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Fareeha’s at Angela’s place because her apartment block tends to be quieter than the student dorms. Angela’s place also had the added benefit of having Angela in it. Really, Fareeha had come over hoping to sneak in more than a few quick make-out sessions, but Angela’shaving none of it.
“You told me you were coming to study, so we’re going to study.”
Fareeha had groaned at that, rolling her eyes.
(She’d pouted a bit too, but she’d vehemently deny that later.)
Angela had smirked then, and leaned over to plant a quick peck on Fareeha’s cheek.
“Just to give you some incentive…” she’d said, pulling away with a wink.
They finish quite late, the moon is high overhead, and Angela refuses to let her girlfriend walk home alone at that hour.
“Schätzli, you can stay here. The bed’s practically big enough for four if you’re that worried about saving my virtue, we won’t even have to touch,” she laughs seeing Fareeha’s expression turn from its previously sleepy appearance to one with flushed cheeks and lips set in a tight line. She briefly wonders if Fareeha has stopped breathing.
“I...uh.”
“Stay, please. For me.”
Fareeha can’t say no to that.
---
Turns out, Angela is a cuddler.
When Fareeha wakes up the next morning she’s initially disoriented, waking up in a room that is larger and brighter than her own school-issued, four-square-foot box of a room. There’s a somewhat unfamiliar weight on her chest, and she glances down to a sleeping blonde sprawled across the bed. In sleep, all of Angela’s stress seems to fall away. Her normally lined forehead and creased brow is smooth. It makes Fareeha ever more grateful that she is not a med student.
It seems almost a sin to rouse her from such a serene sleep, so Fareeha lays staring at the ceiling, until Angela begins to stir some time later.
“Good morning,” Fareeha says, lightly kissing her forehead. Angela blinks blearily, and reaches for her glasses on the nightstand.
“S’not good morge ‘til coffee,” she grumbles, reaching then for her phone as she shifts off Fareeha, finally allowing the other girl to sit up. Her eyes widen when she sees the time.
“I’m sorry, are you late for a class?” Fareeha asks on seeing her distress. Angela quickly shakes her head slightly to ease Fareeha’s worries.
“Nei- no, no it’s not that. I just…” she pauses to stretch, the joints of her arms and neck popping, “I had a good night’s sleep. I haven’t slept that well in quite some time,” she stops to kiss Fareeha’s cheek, who’s looking more than pleased with herself, “I may just need to force you to stay over more often.”
The athlete smiles at that, albeit with slightly reddening cheeks, and they just lay there for another while longer, chatting away about nothing. Eventually though, Fareeha needs to get up and go to her sports therapy class. They stay in bed as long as possible, and Fareeha ends up cutting it very close as she leaves. She promises to call later, and Angela’s definitely up for more study sessions.
For now though, she hits the books alone, and is reading away for about an hour when she gets a text from Jesse. She tries to push down the nagging little disappointment in the back of her head as she opens his message.
He’s asking to meet her in their usual spot for coffee, and she perks up then, remembering she’d forgotten the cornerstone of her whole morning routine.
Fareeha had made her forget coffee.
She rushes out immediately after, determined to smooth this hiccup in her routine. She grabs a jacket off the back of her chair and pulls it on as she’s heading out the door.
The morning is brisk enough, but she doesn’t feel it under the zipped-up fleece.
Funny, Angela didn’t even think she owned a fleece.
She shrugs it off, putting it down to a side effect of her caffeine-deprived brain. She’s relieved when she finally reaches Starbucks and sees Jesse has managed to snag their favourite spot, and has even gone ahead and gotten her coffee. She approaches him with the brightest smile she can muster right now, but he just looks at her oddly.
“Is there something on my face?” She questions as she sits across from him, sinking into the cushioned chair. He raises a brow, almost disbelievingly.
“Naw, there’s nothin’ on yer face,” he quips teasingly, and takes a swig of his coffee before finishing, “Captain Amari.”
“I- what?”
He nods toward her chest, and Angela hurriedly glances down.
There, embroidered just above her right breast, the the University’s coat-of-arms, and just below:
Amari, Fareeha
Captain
Oh dear.
“I- I can explain,” she starts, but he raises a hand to cut her off.
“No explainin’ needed. I mean, if that didn’t tell me enough, you got a lil’ somethin’ right about here,” he points to a spot on his own neck corresponding with whatever is on Angela’s neck. Somewhat panicked, she pulls out her phone and opens the front camera, and there, just off the center of her neck, on the skin above her jugular.
There’s a hickey the size of Texas.
She’s going to kill that girl.
Jesse guffaws at her deer-in-the-headlights expression.
“I do gotta say Ange’, it’s about time. You two been dancin’ around each other for months now. So, how long you been keepin’ secrets from me?”
