Xuebing Du
@theartofmadeline
Cosimo Galluzzi
Sade Olutola
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Today's Document
todays bird
Monterey Bay Aquarium
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
almost home
JVL
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
trying on a metaphor
Discoholic 🪩
styofa doing anything
Not today Justin
#extradirty
Show & Tell
Peter Solarz
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Romania
seen from Venezuela
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
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seen from Netherlands
@tay0333
MASTERLIST 🤓
current work:
Soft Landing - Isabeau Levito x trans masc reader
Static & Blades - Alysa Liu x trans masc reader
writing:
Static & Blades - Alysa Liu x trans masc reader
future works:
Amber Glenn x trans masc reader
Ilia Malinin x trans masc reader
heyyyy guys, just to let you know IM ALIVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!
i’m sorry for not posting for a long ass time, life got really busyyy, i met someoneeee, and i kinda lost motivation to write….
i don’t know when i’ll finish or if ill finish the alysa fic 😞
thank you all for supporting me and my stories, that means lot to me, when and if i come back to write more stuff ill let you guys know!!
sorry again guys.
🫶🏻
Chapter 18 — Girls Only
——————————————————
The lunch is Amber's idea, which means it happens within forty eight hours of her deciding it should happen, because Amber Glenn has never once in her life had an idea and then waited a reasonable amount of time to execute it.
The text comes Monday morning.
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
amber 🖤: girls lunch
amber 🖤: tuesday
amber 🖤: the place with the good salads on fifth
amber 🖤: 12:30
amber 🖤: attendance is mandatory
isa 🌙: mandatory how
amber 🖤: mandatory in the sense that if you don't come i will be sad about it
isa 🌙: okay i'll be there
amber 🖤: alysa
alysa 🩵: i have training until 12
amber 🖤: 12:30 works then
alysa 🩵: amber
amber 🖤: 🙂
alysa 🩵: fine
alysa 🩵: 12:30
amber 🖤: perfect
amber 🖤: and just so we're all clear about the agenda
isa 🌙: amber no
amber 🖤: amber yes
amber 🖤: the agenda is: food, and details
alysa 🩵: i'm not giving details
amber 🖤: you literally texted us from his bed and called him a little freaky
amber 🖤: the details ship has sailed alysa
alysa 🩵: i'm regretting that text
isa 🌙: no you're not
alysa 🩵: no i'm not
alysa 🩵: 🩵
amber 🖤: tuesday 🖤
isa 🌙: tuesday 🌙
Alysa puts her phone down and looks at the ceiling of her apartment and thinks about what she is and isn't going to say on Tuesday.
She makes a list, internally.
Things she will say: some things.
Things she will not say: other things.
The line between them is clear in her head. Some things about Saturday night are hers and yours and don't belong in any other room, and she knows exactly which ones those are.
The rest she can work with.
Tuesday.
The place with the good salads is small and warm and has the specific energy of a lunch spot that takes food seriously without taking itself seriously, which is Amber's preferred category of restaurant. They get a corner table — Amber having arrived first and secured it with the strategic efficiency of someone who has been to enough post-competition lunches to understand the value of walls on two sides.
Isa is already there when Alysa arrives, slightly warm from training, hair still slightly damp at the ends. Amber has already ordered sparkling water for the table and is looking at the menu with the focus of someone who has already decided but is enjoying the process.
Alysa sits.
Amber looks up from the menu.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," Alysa says.
"Good training?"
"Good training."
"Good." Amber puts the menu down. "Now."
"Amber we haven't even ordered yet," Isa says.
"I can multitask," Amber says.
"Let her order first," Isa says, with the patience of someone managing a force of nature.
Amber picks the menu back up.
Alysa catches Isa's eye across the table.
Isa gives her the look of someone who is equally curious but has slightly more self-control about it.
Slightly.
They order.
The food comes faster than expected, which Amber takes as a personal sign from the universe that they should get on with it.
She puts her fork down.
Looks at Alysa.
"Okay," she says.
Alysa takes a sip of water.
"Okay," she says.
"Saturday night," Amber says.
"Saturday night," Alysa confirms.
"You texted us from his bed at 7am," Amber says. "And called him—"
"A gentleman ," Isa finishes, and then looks slightly surprised at herself for finishing the sentence, because she's his sister and she's trying to maintain a certain dignity about this.
"Yes," Alysa says.
"So," Amber says. "Details."
Alysa looks at her salad.
She thinks about the line she drew, the things on either side of it.
"Okay," she says. "But there are things I'm keeping."
"Obviously," Amber says.
"Some things are ours," Alysa says. "And they're staying that way."
"Understood," Amber says. "What are the non-ours things."
Alysa takes a breath.
"Okay," she says. "So. The night was—" she pauses, finding the word. "It was really good."
"We gathered," Isa says, gently.
"He was—" another pause. "He's very present. Like — when he's there he's completely there. He notices everything." She looks at the table. "You'd think that would be a lot. Being noticed like that. But it wasn't."
Amber is very still in the way she gets when she's listening properly.
"It felt like—" Alysa stops. "You know how he listens when you talk about something that matters to you? That thing he does where you can tell he's actually hearing it, not just waiting for his turn?"
"Yes," Isa says quietly.
"Like that," Alysa says. "But—" she gestures vaguely, which communicates everything without communicating anything specific.
Amber makes a small sound.
"He was gentle," Alysa says, and says it simply, the way she's learning to say things from him. "And then not, when—" she stops. "That's one of the things I'm keeping."
"Fair," Amber says immediately.
"Very fair," Isa says.
Alysa picks up her fork. Puts it back down.
"The Bubble Pop Electric thing," she says.
Both of them look at her.
"On the dance floor," she says. "That was—" the corner of her mouth does something. "That was me finding out something."
"What kind of something," Amber says.
"The kind where you realize the quiet person has a whole other—" she pauses. "Register. That they don't show everyone."
Isa presses her lips together very hard.
"Isa," Alysa says.
"I'm fine," Isa says. "I'm completely fine. Continue."
"He asked me to stay," Alysa says. "At the end of the night. Outside the club. Just — come home with me. Like that. No preamble."
"That's him," Amber says softly.
"I know that now," Alysa says. "He just says the thing. When he's decided something."
"Always has," Amber says.
Alysa nods.
"And then we got home and—" she looks at the table. "The apartment still had the candle and the flowers and the ramen bowls and it was—" she pauses. "It was a lot. In a good way. All of it in one night."
"The flowers he remembered from one sentence," Isa says.
"The ramen I practiced three times," Alysa says.
They look at each other across the table.
"You're good for each other," Isa says. It's not a new thing to say but she says it like she means it more now than she did before, which she does.
Alysa looks at her salad.
"I think so too," she says quietly.
Amber refills her water.
The restaurant does its lunchtime thing around them — unhurried, the clink of cutlery and the low noise of other conversations, the particular warmth of a Tuesday that has nowhere urgent to be.
"The morning," Amber says, after a moment. "You were still there at 7am."
"I was still there at 2pm," Alysa says.
Isa makes a sound.
"We had breakfast," Alysa says. "He made eggs. Standing at the counter because neither of us went to the table." She pauses. "I stole his toast."
"Obviously," Amber says.
"He pointed at me," Alysa says. "With the look."
"The look," Isa says. "The fond exasperated one."
"That one," Alysa confirms. "And then he said you're impossible and I said you like it and he said—" she stops.
Both of them wait.
"He said yeah," she says. "Just — yeah. Like he'd decided to actually say it instead of letting it sit implied."
The table is quiet for a moment.
"He doesn't do that," Isa says softly. "Confirm things out loud. Usually he just—"
"Lets you know other ways," Alysa finishes. "I know. That's why it—" she pauses. "That's one of the things I'm keeping too actually."
"You're keeping the yeah," Amber says.
"I'm keeping the yeah," Alysa confirms.
Amber nods like this is completely reasonable.
Because it is.
"The mug," Isa says, after a while.
Alysa looks up.
"Amber told me she told you," Isa says. "About the mug. Week two."
"Week two," Alysa says.
"Did you ask him about it?"
"He said the cabinet organization was inefficient," Alysa says.
Amber laughs — the sudden loud one.
"That's so—" she puts her hand over her mouth— "that's so him—"
"I know," Alysa says, and she's smiling too, the real one.
"What did you say," Isa asks.
"I kissed him," Alysa says simply.
"Good answer," Amber says.
"I thought so," Alysa says.
They eat for a while.
The easy quiet of people who are comfortable with each other, the food good, the afternoon unhurried. At some point Isa asks about training and they talk about the upcoming season for a while, the new programs, the particular pressure and freedom of a post-Olympic year, and it's easy, the way things are easy between the three of them now.
Then Amber says, casually, into a pause:
"Was he nervous."
Alysa looks up.
"At any point," Amber says. "Was he—"
"Amber," Isa says.
"I'm asking because I care," Amber says.
Alysa considers the question.
She thinks about Saturday night. The specific moments of it, the ones she's kept and the ones she's filed away for exactly this kind of question.
"At the start," she says, carefully. "A little. Not in a bad way." She pauses. "In the way of someone who—" she finds the word— "who cares about doing something right. For the other person."
Amber exhales something small.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "That's him."
"I know," Alysa says. "I told him to stop thinking so hard."
"Did it work," Amber says.
Alysa looks at her salad.
The corner of her mouth does something.
"Yeah," she says. "It worked."
Amber points at her. "That's one of the things you're keeping."
"That's absolutely one of the things I'm keeping," Alysa confirms.
Isa is quiet for a moment.
Then she says, carefully, in the way of someone choosing words with intention:
"He hasn't—" she stops. Starts again. "It's been a while. Since he let someone—" another stop. "He's careful about who he lets close. You know that."
"I know," Alysa says.
"This meant something to him," Isa says. "Saturday. Not just—" she gestures. "All of it. The whole night. I know my brother."
Alysa looks at her.
"I know," she says. "I could tell."
"Yeah?"
"The way he asked me to stay," Alysa says. "It wasn't—" she pauses, finding it. "It wasn't casual. He doesn't do casual. Everything he does is deliberate." She meets Isa's eyes. "He asked me to stay because he wanted me there. Not just for the night. For the morning. For the eggs and the record and the mug."
Isa's eyes do the thing.
