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Having a full-time job had its ups and downs, and today Beatrice was seemingly reminded of all of the downs. Everything during her shift that could’ve gone wrong, had gone wrong and more.
Walking up to the apartment, Beatrice was mentally and physically exhausted, with only one wish in mind: stay at home and do absolutely nothing with Ava until the next shift. The plan was easy enough: make some tea, drag herself toward the couch, collapse on it and only move to let Ava cuddle up with her, if she wasn’t sprawled on the couch by herself already.
Yes, Beatrice could do it. Just a few more steps and she would’ve been home.
After walking up the last few steps, the sight of their apartment’s door made her sigh with relief. She was home, everything would’ve been okay. She rummaged in her pocket looking for the keys, and while doing so she smiled fondly at the entrance mat: a normal mat with the print of a big smiling whale saying “whalecome.” Ava had found it in a thrift store the first week after they had moved in together, and nothing would’ve stopped her from buying it (not that Beatrice would’ve even tried). It had been over two years since that day, and while it was starting to wear out, it still made both of them smile.
“Darling, I’m home!” Beatrice announced, finally closing the door behind herself.
No reply came, but Beatrice didn’t worry. Sometimes Ava liked to listen to music with her headphones on, to not disturb the neighbors while still being able to listen to it to her preferred volume. What confused her, was the complete lack of welcoming meows from Cheese, their two years old cat.
Ava had been the one finding him, taking him home on a stormy night. Beatrice was completely shocked once Ava had entered the kitchen completely drenched and holding a tiny orange cat in her jacket, but no further explanation was needed. Two days later, he was named Cheese, and quickly became the most spoiled cat in the whole wide world.
After that day, every time one of them came home, Cheese always walked up to them trying to get some extra snacks. Despite both Ava and Beatrice knowing he was always kept well fed, for one reason or the other they always gave in.
But that night neither Ava nor Cheese came up to see her, and Beatrice immediately felt an uneasy feeling settle in her stomach. Before starting to freak out, aware of her already tense state, Beatrice chose to first look around the house, and then worry.
She walked up to the kitchen first, finding it empty. Then, she moved to the living room, and everything immediately became much clearer: Ava was curled up on the couch, fully hidden under a cover, and Cheese’s tail was sticking out.
Smiling fondly at the sight, Beatrice approached them slowly, crouching next to the couch.
“Hey Aves, having fun there?” Beatrice murmured, not wanting to startle her in case she was sleeping.
What Beatrice wasn’t expecting was to see Ava’s face slowly making itself known from behind the cover, with her eyes puffy and red, and tears still streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh my God, Aves, what happened?” Beatrice immediately pushed herself forward, engulfing her girlfriend in a tight hug.
Ava immediately melted into her hug, hiding her face in the crook of Beatrice’s neck and soaking her shirt with tears. The movement made Cheese stir awake from his spot, now visible after Ava had moved the covers around. Beatrice looked at him, almost hoping that he had all the answers, but the orange cat simply blinked a few times before hiding back under the covers and going back to sleep.
“Do you want some tea?” Beatrice asked.
Ava hummed in agreement, but when Beatrice attempted to move back, she immediately made sounds of protest.
“No,” she grumbled.
“Darling,” Beatrice whispered, her chest filling up with fondness for the woman in her arms. “I know you don’t want me to let go, but I need to go to the kitchen to make tea.”
Ava moved slightly back, still holding her arms firmly linked behind Beatrice’s neck.
“Coming with you,” she said, a clear frown deepening.
Beatrice smiled at her and nodded, moving one arm to dry some of her tears. Then, she stood back up and offered her hands for Ava to take. Instead of grabbing them, Ava slipped between them looking for another hug that Beatrice was happy to give.
“Sorry for ruining your shirt,” Ava mumbled, her mouth pressed against the opposite shoulder she had just cried on.
“I have to put this stuff to wash anyway, work was awful today,” Beatrice sighed.
Beatrice smiled, feeling Ava tightening her hug. “I’m sorry to hear that, I feel bad I didn’t welcome you properly.”
