint sound from the tub makes her look up. Beatrice has started to shiver.

“Hey,” she says. “You ready to get out?”

Beatrice shakes her head. “I don’t want to itch again.”

Ava checks the timer on her phone. “You can only stay for another couple of minutes, anyway.”

“Fine,” Beatrice sighs. She sounds not a little petulant.

Ava bites down a smile. “Mary!” she yells. “Lilith! Bathtime’s over!”

They come quickly. 

“Do you mind?” Mary complains. “It’s ass o’clock, and we’ve got a good relationship with our neighbors.” 

“Oops. Sorry.”

“Are you ready?” Lilith asks Beatrice. 

Still shivering, Beatrice nods.

“Watch out,” Mary says. She and Lilith each take one of Beatrice’s arms. “The tub’ll be slippery.”

They maneuver Beatrice out onto the bathmat, where Ava waits with a fluffy cotton bath towel. Lilith and Mary respectfully avert their gazes, but Ava sees it all again; hundreds of raw blisters dot Beatrice’s golden skin, some weeping, some only just starting to rise. This time, at least, she spies patches that have scabbed over. Gently, she pats the towel along the solid lines of Beatrice’s body until she’s dry. Then she pulls fresh pyjamas out of the tote bag and helps her step into them.

By this point, Beatrice is reprising her role of the walking tranquilized. They stumble her into Lilith’s room, lie her down on the silky thousand-count sheets—which, Ava reflects with a pang, Lilith probably chose more out of principle than an ability to feel their softness against her scales—and pull the top sheet up to her chin. The broth, they unanimously decide, can keep until tomorrow.

“We’re right out here,” Mary tells Beatrice. “You need anything, yell.”

“Don’t,” Lilith adds, “be stupid and brave about it. It’s beneath you.”

“Yeah, leave that to Ava.”

Ava shoots them a look. “Seriously?”

They look back at her, unrepentant.

Beatrice, luckily, is too out of it to appreciate their sparkling senses of humor. She watches them through droopy lids, her hand twisted loosely in the hem of Ava’s damp night shirt. “I’ll be good,” she promises, words thick and drowsy.

Ava gently frees her fingers from the cotton. She pulls the socks out of her waistband, recovered from the floor of the bathroom, and rolls them over Beatrice’s hands and down her wrists. “You don’t have to.” 

Beatrice’s eyes slide closed.

“Night, Bea,” Ava whispers, leaning into press a kiss to her temple. Her damp hair smells of oats. “Sweet dreams. Love you, okay?”

“Love you,” Beatrice manages, and slips into sleep.

At the telehealth visit the next morning, Beatrice’s discomfort radiates through the screen and their mediocre internet connection. The doctor wastes no time in prescribing her two kinds of antihistamines and a handful of other topical goodies. “Come in,” he tells them, “if–” and then rattles off a long list of scary symptoms that Ava immediately mentally forbids Beatrice’s body from manifesting.

“She was kind of out of it last night,” Ava tells him, when he gets to disorientation. “Should we be…?”

He considers. “You’re lucid now,” he tells Beatrice. “Miserable, clearly,” she gives him a slight look of affront, though she doesn’t argue, and he smiles apologetically, “but lucid. What you described last night seemed like a perfect storm of lack of sleep, hunger, days of low-grade fever, and awful pruritus. If you feel most comfortable at home, I’m alright saying don’t come in. But if there’s anything worse, especially if you see any of those other symptoms I describe, I strongly advise seeking medical attention. In adults, varicella is just chickenpox until it isn’t.”

“More like very-hell-a,” Ava quips, after the call ends.

Beatrice blinks at her. “That was awful,” she croaks. Her lips, though, tug up at the corners.

Ava smiles.

“I can legally kill you for that,” Lilith drawls, from where she’s sitting in the loveseat in the living room.

“Bite me, Lilith,” Ava replies.

As Beatrice manages to doze off again, Ava stands. Exhaustion rolls over her like a tidal swell. Her head pounds. She follows Lilith out of the room. Mary meets them in the living room. The three of them face the question of who should run to the chemist for the medication.

“You need to get out of the house,” Mary tells Ava. “Go, be a person again or whatever. We got her.”

“Right,” Ava says, voice dull. Something thick builds in her throat; her back aches all the way from her sacrum through to where her neck meets her head. “Dog. Walk. I get it.”

Lilith frowns. “Ava,” she says, in the way she says her name, her tone cresting the V like a rollercoaster over a peak.

“Just don’t, Lilith. It’s okay. Mary’s right. I’ll go.”

There’s something in Lilith’s face that she can’t look at.

“Hold on,” Mary says. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just– Give yourself a minute. Stretch your legs. Buy yourself a nasty-ass sweet latte. It’s work, what you’ve been doing. And I know, I know you want to and I know you love her. But it’s still hard, seeing her like that. You gotta take a break.”