"Don't," Amber says, to Isa.
"I'm not," Isa says, blinking.
"You're about to."
"I'm not—" a pause. "I'm a little bit."
"Isa," Alysa says, gently.
"I just—" Isa takes a breath. "He's my brother and he's happy and it's because of you and I'm—" she fans her face. "I'm fine. I'm completely fine."
"You're crying," Amber says.
"I'm misting," Isa says with dignity.
Alysa reaches across the table and puts her hand over Isa's.
Isa looks at her.
"I'm not going anywhere," Alysa says. Simply. The way she's learned to say things.
Isa turns her hand over and squeezes.
"Okay," she says quietly. "Good."
They stay at the table longer than the lunch requires.
The plates are cleared and the water is refilled and nobody makes a move toward the door because the afternoon is warm and the corner table is comfortable and there's nowhere any of them needs to be more than here.
At some point Amber leans back in her chair and looks at Alysa with the expression she has when she's about to say something that she's been holding for a while.
"For the record," she says. "And I say this as his self-appointed older sister."
"I know what you are," Alysa says.
"He has never—" Amber says carefully— "in the time I've known him, which is a long time, looked at anyone the way he looks at you."
Alysa is very still.
"I've seen him be kind to people," Amber says. "I've seen him be generous and patient and all the things he is. But the looking thing—" she shakes her head. "That's new. That's you."
The table is quiet.
"The way he looks at you," Isa says, soft, picking up the thread. "Like you're a frequency he found and doesn't want to lose."
Alysa looks at her water glass.
She thinks about the playlist.
Signal & static. Frequencies that find each other.
He named it that before he understood why.
"I know," she says quietly. "I see it."
"Good," Amber says. "Just wanted to make sure."
"I see it," Alysa says again, more certain this time. "And it's—" she pauses. "It's the same. From my side. It's the same."
Amber nods once.
Done.
She picks up her water.
"Okay," she says. "Good. That's all."
They leave eventually, the three of them, into the warm Tuesday afternoon.
On the pavement outside Amber hugs Alysa the way she hugs people she means it for — long, firm, not rushed.
"I'm really glad he came to pick up those two that day," Alysa says.
Amber pulls back. "You mean that your glad you decided to stay for dinner."
"The pasta was very good," Amber says.
"It really was," Alysa says.
Amber grins. Goes.
Isa hugs her next, the Isa way, slightly too tight, slightly too long.
"Isababy," Alysa says, which makes Isa pull back with an expression of delighted offense.
"You can't call me that," she says. "That's his thing."
"He calls you that," Alysa says. "I've absorbed it."
Isa looks at her.
"You've really settled in," she says.
"I have," Alysa says.
Isa smiles — the full one, the private one she has for things that matter.
"Good," she says. "You belong there."
Alysa looks at her.
Thinks about a mug in a cabinet.
A hook by the door.
A playlist with fifty four songs and still growing.
"Yeah," she says. "I think I do."
She texts you on the way home.
alysa 🩵: just left lunch
you: how was it
alysa 🩵: good
alysa 🩵: they asked for details
you: i assumed they would
you: what did you tell them
alysa 🩵: some things
you: and the rest
alysa 🩵: kept
you: good
alysa 🩵: amber cried a little
you: amber always cries
alysa 🩵: isa misted
you: isa always mists
alysa 🩵: they love you very much
you: i know
you: i love them too
A pause.
alysa 🩵: amber said you've never looked at anyone the way you look at me
You look at your phone.
A longer pause.
you: amber talks too much
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: is it true
You look at the message.
You think about a parking lot in April and a borrowed hoodie and a playlist that started with one sentence and grew into something neither of you planned but both of you chose.
you: yeah
you: it's true
Another pause.
Longer.
alysa 🩵: me too
alysa 🩵: from my side
alysa 🩵: same
You look at that word.
Same.
you: i know
alysa 🩵: you know
you: i notice things
alysa 🩵: 😭
alysa 🩵: 🩵
you: 🩵
you: come over tonight
alysa 🩵: i'll bring food
you: you don't have to—
alysa 🩵: i'm bringing food
you: okay
alysa 🩵: see you tonight
you: see you tonight
In the Blade Angels chat, twenty minutes later:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
amber 🖤: okay final thoughts on lunch
isa 🌙: she's good for him
amber 🖤: she really is
isa 🌙: and he's good for her
amber 🖤: equally
isa 🌙: equally
amber 🖤: also
amber 🖤: little freaky
isa 🌙: AMBER
amber 🖤: I'M JUST SAYING I'M PROUD
isa 🌙: he's my BROTHER
amber 🖤: and my little brother and i'm PROUD
isa 🌙: 😭
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: 🌙
signal & static. 54 songs. 2 contributors.
some things are kept.
the rest is theirs.
taglist: @canvascoloredin @yellowfellow004 @couchdweller @urwavvy
Chapter 17 — Morning After
——————————————————
The first thing you're aware of is light.
Not the sharp kind — the soft, early kind, the kind that comes through the curtains at the angle that means it's somewhere around seven and the city hasn't fully committed to the day yet. The second thing you're aware of is warmth. Specific, particular warmth, the kind that has a shape to it.
Alysa is tucked against your side, her head on your chest, one hand loose at your waist, breathing slow and even in the way of someone still mostly asleep. Her hair is everywhere. The outfit is not where it started in the evening.
You lie there.
You don't move.
You're very aware of not moving, of the specific weight of her against you, of the morning being exactly this and nothing else yet, and you think that this is — this is a new frequency. Something you didn't have a word for yesterday that you're starting to find the shape of now.
Pepper is on the end of the bed.
She looks at you.
You look at her.
She blinks, slow, and puts her head back down, which is her version of I told you so and also good morning simultaneously.
Alysa wakes slowly.
You feel it happen — the shift in her breathing, the small movement of her hand at your waist, the way she goes from entirely still to slightly present in stages, like a song coming in on a low frequency before it builds.
She doesn't move away.
She stays exactly where she is, which tells you something, which you file away warmly.
After a moment she tilts her head up.
She looks at you.
You look at her.
Her hair is entirely undone, her makeup from last night mostly gone, the morning version of her face which you have seen before but not like this, not from this specific angle, not with this specific context around it.
"Hi," she says. Her voice is low and slightly rough from sleep.
"Hi," you say.
She looks at you for a moment with the unhurried attention of someone who is not performing wakefulness, just existing in it.
Then the corner of her mouth does something.
"Good morning," she says.
"Good morning," you say.
She puts her head back on your chest.
You press your lips to the top of her head, slow, staying there.
Her hand tightens slightly at your waist.
Five minutes pass.
Maybe ten.
Neither of you speaks. The morning does its thing outside — the city starting up, distant and unhurried, the light through the curtains going from pale to slightly warmer.
Then you feel her move.
Not away — she shifts slightly, reaching for something, and you realize after a moment that she's picked up her phone from the nightstand.
You don't ask what she's doing.
You close your eyes and listen to the city and feel her warm against your side.
Alysa opens the Blade Angels chat.
She looks at the last messages — from last night, Amber's 🖤 and Isa's goodnight — and she looks at the time, which is 7:14am, and she looks at the ceiling of your bedroom, which she is looking at from a position she was not in yesterday morning.
She types.
She looks at what she's typed.
She sends it before she can think about it too much, which is, she's learning, the only way to do anything.
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
alysa 🩵: good morning
alysa 🩵: so
alysa 🩵: for the record
alysa 🩵: he’s really a gentleman
She puts the phone face down on the nightstand.
Looks at the ceiling.
Feels her face do something warm.
Picks the phone back up because she can already feel the notifications coming.
isa 🌙: ALYSA
isa 🌙: ALYSA LIU
amber 🖤: I'M AWAKE
amber 🖤: I WAS ASLEEP AND NOW I'M AWAKE
isa 🌙: are you
isa 🌙: are you texting us from
alysa 🩵: yes
isa 🌙: FROM HIS
alysa 🩵: yes
amber 🖤: ISA
isa 🌙: AMBER
amber 🖤: 🖤🖤🖤🖤
isa 🌙: 🌙🌙🌙🌙
alysa 🩵: can you both please be normal
amber 🖤: absolutely not
isa 🌙: not even a little
amber 🖤: wait go back
alysa 🩵: amber
amber 🖤: i'm asking for science
isa 🌙: amber that's my BROTHER
amber 🖤: i know and i'm PROUD of him
isa 🌙: 😭
alysa 🩵: i'm not giving details
amber 🖤: you don't have to give details the word gentleman said everything
isa 🌙: it really did
alysa 🩵: okay i'm putting my phone down now
amber 🖤: wait wait wait
amber 🖤: is he awake
alysa 🩵: he's right here
isa 🌙: YOU'RE TEXTING US WITH HIM RIGHT THERE
alysa 🩵: he has his eyes closed
amber 🖤: alysa he absolutely does not have his eyes closed
alysa 🩵: he
alysa 🩵: okay he's smiling
alysa 🩵: he can hear the notifications
isa 🌙: HE KNOWS
amber 🖤: HE KNOWS WHAT YOU'RE SAYING
alysa 🩵: i'm putting my phone down
alysa 🩵: goodbye
isa 🌙: ALYSA—
amber 🖤: WAIT WE HAVE QUESTIONS—
alysa 🩵: 🩵
She puts the phone face down.
You have, in fact, not had your eyes closed for the last two minutes.
You've been lying there with the particular expression of someone who can hear notification after notification arriving on a phone six inches from their head and has a reasonably good idea of what's being said.
Alysa puts the phone down.
There is a moment of silence.
Then she tilts her head up to look at you.
You look back at her.
"You heard that," she says.
"I heard the notifications," you say. "I didn't read the messages."
"That's a very careful distinction."
"I'm a careful person."
She looks at you.
"You're smiling," she says.
"I'm not."
"You are. You've been smiling for two minutes."
"I've had my eyes closed."
"[Name]."
You open your eyes fully.
She's looking at you from close up, the morning light on her face, her hair everywhere, and she's trying to look stern and failing completely because the corner of her mouth is doing the thing.
"A gentleman ," you say.
She closes her eyes.
"I'm going back to sleep," she says.
"You're not."
"I am."
"Alysa."
She opens one eye.
