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“Is there a doctor in the house?”
Chrys smirks at her own joke as she slams the door closed, tossing her bag in the direction of the kitchen alcove as she locks the door behind her.
The living room is visible from where she stands; much of the apartment is visible from this particular vantage point, the small shoebox of a place hardly bigger than the dorm room she’d spent the last four years in. The kitchen with its mismatched tile flooring and trio of functioning gas burners is distinguishable from the rest of the space only by virtue of the imagination, and the wooden floors creak whenever one of their neighbors sneezes too loudly. But, hey, the view is nice.
The floor creaks in tandem with the rustling of paper, the flipping of a textbook with a pricetag nearly equal to the rent they hock out each month. “Technically, no.”
Chrys smiles, detouring briefly to the kitchen sink to fill a glass of water from the tap. They’d tried -Ellie had tried anyway- to combat the building’s old pipes with a water pitcher with one of those fancy filters but the aspirations had been given up pretty quickly when they -well, Chrys- had continually forgotten to refill the pitcher one too many times. All things considered, it seems pointless to worry about death-by-lead-pipe anyway. “I mean…close enough?”
Ellie looks up from the books open in front of her, icebergs among the sea of highlighted notes and color coded notecards. The exasperation on her face suggests that her day might have been a little more stressful than Chrys’ hours spent shelving old vinyls and getting quizzed by the dudebros coming in to show off whatever musical knowledge they thought they had. “Not at this rate,” Ellie mutters, sweeping a hand in the direction of the detritus of her studies. “Why does it feel like any time I actually try to memorize any of this stuff it just runs out of my brain like…pasta water?”
Chrys smirks as she sits down on the old couch beside Ellie, somehow managing not to spill the water on the both of them as the cushions dip precariously. “Pasta water? Points for creativity.”
Ellie crinkles her nose, huffing. “You know what I mean.” She takes the glass from Chrys, draining the contents in a few quick swallows. Pipe-water be damned.
Chrys takes the empty glass, setting it carefully on a square of coffee table that isn’t covered in Ellie’s meticulous notes and then angles herself to face the girl beside her, reaching out to run her fingers through Ellie’s hair, brushing it back from her face. “Maybe you need to take a break.”
Ellie has a pinched furrow between her brow, the spot that Chrys loves to brush her thumb along, to press her lips to, even while teasing her that it’ll stay that way, this divot in her skin from how hard her brain works. Her bright eyes are simmering with concentration, despite the frustration in her pinched forehead, her pursed lips. When Ellie doesn’t immediately respond, her gaze still fixed on the diagrams splayed out on textbook pages, Chrys slides her fingers through her hair once more, down the curve of her jaw, turning her face so that their lips can meet instead. Ellie leans into her without complaint, dropping the highlighter she’d been white-knuckling in her other hand in favor of taking Chrys’ face between her palms, her skin warm and dry and smelling vaguely chemical. Over the years, she’s come to appreciate the smell of antiseptic layered with Ellie’s gardenia perfume, the smell of alcohol wipes and bleach embarrassingly causing her heart to flutter.
“See,” Chrys says, when she has to catch her breath or risk another near death experience, letting her lips linger against Ellie’s as she speaks. “You definitely need a break.”
Ellie’s thumb is rubbing against the ridge of her cheek and Chrys can feel goosebumps and heat in equal measure. “I think you might be right.”
“I usually am.”
Ellie smirks, leaning away as she lets her hand trail absently across collarbone and shoulder to the crook of Chrys’ arm. “Since when?” She teases.
“I have my moments.” Chrys pulls Ellie back to her, skin prickling with goosebumps where Ellie’s fingers are currently resting. It had taken her awhile to be comfortable with being the subject of Ellie’s gaze, of her curious and gentle fingers, which seemed to find every scar and pockmark without exception. But none of it had made Ellie shy away, had only seemed to make her pull Chrys closer and closer still until the first thing she thinks about when Ellie touches her is not all the things that have touched her skin in the past.
Ellie hums, though further protests are given up easily enough when Chrys kisses her again and Ellie tangles her fingers through Chrys’ hair and honestly Chrys thinks she could easily just stay here all day, just like this, kissing Ellie and being kissed and wondering how the soft brush of thumb against the nape of her neck makes her want to melt into a puddle on the floor.
A quick, impatient beep makes Ellie pull back, reaching for the phone sitting on the lumpy couch cushion beside her. Chrys exhales, willing her heart to slow back down, combing her fingers through her hair. It’s starting to get long again, taking her back to that girl she’d been years before, standing in front of the mirror and trying to turn herself into someone unrecognizable to the people who would’ve known her before, to make herself into someone ready to face life unflinchingly for the first time since she’d been the kid on the playground pumping her legs on the swings, willing herself higher and higher before launching herself into the air. The shag suits her better, she thinks, especially because it gives Ellie something to slip her fingers into, to tug when Chrys has her right where they both want to be.
As Ellie checks the information on the screen, Chrys leans into her, reading over her shoulder. “Low,” she remarks, lifting an eyebrow. “Maybe that explains the pasta water.”
“I meant to get something on the way back from class,” Ellie says either by way of explanation or excuse, getting to her feet and heading toward the kitchen, floorboards creaking in her wake. “I lost track of time.”
