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1. Lily loves the way Pandora listens with her whole body
Because Lily complains. Constantly.
It’s probably her worst habit, if she’s being honest with herself. All that anger has to go somewhere - from years of swallowing it down, of being the capable one, the impressive one, the girl who made it into places she still feels like she snuck into through a side door.
She carries this quiet, grinding fear that someone will tap her on the shoulder one day and say, Sorry. Administrative error. You don’t actually belong here.
So yes. She complains. About everything. About nothing. About things she knows won’t matter tomorrow but feel unbearable now.
Especially that first year after they got together.
Everything was new then - too new. They’d moved in together with mismatched furniture and silly delusions of stability. Pandora had just opened the flower shop, coming home every day smelling like damp earth and crushed petals. Lily had started her first real internship at the hospital, which meant long hours, aching feet, and the constant sense that she was one mistake away from disaster.
As if that wasn’t enough, there was a man.
Because there’s always a man.
This one had decided - without consulting Lily - that she was his newest fixation. He reminded her daily, in ways that were just subtle enough to stay technically appropriate and just explicit enough to make her skin crawl.
“And he,” Lily was pacing the living room one day, still wearing her coat, bag abandoned by the door. “he smiled at me like I was in on some joke, and then he said…”
Pandora was sitting cross-legged on the couch, a mug cooling in her hands. She hasn’t interrupted once. Her head tilted, eyes following Lily like she was the most important thing in the world.
“He asked if I was always this tense,” Lily snaps. “Like it was cute, funny, haha.”
Pandora’s brows knitted.
“And then,” Lily keeps going, because she’s already wound up and Pandora hasn’t stopped her yet, “he called me Lils. We are not on nickname terms. Absolutely not. I don’t belong to him. I barely belong there at all.”
That’s where Lily’s voice cracked. Just a little but enough to make her stop.
Pandora set the mug down carefully. “So,” she said softly, “you felt trapped. And small. And angry that you had to be still polite to him.”
Lily freezed mid-step.
“…yes,” she said, quieter now. “Exactly that.”
Pandora opened her arms, offering. Lily went to her, immediately collapsing into the space.
Pandora presseed her cheek to Lily’s shoulder, grounding, steady. Listening with her whole body. With patience. With belief.
Lily exhales, long and shaking. Oh, God.
2. Lily loves Pandora’s hands.
Which is disgusting and superficial. Lily has never thought of herself as a visual person. When people ask about her type, she always shrugs and says kind or funny or equally politely vague. Thinking too hard about appearances feels shallow, and Lily has built an entire personality around not being shallow. She has rules and she follows them.
Pandora ruins that completely.
Because Pandora is unfairly, recklessly beautiful - even (especially) in the weird thrift-store outfits and the hairstyles she invents every morning. It’s not a polished beauty. It’s not tidy. It’s Pandora, fully and loudly herself, and Lily has never seen anyone wear their existence so easily. The realization sneaks up on her sometimes, catches her mid-thought, like: Oh. Right. I’m in love with the prettiest girl I’ve ever met. Disgusting. Devastating. True.
Still, the best part of Pandora has always been her hands.
They’re scarred in strange, unromantic places - thin white lines across knuckles, a burn on one finger, a faint crescent where a screwdriver slipped. They’re there because Pandora refuses to replace things. If something breaks, she treats it like a personal insult, like the universe is testing her loyalty. She will fix it herself or die trying. Sometimes both. She’s terrible at it, too, which somehow makes her more committed. Lily has watched her spend 3 hours repairing something that could have been replaced in 10 minutes, jaw clenched, tongue between her teeth, stubborn as gravity.
Once, Lily asks, gently, why she doesn’t just buy a new one.
Pandora doesn’t look up. “Because this one is mine.”
That’s it. That’s the whole thesis.
Later - much later - Lily is sitting on the floor with her back against the couch, watching Pandora fight with a broken lamp. There’s a faint smell of burnt dust and something electrical, and Lily is fairly sure this is how house fires start. Pandora swears under her breath, shakes her hand like it personally betrayed her.
“Do you need help?” Lily asks.
Pandora glances at her, eyes bright, smiling. “Absolutely not.”
Lily laughs, soft and helpless, and lets herself just look. At the careful way Pandora’s fingers move, like they’re trying to apologize to the object. At how those same hands cup Lily’s face when they argue, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. At how they find Lily in the dark without searching.
The lamp eventually works. Kind of. It flickers, then steadies.
Pandora looks absurdly proud.
Lily feels something warm and dangerous settle in her chest and thinks, not for the first time, that love is maybe just this: watching someone refuse to give up on broken things, and hoping -quietly, selfishly - that they’ll treat you the same way.
And Pandora always does.
3. Lily loves Pandora’s refusal to rush joy.
They could be anywhere for that, really. That’s the thing about Pandora - she doesn’t need the right setting. She finds beauty the way some people find loose change - accidentally and constantly.
The grocery store, for example.
When they’re both exhausted, Lily is operating on a strict internal clock: grab essentials, pay, escape. She’s already mapping the fastest route through the aisles, keys practically in her hand.
And Pandora stops.
Just stops.
She kneels in front of a shelf of biscuits in silly shapes, picks up a box, and studies it like it might start speaking.
Lily doesn’t notice at first. She’s 3 steps ahead, mentally halfway home, until…
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Pandora says, bright and soft all at once. “Reminds me of Remus.”