You look at her
She opens both eyes and looks at you with the expression from last night — the warm one, the specific one — and then she reaches up and kisses you, brief and morning-soft, which is different from all the other ways she kisses you and is its own thing entirely.
When she pulls back she's close.
"Good morning," she says again, like it's a second attempt at it, like the first one didn't count because there were Blade Angels notifications involved.
"Good morning," you say.
She settles back against your chest.
Your arm around her.
Pepper at the foot of the bed.
The city outside.
You stay in bed longer than either of you plans to.
This is not unusual for a Sunday morning but it is unusual for this particular Sunday morning, which has a different texture than other Sunday mornings, which has the specific quality of a day that has been given something new to hold.
She asks you questions.
Not the serious kind — the easy, getting-to-know-you-differently kind, the kind that only makes sense in the particular intimacy of a morning like this one. She asks about your first bass. She asks which song on the playlist you added because of her, specifically, not because it fit the playlist in general but because it fit her.
You tell her.
She's quiet for a moment.
"Which one," she says.
You tell her which one.
She picks up her phone and opens the playlist and finds it and presses play, and you lie there together listening to it in the morning light, her head on your chest, and it sounds different now than it did when you added it, the way songs sometimes sound different in the context that made you find them.
"Yeah," she says, when it ends. "Okay."
"Okay," you say.
"That's me," she says. Not a question.
"That's you," you say.
She puts the phone down.
Doesn't say anything for a moment.
Then: "the crane wives one is you."
You look at the ceiling.
"Week one," you say.
"Week one," she confirms. "You said goodnight and I went home and found a song that sounded like something that hadn't finished yet." A pause. "It still does."
"Yeah," you say. "It does."
Her hand moves at your waist, slow.
"I'm going to add something this morning," she says. "When I find the right one."
"Take your time," you say.
She tilts her head up.
Looks at you.
"You always say that," she says.
"I always mean it," you say.
She kisses you — the real one, slow and warm, her hand moving up to your jaw — and you bring her closer and the morning opens up around you and Pepper makes a sound of resigned acceptance from the foot of the bed.
Eventually you get up.
Not because you want to — you don't, particularly, and she doesn't either, which she communicates by staying exactly where she is when you move.
"Coffee," you say.
"Mm," she says, which means yes please and also come back.
"I'll come back," you say.
She opens one eye.
"I didn't say that out loud," she says.
"You didn't have to," you say.
She closes the eye.
You go make coffee.
The kitchen is — it's a little bit of last night still.
The empty ramen bowls you didn't get around to washing. The candle burned to nothing, the wax set. The orange flowers still in the glass, slightly drooped now but still orange, still themselves.
You stand in the kitchen in the morning quiet and look at all of it.
The slightly uneven table. Two places set. One month of something that started in a parking lot in April and became a playlist and became thursdays and became saturday mornings in a kitchen with wildflowers and now has become this — a Sunday morning with two coffee mugs and the orange flowers and someone still in your bed who knows which song on the playlist is her.
You make the coffee.
You put the mugs out.
You wash the bowls because it's something to do with your hands while the coffee brews, and while you're washing them you hear her get up — the soft sound of her moving through the apartment, the particular way of someone who has been here enough times that she knows where things are.
She appears in the kitchen doorway.
In one of your shirts.
Which she has apparently found, which you don't own a lot of, which means she went looking for it, which is — you look at her and feel something that doesn't have a word yet but is warm and specific and entirely right.
"Hi," she says, leaning against the doorframe.
"Hi," you say.
She looks at the kitchen. The bowls drying on the rack. The coffee. The orange flowers.
"You washed the bowls," she says.
"There were two of them," you say.
"You didn't have to."
"It took forty seconds."
She shakes her head. The fond version.
She crosses the kitchen and stands beside you, leaning against the counter, and you hand her the mug she uses — the one that has been hers for three weeks — and she wraps both hands around it and takes a sip and makes the small sound she makes when coffee is right.
You lean back against the counter beside her.
Your shoulders touching.
Looking at the same kitchen.
"Good morning," she says, for the third time. "The real one. The coffee one."
"The coffee one," you agree.
She leans her head briefly on your shoulder.
You press your lips to her hair.
Outside the city is doing its Sunday thing — slower than the rest of the week, quieter, the particular pace of a day that has nowhere urgent to be.
Breakfast is simple.
Eggs and toast and the last of the fruit, standing at the counter because neither of you has moved toward the table, because the counter feels right this morning, side by side with the coffee and the orange flowers in the periphery.
She steals a piece of your toast.
You point at her.
She looks entirely unrepentant, which is exactly right.
"You have your own," you say.
"Yours looked better," she says.
"They're identical."
"Mine looked worse by comparison," she says, and bites into yours, and you look at her and feel the thing again — the warm, specific, unnamed thing — and look back at your plate.
"You're impossible," you say.
"You like it," she says.
"Yeah," you say, which is new — you usually don't confirm it, usually let it sit implied — and she looks at you at the directness of it, small and surprised.
"Yeah?" she says.
"Yeah," you say. Simply.
She looks at her toast.
Her plate.
The small smile she's trying to contain.
"Okay," she says. Soft.
After breakfast she finds the record from the shop.
The one you found for her — the artist she mentioned once, three weeks ago, one sentence in passing. She picks it up from where it's been sitting by the player since the day you bought it, and she looks at it, and she looks at you.
"Put it on," you say.
She does.
The apartment fills with it — the particular sound of vinyl, slightly warm, slightly imperfect, better for it — and she comes back to the couch and sits close, tucked into your side, and you have your arm around her and the Sunday morning is long and unhurried and entirely yours.
You don't talk much.
You don't need to.
The record plays.
Pepper migrates from the bedroom to the couch, apparently having decided the bedroom portion of the morning is over, and installs herself across both of you with her usual authority.
Alysa strokes her with one hand.
Her other hand is over yours on her waist.
At some point she picks up her phone.
You feel her find the right song before she adds it — the particular stillness of someone listening carefully, making sure — and then the notification comes through on your phone on the coffee table.
alysa added a song to signal & static.
You reach for your phone.
You open it.
You read the title.
You lie there for a moment with it.
It's a morning song. The specific kind — not about mornings exactly, but with the quality of one. Warm and slightly unhurried, the kind that sounds like waking up somewhere good and not wanting to leave it.
You look at her.
She's looking at the record player, not at you, with the expression she has when she's added something and is waiting to see if you understand it.
"Yeah," you say, quiet.
She looks at you.
"This one's right," you say.
The full smile. The real one.
"Good," she says.
You add one back.
She reads it.
Goes still for a moment.
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: 🩵
you: 🩵
She stays until the afternoon.
Not because either of you decides she's staying until the afternoon — it just happens the way Sunday mornings happen when they're good, one hour becoming the next without anyone making a decision about it.
At some point you end up back in bed, not for any reason except that the bed is comfortable and the record is still going and neither of you wants to be anywhere else. She's tucked against your side again, the position from this morning, which has apparently become the position, which you are entirely fine with.
She's almost asleep when her phone buzzes.
She ignores it.
It buzzes again.
She picks it up with the resigned energy of someone who knows who it is.
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
amber 🖤: okay it's been seven hours
amber 🖤: are you still there
isa 🌙: amber stop
amber 🖤: i'm just checking in
isa 🌙: you're nosy
amber 🖤: i'm INVESTED
alysa 🩵: yes i'm still here
amber 🖤: I KNEW IT
isa 🌙: 🥹🥹🥹
amber 🖤: okay how are you
alysa 🩵: really good actually
alysa 🩵: we had breakfast and put a record on and now we're just
alysa 🩵: here
amber 🖤: you're just HERE
amber 🖤: on a sunday
amber 🖤: together
alysa 🩵: amber
amber 🖤: i'm normal i'm normal
isa 🌙: alysa
alysa 🩵: yeah
isa 🌙: is he happy
alysa 🩵: yeah
alysa 🩵: i think so
alysa 🩵: isa he made me coffee in my mug
alysa 🩵: he just. has a mug that's mine now
alysa 🩵: he didn't say anything about it he just handed it to me
isa 🌙: 🥹
isa 🌙: that's him
isa 🌙: that's exactly him
amber 🖤: he's been doing that since week two by the way
amber 🖤: i noticed the mug
alysa 🩵: week TWO
amber 🖤: the man claimed a mug for you before you were even official
amber 🖤: i didn't say anything because i thought it would scare you
alysa 🩵: it doesn't scare me
alysa 🩵: it's
isa 🌙: yeah
isa 🌙: it is
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: 🌙
alysa 🩵: okay i'm putting my phone down
alysa 🩵: for real this time
amber 🖤: okay okay go
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: 🌙
alysa 🩵: 🩵
She puts the phone down.
Lies there for a moment.
Then she turns her head to look at you.
"The mug," she says.
"What about it," you say.
"Amber says you've had it as mine since week two."
You look at the ceiling.
"The placement made sense," you say.
"Week two," she says.
"The cabinet organization was inefficient," you say.
"[Name]."
"It's a practical decision."
"It's a mug you put aside for me before we were together," she says.
You say nothing.
She looks at you for a moment.
Then she does something she hasn't done before — she reaches up and puts her hand on your jaw and turns your face toward her, gentle, and looks at you from close up with everything she's feeling entirely visible, no performance of it, just the thing itself.
"I have a mug," she says, quietly, like she's still getting used to it. "In your kitchen."
"You do," you say.
"And a hook," she says. "For my jacket."
"The hook was already there," you say.
"But my jacket's on it."
"Yeah," you say. "It is."
She looks at you.
You look at her.
"Week two," she says again, soft.
"I noticed things," you say. Simply. "I always notice things."
She shakes her head.
The wonder version.
Then she kisses you — not the morning-soft kind, not the slow kind from last night, something in between, warm and certain and unhurried, her hand still at your jaw.
When she pulls back she stays close.
Forehead to yours.
"I noticed things too," she says. "I just showed it in songs."
"I know," you say. "The crane wives one."
"Week one," she says.
"Week one," you say.
You look at each other.
The record has finished — the room is quiet, just the city outside and the afternoon light and Pepper somewhere at the foot of the bed, diplomatically present.
"Stay for dinner," you say.
She smiles.
"You keep asking me that," she says.
"You keep saying yes," you say.
"I do," she says.
"So," you say.
"So," she says.
