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Maya thinks she should be awarded a medal for the sheer magnitude of her self-control.
There were a lot of earthly temptations that she, admittedly, saw no shame in giving into. The absolute bliss of gorging herself on hot, carb-heavy comfort food. The always-lovely indulgence of sleeping in far past noon. The primal, feminine urge to watch a whole season of tokusatsu in one night. She’d been taught all her life that learning to let go of these human pleasures was paramount to honing her spiritual power, and yes, she has an obligation to her clan, but… eating a burger every now and then isn’t gonna ruin her ability to wrangle ghosts. And if it is, then the old masters clearly had no concept of what living truly was.
Most tempting of all those, though, was the occasional opportunity to look Franziska von Karma dead in the face and say those beautiful, delectable, addictive four words—
I told you so.
Sweet spirits, it was hard to resist. And she resisted it every time! Honestly, maybe that was why her grasp on her medium powers didn’t dissipate, because this was the most heady indulgence of them all. For every thirty bowls of ramen she inhaled, she could balance the spiritual scale with one refusal to act like a smartass at her haughty, hypercompetent girlfriend. And she could just do that forever, and eventually she’d achieve proper mediumhood.
The coldest winter on record. Maya didn’t speak German, nor did she consume the news in any regard, but it was pretty damn hard to ignore. Nearly everyone on every social media platform in the world had been celebrating and/or bitching about it, but given that it was mostly localized here in Europe, she didn’t really have anyone besides Franziska to complain with herself. All her friends were back home in America where it was marginally warmer, and she had chosen to shack up with the hot prosecutor in Germany for a while to give herself a break from the rigor of training.
Speaking of aforementioned training, Maya liked to think her cold tolerance was pretty damn impressive. On a good day, she could sit under that waterfall in below-freezing temperatures and walk away with little more besides her chattering teeth. So, it was kind of an insane testament to the sheer magnitude of this winter that she was spending so much of it holed up inside, huddled beside the giant fireplace in one of Franziska’s petal-soft throw blankets.
Meanwhile… Franziska.
Good gods, Franziska.
Six cases. Six damn cases in a week! And of course every last one of them saw Franziska puttering around outdoor crime scenes for hours at a time, and of course she barely made any attempt to dress herself properly. There was snow and ice covering every horizontal surface in Bavaria right now, and Franziska was really out there in one (1) fur-lined trenchcoat (she swore by), a fluffy black scarf, and slightly warmer gloves. Every night she came home looking a little blue in the lips, shivering long after she’d gotten beneath the thick covers of their shared bed, and so Maya wasn’t really surprised when she’d come down with a pretty nasty cold.
Well, that was a lie. It was surprising, because Franziska von Karma didn’t seem like someone who was capable of being felled by something as feeble as the common cold. And, well, actually, she wasn’t—true to form, Franziska didn’t take sick days. She sniffled and sneezed her way through her morning routine, downed the maximum dose of cold medicine, and went right back out into the frigid German winter without a word of complaint. When she’d get home late and curl up in bed without saying much of anything, Maya wasn’t offended. Honestly, she was just glad Franziska was leveling some semblance of care toward herself.
That same care… seemed like it was working. Steadily, Franziska seemed to get a bit of her energy back—rising before her alarm again, snapping back into her routine without the lagging lack of precision that came with the illness slowing her down. Maya was lucky enough to catch her before she headed out one morning, sniffling habitually into her piping hot tea and stifling coughs (that would otherwise be quite productive) into a fist.
“Really, Schatzi, I’m feeling much better,” Franziska had said, voice still dulled and laryngitic. “Illness happens when it happens. Not due to any inclement weather.”
Maya was hanging off her—arms draped across her shoulders, pressing warm kisses into her neck. Tutting and fussing and begging her to just take a day off, give her cases to someone else, stay in and cuddle with her. Franziska was strong, though—against illness and romance alike.
“That’s only half-true and you know it,” Maya pouts, nuzzling her face up against Franziska’s. “Even if it’s not hurting you, I’m sure it’s not helping either.”
Beneath her sheltering arms, Maya feels Franziska take a breath in, presumably to argue. It catches miserably on the way, though, and the cough that follows has Franziska doubled forward, hacking wretchedly into her handkerchief. That poor thing probably needs to be burned by the end of the week.
