Work Text:
It’s ass-o-clock in the morning when the sunrise alarm clock starts its glow, bathing their bedroom in a gentle glow meant to simulate the sun that won’t be out for several more hours in the hellish New England winter. Katie groans, throwing her arm across the bed to where Elle is already shifting, sitting up in bed. The sheet slides down over her form, exposing the hickies peppered across her chest. She looks over at Katie, briefly running her fingers through her hair even as she swings her legs over the side of the bed.
“Are you sure the magazine needs you out there today?” Katie mumbles, resigning herself to getting out of bed too.
Elle turns the clock off, shrugging into a robe as she cracks open the door of their bedroom. Their bedroom – every time Katie thinks about it too long, her head starts spinning a little bit, the bedroom they share, in the apartment they share, in the life they live together.
“Unfortunately so,” Elle smiles, dragging Katie back to the present, “There’s some setup they want with me, background shots and all that before I really get into the conversations. But hey, it’ll be a week max. You’ll barely even miss me with running the club and all.”
That was a lie, and they both knew it. Ever since Elle had gotten the opportunity of a lifetime, some real Annie Leibovitz work with an up-and-coming women’s basketball player out in California, all Katie could think about was the week away from her. It was almost comical how, even though she was the Olympic athlete of the two of them, they’d nearly never left each other’s sides in the years since they’d entered each other’s lives. Even when she was fighting for that gold medal in France, weeks away from campus and her family, Elle was by her side the entire time, documenting and reassuring her in equal measure.
“Do you want some coffee? I’m also totally fine getting a cab to the airport,” Elle asked from the doorway, tightening the robe around her waist so the bruises on her chest were barely visible.
“Oh no you don’t, I will be taking every second of time I can get while you’re here, love,” Katie responds, pushing herself to her feet on the soft rug. She stumbles behind Elle, pulling Greek yogurt out of the fridge and grabbing a paring knife and a container of strawberries. Elle starts the kettle and grabs the coffee beans while Katie cuts the tops off of the strawberries, slicing them into bowls.
She slides the bowl towards Elle once the grounds are in the French press, the smell of coffee warming their apartment and bringing her cognition back towards normal. Her girlfriend presses herself into her side, sliding her hand under the thread-bare tee she’s wearing and flattening it against her back. Katie turns her head, breathes in the smell of tea tree shampoo and lavender from Elle’s purple hair, presses a gentle kiss to her scalp.
“You’ve got to eat,” she intones, pushing the bowl of yogurt and berries towards Elle, “I’m sure they need you at maximum intellectual capacity. Y’know, brain food.”
Elle laughs, picking up the container of honey that lives on their kitchen counter and giving her breakfast a generous drizzle. “They’ll be getting exactly what they get, Katie. They know who they booked, if I’m groggy day one then so be it.” Even so, Katie feels a bloom of pride as Elle takes a bite of her breakfast, leaning her head against Katie’s bicep.
They eat in the morning quiet, listening to the sounds of traffic starting outside their windows, the clatter of joggers and dogwalkers on the street below. Elle’s phone chimes, updates from the airline on takeoff and check-in. She swipes them away, cradling her coffee (honey and a splash of almond milk, an order Katie memorized her freshman year) between her palms. Katie runs her fingers through her hair, absentmindedly detangling the few knots at the bottom of the bob as she watches reflections of cars in the apartment windows across the street, not thinking too hard about how in an hour they’ll be lugging the bags of camera equipment and the suitcase of Elle’s clothes to her car, driving out the hour to Logan airport, how she’ll be waving goodbye from security as Elle flies across the country.
“Tell me what you’ve got scheduled at the club for the week, Katie-bear.” Elle’s watching her, and as Katie startles out of her fugue, she reaches one hand up to ease the crease between her eyebrows. She loves the pet-name, Elle knows this and weaponizes it whenever she can, even now she can feel the blush spreading across her cheeks.
“Well, we have a clinic for the youth foilists starting tomorrow, so I’m going to go down with Night today and run through the drills that we’re going to run, make sure she and the other coaches have their gear and stuff in place. I’ve got a few private lessons this afternoon, so I’m going to do those too, and then later on we have the high school team coming on Wednesday, they have a meet this weekend so it’ll be a good practice.” Katie pauses, searching her mental calendar for anything she might have missed. “Oh, the girls from the team invited me out, I’ll probably go watch a movie with them, celebrate Minnie getting engaged.”