She settles back against your chest.
Your arm around her.
The afternoon light through the curtains.
"Yeah," she says, quiet. "Okay. I'll stay."
signal & static. 54 songs. 2 contributors.
the mug is still in the same spot.
it always will be.
taglist: @yellowfellow004 @couchdweller @canvascoloredin @urwavvy
Chapter 16 — One Month
——————————————————
The text comes on a Tuesday.
You're in the middle of a lab session, headphones in, working through a set of results that are almost cooperating, when your phone buzzes against the desk.
alysa 🩵: okay i need to know something
alysa 🩵: and i need you to answer without asking why
You look at the message.
you: that's never a good opener
alysa 🩵: isa said the same thing
alysa 🩵: just answer
you: okay
alysa 🩵: that time you said you could eat japanese food every day for the rest of your life
alysa 🩵: what specifically were you thinking of
You stare at the message.
You said that approximately six weeks ago, in the car after the coffee place, as a passing comment in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely. You didn't think she was paying particular attention to it.
you: alysa
alysa 🩵: you said no asking why
you: i said i wouldn't ask why i didn't agree to that
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: tonkatsu ramen
you: the kind with the soft boiled egg
alysa 🩵: okay
alysa 🩵: thank you
alysa 🩵: that's all i needed
you: alysa what are you—
alysa 🩵: 🩵
She leaves you on read.
You put your phone down.
You look at the lab results.
You think about tonkatsu ramen and the specific tone of that conversation six weeks ago and the fact that she was apparently listening to all of it.
You try to focus on the results.
You mostly fail.
She doesn't explain for three days.
Which is new — she's not usually a secret keeper, not with you, the communication between you has always been direct in the way of two people who found each other's frequency early and didn't want to mess with it.
But she says nothing, and when you bring it up she says you'll see with the expression Isa uses when she's being strategic, which is a comparison you keep to yourself because she'd find it either funny or offensive and you're not sure which.
On Friday she texts:
alysa 🩵: tomorrow
alysa 🩵: come to yours at 6
alysa 🩵: actually no don't come to yours
alysa 🩵: go to isa's at 6 and come back at 7
You stare at the message.
you: you want me to leave my own apartment
alysa 🩵: for one hour yes
you: alysa
alysa 🩵: please
you: why
alysa 🩵: because i need the hour
you: for what
alysa 🩵: [Name] i will tell isa to physically keep you there
you: she would do that
alysa 🩵: she's already agreed to
You look at the ceiling.
you: fine
alysa 🩵: thank you 🩵
alysa 🩵: oh also
alysa 🩵: wear something nice tomorrow night
you: how nice
alysa 🩵: nice nice
you: alysa
alysa 🩵: 🩵🩵🩵
In the Blade Angels chat, simultaneously:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
alysa 🩵: isa i need your help
isa 🌙: ANYTHING
alysa 🩵: i want to do something for him
alysa 🩵: for one month
isa 🌙: 🥹🥹🥹
amber 🖤: what do you need
alysa 🩵: okay so
alysa 🩵: he mentioned once that he could eat japanese food every day
alysa 🩵: tonkatsu ramen specifically
alysa 🩵: i want to make it for him
isa 🌙: ALYSA
amber 🖤: wait you cook??
alysa 🩵: i'm going to learn
alysa 🩵: i have a week
isa 🌙: i love you so much
alysa 🩵: i need someone to keep him out of the apartment for an hour while i set up
isa 🌙: done
isa 🌙: i will physically sit on him if necessary
alysa 🩵: please don't do that
isa 🌙: i'll think of something more dignified
amber 🖤: alysa this is the sweetest thing
amber 🖤: he mentioned it ONCE
alysa 🩵: he remembers everything about everyone
alysa 🩵: i wanted to show him i do too
The chat goes quiet for a moment.
isa 🌙: 🥹
amber 🖤: 🥹
isa 🌙: okay
isa 🌙: operation tonkatsu ramen is a go
amber 🖤: i want to be involved
alysa 🩵: you can help me practice
amber 🖤: I'M IN
The week that follows involves three practice attempts at tonkatsu ramen in Alysa's apartment, Amber providing running commentary from the kitchen island, one minor broth incident that nobody is going to discuss, and Isa on video call talking Alysa through the soft boiled egg timing with the focused energy of someone who has absorbed your cooking knowledge through years of proximity.
By Thursday the broth is right.
By Friday the egg is right.
By Friday night everything is right and Alysa stands in her own kitchen looking at a bowl of tonkatsu ramen that she made herself, from scratch, and feels something she doesn't have a word for yet but that sits somewhere between proud and certain.
She texts Amber.
alysa 🩵: i think it's ready
amber 🖤: send photo
alysa 🩵: [image]
amber 🖤: ALYSA
amber 🖤: that looks INCREDIBLE
alysa 🩵: yeah?
amber 🖤: he's going to be so—
amber 🖤: alysa he's going to be so
alysa 🩵: okay
alysa 🩵: okay good
alysa 🩵: 🩵
Saturday.
You go to Isa's at six like you were told, which you do with the particular resignation of someone who has decided to trust the process.
Isa opens the door with the expression of someone who knows exactly what's happening and is very pleased about it.
"Hi love," she says.
"What is she doing in my apartment," you say.
"Come in," she says. "I made tea."
"Isa."
"The tea is getting cold."
You go inside.
You drink the tea.
You play one game of MTG which Isa wins, which you're fairly certain she arranged somehow, and at 6:58pm your phone buzzes.
alysa 🩵: okay
alysa 🩵: you can come back
You stand up.
Isa is already smiling.
"Well?" you say.
"Well what," she says.
"Are you going to tell me what's happening."
"No," she says pleasantly. "Go home, love."
The hallway smells different.
You notice it before you've even opened the door — something warm, something that takes you a moment to place, and then you place it and you stop in the hallway for a second because it's — it's the specific smell of a kitchen being used properly, of a broth that's been going for a while, of something that takes time.
You open the door.
Pepper is at the entrance but she's looking behind her, toward the kitchen, which means her attention is already elsewhere.
Alysa is in your kitchen.
In your kitchen, in a soft blue dress you haven't seen before, her hair down, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, doing something at the stove with the focused expression she gets when she's concentrating on something that matters to her.
The table — your small, slightly uneven table — has two places set. Properly set. There are flowers in the glass you use for water, small and orange and yellow, and there's a candle that she must have brought because you don't own candles.
You stand in the doorway.
She turns around.
She sees your face.
Something in her expression goes warm and slightly nervous simultaneously, which is rare for her, which means this cost something.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," you say.
"You're early."
"It's 7:02."
"You're exactly on time." She turns back to the stove. "Sit down. It's almost ready."
You don't sit down.
You cross the kitchen and come up behind her, and she feels you before you touch her, going slightly still, and you put your hands on her waist and press your lips to the back of her shoulder, slow.
"[Name]—"
"What is this," you say, quiet, into her shoulder.
"Dinner," she says. "Sit down."
"Alysa."
She turns in your hands.
She looks up at you with the expression — the full one, the unguarded one — and her hands come up to your chest.
"One month," she says. Simply. "You remember everything about everyone. I wanted to show you I do too."
You look at her.
"Tonkatsu ramen," you say.
"With the soft boiled egg," she says. "Isa talked me through the timing on video call. Amber supervised three practice attempts." A pause. "There was a broth incident on Wednesday that we don't talk about."
You look at her for a long moment.
"You practiced," you say.
"Three times," she says.
"For me."
"For you," she confirms, plain and simple, the way you say things.
You bring one hand up to her face.
She closes her eyes for a second.
You kiss her — soft, slow, the kind that says everything you're not saying out loud, which is considerable, which she seems to understand completely.
When you pull back she opens her eyes.
"The broth," she says.
"Right," you say.
"Sit down," she says.
This time you do.
The tonkatsu ramen is extraordinary.
Not because it's perfect — though it's close, closer than it has any right to be for someone who learned it in a week — but because of what it is. Because she heard one sentence six weeks ago and filed it away and then spent a week practicing it and brought it to your kitchen with flowers and a candle and the soft boiled egg timed exactly right.
You eat it without saying much for a moment.
Just eating.
She's watching you across the small table, slightly nervous, which you notice.
"Well," she says.
You look up.
"It's the best thing I've eaten in a month," you say.
She blinks.
"That's — you make everything I eat," she says.
"I know," you say.
She stares at you.
Then she laughs — the sudden one, the real one — and shakes her head and picks up her chopsticks and you eat dinner together at the slightly uneven table with the candle and the orange flowers and the city doing its late July thing outside, warm and unhurried.
Halfway through dinner she says, casually, like it's already decided:
"I was thinking after this we could go out."
You look up. "Out."
"Dancing," she says. "There's a place Amber mentioned. Good music, not too big." She pauses. "I thought we could ask Isa and Amber. Make a night of it."
You think about this.
You are not, historically, a going-out person. You go places with purpose — the coffee place, the rink, the record shop. Dancing is a different category.
You look at her.
She's looking at you with the expression that knows exactly what she's asking and has decided to ask it anyway.
"Okay," you say.
She blinks. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," you say. "Text Isa."
She already has her phone out.
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
alysa 🩵: okay so
alysa 🩵: he said yes to going out tonight
isa 🌙: WAIT
isa 🌙: HE SAID YES??
alysa 🩵: he said yes
amber 🖤: wait you got [Name] to agree to going OUT
alysa 🩵: to dancing yes
amber 🖤: dancing
amber 🖤: our [Name]
amber 🖤: said yes to dancing
alysa 🩵: amber
amber 🖤: I'M PROCESSING
isa 🌙: she really fed him tonkatsu ramen and he became a different person
alysa 🩵: 😭
amber 🖤: okay OKAY
amber 🖤: i'm calling the girls
alysa 🩵: wait what girls
isa 🌙: amber no
amber 🖤: amber YES
amber 🖤: it's a saturday night in july alysa we are NOT going with just four people
alysa 🩵: how many people are you thinking
amber 🖤: a reasonable number
isa 🌙: amber's reasonable number and actual reasonable number are very different things
amber 🖤: i'm thinking
amber 🖤: me, you, isa, [Name]
amber 🖤: and maybe ilia and madison and evan and ellie
alysa 🩵: oh that's perfect actually
isa 🌙: wait ilia's in the city?
amber 🖤: got here thursday
isa 🌙: AMBER
amber 🖤: I JUST FOUND OUT
amber 🖤: okay i'm texting everyone
amber 🖤: dress code: nice but make it fun
amber 🖤: we leave at 10
isa 🌙: 🌙
alysa 🩵: 🩵
You read all of this from across the table.
