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Of all the venues, it just had to be the petting zoo.
God, Maya loves the petting zoo. They took a bunch of little guys, who are soft and social and cute, and then they were just like, hey, give me ten dollars and you can pet them for fifteen hours or however much longer. Oftentimes her growling stomach was the only thing that could pry her apart from the urge to crawl into the little goat house and become one with the herd—as much as it pained her, goats did not often get burgers for lunch. Unless they stole them. Which Maya could probably do, if she really felt like committing, but—
The thought spiral stops itself, hijacked by her seesawing breath. Way out here, there’s no one in the splash zone, and so she sneezes shamelessly into the open space in front of her, nearly knocking her head on her bent knees. Shivering, she hugs her midsection and burrows into her jacket, wondering when exactly it got so cold.
A frigid breath in through her mouth stings against the rawness in her throat, but it’s all she can do with how stuffy she is. Honestly, she hadn’t realized a person could be this congested, it just seemed unfathomable before this moment. Every sense she has feels muffled, every cavity in her head pulsing with radioactive slime that burns and bogs down just the same. Until now Maya had never understood what people meant when they said they could feel their sinuses aching. Sweet spirits, she feels them now, packed tight beneath her eyes and refusing to clear themselves out.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Her nose is dripping, but it’s hardly doing much. Perhaps on a sunnier day Maya might make some attempt to control this—but right now, with the wind and rain ripping torrentially around her, there’s really no point at trying to hide it. Her hair and clothes are soaked through, and it’s unlikely anyone can tell snot from rainwater just looking at her.
Ugh. Gross.
Bus-stop benches are the worst benches just by definition. They’ve gotta be, or people will sleep on them, which Maya thinks is a deranged way of viewing both human life and infrastructure, but whatever—it’s reality. The one she’s sat on now is metal, and just as cold as the pouring rain, conducting the chill that hangs around her and giving it one more conduit to discomfort her. Allegedly, it has a shelter, too—but it’s pretty much useless with the way the wind howls, throwing fat raindrops into her face regardless.
It’s like, sitcom levels of cliché at this point. An absolute farce of a day. If not a sitcom, then, like, the part of the movie where the heroine falls to her lowest point before things begin to look up in a glowing ray of light. Still being sick the day she was supposed to go on a date with the hottest woman she’s ever seen is one thing. That in itself would make her wonder where her luck’s gone. But to also be stuck at the bus stop? In this weather? Her life is starting to feel like the deranged musings of a fanfiction author with penchant for light torture and way too much free time.
Damn. On that thought, she dazedly hopes she’s at least their fave, as unlikely as it is in this grand hypothetical.
Maya balls up tighter, shuddering fiercely as another gale shakes the trees that frame the pale-grey skies. Why the hell did she get here so early? She supposes the thought was that, Franziska always got everywhere early, Maya knew for a fact how much she valued punctuality, so maybe it was an instinctual attempt to impress her? Which was the dumbest thing in the world, actually, because Franziska had said she’d be taking the bus, and the bus didn’t care what time someone wanted to get to their destination. It existed outside any time table or schedule. Evidenced by right now.
Man. She should’ve just called Franziska and asked her to reschedule. But… the fucking petting zoo!
Around her, the rain continues its forceful drumming, and on a better day Maya might have found herself lulled to sleep by the rhythmic sound. That’s a very nice thought, right about now… her and Franziska, curled up inside where it’s warm, limbs tangled beneath the covers while they drift to the sound of the crying skies. If this is a movie, Maya hopes it’s at least a romcom.
She’s so caught up in imagining who would play her and Franziska in a Hollywood adaptation of their love story that she doesn’t even notice the bus pulling up, the shield of it offering a bit of momentary solace to the sideways storm that’s still attempting to bludgeon her. The sound of heels on the concrete rouses her a bit—not her mind, but something more primal and instinctual deep in her heart. The ringing of a bell to a hungry dog, Maya’s more animal mind has come to associate the click of those heels with safety.
And then, of course, their pace hastens—from the bus’s back door to the failing excuse for a shelter. Franziska barely has time to get her umbrella open before she’s all but bolting over to Maya, who stands up despite the throbbing protest of every one of her leg muscles.