“Case in point!” Maya pulls away, shifts her hands so that she can rub her beloved’s back. “That sounds like complete shit, Franzy, oh my god.”
“I sound worse than I feel!” she shoots back, with her mascara already dotting at the corners. “Isn’t that always how it goes? At my most fit I always begin to sound utterly piteous.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you wouldn’t if you didn’t spend like fifteen hours a day talking in a huge room with garbage airflow.”
“You have not been in the courtrooms I frequent here,” says Franziska. “They are kind enough to at least give me a microphone.”
“Awesome. Everyone can hear you sound like you gargle rusty nails for breakfast in glorious 4k UHD.”
“I do not believe those units of measurement are—”
“‘What’d you do today, Hans?’ ‘Oh, nothin’ much, just got to listen to a federal prosecutor cough the jankiest, most black-plague-soundin’-ass cough directly into my ears for three hours.’”
“It’s hardly worth describing in such a way—”
There’s a hand waving weakly in front of her face, then, which is a very cute thing Franziska sometimes did when she was about to sneeze. Maya doesn’t really know what it’s meant to accomplish—like, is she trying to chase the sneeze away?—but she also doesn’t really care because it’s fucking adorable. The adorable woman in question dips back into her silky handkerchief, where the normally delicate sound sands itself down to something hoarse, exhausted, barely audible. Franziska doesn’t have the time to replenish the precious oxygen before she’s tumbling into another ragged coughing fit.
“Uh huh,” Maya says, rightfully unconvinced. “I’ve literally never heard a person sound this sick in my life.”
“Operative word—” she says through coughs, “—‘sound!’”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Maya with a little sigh, and wonders how the hell this woman could be such a legend arguing in court, and such a loser arguing at home.
Eventually, some semblance of agreement is reached. Maya brews another pot of tea, loads it with fancy ass honey from whatever fancy ass German bees they got over here, and puts a generous three fourths of it into the biggest thermos Franziska owns. In a half-hour’s time, they are standing in the front doorway of the massive, sprawling von Karma estate, and Franziska is turning red rather quickly as Maya tucks in her scarf.
“I really do appreciate your concern, dear one,” says Franziska to the charming furrow in Maya’s fuzzy brow, “but I promise you, the worst of this thing is over. Grating post-viral expulsions notwithstanding.”
“Yeah, I know, I just can’t help it…” Maya finally feels satisfied with her work, backing up a half-step and pulling Franziska’s jacket collar inward. “Like, I know I shouldn’t be worried about you, but for some reason I still am.”
For some reason, the two of them ponder in sync, a performance unspoken and clear all the same. Maya cups Franziska’s jaw, warm on the underside from where the scarf protects her, and Franziska can’t help but admire how that warmth is little compared to the way Maya’s touch makes her very bloodstream feel like oil aflame.
Suddenly shy, Maya looks off to the side, an uncharacteristically shy smile on her face. “If you’re not sick anymore, am I allowed to kiss you now?”
This is a trap. Clever, and cunning, and Fey. If ever Maya were to pursue law herself, Franziska knows she’d give every fool in the LA District Court a run for their money. Today, though, Franziska truly does have nothing to hide, and so today everyone wins.
“I thought you might never ask.”
She leans down ever so slightly, touching her forehead to Maya’s in the split second before their lips brush together. Normally, Maya kisses like she’s been starving her whole life—but today she is grateful, romantic, chaste. Featherlight and sweet and delicate, so as not to demand too much of Franziska on the tail end of her regrettable convalescence.
There is so much careful love in everything Maya does, antithetical to the lackadaisical way she seems to saunter through life. The shape of that love floats around Franziska as she fights not to doze in the back of her limousine, a glowing pink cloud of warmth against the bitter cold outside.
I told you so is supposed to feel good.
It’s supposed to taste marvelous atop the tongue, passing through the teeth. A swelling of smug superiority in the chest, a battle cry screamed from a mountain on high. Upon reflection, maybe Maya doesn’t deserve to be praised for not uttering those glorious, gilded words… because she’s pretty sure this victory would taste like ashes in her mouth.