Alysa looks up from her phone.
"Amber is inviting people," she says.
"I gathered," you say.
"Ilia, Madison, Evan and Ellie," she says. "Is that okay."
You think about a room full of people, most of whom you don't know. You think about how that would have felt six months ago, before the rink, before the playlist, before all of it.
You think about Alysa beside you in a room.
"Yeah," you say. "It's okay."
Getting ready is its own event.
Alysa does her makeup at your bathroom mirror, which she's done before — the spare things she keeps here including, now, a small bag of things for exactly this — and you get changed in the bedroom and come back out in dark jeans and a black shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and she looks at you in the mirror.
Goes back to her makeup.
"Nice nice," she says, which was what she told you.
"You said nice nice," you say.
"You listened," she says.
"I always listen," you say.
She meets your eyes in the mirror.
"You look good," she says. Simply.
"You're not done yet," you say.
"I don't need to be done to tell you that," she says.
You sit on the edge of the bed and watch her finish, which is something you didn't expect to find as interesting as you do, the small careful ritual of it, the way she does it with the same focused attention she gives to things that matter to her.
When she turns around she's — she's in low waist jeans and a top, but she's done something with her hair and the makeup and the overall effect is—
You look at her.
"Okay," you say.
"Okay?" she says.
"You look like a song," you say. "The kind that knows something."
She stares at you.
"You can't say things like that," she says.
"I just did," you say.
She walks across the room and takes your face in her hands and kisses you, which smudges her lipstick slightly, which she fixes in the mirror while you stand behind her with your hands on her waist watching her fix it.
"You're going to be very distracting tonight," she says, to your reflection.
"Good," you say, to hers.
Isa arrives at your door at 9:45 in a silver dress and the expression of someone who has been vibrating with excitement since the tonkatsu ramen text.
She hugs Alysa first, long and warm.
Then she turns to you.
She looks at the flowers on the table. The candle still burning. The two empty bowls.
Her eyes go slightly bright.
"Hi isababy," you say.
"Hi love," she says, and hugs you, and squeezes the way she always squeezes.
"I'm okay," you say, into her hair.
"I know," she says. "I know you are."
She pulls back and holds your face in her hands for a second.
Then she smiles.
"You're happy," she says.
"Yeah," you say. "I really am."
She pats your cheek once.
"Okay," she says, switching registers. "Amber is downstairs with everyone and I refuse to know how she organized this so fast."
There are eight of them by the time the Ubers sort themselves out.
You, Alysa, Isa, Amber — and then Ilia, who greets Isa and Amber with the ease of people who have shared competitive ice for years, and Madison, Evan, and Ellie, who arrive in a collective energy of people very ready for a Saturday night. They greet Alysa and Isa with the warmth of people who have texted in group chats for years and are now in the same physical space.
Amber introduces you to the ones who don't know you yet as my little brother without further explanation, which is exactly right.
Ilia shakes your hand and says "Isa talks about you constantly" with the matter-of-fact warmth of someone who has been briefed and approves of the briefing.
"Good things?" you say.
"Mostly," he says, which makes you like him immediately.
You end up in the back of the second Uber with Alysa, her hand in yours, the city going by outside, the night warm and open in the way of late July.
She leans close.
"You okay?" she says, quiet, just for you.
"Yeah," you say.
"You don't have to stay if it's too much."
"I know," you say. "I want to be here."
She looks at you.
"With you," you clarify.
She squeezes your hand.
Leans her head briefly on your shoulder.
The city goes by.
The place Amber chose is exactly what she said — good music, not too big, the kind of venue that takes itself seriously about sound but not about everything else. The lighting is low and warm, the floor already moving when you get there, the bass audible before you're fully through the door.
You feel the bass in your chest.
That's always good.
Amber disappears into the room like she was designed for it. Madison and Ellie follow, and Evan is already moving toward the bar, and Ilia and Isa are in conversation about something that has made Isa laugh before they've reached the floor. The group disperses naturally, the way groups do when everyone is comfortable.
You and Alysa find a space at the edge of the floor.
She turns to face you.
"I should tell you," she says, close enough to be heard over the music. "I'm a good dancer."
"I assumed," you say.
"Are you."
"I have no idea," you say honestly. "I don't do this much."
She tilts her head. "Do you feel the music."
"Always."
"Then you'll be fine," she says, and takes your hand, and pulls you in.
She's right that she's a good dancer.
She's also right that feeling the music is most of it — the rest is just letting your body do what it does when you're playing, following the rhythm, being in relation to what's around you rather than thinking about what comes next.
You're not bad at this.
You're actually not bad at this at all.
Alysa is close, moving with the ease of someone who has spent her whole life understanding what her body can do, and you have your hands on her waist and she has hers at your shoulders and it's — it's not so different from the ice, actually. The reading of something and responding to it. The being in it together.
She looks up at you and something in her expression says she's thinking the same thing.
"Physics," she says, over the music.
"Everything's frequencies," you say.
She laughs — the sudden one, the real one — and closes the distance between you, and you pull her closer, and somewhere across the room Amber is dancing with Madison and Ellie, and Ilia is doing something that impresses even Isa, and the music does what good music does.
Then the song changes.
You feel it before you register what it is — the shift in the room's energy, something in the bass, something that the DJ has decided about this particular moment in this particular night. And then the opening comes through the speakers and Alysa goes very slightly still in your arms for exactly one second.
Bubble Pop Electric.
You know the song. Of course you know the song — you know music the way you know frequencies, from the inside.
You look at her.
She looks at you.
Something in her expression has shifted — not gone anywhere, not become something else — just. Shifted. Like a key change. Like the same frequency at a different register.
She holds your gaze for a moment.
Then she turns.
Her back presses to your chest, slow and deliberate, and your hands find her waist without a decision being made, and she starts to move with the music and you move with her, and the song does what the song does — that particular pulse of it, warm and low and entirely purposeful.
The room keeps going around you.
You're not particularly aware of the room.
She moves with the ease of someone who knows exactly what she's doing, which she does, which is — that's — you bring her slightly closer, your hands firming at her waist, and she leans back into you and there is nothing ambiguous about any of this.
gonna speed it down and slow it up in the backseat—
She goes down slowly.
And then up.
Slow and deliberate, the length of it, against you, and you stay very still for a moment because you are making decisions about how to exist in your own body right now and movement is not on the table yet.
She turns her head slightly.
Just enough to look at you from the side.
Her expression is — she knows exactly what she's doing.
You bring your head down close to her ear.
"Alysa," you say.
Just her name.
She turns to face you, slow, still close, still in the space between you, and she looks up at you with the expression that has the warmth in it and something else now, something that has been building since the kitchen and the outfit and the lipstick smudge and all of it accumulated into this specific moment on this specific dance floor.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," you say. Your voice comes out lower than usual.
She looks at you for a moment.
Then she takes your hand and keeps dancing.
But something has shifted.
You both feel it.
Neither of you says anything about it.
Midway through the night Isa finds you at the bar.
She appears at your side, silver dress, slightly flushed from dancing, with the expression of someone who saw the Bubble Pop Electric moment from across the room and is being extremely mature about it.
"Hi," she says.
"Don't," you say.
"I wasn't going to say anything," she says.
"You were."
"I was going to say," she says carefully, "that she cooked for you. Tonkatsu ramen. Three practice attempts."
You look at the floor.
At Alysa, dancing with Ellie now, the blue dress and the warm light, the full ease of her.
"I know," you say.
"She texted me after each practice," Isa says. "She was so determined to get the egg right."
"She got it right," you say.
"I know," Isa says. "I talked her through it." A pause, softer. "You've always been the one who pays attention. Who does the things." She looks at you. "She does too. She just shows it differently."
"I know," you say.
"Good," she says.
She pats your arm once.
Picks up her drink.
Goes back to the floor.
You find Alysa when the song changes again.
She's at the edge of the floor, slightly flushed, her hair a little undone from how it started, and she looks up when you approach and her face does the thing — the warm immediate thing, the one that's just for you.
Except tonight there's the other thing in it too.
The thing from the dance floor.
Still there.
Still growing, slow and certain, the way things grow between you.
You take her hand.
She comes easily.
You're close, moving with the slower song, and she looks up at you and the expression is fully unguarded now — everything in it, the month of it, the tonkatsu ramen and the playlist and the record shop and the bad days and the good days and the Bubble Pop Electric moment that neither of you has addressed yet.
"One month," you say, quiet.
"One month," she says.
"The ramen was perfect," you say.
"Third try," she says.
"Third try counts," you say.
She looks at you.
You look at her.
The thing between you is not something you need to name right now. It's just — present. Warm and certain and building.
You press your lips to her temple, slow.
She closes her eyes.
It's past midnight when the group starts to fracture in the natural way of nights that have gone long and good. Evan has somewhere to be. Ellie and Madison are getting food. Ilia and Isa are deep in a conversation that shows no signs of ending but has migrated to a corner booth, which means it's probably fine.
Amber finds you and Alysa near the door.
She looks between you with the perception of someone who saw the dance floor and has been filing things away all night.
"You two heading?" she says.
"Yeah," you say.
She looks at Alysa. Something passes between them — quick, wordless, the language of people who know each other well.
Alysa nods, small.
Amber smiles.
She hugs you — long, firm, chin on your shoulder.
"Bubs," she says.
"Bubba."
"Good night," she says.
"Yeah," you say. "Really good."
She pulls back. Looks at you once more with the expression she has when she means something completely.
"🖤," she says, out loud, which is such an Amber thing to do that you almost laugh.
"🖤," you say back.
Outside, the city is warm and dark and quiet in the way of past-midnight July.
The others are still inside or dispersed into their own nights. It's just the two of you on the pavement, the music muffled now through the walls, the air warm on your skin after the heat of the venue.
Alysa is beside you.
Close.
The thing from the dance floor is still there between you. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's just — waiting, patient, the way the real things tend to wait.
You look at her.