“What do you think you’re doing, Maya Fey?!”
Stumbling a little on her wedges, Maya grins her lopsided grin at Franziska, arms swinging lazily at her sides.
“Uh… waiting for you at the bus stop?”
“Waiting for me at the—” Franziska sputters, unraveling the wool scarf around her neck, “what am I going to do with you, you foolish woman?”
Exasperated, she lowers her deep umbrella so it envelops the two of them, sheltering and safe as the torrent patters pleasantly atop it. It’s one of those clear plastic ones, with jet-black florals stretching out from the crown, and Maya stares beguiled as fallen cherry blossoms swim down alongside the rivulets in its crevices. While she’s distracted, Franziska is draping her scarf around Maya’s neck.
It’s a very… plain gesture, but one Maya finds herself fixated on all the same. The scarf, of course, is warm by definition—accentuated by the fact that it’d been pressed against Franziska’s neck this whole time, as if she’d been warming it up extra for Maya. It’s not until this moment that Maya really, truly laments how stuffed-up she is, because she knows that if it were some other day she’d be able to smell the heady scent of Franziska’s perfume on it, too—the subtlest rose-scent, the one that always made Maya’s head swim. Rose perfume was always bogged down by some attempt to make it sugar-sweet, doused in vanilla and undertones of dessert, but Franziska’s possessed none of that distraction of scents—she just smelled like a sunny spring day, warm and breezy and utterly intoxicating.
“You didn’t have to wait out in this!” Franziska fusses, tucking the scarf into Maya’s jacket the way a doting mother might. “Why didn’t you go somewhere warm? There’s a café down the road!”
Maya sniffles to no avail. “My German’s shit.”
“One look at you will speak a thousand words.” Franziska tilts her head, lips pursed and brow knit. “You needn’t say a thing.”
“Yeah, and then everyone in the café would stare at me for an hour,” says Maya. “It’s like they know I’m American.”
“No, we just do that—” Franziska waves her hand noncommittally, as if she’s going to go on, before she processes what Maya’s just said, “an hour?!”
“Babe, it’s really no big deal. This ain’t really shit compared to my training, a-and—”
There’s freezing water still clinging to every inch of Maya’s body, and it’s at this moment that a particularly chilly drop slides down her nose. If the thing weren’t so oversensitive already, it’d hardly be a thing of note—but today she is living in her little sitcom, completely at the mercy of the barbed, ticklish aura that bothers her sinuses.
Scrambling and stuttering in a bid to back up, Maya’s hands seem to move on their own. When a pretty girl gives you a scarf, you’re supposed to treat it like gold—but in the fight between sneeze on the pretty girl and sneeze on the pretty girl’s scarf, there is, unfortunately, a clear lesser of two evils. Running on instinct entirely, Maya can do little else but turn to the side, pull the thing over her face, and try not to shatter the glass of the bus shelter with the volume and desperation of the fit her nose throws.
“Ugh. Sorry. That was so unsexy.”
The pressure in her head shifts uncomfortably, offering no relief. Franziska fingers a loose lock of rainslick hair from Maya’s cheek, pushing it back into place behind one ear.
“Bless you. Do you really think it’s wise to compare this to your training? The training you’re constantly getting yourself sick with?”
“‘Constantly’s a bit much.”
“Every time you go up the mountain I find myself absentmindedly window-shopping for cold medicine.”
“I’ll have you know,” Maya says, croaky and congested, “that I was sick before I got caught in the storm waiting.”
“That’s your argument, Schatzi?” Franziska says as she’s digging around her bag. “Digging yourself deeper? Here.”
She hands Maya her handkerchief—folded into a perfect square, as always. This song and dance has, of course, been done before, and still it takes Maya by surprise every time. Sometimes it felt like she was dating ancient royalty, how gentlemanly and old-fashioned Franziska could be. There’s an impulse, uncharacteristic and soft, to cool it on the obnoxiousness when she goes to clear her stuffy head out.
“Thanks,” says Maya, breathless, and Franziska snakes a hand tentatively around her waist, pressing their bodies together in a bid to be closer to Maya, warm her up even just a smidgen more.
“Goodness. You seemed fine when I left, how long have you been like this?”