“Hey, no,” Beatrice shook her head. She brought one of her hands to the back of Ava’s head and scratched lightly her scalp, knowing that would’ve helped calm her down a little. “Clearly, you’ve had your own version of a bad day. We can spend the evening recovering from our bad days together, okay?”
Ava hummed in agreement, and finally broke the hug. She still held onto one of Beatrice’s arms, following her into the kitchen. There, she sat on a stool, letting Beatrice do her thing.
Ava loved watching Beatrice making her tea. Since the very early stages of their relationship, it kind of had been their thing: every time she had been upset over something, Beatrice would take her to the kitchen and show her the best way to make her tea. It was her way of distracting her from whatever was going on in Ava’s head, while also getting to take care of her.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Beatrice asked, while picking two mugs out of their cabinet and placing them in front of Ava.
“You’re going to think it’s stupid,” Ava said.
Beatrice stopped in her tracks to turn around and look straight into Ava’s eyes. Her gaze had been so piercing, Ava found herself blush.
“Have I ever said that anything that has troubled you, or made you happy, was stupid?” Beatrice asked, seriously.
Ava immediately shook her head. No, Beatrice had always been the most supporting and loving person she had ever met, and that was one of her favorite things about her. No matter how weird Ava would get, Beatrice would be there cheering her on. Sometimes, she would even get out of her own comfort zone just to be weird with Ava, just to be together.
Beatrice's serious look melted into a knowing smile, and Ava couldn’t do anything else other than smile back at her. Yeah, Beatrice wouldn’t have made fun of her for something like that.
“I was just scrolling through twitter earlier, and I found out that today it’s 18 years since the International Astronomical Union declassified Pluto from its planet status,” Ava finally said. “I kind of hoped it was a prank or whatever, so I went to look up some more information on Google to confirm it and found out that Pluto had been a planet for 76 years. It was considered to be that one tiny, weird planet of the Solar System but everyone kind of loved it because it was super tiny and super weird, until one day they decided it wasn’t a planet anymore.”
Beatrice turned around with a filled teapot in her hands and was met with an extremely sad looking Ava. Her eyes were again filled with tears, but they weren’t falling down her cheeks yet. Quickly, she filled the mugs up before putting the teapot down and took a seat next to Ava.
“I remember the day I found out about it, too,” Beatrice said, taking Ava’s hands within hers.
“You do?” Ava asked, looking up at her.
Beatrice looked at Ava, smiling fondly at her. Her lip was quivering, showing how hard she was fighting against her tears. She squeezed their hands together, trying to show her it was okay if she wanted to cry some more, but Ava remained strong and kept the tears in a little while longer.
“It was when I was 10, or about to be,” Beatrice began to tell. “I was doing some research for science class, during my last year of Elementary School. At the time I wanted to become an astrophysicist, so every project was about the Universe. Until one day, I read about how Pluto had been declassified, and since it was my favorite planet of our Solar System, I took it pretty badly.”
Ava let a few of her tears fall, biting one of her lips to try and fight against them some more. She squeezed Beatrice’s hands a little bit tighter and moved their chairs closer together.
“Did you cry?” she asked, in a choked voice.
Beatrice nodded, smiling sadly at the memory. “My parents found me crying while reading the same article over and over again.”
“Oh no,” Ava gasped.
Her sadness was quickly replaced with anger, and Beatrice almost felt like crying seeing how upset Ava got even just at the thought of baby Beatrice not getting the support she would’ve needed from her parents. No matter how many years had passed, Ava would have always been angry on Beatrice’s behalf for what they had done, or didn’t do, to her.
“As you can imagine, my dad just brushed it off and told me to get over it,” Beatrice said. If she had tried to, she could’ve still heard his cold words dismiss her emotions. “My mom, for once, kind of tried to explain to me why it had happened, I suppose she thought that rationality would’ve helped me move on from the sadness. But she used super hard terminology that I couldn’t understand at the time, so I ended up crying more.”