She looks at you.
"Come home with me," you say.
Not do you want to come home or you can stay if you want. Just — come home with me. Offered plainly, the way you offer things you mean completely.
She looks at you for a moment.
The warm late night around you.
The thing between you, present and certain.
"Okay," she says.
Simple. No hesitation.
"Okay," you say.
You take her hand.
You walk.
The Uber ride is quiet.
Not the comfortable quiet of your usual evenings — something different. Something with more in it. You're aware of her beside you in a way that is specific and warm and not entirely new but feels new tonight, feels like something that has been building all evening and has not stopped building.
Her hand is in yours.
Her thumb moves once, slow, across your knuckles.
You look at the city going by outside and feel it in your chest, low and certain, the frequency of something that knows where it's going.
Your apartment is quiet when you get home.
Pepper appears at the door, takes one look at both of you, and exits the room with the discretion of a cat who has excellent instincts.
The candle on the table has burned down to nothing.
The orange flowers are still there.
You close the door.
The city is outside, distant, warm.
In here it's just the two of you and the low light and the thing that has been building since the kitchen and the dance floor and the walk home, patient and certain and entirely present.
She turns.
She looks at you in the low light of the apartment, the low waist jeand and top and her slightly undone hair and everything from tonight still in her expression, and you look back at her and there is nothing in either of you that is uncertain about this.
You cross the room.
She meets you halfway.
Your hand finds her face, slow, the way it always does, tilting her up toward you, and she comes, easy, and you kiss her — not the quick kind, not the certain kind, not even the slow kind from the couch weeks ago.
Something else.
Something that has the dance floor in it and the tonkatsu ramen and the one month and all forty-nine songs on the playlist and everything you've been to each other since a parking lot in April.
She kisses you back the same way.
Her hands in your shirt, then at your jaw, then moving, and yours finding her waist and staying there a moment before—
You pull back just enough to look at her.
She looks up at you, close, eyes slightly dark, entirely present.
"Hi," she says. Quiet.
"Hi," you say.
You look at each other for a moment.
Everything in that moment.
Then you take her hand.
And you walk down the hall together.
signal & static. 52 songs. 2 contributors.
still growing.
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
Chapter 15 — Unplanned
——————————————————
It starts because of rain.
Not a dramatic rain — not the kind that makes plans impossible and forces decisions. Just the steady, grey, this-is-happening-all-day kind that shows up in late June sometimes and makes the city feel smaller and closer and like staying inside is not a retreat but a choice.
You wake up to it.
The sound of it against the window is the first thing, before the light, before full consciousness — that particular rhythm of rain on glass that your brain has filed under good since childhood. You lie there for a moment just listening.
Pepper is on your chest.
Your phone says 8:12am.
Your phone also has a message from 7:54am.
alysa 🩵: it's raining
alysa 🩵: practice got moved to tomorrow
alysa 🩵: i have a whole day of nothing
You look at the message.
Look at the rain.
Look at Pepper, who is looking at you with the slow blink of someone who has already decided how this day should go.
you: come over
you: i'll make breakfast
The reply comes before you've put the phone down.
alysa 🩵: i'm already on my way
you: you texted me before i was awake
alysa 🩵: i was hoping you'd say that
you: alysa
alysa 🩵: 🩵
alysa 🩵: see you soon
She arrives at 8:47am.
In the time between her message and the buzzer you've made coffee, started on breakfast — eggs, bread, the good butter, fruit from the bowl on the counter — and changed out of the shirt you slept in into a different shirt which is the same level of casual but cleaner and you are not examining that decision.
Pepper is at the door.
You press the intercom.
She comes through the door in a raincoat that has actually done its job, mostly, except for her hair which is slightly damp at the ends and curling in the way that happens when it gets wet, which you have not seen before and which is — you file it away. You're always filing things away.
"Hi," she says, shaking the rain off her coat.
"Hi." You take the coat from her and hang it on the hook — next to her jacket, which has lived there for three weeks — and when you turn back around she's closer than you expected, still slightly rain-damp, smiling at you with the morning version of her smile which is softer than the daytime one, less guarded, the one she has before the day has asked anything of her yet.
She reaches up and kisses you.
Good morning in the language you've developed for it — warm, unhurried, her hand flat against your chest, and you bring one hand up to her jaw and stay there for a moment longer than strictly necessary because it's raining and there's nowhere to be and you can.
When she pulls back she looks at you with her eyes still slightly closed.
"You made coffee," she says.
"I made coffee."
"I could smell it from the hallway."
"The walls are thin."
"Or the coffee is very good."
"Both," you say, and she smiles and steps past you into the kitchen, and you stand there for a moment before following her because you needed the moment.
Breakfast is eggs the way you make them — slow, in butter, with more black pepper than most people would use — and toast and fruit and two mugs of coffee that you both drink standing at the counter because the stools are further away and neither of you has moved toward them.
Outside the rain keeps going.
It's comfortable in the particular way of early mornings with someone you don't have to perform for — slightly undone, quiet, the day not yet asking anything. She's in the oversized cream sweater again, the one she's worn to your apartment three times now, and her hair is still slightly damp and you think she's never looked more like herself than she does right now, at 9am in your kitchen in the rain, stealing fruit from the bowl with the casualness of someone who lives here.
"What do you want to do today," she says.
"Nothing specific," you say.
"Good," she says. "Me too."
You look at each other.
"We could go somewhere," she says. "Later. If the rain stops."
"It won't stop," you say.
"Probably not." She takes a sip of coffee. "That's also fine."
"Yeah," you say. "That's also fine."
The morning is slow in the best way.
You end up on the couch with the playlist on low and the rain against the window and Pepper distributed across both of you with the democratic impartiality of a cat who has decided you are collectively her people. Alysa has her legs across your lap, which happened gradually, one shift at a time, until they were just there and your hand was just resting on her ankle and neither of you made a decision about it.
She's reading something on her phone — not the Blade Angels chat, something else, an article or a post, you're not sure. You're not doing anything specific. You're watching the rain and thinking about the lab in the loose way you think about things when you're not trying to think about them, the kind of thinking that sometimes produces the best ideas.
At some point you turn your head and just look at her.
She feels it.
She looks up from her phone.
"What," she says.
"Nothing," you say.
"You're doing the noticing thing."
"I'm always doing the noticing thing."
"What are you noticing."
You look at her for a moment.
"Your hair does something when it gets wet," you say.
She reaches up self-consciously. "It curls."
"I know," you say. "I like it."
She looks at you.
Something in her expression does the warm thing, the unguarded one.
"You can't just say things like that," she says.
"Why not."
"Because—" she stops. Looks back at her phone. Looks back at you. "Because I don't have a good answer for it."
"You don't need an answer for it," you say. "I'm just telling you."
She shakes her head slightly.
You smile at the rain.
Midmorning she migrates.
Not dramatically — one shift at a time, the same way the legs happened — until she's beside you instead of across from you, tucked into your side with her head against your shoulder and your arm around her because that's where your arm ended up and neither of you has moved it.
The rain keeps going.
The playlist moves through something slow and unhurried.
You press a kiss to the top of her damp hair without thinking about it, the way she kissed yours weeks ago, before you decided to, and you feel her go slightly still and then settle, and her hand finds the front of your shirt and holds it loosely.
"That's mine," she says, quiet.
"What is."
"That." A pause. "The hair thing. I did it first."
"You did," you agree.
"And now you're doing it."
"Is that a problem."
She tilts her head up to look at you from close up, which is an angle you've come to know well, all the things in her expression visible from here.
"No," she says. "It's not a problem."
You look at each other for a moment.
Then she reaches up and kisses you — properly, her hand moving from your shirt to your jaw, the kind of kiss that has the morning in it and the rain and the playlist and the eggs you made her and everything accumulated before it, and you turn toward her and bring her closer and she comes, easy, the way she always comes toward you when you reach for her, like there's no hesitation in it anywhere.
When you pull back she stays close.
"Hi," she says, which is what she always says.
"Hi," you say.
Pepper makes a sound of mild displeasure at the disruption and reinstalls herself more firmly across both of you as punishment.
Alysa laughs into your shoulder.
You press another kiss to her hair, deliberate this time.
She lets you.
Lunch happens because you get up to refill the coffee and look in the fridge and realize it's past noon.
"Lunch," you say, from the kitchen.
"What is it," she calls from the couch.
"Whatever you want."
"You keep saying that."
"I keep meaning it."
A pause.
"Soup," she says. "If there is any."
There is. There's always soup — you make it in batches on Sundays, different kinds, and it lives in the fridge in containers with the date written on the lid in your handwriting, which Alysa has mentioned twice that she finds unreasonably charming.
You heat it without saying anything about the charming comment, because it made you feel something and you didn't know what to do with it yet.
She appears in the kitchen doorway while it's heating, sock feet on the floor, arms crossed loosely, watching you the way she watches you in kitchens.
"Can I do anything," she says.
"Bread's in the cupboard above the—"
"I know where it is," she says, and moves past you to get it, and her hand trails briefly across your back as she passes, light and easy, the kind of touch that isn't trying to do anything except acknowledge that you're there, that she's moving through your space and you're in it.
You stand at the stove and feel it for a moment after her hand is gone.
She cuts the bread the way you cut it — thicker than most people, which she picked up from watching you, which you notice and don't say anything about.
You eat at the kitchen table this time, facing each other, the rain still steady against the window behind her. It's the kind of lunch that doesn't need to be anything — just food and the easy back and forth of two people who have found the rhythm of each other.
She tells you about a conversation she had with her coach this week. About the upcoming season, the programs, the particular pressure of the cycle after an Olympics when everything resets and you have to find new reasons.
You listen the way you listen — completely, without interrupting, letting her get to the thing she actually means which is usually a few sentences past the thing she starts with.
"I think I'm scared," she says, at the end of it. "That it won't feel the same. That the thing I had going into Milano won't—" she pauses. "That I won't find it again."
"What was the thing," you say.
She thinks about it.
"Certainty," she says. "I felt certain about what I was doing. Every element, every program. Like I knew exactly what it was and why." She turns her cup in her hands. "I don't feel that yet for this season."
"Yet," you say.
She looks at you.
"You said yet," you say.
A pause.
Something in her face shifts.
"Yeah," she says. "Yet."