Sometime in the afternoon, when the sun is still uncomfortably bright on the incandescent world outside, Maya hears Franziska.
This is strange for a number of reasons. Firstly, Franziska rarely got back to the estate before the sun set, let alone while it was still this high in the sky. Second, the mansion is fucking huge, a voice would really have to carry down the halls for it to be audible up here in the bedrooms. Third, Maya’s currently got her headphones plugged into her laptop and is watching Iron Infant on full fucking blast, over-the-top smoke explosions ringing in her ears.
It’s definitely Franziska, though—that cough is unmistakable. No one who sounded that sick would be allowed within the estate’s walls, the family’s domineering matriarch would take one look at them and send them off with her upper lip curled in disgust and her hands itching to drown themselves in disinfectant. The only exception to that rule was the household’s head herself.
Confused, Maya pauses her show, shuts her laptop, and pulls out her fraying, tinny earbuds. Off in the distance, Franziska coughs.
And coughs. And coughs.
And… okay, what the fuck, is she even breathing?
An immediate sense of urgency grips Maya, and then her legs are moving on their own. She wiggles into her slippers and out of the bedroom, following the horrible beacon of the sound with her heart-rate quickening on every step. The damn house is a maze, she gets lost in it every single time she’s here, but something else guides her this time—she finds Franziska in mere minutes, crumpled to her knees in the center of one of the estate’s long hallways, one hand leaning palm-flat against the wall and another clutching hard at her shoulder. She’s still coughing that terrible, chest-deep cough when Maya nears her, mouth pressed hard into her elbow. It does nothing to muffle the horrendous sound.
“Fuck,” Maya says, mostly to herself, and before the words are even finished leaving her, she’s right there on her knees besides her girlfriend. “Franzy, what happened? Why are you…?”
“They—sent me—home—” the words come out seething, breathless in-between the unrelenting spasms of her protesting lungs, “said I couldn’t—come back—without some blasted doctor’s note—”
“Yeah, good call,” Maya says, laughing nervously in an attempt to keep the mood light. “Um, maybe we should—”
“I’ve already gone,” Franziska says, and Maya notices her eyes are glazed over in a foggy shade of blue she’s never seen before, “but I was put on—days of bedrest, can you believe something so—”
The natural end to the sentence does not come. She doubles back over coughing, tears streaming down her cheeks. Making her best attempt not to panic, Maya takes the moment to actually look at her girlfriend—and notices that Franziska’s hair is plastered to her skin, deathly pale besides the flush that rides high on her cheeks.
Desperate to move, Maya raises a clumsy hand to her forehead—and immediately recoils, gut sinking at the scalding heat she finds.
“Spirits, Franzy, you’re on fire!” she squeaks out, trying to keep the terror from her voice. “Fuck, okay, um. Bed. Now.”
Maya wraps an arm around her waist, intent to heave her upward, drag her to the bed by force if she has to. It’s a testament to everything that Franziska doesn’t protest besides an irritated groan, like she’s somehow still above all this while cooking in her own skin.
As soon as she’s pressed against Maya, the latter notices the shivering. It’s a violent thing, uncontrollable, not the cute little tremor Franziska sometimes let run through her when her coat was too light and she thought no one was looking. This was the kind of shiver seen only in the soon-to-be-hypothermic, like the ruthless winter outside their door had burrowed parasitic beneath her skin. Franziska isn’t just shivering, she’s quaking. All the while still in exactly what she wore as she left—she’d been too weak to make it to the bedroom without collapse, too weak to even remove her jacket.
Eventually, Maya gets her situated on the bed. Beneath the thickest, most expensive, highest thread count comforters Maya has ever seen, Franziska sweats and shakes and begs the world around her for warmth, face twisted in agony as her body fights with all it has.
“You said you went to the doctor, right?” Maya says, running trembling, bitten-down fingernails through her long black hair. “Did they give you anything?”
Franziska shuffles weakly beneath the covers. “In my bag.”
Maya’s rooting through the thing already, locating the cloudy orange pill bottle that lays conspicuously at the bottom. Haphazardly thrown in, no organization, no attempt to keep the bag’s insides tidy—fuck. She pulls the thing out, squinting at the label, and her heart all but seizes there in her chest.