It all clangs together in Ava’s loud, overtired chest, then, Beatrice behind her in a bed, being told it’s work, being told it’s hard, staying inside not being a person. Her eyes blur.

“Hey. Ava.” Mary says it the way she says her name, with the first A a stretching hammock. She tries to step forward, reach for her shoulder, but Ava shakes her off.

“Don’t,” she snaps, drawing into herself.

She wants Beatrice. She wants to hug Beatrice. She needs Beatrice but Beatrice needs her more and she hates herself for being such a fucking baby about it, needs herself to get her fucking shit together, but her nose clogs and tears stream down her cheeks.

Mary and Lilith share a look. Ava wants to scream.

“Fine,” she says. “If you think I should go, I’m going.” She reaches, half-blind, for her phone with the wallet pocket, snatches on the jacket—not hers—lying on the back of the couch, and storms out the door.

It’s raining outside. Ava gets down the front steps of Mary and Lilith’s terrace house and stands on the sidewalk, heavy drops soaking her hair, her borrowed coat, splattering her skin. She takes a deep breath. A city, washed wet, swollen concrete and stone. Small rivers rush down the gutters. She closes her eyes and tips up her face.

She breathes out.

She walks slowly, to the coffee shop on the corner. A couple people give her strange looks—they huddle under their umbrellas, and she hasn’t bothered to flip her hood. She ignores them, watching boots and raindrops ripple through puddles, hearing the rumbles of cars and the hisses of stopping buses. The cold air stings her dry, heater-cracked fingers, tucked under the cuffs of the too-long sleeves. After a moment, she tugs the sleeves back. She lets the water patter over them. She feels every nerve on her palms, on the undersides of her knuckles. When the cold starts to numb them, she feels that ache too.

And if she couldn’t?

She arrives drenched, at the coffee shop. This one is hipper than the one by her and Beatrice’s apartment, where Zi’ Liliana always beams at her and brings her out small little cups of Italian coffee, leaving her husband to man the counter while she chats with Ava in Ava’s progressively improving Napoletano. But the guy at the counter—Milo, who always kind of looks like he’s suffered three major life crises the night before—remembers her name just the same. He gives her a smile with eye bags as dark as the ones she saw reflected in the cafe’s glass door as she pulled it open. “Good morning, Ava,” he greets in Portuguese, and the first and the last As in her name are the same. “Did it catch you? 

“Hey, Milo.” She offers him a smile, smaller than her usual ones. “Yeah, after the first thirty seconds I just kind of gave in, you know?”

He nods like he understands, and also maybe like his head has run so many parallel conversations this morning he can’t quite remember what she just said. “Totally. What would you like today?”

Her wet hair brushes her jaw as she looks up at the menu paneled on the wall behind him. Then she looks back at him. “What do you most feel like making?”

He pauses. Blinks. “Honestly?”

“Yeah. You know me—anything. With caffeine, though. Need that today. And to-go.”

“I can make you a chai latte?” He glances behind him, lowers his voice. “I just have to steam the milk and the pre-made chai together, I don’t have to pull espresso. Matcha’s the same.”

He has the eyes of a guy who woke up before dawn and has been pulling a lot of shots of espresso. She wonders if his wrists hurt.

“Chai latte sounds great,” she says. She knows it won’t taste anything like Rana’s chai from downstairs, but she has enough confidence in Milo to trust that it will be a good, if different, drink.

“Coming up,” he promises. “Anything for…” He pauses, searching his memory. “For Beatrice?”

“Oh, um, no,” she says. “She’s sick today.”

“May she feel better,” he says, with a non-cloying understanding. “Anything to eat for you?”

Her stomach growls. “Yeah,” she admits, with a bit of amused surprise. She hadn’t realized she was so hungry. She looks at the case and points at a big, filling-looking pastry. “One of those, please.”

He nods and rings her up. She pays with the scraps of cash stowed at the back of her phone case.

She sits at one of the tables while she waits. A gust of wind blows rain sideways under the awning, spraying the window. Once hit, the beads of water roll down in wiggling strings.

“Ava?” Milo calls. 

She smiles at him as she picks up her hot paper cup from the counter, the crinkled pastry bag. “Thanks,” she bids him.

“You too,” he says, and the shop is in a brief lull, so he has enough time to say it genuinely.

She stows the pastry bag in her pocket and covers the hole of the cup lid with her thumb as she steps back into the rain. The chill has sunk almost painfully in now. She wishes she’d been less hasty with her exit from Mary’s and less stubborn about her hood.

The chemist is nearby, though, only another two blocks up. The walk gives her drink time to cool; by the time she stands under the cover, a sip doesn’t burn her tongue. She was right to put her trust in Milo. The sweet drink settles warmly in her stomach. She opens the pastry bag and takes a big bite, feels the taste burst in her mouth. She eats half ravenously. Rain drums above her head.

