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The door is only open for a scant few seconds before Maya and Franziska fall through it, at what can be considered wildly contrasting pace.
Franziska moves like the walking dead—to call it skulking would almost be too generous—her every limb weighed down with something intangible, like gravity itself is pushing back against her. That ever-present, perfectionistic voice in her head screams at her to straighten her spine, fix her posture, but even this is simply too much to bear after the night she’s had. Instead, she swats the thoughts away like they’re gnats swarming around her swampy head, makes a beeline for the couch where she—god forbid—collapses. Face-down, embellished, utterly pathetic. It takes everything she has in her not to groan the second her face hits the soft cushions, one final push to maintain some semblance of dignity.
Why did they even invite her in the first place? She barely even qualified as a Los Angeles prosecutor. And yet they’d found her suitable enough to invite her to this end-of-year event, full of loud American chatter and frankly revolting food. Her father had gone on and on once upon a time about the importance of networking, and once upon a time Franziska hadn’t the nerve to tell him he was wrong. This was the modern day, though, and he was wrong about a great many things—in this case, that making one’s name via pointless small talk was any better than making it with accolades alone.
She’d been dead set on setting her RSVP to a curt no with zero hesitation, right up until she’d seen Miles’ name on the event guide. Giving the closing speech, no less—of all the blasted speeches to give. Not only was Franziska now duty-bound to go, she was duty-bound to stay until the very end.
The plus one was promising. Maya had a way of making anything tolerable, entertaining even. Maya could turn even the most boring of nights into a game, playing some twisted form of I Spy with badly fitted suits and horribly mismatched shoes. She’d spin whole backstories for every attendee, whispering telenovela plotlines into Franziska’s ear in-between speakers. This, evidently, was how Franziska had learned that she was positively dreadful at holding in her laughter—she’d never had any time to practice, had never known anyone quite like Maya Fey.
And, of course, Maya loved to make Franziska laugh more than she loved just about anything.
Tonight, the laughter was blunted, soft and hoarse. Franziska had gone to bed the night prior with a bit of a headache and woken up to the sensation of something… scratching at her airways. Clawing at her throat, wriggling behind her eyes, taking up residence there in her head. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but more or less something easy to ignore—and ignore she did, right up until she could do so no longer.
Not an hour into the night did the chills begin. She’d pulled her suit collar a bit closer to her neck, fluffed up her frills while Maya helped herself to the champagne. Even through the bubbly dizziness the girl put herself in, she could tell something was off about Franziska—though, she couldn’t put her finger on what. Not until the next hour after that, when Franziska made her best attempt to stifle a trio of her famously tiny sneezes into her curled fist—and once she started, of course she did not stop.
The rest of the night was plagued by more and more of these little outbursts, and the stifling itself was what concerned Maya the most. Franziska, simply, was not a stifler—there was nothing to stifle, and generally if anyone had a comment about the dainty (see: adorable) contrast of those sneezes of hers, she was much more likely to simply whip them until they learned manners.
Plus, it certainly wasn’t doing anything for the headache she was still nursing. Nor did it stop the sandpapery feeling in her throat from worsening. By the time the night was over, Miles and Maya had made enough uncomfortable eye contact to rival an entire lifetimes' worth of thanksgiving dinners, wordlessly screaming to one another that something would have to be done. Whether the flush riding high on Franziska’s cheeks was from illness or embarrassment at making so much noise, neither of them dared to speculate.
The cab ride home saw a sweaty, shivering Franziska slumped into Maya’s side, fighting off the monumental urge to fall asleep in the back of some stranger’s car. Maya had simply held her firmly, one hand on her waist, trying not to let her heart sink too much at the way Franziska’s stuffy mouthbreathing puffed out hot against the bare collar of her dress. She’d been trying to find a sneaky way to check her for a fever all night, but once the sick girl had leaned into her like that there was simply no need for such a thing anymore.
Balefully in the present, Franziska sluggishly pulls her eyes open for just a moment to stare holes into the couch backrest. How did her headache turn into this? She’d never had an illness ram into her so quickly, so remorselessly, there was barely any time to anticipate the thing. A mere day ago she was breathing just fine, no concrete in her sinuses and no chills crawling up her spine. Oh, what a mere twenty-four hours could do.
Around her, the apartment is dark. Maya hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights, too concerned with other things, like getting the kettle and the heating on, like rooting through every closet for a blanket to throw on her still-shivering girlfriend. Franziska didn’t notice the thing being draped over her as she lay there, too fever-bleary to register how the cacophony of the world mutes itself, simmers down. On the tail end of the event, everything had been too much—too bright, too loud, too abrasive. Somehow, though, the subtle weight of this soft little scrap across her shoulders acts like a muffler between her and the friction of the universe. Lulled ever-so-slightly, Franziska closes her eyes once more, making her best effort to ignore the itchy-hot burn of them.
