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She’s wearing this amazing mauve lipstick and you’re wearing an ugly holiday sweater.
It’s a nondenominational holiday sweater, festooned with bits of tinsel and gently flashing LED lights, winter imagery knit and purled hatefully into every stitch.
Mauve is a color that comes to you. Through the Drift maybe, or from a memory of Jas holding up an issue of Vogue she checked out from the library. ‘Mauve, Rals, mauve. It’s a color. Say it with me. I don’t want you to grow up color illiterate like your brother, Yancy, the heathen.’
You feel a tug whenever she comes into a room you're in. It’s like in some ways she’s still in your head. There’s a part of you that’s always looking for her, but you’ll never drift again so you have to make do by going over to her, and putting a gentle hand on her hip. She puts her hands on you in turn, slipping her cold fingers under your shirt to press against your sides. She knows you’re ticklish, so she’s extra careful with how her fingers press against your skin. You feel like your heart is a balloon entering the atmosphere.
She lights you up. When the intern gestures frantically for you, you separate and make your way outside. You miss her already.
The talk show host is from the East Coast. It’s like Hollywood moved out all the way here and folded itself down to fit into the nooks and crannies of New England. It takes a little getting used to. It's a very beautiful. It's very sad.
The host has a brilliant white smile and she asks, ‘How does it feel to be back?’
Are you even really back? You lived in Anchorage for the best years of your life. You’ve only ever been this far East once.
‘Winter is so festive and cheerful. We appreciate the atmosphere here,’ Mako says smoothly. It doesn’t sound like like a lie when she’s saying it.
The host smiles at the camera and then her co-host presses you further, wants to know what it felt like the moment you realized you had saved the world. Maybe the faint amusement you detect from Mako is in the the tilt of her lips, but it could also be the Drift still tugging at the two of you, trying to bring you both back into an impossible alignment.
‘Are you happy?’
‘I’m happy,’ you reply. ‘I’m happy to be here during the holidays. It’s been good to see what we were fighting for. We’ve lost so much, so this is a nice reminder of what is still here. We want to continue to improve the world.’
When the interview is over, you head on home. You exchange the ugly sweater for your thick coat. Mako tries wiping her lipstick off on her hand while you wait for a cab, but it just leaves a smear of color on her wrist and her chin.
The cab driver gives you both looks like he thinks he knows what the two of your have been up to before he came to pick you up, but it’s so far from the truth that it’s laughable. You let him assume what he wants. Mako slides into the back with you and taps your ankle with her shoe when she crosses her legs. The two of you are in on the joke.
Your home is wreathed in death. It’s just temporary, a hotel room the shell of the PPDC have put you up in. This interview was one last hoorah to remind everyone what they’ve done, and they’re using the two of you as their poster children. Although, it might be better to think of yourselves as spokespeople. The war with the Kaiju might have started when you were children, but neither of you stayed children for long.
The two of you carry your most treasured possessions with you. Mako’s red shoes wrapped in yellow silk wrapped in one of your knit sweaters sits in the first drawer of the dresser. Your bundle of photos lay next to that. Next to those lay Stacker’s fountain pen long gone dry, Herc’s dog tags, one of Max’s chew toys, a map of HK with helpful annotations by the triplets, and a comb that Mako swears the Sasha’s shared.
‘They shared everything,’ she explained. She could have been talking about everything in general, everyone involved with anything, or she could meant the Sashas.
Your lay down and she lays down next to you. There are two queen beds in the room, but one remains staunchly unused. She puts her head on your shoulder and you put your face in her hair and breathe her in.
‘Are you really happy?’ she asks softly. Her lips brush your bare arms. You undressed before you got into bed. The only thing you had booked today was that morning interview. She’s still wearing her shirt, which is actually your shirt, but she’s left her pants on the floor next to yours. Her toes are very cold where they’re pressed into your calves.
It hits you then, like a frying pan to the face. ‘I’m happy where you are,’ you tell her. You just want her to know.
Mako kisses you slowly, like she has all the time in the world, like all the possibilities of every universe you’ve ever been in would have led her here. That’s how she kisses you, like you did anything to deserve something so good in your life. She runs her hands through your hair. She looks at you with such a softness to her expression that you almost can’t believe it.
Tomorrow, maybe you’ll rent a car and drive west. Drive west until you’re standing at the edge of the world and then maybe you’ll find a way back across the Pacific, all the way back to Hong Kong. Tomorrow, you want to wake Mako up for morning sex, slow and hazy in the early morning light, and then you’ll order breakfast on the PPDC's dime and head out into the cold. You’ll remind her to wear mittens and she’ll tie your scarf for you.
You should always bring your most precious people with you when you travel away from home.