“What, plagued?” Despite herself, she smirks. “Like, the whole week. Hit the second you dipped. It’s really hanging on!”
“Oh, Maya,” Franziska tuts, in that softhearted, tortured way she always did. “I’ll ask again—what were you thinking, dragging yourself out in this weather?”
“Hm…” She presses her index finger to her cheek, looks off elsewhere. “Mostly about how badly I wanna be a goat.”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t you think it’d be nice?” she carries on. “You’d never have to worry about a stressful case again. Every day you’d wake up, and you’d just stomp out into the dewy grass and smell the crisp morning air, and then you and your hot goat girlfriend who looks exactly like me but in goat form could just headbutt each other all day.”
A beat. Franziska blinks, which is something Maya is used to at this point, but still she finds it very cute every time.
“I think you’re running a fever.”
“Franzy, that’s not fair!” Maya stomps a foot, then winces a little at the ensuing pain that spikes up her leg. “That’s completely on par with the shit I say when I’m perfectly healthy.”
“Hmm… I’ll concede to that point.”
She palms Maya’s face, then, as if trying to study the heat of it, regardless. It’s a useless gesture, of course—she’s too chilled from the fierce wind and rain for it to be detectable. Maya leans into the contact, despite it.
“Nevertheless, you really shouldn’t be out of the house…” She looks up and around, as if to confirm the dreariness of the quickly-darkening sky. “It was very sweet of you to meet me in town, but we really ought to catch the train back home.”
“Noooo,” whines Maya. “We’re supposed to go to the petting zoo!”
“With all my love, Schatzi,” says Franziska, “the only place we’re going is to the pharmacy.”
“My goat kingdom, Franzy,” she grabs at her girlfriend’s collar—an overdramatic scene, looping back around into something lighthearted and silly, “they need me! My herd needs me!”
“Please. One sneeze from you and they’ll get spooked and scatter.” With an air of similarly exaggerated haughtiness—a shade different to that of her usual—Franziska extricates Maya’s trembling hands from her shirt, one leg poised forward as if to say we’re walking, now.
“You’re being so mean to me right now,” Maya says with a sigh, but follows nonetheless. She slumps against Franziska in the same manner a cat might throw itself into a patch of sun, aggressively affectionate and just as warmed. “Whatever happened to Franziska von Karma, globally known nice lady who everyone finds super kind and agreeable?”
“Yes, heaven forbid I tell my sick girlfriend she isn’t allowed to bring her germs to the petting zoo,” Franziska shifts the umbrella to her other hand, using the free one to slither her arm back down around the dip in Maya’s waist. “How about we get you some tea from the café before we hit the station, yes? It’d be a pity to wait without something to keep you warm.”
“That sounds nice,” says Maya, burrowing into the scarf around her neck. “How long’s the wait? Isn’t there some idiom about German trains always being on time?”
It’s like Franziska’s whole face changes. The scowl that weighs it down is seething, it’s unlike anything Maya’s ever seen before. For a moment, her heart feels like it’s being dropped into some deep, dark cavity—a black hole that opened up in her chest and devoured her from the inside out.
“I don’t believe the people who coined that phrase,” Franziska fumes, “have ever rode the Deutsche Bahn.”
Maya can’t help herself from giggling at that, and the jump of it in her throat hurts something fierce, but she finds she cannot stop. Despite the flames that crackle off Franziska, her grip on Maya does not lessen or falter. There, with the girl she loves pressed like a crackling hearth into her side, Maya loses track of where fever-dizzy ends and love-dizzy begins.
“If I promise to take it easy,” Maya says, “do you promise to tell me all your opinions on trains, forever?”
“I’ll begin preparing flowcharts as soon as the train in question comes,” she frowns again, “if it ever comes.”
“You know, if we were two goats in love in our little pasture, you’d never have to think about the Doitchy-Bimbo—”
“—not what it’s called—”
“—ever again.”
The hand on Maya’s waist falters and fidgets as the two of them fall on messy steps forward, holding back more giggles. As the rain continues to drizzle in sheets down around them, Maya thinks that the only medicine she will ever need in life is the sound of Franziska von Karma laughing at the stupid shit she says.