Of all the lingering sounds in the otherwise quiet apartment—airplanes and cars in the far-off city, the purr of the heater kicking on—there is one that keeps Franziska’s otherwise stuffy hearing alive.
Maya had switched out her regular kimono for a long, tightly-tied furisode, decorated in spiraling, sprawling floral patterns that accentuated every pudgy curve of her. It was as flattering on her as everything else, but the cut of it transformed her long strides and stumbling, aimless steps into something more rapid and small.
One of Franziska’s favourite sounds in the world was the uneven clipclop of Maya’s sandals as she stumbled along anything hard enough to draw it out. This abridged version is, obviously, cute. But Franziska can’t help but get stuck on how it… shouldn’t exist. For the people of Kurain were known for their ritualistic manners, their dedication to doing everything in a distinctly particular way. This list of rituals was long and sprawling, and Maya certainly did a nonzero amount of picking and choosing which ones she deemed reasonable, but.
But. Taking off one’s shoes indoors, from birth to death (and far beyond), was something even she was unable to shake. Thankfully so, because Franziska herself certainly didn’t take kindly to anyone who dared to track a single mote of the great outdoors into her home.
Tonight, though, both of these seemingly unshakable ideas are different. Tonight, Maya does not remove her shoes before she begins puttering around the apartment. Her thoughts are too clouded by her girlfriend’s discomfort, ever-racing mind locking onto every possible way to assuage what is, honestly, an unremarkable amount of pain. Tonight, Franziska is too tired, too feverish, too love-dizzy to worry about dirt on her throw rugs or how she’ll have to sweep the kitchen come morning.
Love existed in all five senses, how often Franziska forgot. In tender touches, fond smiles, greasy American fast food, the sweet, hazy scent of green-apple shampoo… and, tonight, the clipped cut of sandalstep on polished gray hardwood.
“Franzy?” comes Maya’s voice, softer than usual to spare Franziska’s head. “Hey, think you can make it to the bathroom without keeling over?”
With great effort, Franziska rolls over—ugh—wincing only slightly at the pull in her muscles. Judging by the pitying look on Maya’s face when she finally does, she surmises she probably looks akin to some sort of wet-eyed baby animal right now.
“Must I?”
“You must,” Maya says with a flourish of her arm, then pulls it back down to caress her sick girlfriend’s sweaty cheek. “Lest the luxurious bath I’ve prepared for you run cold, and you wither in the chill like a delicate rose.”
To that Franziska props herself up, scowling the whole way. “What a hidden way with words you have.”
“Oh, that’s just my Edgeworth impression.” She grins, and does not mention that her Edgeworth impression is just her Franziska impression without the accent.
“Please do not ruin this night further, dear one.”
It’s a struggle not to stumble into Maya’s waiting arms as Franziska stands. As soon as the blanket falls from her shoulders, the chill of the night settles in—Franziska can’t help but shiver, and Maya can’t help but steady her. An arm around her waist, guiding and patient, does its best to replace the warmth as they shuffle three-legged down the hall.
Confident that Maya will safely bring her to where she needs to be, Franziska closes her eyes once more, allowing muscle memory to take her. Each footstep aches up into her core, traveling straight to her pounding head. In times like this, where the pain is near overwhelming, it’s become second nature to breathe deep and slow in an attempt to ground herself, equalize. With her lungs and sinuses the way they are now, this task is impossible, and so instead she shivers miserably and reminds herself that if she were to fall, Maya would most certainly catch her.
Eventually, Franziska is undressing. The water’s already been drawn, she can feel the tantalizing heat of it radiating from her left side, all she has to do is get out of these blasted clothes. At some point, Maya starts wiggling her out of her suit jacket, and Franziska can tell in the silence of the gesture that she’s putting all she has into not lining its existence with pity. The jacket comes off, imperfectly draped across the marble countertop—with it goes her necktie, her dress shirt, everything else—a loving contrast to the way Maya’s thrown her own silken wrap on the floor. To Franziska’s credit, her stumbling fingers managed to get a generous few of the buttons undone! She could have probably figured the rest out, if not for her girlfriend’s fussy, everquick hands, rapid-fire things alongside that anxious canter, its wooden taps still singing their unsteady song.
Exhausted, Franziska stares down at the source of this noise. Vision blurry and head full of concrete, she squints at the shape of her girlfriend’s feet. Maya’s too busy to notice, at first—trying to pry Franziska’s shirt off sweat-slicked, blazing skin—but her ministrations cease with a moment’s pause as she registers the concentrated furrow of Franziska’s brow.
“...you good?” says Maya, tilting her head as if it will help her to understand.