“About a month,” she admits, sheepishly.
“Well, seein’ as you two are all official now, I’d like to meet her for lunch,” he declares as he polishes off his drink.
Her blood runs cold.
“Jesse, no.”
***
Jesse yes.
Unfortunately for Angela, Jesse McCree has a tendency to get his way. Which is what brought them here, in the padded booth of what was once Angela’s favourite diner, but would henceforth and forevermore be known as: “The-place-we-were-that-time-Jesse-decided-to-give-Fareeha-the-”talk””
Angela is observing quietly as Fareeha enters the diner, spots them, and makes her way over with a small smile for Angela. The blonde smiles back briefly, then hisses venomously at Jesse.
“Not a single damn word, you discount wannabe cowboy, do you understand me? Not one word.”
He raises a brow, smirking, then pinches his thumb and forefinger and drags them across his lips. Zipped.
Fareeha takes the spot beside Angela, hovering uncertainly a few inches away. She’s aware of Angela’s boundaries, and she’s not sure how to act around her friends. So Angela takes her hand in her own under the table and tugs her closer slightly, trying to get her to bridge the gap. She figures Jesse will find something to tease them about anyway, so they may as well get comfortable.
“Jesse, isn’t it?”
He nods but doesn’t speak. Fareeha looks distinctly uncomfortable, and Angela frowns at him as she lightly squeezes Fareeha’s hand.
“I ah...we met once, didn’t we? You were in the library with Angela and Lena, I think-”
“What’s your game?” He cuts her off suddenly, leaning onto the table on his elbows and steepling his fingers in front of his face. He glares at Fareeha over them, and his mop of bangs flops forward so it’s covering his face slightly.
“What?” Fareeha asks, bewildered.
Beside her, Angela groans and buries her face in her free hand.
Here it comes.
“What’re your intentions with my best friend? Nothing inappropriate I hope. Wouldn’t wanna have to introduce you to my revolver too soon in a relationship.”
“Jesse, for fuck’s sake,” Angela moans from behind her hand.
Fareeha glances at Angela, then back to Jesse. Her face morphs into a grin wicked enough to give Jesse a run for it money.
“Oh no…”
“Well you see,” she begins, leaning forward and mirroring Jesse’s pose, “Angela doesn’t know this, but I’m actually a deranged and infamous serial killer. My modus operandi...taking beautiful blonde women with blue eyes out on dates. On the seventh date...that’s when I kill,” she explains in a stage-whisper. Her eyes dart mischievously to Angela who looks like she’s beginning to wonder why she ever agreed to this meeting in the first place. Actually, she looks like she’s wondering why she ever agreed to go on a date with Fareeha in the first place.
Fareeha, undeterred, pipes up, “how many dates have we had dear?”
“...five, no- six.”
Fareeha turns back to Jesse, grinning conspiringly.
“You’d best say your goodbyes,” she hisses, “I’m counting this as date number seven.”
Jesse looks at her, stone-faced for a time. Angela begins to squirm slightly under his scrutiny, but Fareeha meets his gaze, unflinching. Somehow, he manages to keep it up for an entire half a minute, before his facade cracks and he gives a low, long whistle.
“I like this one, Ange’, she can stay,” he says with a wink, and Angela just looks at him incredulously while she feels Fareeha chuckles soundlessly beside her.
She mumbles something about Jesse not being able to tell her who she can and can’t date, but her grumblings are cut off by the waitress coming by to take their orders. Their food arrives shortly after that, and Angela sits rather quietly while the other two chat away about...well Angela hopes are guns in a videogame or something. She really hopes it’s a videogame, because from the snippets of conversation she’s catching, it’s either that, or Fareeha’s going to try a bring an actual freaking rocket launcher into the bedroom.
---
Later that night, Fareeha’s over again, legs folded as she sits near the end of Angela’s bed, flicking idly through a medical journal she’d nicked off of Angela’s shelves. Angela had taken a momentary break from her studies, intending to sneak by Fareeha somehow to fetch another cup of coffee. She might not say anything, but she definitely always gave her a look anytime she went for her caffeine dosage any time past ten at night.
Fareeha glances up, as if she’d felt Angela’s gaze on her. She frowns.
“Oh no you don’t.”
“But I-” Angela begins to protest.
“No.”
Angela’s weight falls onto one hip petulantly. Fareeha smiles softly, and lightly grips Angela’s forearms to tug her into an embrace from her perch at the edge of the bed. The blonde slumps into Fareeha’s arms, who laughs and moves a hand to stroke the hairs at the back of Angela’s head.
“You should sleep, ya amar,” she says softly, before that same stupid grin she’d already seen too many times today graces Fareeha’s features.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to hang out with my best friend.”