That’s when Lily turns.
Moon-shaped biscuits. Pale, slightly ridiculous. Dusty with sugar.
She smiles before she can stop herself.
“Yeah,” she says, quieter now. “It does.”
Pandora tilts her head, thoughtful. “We haven’t talked to him in a while, have we?”
Lily hums. She already knows where this is going.
“We should call him.”
They buy everything they actually need: vegetables, milk, past and the biscuits, obviously -because some things become necessary the moment Pandora decides she loves them.
When they get home, they’re sprawled on the couch, a terrible Netflix show playing in the background. Crumbs everywhere. The phone on speaker between them.
Remus answers on the 3rd ring.
4. Lily loves the way Pandora argues.
Mostly because she doesn’t. Not really. Not the way Lily learned to do it - like a full-body sport, all teeth and momentum, words sharpened until they can draw blood. Lily was taught that if you’re going to fight, you fight properly. You show up with your whole chest, your whole history, your whole fury.
Pandora never does that.
She doesn’t raise her voice when she’s angry, but she doesn’t disappear into herself either. She stays, steady and present. Lily hadn’t even known that was an option.
The first time it happens, it’s over something painfully mundane - plans that didn’t work out, a stupid misunderstanding. Lily is pacing, hands moving, heat climbing her throat. Pandora is sitting on the edge of the counter, listening, really listening, which is infuriating.
“You’re not even mad,” Lily snaps.
Pandora blinks. “I am.”
“Then act like it.”
“I am acting like it,” Pandora says calmly. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”
That stops Lily cold. It feels like cheating.
Pandora asks questions instead of making accusations. She repeats Lily’s words back to her, slower, softer, until they sound less like weapons and more like wounds. When Lily says something unfair - and she does, because she’s human - Pandora doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t counterattack. She just tilts her head and says, gently, “That wasn’t what you meant.”
And the worst part is that she’s right.
By the end of it, Lily is exhausted in a way that feels clean. No scorched earth. No slammed doors. Pandora concedes one small point she doesn’t even believe in, just to make Lily smile again, and Lily sees it happen and pretends she doesn’t. She lets herself win. Pandora lets her.
Then, Lily realizes that Pandora has never tried to win an argument with her. Only understand her. Keep them both intact.
It feels revolutionary.
5. Lily loves the way Pandora exists when no one is watching
She’s beautiful, which is obvious, but Lily is still startled by it every morning - caught off guard by the fact that beauty can be this unguarded. Pandora asleep is all soft lines and loosened edges. Blond hair splayed messily across the pillow, mouth parted just enough to feel intimate, breathing slow and even.
This version of Pandora has no audience. Just a human being taking up space and trusting it will be there when she wakes.
She used to talk in her sleep, absolute nonsense.
Once, very seriously, she said, “No, that’s not a chair. That’s a piano.”
Another time, Lily was jolted awake by a furious whisper: “We can’t invite him. He knows what he did.”
Lily lay there, frozen, heart pounding, only for Pandora to roll over and add, cheerfully, “The soup will remember.”
In the mornings, Lily would tell her about it, trying not to laugh. Pandora would listen with solemn interest, nodding like this was in fact very important.
“Wow,” she’d say. “Rude of my subconscious.”
She doesn’t do it anymore. Or maybe Lily just sleeps through it now. Either way, Lily misses it sometimes - those small, unfiltered glimpses into a mind that’s always half elsewhere. Proof that even at rest, Pandora is strange and vivid and entirely herself.
Lily watches her sleep longer than she probably should. Counts breaths. Traces familiar shapes in the air above her shoulder without touching. She thinks, with a kind of calm certainty, This is the truest version of you. And you let me see it.
Pandora shifts, frowns briefly, then relaxes again. One hand drifts across the bed, finding Lily without effort.
Lily lets herself be found.
+1 one thing Pandora loves about Lily
Pandora can’t remember falling in love with Lily. There was no lightning, no cinematic pause, no moment that begged to be framed and hung on a wall. Love, to her, has always been an accumulation. A hundred small, almost-forgettable moments stacked so carefully they start to feel like fate. She’s always believed love is built in kitchens and hallways and half-listened conversations. In days that feel ordinary and end up meaning everything.
What she can remember is the moment she realized it was real. The moment she thought, with sudden, terrifying clarity: Oh. This is it. She’s the one.
It was a Tuesday, because of course it was. Nothing important ever announces itself properly. Tuesdays are sneaky like that.
They were drunk, reckless, and glowing with that specific invincibility every woman in her 20s seems to possess when the night is warm and the world feels finally good. They were walking back to their dorms, arms tangled, laughing too loud, tripping over perfectly flat ground.
Lily was ranting about something - Pandora can’t remember what. Probably injustice. Or principle. Or someone being treated unfairly. Lily always burned brightest when she was defending something. She stopped mid-sentence, gestured too dramatically, and nearly fell.
Pandora caught her without thinking.
Lily looked at her then - hair a mess, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with alcohol - and said, very seriously, “You’re good. You know that, right?”
It wasn’t flirtatious, it wasn’t even romantic - it was sincere in that dangerous Lily way, like she meant it in her bones.
Something in Pandora shifted.
She looked at Lily, really looked, and saw the way she cared with her whole self. The way she chose people, over and over, even when it exhausted her. The way she loved like it was an act of quiet rebellion.
And Pandora thought: I want this forever.
And she got it.