It’s in this moment that Franziska registers the bleary vision is not, in fact, from the fever, but because she’s on the verge of tears. The feeling in her heart spills over, spurred on by the constant tiptap of those sandals. Maya’s robes are falling off her, but still, this garment remains.
Squinting harder, all Franziska can say as her voice is breaking is, “Shoes.”
“Wh—” Maya stops moving, looks down at her feet, “really?”
The tears sit there in Franziska’s eyes, refusing to cross the threshold. Somewhere within her, she knows the words exist to articulate all she’s feeling. Right now, though, this is all she can manage.
“You’re so freakin’ uptight,” says Maya, bending backward, awkwardly, to start pulling the things off. She looks very cute, exasperated as she’s curling around herself in the warm light of the vanity. Cute enough that Franziska doesn’t try to explain what it is she really means, content just to watch her do what she can to soothe.
“There, you happy?” says Maya, holding up the offending things in a clanky bunch, their straps looped loosely around her index finger. Franziska thinks the precious sound of those shoes is what she’ll hear in every fuzzy dream from now until her end.
“Yes.”
Unceremoniously, then, Maya drops the things on the bathroom floor and shuffles, finally, out of her kimono. It had been reduced to little more besides a silk blanket as it hung off her in shimmering waves, and Franziska can’t help but stare transfixed as it falls around her beloved’s ankles. On some other day, perhaps, Maya would saunter forward with a sly-eyed grin and a slew of indecent thoughts rolling around her head. Tonight, she simply takes Franziska’s trembling hand and leads the two of them to the massive tub in the bathroom’s far corner, still steaming and dyed petal-pink.
They climb in together, in an inarticulate sort of tandem. Maya sticks one leg over the lip, Franziska follows, rinse and repeat. There’s a shock of pain that crawls up the shivering girl’s extremities, but it’s a good sort of pain, searing heat like holy fire that burns away the biting frost of the fever. They sink down together, too, slowly and deliberately into the soapy, glittering waters.
The heat of it envelopes Franziska on all sides, her shivers abating without much fanfare. Almost immediately the steam begins to loosen whatever’s still stuck in her airways, and only then does she smell something minty, crisp and rich. The scent curls barblike high in her nose, resulting in what can only be described as a flurry of tiny sneezes, muffled haphazardly into the back of Franziska’s hand. Ripples dance across the water as she jerks forward, and at her back Maya giggles and runs damp fingers through her hair.
“Bless you, cutie.”
The sniffle that follows is the respiratory equivalent of the phrase if looks could kill. “Did you put one of your infernal bath bombs in this?”
“Um, duh.” Maya sinks her arms back down beneath the surface, links them around Franziska’s waist. “Only the best for my poor, sick Franzy.”
“The best, she says.” Franziska sinks lower, the wheezy sigh on her lips hot enough to rival the steam on the water’s surface.
“It sure sounds like it’s clearing you out.” Maya presses a kiss to her still-blazing forehead. “But maybe we stay home next time, yeah?”
“I didn’t even want to go,” groans Franziska, eyes shut as her crown hits Maya’s collar. “Curse that Miles Edgeworth. Shackling me to these meaningless events when I am so dreadfully ill.”
“How dare he. The disrespect!” Maya agrees, “and now you’re being tortured via peppermint essential oil and biodegradable glitter. A fate worse than death.”
A pang in Franziska’s chest, then. She’s certain they’re both joking around, but Maya’s tendency to joke even when her own feelings are hurt sets her on edge, leaves her itching to over-correct. “Well, Schatzi, things could certainly be far worse.”
“Oh yeah?”
Beneath the water’s surface, their hands find one another, and Franziska pushes forward to tangle her bony digits with Maya’s own. A quiet, laboured hum vibrates there in Franziska’s chest, affirming in its timbre.
“I could be without you.”
“Nah,” Maya says, voice wavering with something unseen, buried, “I’d never let that happen.”
She shuts her eyes, too, holding her girlfriend close to where her heart beats steady and rhythmic. Franziska feels it even her own spiking heart rate out, a compass to serenity, a north star for her wandering soul. Behind her, Maya shuffles just barely, warping the rosy-pink pool of them both.
“Hey, you stopped that awful shivering,” she says with the slightest smile in her voice. “Finally warming up?”
The whole night had been cold. Frigid, stinging Californian AC touching down on her already-prickling skin like knives. Eventually, she will have to face that special kind of discomfort again—eventually, she and Maya will have to extricate themselves from the safety of the massive tub and step back into the chill of the night. Right now, though, there are two kinds of warmth that crackle hearthlike around her, two forms of sunshine that revitalize entirely her aching frame.
She leans into Maya. The waters are still.
“Yes,” Franziska says, whispery and fond, “I believe I am.”