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There is an itch where her heart beats, somewhere deep inside, that she can’t scratch. Unreachable. Insatiable. And it does this sometimes, when she spends too many days at Karolina’s. Pulling clothes out of the spare drawer in the dresser or the bit of closet space that Karolina has made for her. Using the green toothbrush that lives beside Karolina’s blue one in a cup on the bathroom counter. Letting Karolina cook for her, not often, but there’s this roast chicken dish that might be Shiv’s favorite.
And that’s the whole thing: she has a favorite dinner that Karolina makes for her. That’s the entire fucking thing. It’s too comfortable. Intimate in a way that Shiv wishes she could turn her back to.
But Karolina doesn’t make Shiv feel like she has to turn away. None of it feels strategic, like Karolina is just trying to soften Shiv up enough to sink her teeth in. No, Shiv is familiar with that, knows all too well what it feels like, and this is not that. She at least knows what to make of that.
This? Lounging on Karolina’s bed while Karolina paints her bedroom ceiling because of a post she saw on some DIY interior design Pinterest account? She has no idea what to do with this.
Shiv has started scrolling through articles on her phone in a failing attempt to distract from the twinge she keeps getting between her ribs every time she glances up at Karolina. She has her head at the foot of the bed, so Karolina is upside down to her, but no less appealing. Even with streaks of navy blue paint on her face and in her hair.
Especially. Karolina is especially attractive like this; old, faded clothes that she doesn’t care if she spills paint on, short hair pulled back into a ponytail, stubborn bangs that she keeps having to tuck behind her ear.
Shiv hasn’t seen a version of Karolina yet that she hasn’t been drawn to. Corporate chic, business casual, evening elegant. But this version is just for Shiv. The soft, cozy version all covered in paint. No one else gets this. Maybe that’s why she likes it so much; it’s something that belongs only to her. Something that no one else has access to.
Karolina has a little Bluetooth speaker up on the ladder with her, some singer Shiv doesn’t know murmuring lyrics to a song Shiv has never heard. The quiet music has been the only sound between them for a while, with Karolina humming along here and there, and Shiv can only keep her thoughts to herself for so long.
“You should’ve let me hire someone to do this for you,” Shiv comments, not looking up from her phone.
“I could have hired someone myself,” Karolina says, and Shiv finally tosses her phone to the side and rolls over onto her stomach to get a better view.
“Then why didn’t you?”
She watches Karolina’s lips turn up at the corners, and—yeah, this angle is much better. Now she can see Karolina when she smiles.
“I’m not sure why you’re complaining. You’re not even doing anything.”
“Um…” Shiv says, drawing out the consonant, “Being supportive? Emotionally.”
“Right,” Karolina says dryly, stretching a bit to reach the blue-dipped paint roller where she needs it.
Shiv lets a few moments pass, but Karolina goes back to ignoring her, too focused on what she’s doing to pay attention to anything else. And the thought of leaving doesn’t even occur to Shiv, really. She’d rather be ignored here by Karolina than be acknowledged by anyone else.
Another pang in her chest.
“What do you want me to do?” Shiv asks impatiently. “Hold the ladder? Or, like, hand you the tray? You want me to tell you how hot you look all covered in paint?”
Karolina frowns, pauses.
“I’m not covered in paint,” she argues, holds the roller in one hand and brings the other up to touch her cheek, ends up smearing more dark blue across the skin there, which is—fuck, alarmingly endearing.
“I mean…you are,” Shiv says, bites the inside of her cheek to keep her face from splitting into a grin. “You just made it worse.”
“Well, go get me a towel.”
Karolina’s voice is thin, which means she’s annoyed, and Shiv does smile this time, at how unkempt Karolina looks, how messy and flustered she is and how it’s all for Shiv.
“I don’t know. I think I like it? Makes you look kind of crazy.”
Karolina huffs, indignant, and dips the roller brush back into the paint tray on top of the ladder.
“Yeah? Crazy does it for you?”