"It'll come," you say. "You're not the kind of person who loses the thing. You're the kind who finds it on a different frequency each time."
She's quiet for a moment.
"You sound very sure," she says.
"I've been paying attention," you say. Simply.
She looks at you across the table.
The rain against the window.
The bread between you.
"Okay," she says quietly. "Okay."
After lunch you end up back on the couch and she ends up with her back against your chest and your arms around her and the playlist on and the rain still going and it is — it is exactly nothing and exactly everything simultaneously.
Her hands are over yours, loosely, fingers laced through yours on her stomach.
"This okay," you'd said, when you settled.
"Yes," she'd said, immediately, the way she says yes to the things she's been waiting to be asked.
Now she's quiet.
You press your lips to the side of her head, slow, staying there a moment.
She tilts her head back slightly.
You press another to her temple.
Her hands tighten over yours.
"[Name]," she says.
"Yeah."
"Nothing," she says. "Just — yeah."
You understand.
You press one more to her hair and stay there, your chin resting on her head, and she relaxes back into you and you close your eyes and the rain keeps going.
Mid-afternoon it stops.
Not gradually — the way rain sometimes stops here, all at once, like a decision.
You're both half asleep when it happens and the sudden quiet wakes you both slightly, the absence of the rain more noticeable than the rain was.
Alysa stirs.
"It stopped," she says.
"Mm."
A pause.
"We could go somewhere," she says. "Now that it's stopped."
"We don't have to."
"I know." She turns slightly to look at you. "Do you want to."
You look at the window. The city outside, washed clean, the particular pale gold of post-rain afternoon light.
"Yeah," you say. "Actually."
You walk because it seems like the thing to do after a day of rain — the city is clean and quiet in the specific way it gets after, the streets slightly steaming in the warmth, the light doing something good.
You don't have a destination.
You just walk.
She's beside you, close enough that your arms brush every few steps, and at some point — a corner, a slight crowd, a moment of navigation — your hand finds hers and stays there. Not decided. Just arrived.
She looks down at your joined hands.
Looks up at you.
Doesn't say anything.
Keeps walking.
You find a record shop.
Not looking for it — you just turn a corner and it's there, small and slightly cluttered, the kind that has been in the same spot for thirty years and will probably be there for thirty more. The window has a handwritten sign and a display of covers that someone chose with actual care.
You both stop.
Look at it.
Look at each other.
"Yeah," she says, before you've said anything.
You go in.
It's the kind of shop that has a specific smell — vinyl and paper and something slightly warm from the lights — and a person behind the counter who looks up when you come in and goes back to what they're doing, which is the right instinct.
You separate naturally.
Not by decision — you just follow different threads, different sections, and end up a few feet apart browsing in the easy way of two people who are comfortable not being attached at every moment.
You find things and bring them to each other.
She brings you a record and holds it up with a look that says I found this and thought of you without saying any of those words. You take it and look at it and it's exactly right — she's been following the thread long enough that she knows your taste the way she knows the playlist, from the inside.
You bring her something in return.
She looks at the cover. Looks at you.
"How did you know I'd like this," she says.
"You mentioned the artist once," you say. "Three weeks ago. You said you heard a song of theirs at the rink and couldn't find the album."
She stares at you.
"That was one sentence," she says. "In passing."
"I remember things," you say.
She looks at the record.
Looks at you.
Reaches up and kisses you in the middle of the record shop, brief and warm, her free hand finding the front of your jacket.
The person behind the counter doesn't look up.
You buy both records.
On the walk back the light is doing the post-rain evening thing — gold and low, the kind that makes everything look slightly more itself than usual. She's beside you, close, her hand in yours, the record bag between you.
At some point she leans her head briefly against your shoulder while you're walking, just for a moment, just because she can, and then straightens back up and keeps walking like it didn't happen.
You squeeze her hand.
She squeezes back.
Back at the apartment you put one of the records on — hers, the one you found for her — and it fills the space the way good music fills a space, like it was always supposed to be there.
She's standing in the middle of the living room listening to the first track with her eyes closed and her head slightly tilted and you stand in the kitchen doorway and watch her do it.
She's not performing it.
She's just listening.
Really listening, the way you taught her — choosing it, being in it, letting it be what it is.
You watch her and think about frequencies and how far she's come down the thread from the person who said I've never chosen music just for the feeling of it.
She opens her eyes.
Finds you in the doorway.
"It's good," she says.
"Yeah," you say. "It is."
She crosses the room.
Doesn't stop until she's close, her hands finding your waist, and she looks up at you with the full warmth of everything today — the rain and the soup and the record shop and the walk and all of it accumulated in her expression.
"Today was good," she says.
"Yeah," you say. "It was."
"We didn't plan any of it."
"No."
"I like that," she says. "The unplanned days with you."
You look at her.
You bring one hand up and push the still-slightly-damp hair back from her face, slow, and she closes her eyes for a second at the touch the way she does when it catches her off guard, and then opens them again.
"Me too," you say.
She reaches up and kisses you — the slow kind, the one that has everything in it, her hands moving from your waist to your back and yours finding her face, tilting her up toward you, and the record plays in the background and the city outside is gold and washed clean and Pepper is somewhere behind you being diplomatically uninvolved.
When you pull back she stays close.
Forehead against yours.
Eyes closed.
"Stay for dinner," you say.
"I was going to anyway," she says.
"I know," you say. "I'm asking."
She opens her eyes.
Smiles — the real one, the full one, the one that doesn't know it's beautiful.
"Yes," she says. "Okay. Yes."
She stays for dinner.
She stays after dinner.
She stays until the record has played through twice and the city has gone dark outside and the playlist has taken over from the record and the evening has become the kind that neither of you wants to be the one to end.
At some point she's lying with her back against your chest again, your arms around her, and she's almost asleep — you can feel it in the weight of her, the way her breathing has gone slow and even — and you press your lips to her hair one more time, soft, staying there.
"Stay," you say. Quiet. Not a demand. Just — offered.
A pause.
"Okay," she says. Already mostly asleep. "Okay."
You reach over and turn the lamp off.
The city does its nighttime thing outside.
Pepper settles at your feet.
The playlist plays on low, something she added last week, something that sounds like exactly this.
You close your eyes.
In the morning you wake up first.
She's still there, real and warm, her hair damp-curled again from the shower she took at some point in the night with the spare things she's started keeping here without either of you announcing it.
You lie there for a moment.
You think about unplanned days and record shops and the way she listened to the music with her eyes closed in the middle of your living room.
You think about how the best things tend to be the ones that didn't have a plan.
You get up carefully, slow, trying not to wake her.
You go make coffee.
You put two mugs out.
signal & static. 49 songs. 2 contributors.
taglist: @yellowfellow004 @couchdweller @canvascoloredin @urwavvy
Chapter 14 — Low Frequency
——————————————————
There are bad days and there are bad days.
You know the difference by the time you wake up. It's not always something you can point to — not a trigger, not an event, not a reason that would make sense explained out loud. Sometimes it's just the weight of being inside yourself, the particular grey that settles at the edges of everything and makes ordinary things feel like they require more than you have.
You know how to manage it. You've been managing it for years — the ice when you can, the bass when you can't, the quiet when you need it, Isa when all of those stop working. You have a system. The system works most of the time.
Today the system is not working.
You've been in bed longer than you should be. Not sleeping — just lying there, Pepper on your chest, the morning light coming through the curtains at the wrong angle for how you feel, too bright, too certain about the day being fine when it isn't.
Your phone has three messages.
One from Isa — a photo of something Amber did at training that she documented for you, no text, just the image, because she knows when you need things that don't require a response.
One from your lab partner about something that can wait.
One from Alysa, from forty minutes ago.
alysa 🩵: good morning 🩵
You look at it.
You put the phone face down.
You lie there for a while longer.
Here is the thing about bad days.
You don't perform them. You never have — not for Isa, not for Amber, not for anyone. You don't send distress signals or make the people around you responsible for the weight of it. You manage it, quietly, in the particular internal way of someone who has always been more comfortable holding things than asking to be held.
Which means Alysa doesn't know yet.
She knows the system exists — you told her, in pieces, the way you tell her most things. She knows about the ice, the bass, the Isa 8am texts. She knows what bad days look like from the outside. She saw one, early on, before she was yours and you were hers, and she skated beside you and didn't ask you to explain it and you filed that away as one of the first true things you knew about her.
But she hasn't been in one with you yet.
Not like this.
Not the kind where you go quiet in a way that isn't peaceful, where the grey is thick enough that being in your own head is genuinely uncomfortable and yet the idea of having to explain that to someone feels like more than you can do.
You pick your phone back up.
You look at her message.
You put it down again.
She texts at noon.
alysa 🩵: hey
alysa 🩵: no pressure, just checking in
You stare at the ceiling.
She texts again at 1:30.
alysa 🩵: i'm around if you need anything
alysa 🩵: or not around if you need that
You close your eyes.
The thing about those messages — the thing that gets through the grey in a way most things aren't managing today — is that she isn't asking for anything. She isn't asking you to explain or respond or be okay. She's just. Telling you she's there. Leaving the door open without standing in the doorway.
You know the difference.
You've always been able to tell.
You pick up the phone.
you: bad day
You send it before you think about it too much, which is the only way you were ever going to send it.
The reply comes in under a minute.
alysa 🩵: okay
alysa 🩵: do you want company or quiet
You look at those two options.
She didn't ask what's wrong. Didn't ask if you're okay, which you're obviously not, which makes the question redundant. Didn't offer solutions. Just — company or quiet. The two real options. The ones that actually matter.
You think about the apartment. The grey edges. Pepper, who has not left your side all morning, which means she's clocked it too in the way she always does.
You think about Alysa on the couch three weeks ago, her hand in your hair, the quiet of it.
you: company
you: but i'm not going to be good at talking today
alysa 🩵: that's okay
alysa 🩵: i'll be there in twenty minutes
alysa 🩵: do you need anything
you: no
you: just
A pause. You're not sure how to finish the sentence.
you: just come
alysa 🩵: i'm already on my way
She arrives in eighteen minutes.
You've managed to get off the bed and onto the couch, which felt like a significant achievement, and Pepper has migrated with you, and you're sitting there in the particular stillness of a bad day when you hear the buzz of the intercom.