“That sounds nice, it’ll be good to see all of them together! Let them know I say hello, I’m sure it’ll be weird to not have me hanging off your arm there.” Elle laughs, but Katie sees the way it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Isn’t it weird that, even though it’s been what, 5 years, we barely travel without each other?”
“Oh my god SO weird,” Elle gasps, almost instantly. “I don’t think I realized it until I was packing and realized I’d put two travel toothpastes in by sheer memory. I don’t know what I’m going to do for a whole week without you. I wasn’t thinking about it when I booked the job, I just thought ‘hey I went to Paris and that was totally fine, I traveled for every NAC and Olympic qualifier and world cup and that went off without a hitch, a week in California is child’s play. I, apparently, forgot that we are so codependent we’ll die without each other.”
Katie laughs, pushing herself off the stool and gathering their plates to wash. Honestly, just knowing that Elle was as worried about it as she was loosened somewhat the knot of anxiety that had buried itself behind her ribs. “I believe in your ability to find a way to fill your time without my glowing presence, as codependent as we are. I’ll be facetiming you constantly whenever you’re not shooting, after all.”
“I hear there’s a good zoo there, maybe I’ll do a trip there when I’m not working.”
“Elle, my beloved sunshine, if you go to the zoo without me I will fly out to California just to tell you that you are a traitor in person. That is a together activity and you know it, who else will you get to explain how penguins mate if you go without me?”
Elle laughs so hard she hiccups as Katie gestures vehemently to their fridge, which is already covered in magnets of all the zoos and aquariums that they’ve gone to, a mission for every city they’ve visited together for fencing tournaments.
“Hey, you can souvenir shop for me while you’re there, find the coolest non-zoo bottle opener in all of San Diego.”
“I’m going to bring you a shirt that says ‘My life partner went to San Diego for a work trip and all she got me was this stupid t-shirt.’”
Katie snorts. “Elle, my love, my shining star, I cannot imagine that they will have that on a t-shirt.”
“They’re very enterprising out there in California. I’m sure an innovator has disrupted the novelty t-shirt business by now. Frankly, I’d be a bit disappointed if they haven’t.”
Katie glances at her watch, then back to Elle. “Are you conniving to miss your flight by talking about novelty t-shirts?”
“Oh SHIT. We have to go Katie, I really can’t miss this flight.”
They make it to Logan just in time (with an hour and a half to spare because at the end of the day Elle is still neurotic enough to have included time for a teary goodbye and make it through Logan’s security). Katie parks and decides to walk with Elle, rolling her suitcase while she sorts through her camera equipment slung over her shoulder. She’d changed in the apartment, now in a smart burnt-sienna pantsuit and kitten heels. It was a testament to Katie’s willpower that she hadn’t tackled her the moment she’d stepped out of the bedroom and really made her miss her flight. Even so, they’d spent maybe a moment too long dawdling outside the car, Elle patting down her pockets and her bag three times to make sure she had her ID, her phone, her wallet, her headphones.
Now, walking toward the terminal, she is chewing her thumbnail absently, worrying at the already-chipped blue nail polish. Katie ants to pull her hand out of her mouth, smooth the worry lines on her face, but she is acutely aware that any touch would divert them for another five minutes at the least, and at this point she is legitimately worried about Elle getting on her plane if they detoured. Finally, they make it to the inside of terminal C, Elle finding her flight on the departure board and checking that the gate hadn’t been changed.
“Well, this is it I guess,” she says, looking towards the security line snaking back onto itself. “I should get in there, make sure I get to my gate in time.”
“Of course,” says Katie, aiming for magnanimous but landing somewhere closer to heart-wrenching, “Just, Elle?”
She looks up at her, a gentle smile on her face.
“Come back soon, okay? Don’t abandon me for the sunny coast of California, I don’t know how I’ll manage, and we both know that I need that New England rudeness to survive any social situation.”
She laughs, a real laugh that cracks her face open and makes her glow like sunshine (Katie’s mentally pumping her fist at this) and grabs Katie’s face between her hands, pulling her down to close the gap between them. She kisses her, soft and gentle like a homecoming, winding her arms around Katie’s neck.
“Of course, Katie, love. I’ll be home before you know it.”