Even if she couldn’t feel the heat searing her hand, one of her friends could bring her to a coffee shop. She could chat with the barista. She could eat a sweet pastry. She could listen to the rain. 

Right?

Inside the chemist, the person behind the counter inside is an older woman, initially reserved, whose retail indifference melts when she realizes that Ava is not actually picking up medication to soothe the chickenpox symptoms of her child, but rather her adult girlfriend. “I got them when my best friend’s baby had them,” the woman shares, shaking her head at the memory. “Awful. Just awful. I called my mother—I had them when I was young, no? And she said yes, she said of course. So I go, I help out my friend with the screaming baby. Well, I think she was remembering my sister having them, because I looked after that baby and then what do you know, I’m head to toe in spots. Ridiculous. But I took the antihistamines too,” she shakes the bottle she’s packing away for Ava, “and they did help. Maybe not so much as I would’ve liked, but–” She makes a what can you do kind of gesture. “So they should help your friend. And you’re changing her sheets? Giving her the oatmeal baths?”

“Yep,” Ava agrees, a little bowled over. “Yep.”

“Good, good. Someone like you to look out for her, she’ll be just fine. You’ve had them?”

“Yeah, I remember from when I was a kid.”

“Good,” the woman repeats again. She hands the bag over to Ava. “Take care of yourself. Sleep and eat. And get dry, the moment you get home, you’re drenched. And take care of her. May God carry you both through.” 

It takes Ava a moment to find her tongue. By then, she can’t even thank the woman before she’s disappeared behind the shelves of medication.

Maybe that’s for the best. There’s something bubbling in her chest where the chai had run through, the opposite of acid reflux. It spills out onto her face as a trembling, emotional smile.

Ava has met god, in the flesh—Ava has obeyed god, died for god, sworn at god, cut her hands on god, screamed at god—and god has never carried her through anything, not like this, not like an old woman extending her and Beatrice her forthright, unsolicited care.

She swallows, brings Milo’s drink to her lips. She takes a sip.

Go, be a person, Mary had said. Poor phrasing, unconsidered implications; Mary’s eyes had been tired as she’d said it, too.

Ava is always a person. Ava, for as long as she’s alive—well, for as long as she can conceive of her own existence—will always be a person. So will Beatrice.

But there’s something under the phrasing, something Mary had been trying to say. Something she’d known because she knows Ava, and wants her well.

Go, she’d said. 

She hadn’t meant the walking.

Newly calm, Ava enters Mary and Lilith’s place with the bag of meds swinging from her wet fingers.

She uses the chair lift up the stairs and finds Mary and Lilith sitting at the kitchen table. Neither of them exactly work a 9-5, but it strikes her that they must’ve canceled whatever plans they did have for the day to care for Beatrice. A wave of fondness for them surges in her chest. 

“Hey,” she says. “Sorry about before.” She looks at Mary. She admits, “Going outside helped.”

Mary doesn’t gloat. She just raises her eyebrows, mouth curling. “You look like a wet animal.”

“Someone was brave enough to give you a bath,” Lilith muses. 

“Hey, now,” Ava protests, but she grins. “Rude.”

“You’re dripping.” Lilith stands and flares, disappearing, and then reappears a moment later, throwing something at Ava’s head.

Ava yelps, but manages to catch it with the free hand she lifts to shield her body. She looks down and sees a plush, bright yellow towel. She sets down the meds in a small puddle on the floor, sheds the jacket, and tries to give herself and her hair at least a triage scrub. “She awake?”

“Dozing, on and off,” Mary says. “She’s still too itchy.”

“Good thing that’s what that’s for.” She nods at the meds. “I got a firsthand testimonial for them at the pharmacist, too.”

Dropping the towel on top of her puddle (“I’ll clean that up.” “Oh, I know you will.”), Ava grabs the bag and leads the BCS (Beatrice Care Squad) through the apartment. Clumsily, she pushes open the door to Lilith’s Beatrice-occupied room. 

Beatrice cracks her eyes open at the noise.

Ava holds up the plastic shopping bag (sorry, Bea, no reusable tote) like a victory prize. She does a funny voice. “I have a delivery here with me today for a Ms. Beatrice Nolastname? Is she here with us in the audience?”

Beatrice’s forehead goes smooth in recognition. “Ava,” she murmurs.

And there, in Bea’s mouth—that’s how Ava likes her name said best.

Ava plonks herself down on the bed on Beatrice’s side. She pulls out the non-drowsy anti-histamine and pulls it free of the carton. “Daytime,” she says, popping out a pill. She sets it on the folds of Beatrice’s sweater, making a table of her stomach. “And then we’ll keep these bad boys–” she shakes the other carton– “for after hours.”