“Fucking pneumonia?!”
Loud. Much too loud. Franziska buries her face in the pillow, willing the noise to spare her aching head. The impulse to place her hands around it, press its silk into her ears, it’s there—but her arms stay useless and limp at her sides, aching as though they’re encased in coiling chains. Instead she just rasps out another tired groan, and the groan turns into another coughing fit, one she can feel crackling and popping against her breastbone.
“I thought—” she coughs, “—that was apparent.”
“You’re going to kill me!” Maya throws her arms in the air, pills still in tow. “I’m going to die, and it’s going to be your fault!”
“My deepest—condolences,” Franziska says through the wheeze in her lungs. “Truly, no one here has—suffered more than you.”
“God, fuck, sorry. I’m just…” Maya seems to snap back into herself, reprioritizing. “Okay, no, you can’t be laying down, here, up against the headboard for me.”
To her credit, Franziska tries her best. She manages to prop herself up on raised elbows, wincing the whole way, and then Maya’s doing her best to help scoot her up, mindful of her bad shoulder. Franziska leans her fevered head back, against the curling, ornate wood of the four-poster’s headboard. Even just this has her breathing like she ran all the way home, open-mouthed and whistling through her lungs, all but gasping in the precious oxygen as it fights her.
“Oh, Fran…” Maya can’t help but fuss, dragging the back of her hand down her poor, sick girlfriend’s face. “Did you take any of these?”
She rattles the antibiotics, to spare Franziska the torturous ordeal of opening her eyes. Quick-witted despite the illness, Franziska shakes her head.
“Alright, well, I’m gonna need you to do that now…” she looks around, lost, “shit, I need to hydrate you stat, hold that thought.”
“Holding.”
As Franziska says it, she’s still just sitting there—eyes shut, laboured breaths, looking like the walking dead as she just… lets the world exist around her. It sours Maya’s stomach to leave her there, like that, even just to rush to the fridge downstairs. Franziska shouldn’t be… complacent in her own paltry health. Franziska was never complacent about anything.
How bad is she feeling, that this is how things are? Maya misses the sharpened glares and waving hands, Maya misses the hissed-out I’m fines that were driving her crazy not twenty-four hours ago. Maya misses being snapped at, fought with, brushed off. To see that fire doused is a million times more gut-wrenching than the annoyance that came with her usual flavour of stubborn denial.
A glass is skipped over, in favour of just taking the whole damn jug of juice back up to the bedroom. The estate staff are off for the day, but the second they begin to file in tomorrow Maya’s going to go completely apeshit with her phone’s translator app on hands and knees, begging someone to buy the store’s entire supply of Sports Drank. Failing that, there’s got to be some kind of grocery delivery she can utilize, she just has to get Franziska lucid enough for long enough to help her—
Shit, Franziska! Think about this later!
At what can genuinely be considered breakneck speed, Maya manages to make it back to her girlfriend’s sickbed, where she finds Franziska exactly where she left her, looking no better (bad) and no worse (good?) Gently as she can muster, Maya coaches her through taking her medicine—holding the massive red jug of sickly-sweet ambrosia steady to Franziska’s lips when it becomes clear she’s too weak to do it herself.
Fuck.
Franziska, historically, was kind of a god when it came to taking pills—which was weird, because last Maya checked, the portion sizes outside of America were designed for little babies. She’d muttered the words throat GOAT more than a few times, changing the subject when Franziska demanded she elaborate upon that foolish slang, define it immediately, Maya Fey. Where did one even start with that?
So it’s a little concerning when she barely chokes down her antibiotics. The choking, of course, turns to more coughing—frightful, atrocious, hideous coughing, coughing that does not seem like it’s ever going to end. Franziska’s curled into herself, whole face red and half-buried in her blankets in her best attempt to remain polite, even in the throes of her lungs trying to drown themselves. Crestfallen and shattered, Maya tries not to get lost in the hammering of her heart as it pounds in her chest—a voice in her head shouts do something, but the last time someone she loved was propped up against a wall and deathly pale like this—
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
Moving, moving helps. Moving offers some sort of solace. She has to reach a bit with the bedside table in her way, but Maya manages to get her hand on Franziska’s back, guiding her through it as she’s hunched over and wheezing. It might just be a coincidence that Franziska’s airways quiet down at this moment, and Maya finds that she doesn’t care—as long as she’s breathing. As long as she’s breathing.