“Oh, baby,” Ava whispered, her eyes filled with compassion for a much younger Beatrice, and anger towards two adults who had yet again failed at their most important job in the world: raising their child. “I’m so sorry.”
Beatrice nodded, accepting Ava’s sympathy. It had taken her a long time before being able to recognize her parents’ wrongs, and now that she did it got easier for her to feel sympathy for her younger self, as well. It wasn’t her fault she had cried so much for “just a planet,” as her parents had said. No, she was just a child that had been upset about seeing something that, in some way, was representing her, not being recognized as important enough. Pluto was the weirdo, the tiny one, the different one, just like Beatrice, but it was classified on the same level as all the other much cooler planets that all her classmates preferred. And suddenly, it wasn’t anymore, and Beatrice felt as if she, herself, wasn’t as important as the others, too.
Beatrice knew that Ava knew how she was feeling. She saw it in the way Ava’s eyes filled with pain for a much younger version of herself, maybe of both of them, that found comfort in something as insignificant but just as important as Pluto, one of the trillions of objects floating in the Universe.
So, it didn’t come as a surprise, when Ava threw herself into Beatrice’s arms, engulfing her in a soul-crushing hug. Ava squeezed her and held her close, telling her everything she couldn’t say through words, letting their heart beating against each other’s ribcages speak for themselves.
They both cried for a bit, Beatrice melting in the comfort of Ava’s embrace, surrounded by her perfume and enjoying the feeling of being understood and accepted by someone who truly loved her unconditionally. Then, eventually, Ava ended their embrace.
Before anyone could say anything, Ava placed a pack of tissues between them, making both of them giggle a little. Awkwardly, Beatrice held the pack still while Ava took a few tissues out, offering one to her girlfriend.
“You know what? It’s time to heal my inner child and to take care of you before this event translates into a new form of trauma,” Beatrice declared, after having cleaned herself up a bit. “We’re now going to grab our mugs, go on the couch, watch some show about the Universe and cuddle with Cheese until either one of us, or him, gets hungry.”
“And after that we’ll watch some more until we fall asleep,” Ava added. “And tomorrow I’ll take you on a date to an observatory. Fuck your parents, I love you.”
Beatrice laughed a full belly laugh, throwing her head back in disbelief. Only Ava could make her so happy in so little time after remembering how much her parents sucked. And, not too long after, Ava was laughing with her, happily squeezing her hands.
“I love you too, darling,” Beatrice finally said, still giggling lightly.
***
A few hours later, which had been spent, as promised, cuddling on the couch and watching some Discovery channel shows on the Universe, Ava had found herself lying half on top of Beatrice, her head on her chest.
It was dark outside, and the only light in the apartment was coming from a single lamp in their bedroom, and from the TV which was showing the credits for the past 10 minutes. Neither Ava nor Beatrice had shown any interest in getting up to either turn the TV off or switch to another program, and while Ava knew that, on her behalf, it was out of pure laziness (and comfort, who would want to move away from lying on top of Beatrice anyway?), from her position she couldn’t really understand whether Beatrice was being lazy too, or had fallen asleep.
“Hey Bea?” Ava whispered, not wanting to disturb her in case she had actually fallen asleep.
“Hm?” Beatrice hummed, half asleep but awake enough to answer.
Ava wiggled around a bit, trying to feel closer to Beatrice than they already were. “In this household Pluto is still a planet, right?”
Ava felt Beatrice’s chest shake a little, telling her she had somehow managed to make her laugh despite her being half asleep. Ava’s chest filled with pride. Oh, how she loved making Beatrice laugh.
“Of course, darling,” Beatrice replied. And then, totally unexpectedly, she added: “Fuck the International Astronomical Union.”
Ava felt her jaw drop, shocked by hearing Beatrice swear. It was something that almost never happened, the only very few rare occasions taking place mostly in their bedroom, during other… activities.
“Hell yeah!” Ava finally shouted under her breath. “Fuck the International Astronomical Union!”
And despite how shitty Beatrice’s day had been, the last thing she remembered before falling asleep was laughing.