Chrys clucks her tongue, feigning disappointment. “And here I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one.”
She stands, following after Ellie, leaning against the counter beside the sink that leaks more often than it doesn’t. She watches Ellie the way she never seems to tire of doing, seizing the opportunity to study her when her attention is otherwise occupied. She’s wearing an oversized sweater, one end drooping off her shoulder, stolen so often from Chrys that she feels like it belongs to the both of them now, on its third life after she’d stolen it from her dad’s closet while packing up her life in Chicago. Chrys is certain even her dad would have to agree that the old Reckless Records sweater looks best on Ellie anyway. Especially paired with the sweats and fuzzy socks that she’d likely changed into after coming back from classes, making herself comfortable to curl up on the couch in the quiet apartment. Ellie reaches up absently to toy with a curl that has escaped her ponytail, contemplating the box of whole wheat pasta in her hand. “Is it too early for dinner?”
“I think you just have pasta on the brain.”
Ellie rolls her eyes, sticking out her tongue. “Can you just get me a pot, please?” Her lips quirk in a smile that melts Chrys immediately.
It’s embarrassing, really. It seems impossible that there was ever a time where she’d thought she would be able to keep Ellie out of her life.
And here she is now, sharing an apartment with her, grabbing a cooking pot from their shared cabinets, their things a jumbled mixture that Chrys never wants to untangle.
As though sensing her thoughts, Ellie hooks an arm around Chrys’ waist once she’s put the pot on the burner, pulling her slightly off kilter as their hips knock together seconds before their mouth meet, clumsily and without the smoothness Chrys would prefer to be known for. Not that she really minds. Even a bad kiss is pretty great where Ellie Gains is concerned.
Chrys dreams of Rel, thankfully waking herself up before it gets really bad. Blood and screaming and tearing of limbs bad. She sits up, panting, and rubs the heel of her hand against her chest, above her heart, as though trying to press it back into place. It’s there, hammering away behind her ribs, frantically and desperately alive despite the gossamer of memories clinging to the edges of her mind.
Slowly, Chrys exhales through her teeth, glancing beside her toward Ellie, still asleep. She has class in a few hours, ever the early bird despite Chrys’ best efforts to convince her of the merits of sleeping the morning away and staying curled in bed -preferably together- for as long as possible. Quietly, Chrys eases herself out of bed, curling her toes against the cold that seeps into the floors. The rugs and occasional islands of discarded clothes seem to have done little against the perpetual chill in the floorboards, which seem to care little if it’s the dead of summer or the middle of winter.
In the kitchen, Chrys fills another glass with water, sipping at it absently as she lets her gaze drift toward the windows on the far side of the room. They overlook the city, the glittering buildings and river further beyond more than enough to make up for the cold floors and questionable neighbors. Most of the apartment is full of pictures of her and Ellie or things Ellie has brought with her from place to place, first to the dorms and then to the house they’d lived in with a few other pre-med students before graduation and their determination to move out before Ellie started med school. Sometimes Chrys thinks if someone were to look around the place, it would look like Chrys Willet didn’t exist before five years ago, springing spontaneously to life for the purpose of recommending good music and falling in love with Ellie Gains. Not that she minds so much the idea of such a thing; it seems a gentle enough existence.
The sound of the floors gives Ellie away long before Chrys actually sees her. Ellie still looks half asleep, rubbing at the corners of her eyes as she yawns, shuffling her way into the living room. The bottom of her tank top has ridden up enough for Chrys to see her hip, the curving scar there that she presses her palm to, her lips, her tongue, whenever she can in the same way that she imagines someone might delicately put a rosary to their lips or forehead. A desperate penitent expressing their continued devotion, their relief in salvation. Not just for herself but for Ellie too and how when she isn’t dreaming of Rel or her father she thinks about that warehouse and how it seemed impossible that all that blood could come out of someone and they could still live. How it stained the same palms that Ellie traces absent shapes on during movie nights or during trivia at the bar with their friends.
“Sorry,” Chrys says, pulling her eyes from the scar and toward Ellie’s face again, flushed with color and sleep and alive, very much alive. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Ellie shakes her head, even though it’s clearly a lie and not a very good one. “You didn’t.” She sits on the stool at the other side of the counter, propping her cheek up in her palm, messy hair falling around her face. “You okay?”
Chrys nods, setting the half empty water glass in the sink. “Just…” She shrugs, quirking an eyebrow. “A nightmare, I guess.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Chrys scowls, trying to ignore the sudden coppery taste in her mouth that shows up whenever she thinks too long about any of it. That time, then. “Nah.” She shakes her head. “I just feel bad, I know you’ve got class.”
Ellie shrugs. “In a few hours.” She crooks a finger and as much as Chrys wishes she could easily leap the counter between them and curl herself into Ellie, she walks the long way around, fitting herself in between Ellie’s knees when she turns the stool in her direction. “I guess you’ll just have to take me to breakfast, huh?”
Chrys puts her hands gently against Ellie’s cheeks, tilting her head up so they’re nearly nose to nose. “Whatever you say, Dr. Gains.”
Ellie tries to protest, the way she always does but Chrys swallows up the words before Ellie can accuse her of jinxing it, like speaking the words into existence too early will keep them from coming true. But Chrys never bothers with superstitions anymore. She’s got plenty of proof that some things are just inevitable.