Franziska inhales—long, shakily, with a pronounced whistle. The back of her deflated, silvery crown touches the headboard once more, and her eyelids look bruised as they angle themselves skyward, toward the overhead light. Brow sweat-sheened and cheeks flushed a painful shade of scarlet, she stares half-lidded at Maya out of the corner of her eye. A weak, half-hearted smile pulls at her chapping lips.
“You look even worse than I, Schatzi,” Franziska says, reaching out a trembling hand that cups Maya’s face. “I’m going to be alright.”
Maya swallows the tight feeling in her throat. “Those are pretty bold words. You looked in a mirror lately?”
“The wretched way I’m feeling is proof enough.” She clears her throat—a careful thing, so as not to spur on more coughing. “It breaks my heart to see you like this, though. I’m… sorry.”
Franziska’s shaking thumb traces the ghost of one of Maya’s signature dimples—an unsteady rhythm, wide, loving strokes. Right, what is she doing? Freaking out like this when Franziska needs her to be an anchor? Eyes still watering, Maya sets her jaw—forcing Fey resolve to burn bright in her eyes as she mentally dries her tears, forces the biggest grin she can muster.
“Yeah, you better be!” Maya says, a faux impression of anger in her voice. “Whatever happened to ‘I sound worse than I feel,’ huh?”
“I did,” Franziska rasps, “and then I did not.”
“Geez.” Maya rolls her whole head with her eyes. “Man… can’t believe I’m saying this, but I kinda wish your house was bougier. Like, ye von Karmas of olde put a hedge maze in this place but couldn’t flesh out for a sauna?”
Blinking blearily, Franziska finds the strength to quirk a silversharp eyebrow. “A sauna?”
“Yeah, man,” Maya says, “your lungs are full of narsty jank. Breathing steam will un-jank them. If you had a sauna up in this bitch we could just strip down and go on the un-sexiest naked outing ever. And you’d probably feel a lot better. But nah, apparently a glorified room fulla vapor is too big an ask f—wait.”
Maya’s got that look on her face. Franziska thinks, there in the fever haze, that it’s this precise look that first made her fall in love with Maya all those years ago. Cheeks bunched up against her eyes, fuzzy brow ever-so-slightly askew, the lopsided, sleazy-looking features of her usual grin now mischievous and alert. Let’s start something, that look pledges with a giggle, and Franziska can never find it in her heart to say what she’d say to anyone else—absolutely not.
“I have an idea.”
True to its size, the von Karma estate has a veritable plethora of rooms. Most of these are personal rooms—bedrooms, guestrooms, studies. Several of them are extravagant installations, like the massive law library, the gigantic dining hall. And, of course, several are bathrooms.
Not even the bathrooms in this place have the nerve to be anything other than proper luxury, though. The biggest of them all is oddly modern, despite the otherwise Victorian architecture—it’s got a massive amount of counterspace, a private vanity in the corner, double-doors, a walk-in shower, and what may as well be considered a hot tub, jets and all.
So, no—the von Karma mansion does not have a sauna. But Maya Fey is nothing if not resourceful.
The empty shower is cranked as hot as its water will go—all three of its heads spraying against themselves in the empty middlespace where a person’s meant to be. Franziska isn’t there, though—she’s laying in the empty tub with Maya, easily big enough for both of them to sit shoulder-to-shoulder and stretch their legs.
There is, obviously, a discomfort. She was drenched in sweat long before she stepped into the room, and the haze of warm vapor in the air has done little to cool her down. It’s… slimy, and she can’t help but feel the urge to shudder at the way her and Maya are more or less glued together at the side. Normally, that language was figurative—right now it is quite literally the case, the pallor of her own ghost-white skin stuck to Maya’s much healthier shade of brown.
She’s dizzy, too—lightheaded from the steam. It’s a very good thing Maya’s holding onto her, because otherwise she fears she might fall right over, somehow drown in the waterless basin. Limbs jellied, brain cooking, so thoroughly ill, Franziska doesn’t find her mind sharp enough to entertain itself. It’s a little maddening, to not even be able to fidget with her hands without every small joint and bone and muscle aching.
