Cessna’s sitting on the couch in the dark, watching the newest season of How to Get Away with Murder with a bowl of cereal in her lap, when the doorknob rattles violently. She looks up with a start (– it’s past 3am holy hell I'm going to get murdered while watching a show about murder –), but before she can panic, she makes out the sound of someone fumbling with his keys and swearing tiredly, and she exhales in relief and knows who it is right away.
“Someone’s home early,” she quips, turning back to the screen as the door finally swings open. L’yuta flips her off halfheartedly and dumps his backpack on the kitchen counter with a huff. “Early in the morning, that is. Hot date tonight?”
“Yeah, unidentified male cadaver. Innards are sooo hot,” he deadpans back, rubbing his face tiredly and squinting at the glow that Cessna’s currently engrossed in. She’s watching her show intently and shoving cereal into her mouth with an energy L’yuta wishes he still had after an entire day at the gross anatomy labs; he almost forgets the fact that she deals with children on a regular basis and that that same energy is probably the only thing keeping her alive for a job like that. “What are you doing up? Don’t you have work tomorrow?"
Cessna turns to wrinkle her nose at him. “It’s the weekend, silly. Little kids don’t go to school on Sundays, remember?” She takes another bite of cereal and taps her spoon on her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe you did, though, haha –”
L’yuta doesn’t bother to dignify that with a response and goes to get a glass of water instead. He knows she never really means it when she takes lighthearted digs at him for working hard, and if it isn’t hard work that’s gotten him to where he is now, he doesn’t know what else did.
They’re both working hard, really. He’s in his first year of medical school (self-explanatory right there), and Cessna’s picking up little volunteer shifts at the nearby kindergarten after her classes in a last-ditch effort to pad her extracurrics right before grad. He suspects that it’s also because she enjoys the fact that volunteers get to take part in the kids’ snack breaks, but he’s seen the way she treats them – he’ll never be able to tolerate children, but Cessna loves talking to them like they’re little adults, and they all look up to her as some role model of sorts. (Which he thinks is kind of a bad idea on the kids' end, honestly. He never mentions it to Cessna, but he thinks it’s hilarious that the kids think she's a shining example of Cool Adult.)
He doesn't know how she manages to stay functioning through all of it, though. It's only the middle of the term and he is already so tired; so, so tired.
A dull ache somewhere at the back of his neck nudges L'yuta from his increasingly tangential thoughts and reminds him just how exhausted he is, and he feels a desperate urge to sink into soft couch pillows and close his eyes. He puts his glass in the sink, walks over to where Cessna is hogging the entire couch, and makes little shooing motions at her, but she's too busy staring at her laptop screen to see him gesturing and doesn't budge.
He is definitely too tired for this shit.
He waits for the moment Cessna raises her cereal bowl to her lips and (quite literally) flops into the tiny couch, not caring that she's still firmly planted pretty much in the middle of it. She squawks indignantly and tries to kick him off, then quickly realizes it's pretty hard to kick someone when their entire body weight is on your lap.
"Augh, hell, you're heavy, get off," Cessna whines, jiggling a knee in a futile attempt to get him to move. L'yuta's face, however, is planted firmly in a soft couch pillow and he hasn't known bliss like this in forever so he can't be assed to reply with anything other than a slow drawling nnnnnnnah.
She sets her cereal bowl down precariously on the cushion between her hip and the couch arm and folds her arms. "You know, if you want to take part in this currently solo Netflix-and-chill, you can ask me nicely instead of trying to crush me to death."
The only response that comes is a lazy shrug. Cessna sighs in resignation and scratches his head gently, to which he makes a muffled noise that she thinks mostly sounds like content.
"Wow, you are just a big lazy cat, aren't you," she murmurs in mock awe, running a hand through his hair and scritch-scratching a little more for good measure. Out of the blue, she has this sudden mental image of a cat-eared L'yuta with a tail, and thinks that if he did have one he'd probably be swishing it lazily – it sends her into peals of laughter of the belly-shaking kind, and L'yuta just buries his face deeper into the couch pillow and tells her to shut up already god Cessna it's 4am.
L'yuta wakes up just like that on Sunday afternoon – with a cramp in his back and a hand that somehow, inexplicably, found its way into Cessna's half-empty bowl of squelchy cereal through the night – and wonders if there is a God.
(Cessna jerks a knee up and into his midsection in her sleep and he is very tempted to think otherwise.)