“You do it for me,” Shiv says, and when Karolina looks over at her, all soft eyes and sincere smile, Shiv shrugs and pushes herself up off the bed, thinks if she doesn’t get up and stretch her limbs that her guts might actually start trying to crawl out of her mouth. The longer she spends looking at Karolina, the more she feels like a peeled orange—naked, segmented, susceptible to being held. “Whatever. I’ll get a towel.”
She goes to where she knows the towels are, rummages around the closet in the hallway for one with the most frayed edges because Karolina can’t be sad about ruining something that’s already worn to shreds; it’s why she and Shiv work so well together.
But Karolina would never believe or even think something so unkind. Karolina says they are together because it makes sense, whatever the fuck that means, and why Karolina needs things to make sense before she engages with them, Shiv doesn’t know.
All Shiv knows is that Karolina is the only thing left for her in this city.
“Come here,” Shiv says, shaking out the towel once she’s back in Karolina’s bedroom. She brings it up to her nose, sniffs it briefly while Karolina climbs down from the ladder, while she can’t see her, and thinks that laundry has never smelled as good as when she is here.
Fuck, she needs to go back home. Needs to be by herself for a night or two. Needs to forget Karolina’s obscure music taste and her navy blue ceilings and her detergent that smells like citrus. She knows she does, knows being here for this long is fucking her up, but then she keeps imagining her own plain ceilings in her empty apartment with no playlists or speakers and her laundry that smells like nothing at all, and she keeps deciding that she can forget this itch in her chest if it means she doesn’t have to be alone.
Face to face, Karolina is so beautiful it makes Shiv's stomach ache, and Shiv swallows hard, eats the urge to tell her so. She reaches out to grab Karolina’s water bottle from one of the steps of the ladder, douses a patch of the towel with it and sighs, watches strands of Karolina’s bangs flutter from the breath she blows out.
Karolina has that look in her eyes that she sometimes gets when Shiv does something nice for her. Like she’s afraid to say anything, afraid to spook her and chase the gesture away, so she smiles instead and levels Shiv with a gaze that is both knowing and affectionate.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Shiv says as she begins carefully wiping the paint from Karolina’s face with the towel. She starts at the smudge on her cheek first, then moves to her forehead, just above her eyebrow.
“How should I look at you?” Karolina wonders softly, lets Shiv run the towel over her face, down to her chin.
Shiv’s eyes linger on Karolina’s lips, and Shiv shakes her head.
“I don’t know. But not like that. Not like we’re on a fucking date.”
Karolina exhales a laugh.
“We are dating.”
Shiv frowns, scrunches her nose at the word, at how wrong it feels. How stupid. Like straining to reach something from the top shelf that she doesn’t even need.
“We’re not dating. Don’t be disgusting,” Shiv says. “I love you.”
Karolina finally stops looking at her like that. Looks at her, instead, like Shiv has just gotten a horrifying nosebleed.
Maybe she has. Maybe it’s all over her face, dripping down her mouth, down her chest, where that scratching sensation is now screaming for attention, thrashing against the walls like a poor, ugly monster.
“Shiv,” Karolina says, takes Shiv’s wrist and lowers her hand from her face, “be serious.”
Shiv shrugs and glances down at where their hands are still joined, starts running the towel over Karolina’s fingers, wiping the dried paint from her nailbeds just to have something to do.
“I thought you knew.”
Karolina uses her free hand to take Shiv’s chin and tilt her head back up so she can see her, and Karolina is smiling now, again, but different from before. This time, it’s contagious, something that catches in the back of Shiv’s throat.
“I should have,” Karolina admits. “It makes sense.”
Shiv huffs, feels her cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“Weird way to say it back,” she mutters, and Karolina brings both hands now to the back of Shiv’s neck.
Karolina draws her closer, kisses her instead of saying anything at all, open and slow and patient, and Shiv exhales through her nose as though it is the first time she has ever exhaled in her life.
When Karolina pulls back, nudges Shiv’s nose with her own, Shiv can feel her smiling, can feel Karolina’s fingers stroking through her hair, and she hopes Karolina stains her, hopes the next time she looks in the mirror she is more blue than red.
“I love you too,” Karolina says against her lips, between their shared breaths—something just for them.