She settles for watching the water as it condensates and drips down the high-up windows. On a better day, she’d be having a fit at this sight—bemoaning German architecture, demanding Maya open all the windows for proper lüften, lest even a single mold spore think of taking up residence here. Today, though, she is far too tired—thinking instead about late, rainy nights in limo backseats with Miles, and how they’d pick their favourite droplet on the window and watch the sparkling rivulets race.
It’s wet, and hot, and uncomfortable… but Franziska finds herself breathing much easier. The air goes down smooth, does not catch—when it does, Maya is right there beside her, clapping her on the back with baby-soft hands, making her vulgar jokes at the vile things she’s coughing up. Like it’s any other day, because it is.
The girl in question is fixing, right now, rearranging the clumps of hair that stick wetly to Franziska’s face, pulling them back behind her ear. When she’s done, she trails her fingers down, wordlessly—simply admiring her beloved, laid bare before her. As always, her fingers falter on the scar—mystified, fixated, smitten. Maya ghosts her digits around the ropey indent, and Franziska knows she’s resisting the urge to lean down and kiss it.
Something in Maya adored her asymmetry. The only thing she kissed more than that scar on Franziska’s shoulder was the unassuming dark spot beneath her eye. Unremarkable features on a good day, and oddly metaphorical reminders of a hopeless pursuit of perfection on a bad one. To Maya, though, they were the most beautiful parts of her.
“I looooove your shussy, babe.”
How romantic a creature, Maya was.
“Did I not ask you to stop calling it that?”
“Oh, you super did,” Maya says, snickering, “but you’re in trouble right now, and I’ve decided this is your penance.”
“Cruel and unusual punishment,” Franziska mumbles. “I demand a retrial.”
“What are you, some kinda lawyer?”
“No,” she slumps against Maya, “I am a heinous amalgam of disease and poor choices.”
“Aww,” says Maya, dropping her hand back around Franziska’s waist and wiggling in close. “Maybe next time, uh, we don’t spend all week investigating out in the worst winter on record with a cold?”
“In my defense—”
“—here we go—”
“—it was my first worst winter on record as a prosecutor.”
“I thought you weren’t a prosecutor right now?”
“...formerly a prosecutor.”
“Pshh. Details.”
Maya waves a hand, and Franziska leans her head weakly on the girl’s bare shoulder. At some point—she hadn’t noticed when—her chills had subsided, and that warmth exists all around her when Maya leans her own head against Franziska’s and lets out the tiniest sigh.
“Just, uh, don’t scare me like this again, okay?” Maya says. “I know you’re used to doing stuff on your own, but, like, you’ve got people who love you now. And we’d all be pretty sad if you weren’t around.”
Franziska lets go of a held breath, wheezy and unsure. “When you… frame it in that manner, I suppose…”
More deep breaths. They’re difficult, they protest, but she manages.
“Well, I certainly don’t endeavor to break your heart, Maya Fey.”
“God, I hope not,” Maya laughs. “‘Sides, it’d be kinda anticlimactic if the great Franziska von Karma keeled over from something as foolish as pneumonia. I mean, you took that bullet and walked away like it wasn’t even shit.”
“I walked away with years worth of chronic pain.” Franziska scowls.
“And the shussy.”
“And the shussy.”
Maya howls.
“Nooo!” Despite herself, she’s smiling wide. “Dude, you cannot… it sounds so wrong when you say it.”
“It’s my shussy, Maya Fey.”
“I’m gonna fuckin’ die.” The wheeze that’s trying her is almost enough to rival Franziska’s own. “You’re gonna kill me, and then who’s gonna help you cough up all the shit in your lungs?”
“They’ll bury us together,” says Franziska, “two foolish, star-crossed lovers, found deprived of air and as foolishly bare as the day they were born.”
“We’re like if Romeo and Juliet were sapphics who made slightly better choices.”
“Yes,” Franziska smiles to herself, and goes back to watching the moisture as it pools around the windowpane, “we are.”
Inside the mansion, things are awfully warm.