“Benadryl?” Mary asks. She’s leaning in the doorframe.

“Yep.” She hands Beatrice the cup from her nightstand. 

Beatrice swallows the pill without comment. 

“Still feeling crummy?”

“Dr. Sesay said I would for the next few days at least.” Her scratchy voice sounds resigned, but also a touch defensive, as though Ava might have been trying to tell her to hurry up already.

“Yeah, no, of course. And fingers crossed these help in the meantime.”

Beatrice’s eyes soften. “Thank you.”

“I’m the best. What feels the worst right now? Other than the itching.”

“Every time I sit up,” she admits, “it’s like a spike, through my head.”

Ava rests the backs of her knuckles against her face. “Damn, still hot.”

“Coqueta,” Lilith disdains.

Ava flips her off without looking. Starting to rise, she says to Beatrice, “I’m gonna go get you a cool compress, babe.” Hopefully it will help half as much as the one Samara had gotten her, on the stairs.

Beatrice’s hand lashes to her wrist. Her grasp is hot, dry. “Don’t leave,” she says. It balances on the cusp of a question and a plea. 

“Don–“ ’t worry, Ava almost returns. I always come back. But Bea has a look in her eye that she has had too many times before, so she breaks off. Instead: “Yeah,” she says. She settles back on the mattress, shifting to take Beatrice’s hand in hers. “Yeah, okay, hey. I’m not going anywhere.”

Beatrice nods. 

Ava looks up at Mary and Lilith. 

“Alright, alright,” Mary says. She’s already moving, though, which belies her griping tone. “One cold compress, coming up.”

Lilith looks from Beatrice to Ava again, loath to leave but unsure what to do. Ava nods at her. Lilith steps into the room, puts a hand on Beatrice’s blanket covered leg, and squeezes. With a considered effort, Beatrice rolls her head to face her; the two of them have a silent conversation. Then Lilith moves back into the living room.

“Right here, Bea,” Ava murmurs. She lies down next to her, as close as they can get without touching. “We’re all right here. No matter what you do, none of us are going anywhere.”

They return back home after almost a week of Mary and Lilith’s hospitality. As much as Ava loves the two of them, there’s a joy in walking up her and Beatrice’s stoop, of hitting the elevator button for their apartment, of walking through the door and smelling their smells.

She tugs Beatrice in by the hand. Spots still linger across her skin—she shouldn’t lead any school field trips in the next couple days—but she’s well enough to be bored, and as such well enough to be sent home to live out the rest of her convalescing in the comfort of her own home. Or so say her sisters, at least. Ava’s not arguing.

“Honey,” she sing-songs to nobody, but also to Beatrice, her cheeks aching, “we’re home!”

Beatrice smiles at Ava’s enthusiasm. She squeezes their linked hands. “Home,” she says, savoring.

“And you can finally appreciate it.”

“Yes.” Beatrice takes a deep breath. “Thank you. For everything.”

“No problem.” Ava’s eyes twinkle.

“It was, actually, quite a big problem,”

Ava wrinkles her nose, lifts a shoulder. “Eh.”

Beatrice ducks her head, amused. After a beat, she steps forward, and pulls Ava into a tight hug. Ava’s head fits into the space over her shoulder. The even pressure slots Ava back into her body fully, completely. She sighs, content. She wraps her arms around Beatrice, too.

“I missed you,” Ava admits, low.

Beatrice snorts. Her hand doesn’t leave the back of Ava’s neck. “Really? You got so much of me I’m shocked you’re not…sick of me.”

“Okay, that was weak.”

“I’m still recovering,” Beatrice agrees.

Ava laughs. She can feel the warmth of Beatrice’s chest vibrate against hers—a normal, feverless warmth. They’re alive. They’re safe. They’re home. Beatrice makes dumb jokes. 

“I love you,” she says. She could say it a thousand times, more than the a handful of times a day she already says it—love you, love you, love you. 

“I love you, too,” Beatrice murmurs. She pulls back from the hold. Ava doesn’t have time to miss the contact before Beatrice leans in, and then she’s kissing her. She missed her lips, missed the contact, missed the taste of Beatrice’s toothpaste—

Toothpaste, even though it’s been hours since they woke up, which means Beatrice brushed her teeth before they left in preparation for doing this. 

Ava grins into the kiss, and Beatrice smiles, too, when her mouth meets Ava’s slick teeth. They break for a moment, and then Ava kisses her again. She could kiss her all day. She’s dizzy with it.

“Hey, Bea,” she says, when they stop to breathe.

“Yes?”

“You match this building, now.”

Beatrice squints, casting around for a polka dot pattern. She looks askance at Ava when she doesn’t see any. “Sorry?”

“I think it’s had chickenpox before, too.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Ava says. She knits her fingers together at the nape of Beatrice’s neck. “Now it has shingles.”