You press it without getting up. You've given her the door code — when that happened you're not entirely sure, but it happened somewhere in the last few weeks, the same way the mug happened and the jacket on the hook happened, quietly and without ceremony.
You hear the door.
You hear her put something down — bag, probably, whatever she grabbed on her way out — and then she's in the doorway of the living room, looking at you, and she's still in her training clothes which means she came straight from the rink which means she didn't go home first.
You notice this.
You don't say anything about it.
She looks at you for a moment — taking you in, the way she does, reading the things you don't say — and then she crosses the room and sits beside you on the couch. Close. Not touching yet, just close, giving you the choice of it.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," you say. Your voice sounds slightly wrong. A little flat, a little far away, which is how you sound on bad days and which you can't do anything about.
She doesn't comment on it.
She just sits.
Alysa has been thinking about this since the message.
Not anxiously — she doesn't do anxious the way some people do, she's learned to move through uncertainty with something close to patience — but carefully. She's been thinking about what you needs and what she knows and what the gap is between those two things.
She knows the system. She knows the ice, the bass, the Isa texts. She knows that you manage things quietly and internally and don't perform the hard days for anyone.
She knows that you texted her today.
She knows what that means, specifically, for someone who has never once in the time she's known yoy sent a distress signal without deliberate intention. Bad day. Two words. The asking of them probably cost more than they look like they cost.
She knows she can't fix it.
She has never been someone who tries to fix things that can't be fixed — skating taught her that, the hard way, the difference between a problem and a condition. A condition you manage. You show up for it. You don't pretend it isn't there and you don't try to make it into something smaller than it is.
So she sits.
She lets the apartment be quiet.
After a few minutes your hand finds hers on the couch, not reaching so much as arriving, and she closes her fingers around it and doesn't make anything of it.
They sit like that for a while.
It's twenty minutes before either of you says anything.
"I don't always know why," you say. Into the quiet, not quite at her, just — out. "That's the part that used to bother me most. When there's no reason."
"Yeah," she says.
"It's better than it used to be," you say. "I've had a lot of practice."
"I know."
"It just—" you stop. "It makes everything require more. Even things that are easy usually."
She doesn't say like what or such as or try to inventory the cost of it. She just nods, once, small.
"Okay," she says.
That's all.
You look at your joined hands.
"I wasn't going to text you," you say.
"I know," she says.
"I almost didn't."
"I know that too."
You glance at her. She's looking at the window, the city, not at you, which is the right instinct — you can say things more easily when you're not being looked at directly on days like this.
"I'm glad I did," you say.
She squeezes your hand once.
Doesn't say anything.
Doesn't need to.
She stays.
She doesn't make a production of it — doesn't announce she's staying, doesn't ask if that's okay, just. Stays. At some point she gets up and makes tea, which she's watched you make enough times that she knows where everything is, and she brings two mugs back without asking if you want one because she already knows.
She puts something on — not the playlist, not music, just a film, something easy, something that doesn't require tracking a plot closely. You don't ask her to. She just finds it and puts it on and sits back down beside you, close enough that your shoulders touch, and Pepper migrates from the cushion to her lap within minutes which is a betrayal you don't have the energy to address.
You watch the film without really watching it.
The grey is still there. It doesn't go away because she's here — that's not how it works, and she seems to understand that it's not how it works, which is the thing. She's not here to fix it. She's just here.
The distinction matters more than you can say.
Midafternoon she asks: "are you hungry."
You think about it honestly. "A little."
"What do you want."
"I don't know."
She's quiet for a moment.
"Is there stuff here," she asks. "Can I make something."
You think about the fridge. "There's eggs. Bread."
"Okay," she says, and gets up, and you listen to her move around the kitchen — the particular sounds of someone who is comfortable in a space, knows where the pan is, knows the temperament of your stove — and something about the normalcy of it, the sound of someone making you food without any ceremony, loosens something in the grey.
Not much.
But something.
She comes back with eggs on toast, simple and exactly right, and sits back down and puts the plate in front of you and picks up her own and watches the film and doesn't say eat or you need to eat or anything that would make it a thing.
You eat.
It helps, a little.
The way small things help on bad days — not solving it, just making it slightly more manageable. One degree less grey.
"Thank you," you say.
"Mm," she says, which means you don't have to thank me without making you feel bad for doing it.
Late afternoon.
The film has ended and neither of you has put something else on and the apartment is doing the thing it does in the long summer evenings — the light going slow and golden, the city audible but distantly, the particular peace of a Friday that has nowhere it needs to be.
You're lying down now, the length of the couch, your head in her lap again, and her hand is in your hair again, and the grey is not gone but it has — thinned, somehow. Not because of anything she's done specifically. Because of the accumulated weight of her just being here, unhurried, not asking the day to be different than it is.
"Can I ask you something," she says.
"Yeah."
"Does it always last a day," she says. "Or does it sometimes go longer."
You appreciate the question. The specificity of it — not are you okay or does it get better but the practical shape of it, the thing that would actually help her understand.
"Varies," you say. "Usually a day. Sometimes two." A pause. "Rarely longer than that now."
"What helps most," she says. "When it's longer."
"Ice," you say. "And not being asked to explain it."
She nods. You feel it.
"Okay," she says.
"And Isa, sometimes," you say. "Just — her being nearby. We don't have to talk."
"Like today," she says.
"Like today," you confirm. A pause. "You're good at that. The not talking."
"I've had practice," she says. "Long training days. You learn when words don't help."
"Yeah," you say. "Exactly like that."
Her hand moves slow through your hair.
"I'm not going to always get it right," she says, carefully. "How to be here for this. I might say the wrong thing sometimes or try to fix something that isn't fixable."
"I know," you say.
"I just want you to know I'm trying to learn," she says. "What you need. Specifically."
You close your eyes.
You think about the two options she gave you in the text. Company or quiet. The eggs on toast without ceremony. The film she put on without asking. The hand in your hair that doesn't want anything back from you.
"You're doing well," you say. "For a first one."
She's quiet for a moment.
"First of probably many," she says, and it isn't sad — it's just true, and she's saying it like she knows that, like she's already decided that the many are something she's here for.
"Yeah," you say. "Probably."
"Okay," she says.
"Okay," you say.
Her hand keeps moving.
The city does its golden evening thing outside.
She texts Isa at 5pm, from the couch, with her free hand.
She doesn't think about whether to. She just does.
alysa 🩵: hey
alysa 🩵: i'm with him
alysa 🩵: just wanted you to know
Isa replies in two minutes.
isa 🌙: thank you for telling me
isa 🌙: how is he
alysa 🩵: okay i think. quieter than usual
alysa 🩵: we've just been here
isa 🌙: that's exactly right
isa 🌙: that's what he needs
isa 🌙: you don't have to do anything else
alysa 🩵: i know
alysa 🩵: i figured
isa 🌙: 🥹
isa 🌙: alysa
alysa 🩵: yeah
isa 🌙: thank you
isa 🌙: genuinely
alysa 🩵: he texted me
alysa 🩵: that was the hard part. i just showed up.
isa 🌙: you don't know how much that means
isa 🌙: that he texted
alysa 🩵: i think i'm starting to
isa 🌙: 🌙
isa 🌙: text me if you need anything
alysa 🩵: i will
alysa 🩵: 🩵
She puts her phone down.
Looks at the window.
Looks at you — eyes closed, breathing slow, not asleep but somewhere close to the edge of it, the particular stillness of someone whose body has finally decided to rest.
She keeps her hand moving.
She doesn't go anywhere.
You wake up and don't know exactly when you fell asleep.
The light from the window is different — later, softer, the gold gone to a pale grey that means early evening. Pepper is somewhere by your feet. The apartment is quiet.
Alysa is still there.
You feel her before you fully remember where you are — the warmth of her, the steadiness of her, her hand no longer moving but still resting in your hair, and when you open your eyes the first thing you see is her looking at the window with the unguarded expression, the one she gets when she thinks you're not watching.
You watch it for a moment.
Then she feels you looking and glances down.
"Hi," she says quietly.
"Hi," you say. Your voice is different — clearer, less flat, the particular texture of someone who slept through something and came out the other side slightly lighter.
"How long was I out," you say.
"About an hour."
You process that.
"Sorry," you say.
"Don't apologize," she says. "You needed it."
You look at the ceiling for a moment.
The grey is still there but it's thinner now. Genuinely thinner, not just managed. The sleep helped. The hour of her hand in your hair before the sleep helped. The eggs on toast and the film and the two options — company or quiet — all of it, accumulated, helped.
"Better," you say, answering the question she hasn't asked.
She exhales something small.
"Good," she says.
You sit up slowly, and she lets you, and you end up side by side the way you usually end up, her legs tucked under her, your shoulder against hers, looking at the window together.
"You stayed," you say.
"You asked for company," she says simply.
"I fell asleep on you."
"You needed to sleep."
"Alysa."
She looks at you.
"Thank you," you say. And you mean it the way you mean the things that cost something to say — completely, without decoration.
She holds your gaze.
"You texted me," she says. "That was the hard part. I just showed up."
You look at her.
She looks back.
"It wasn't nothing," you say. "The showing up."
"No," she says. "But it wasn't hard either." A pause, something careful and true in it. "I want to be where you are on the hard days. That's not a burden. That's just — where I want to be."
The apartment is very quiet.
Pepper makes a small sound from the end of the couch.
You reach over and take her hand.
You don't say anything else because there isn't anything else that needs to be said, and she knows that, and she laces her fingers through yours and looks back at the window, and the city does its early evening thing, slow and unhurried, and you sit there together in the thinning grey until it goes.
Later, she adds a song to the playlist without telling you.
You see the notification and open it and lie there for a long time looking at the title.
It's a quiet song. The kind that knows something about being beside someone in the dark without needing to fix the dark. The kind that understands that presence is its own language.
You add one back.
She doesn't reply with words.
Just:
alysa 🩵: 🩵
You put your phone down.
Close your eyes.
Sleep, this time, the real kind — deep and untroubled, the grey finally gone, the apartment warm around you.
Signal & static. 46 songs. 2 contributors.
In the Blade Angels chat, late that night:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
isa 🌙: amber
amber 🖤: yeah
isa 🌙: alysa stayed with him all day
amber 🖤: i know
isa 🌙: she texted me to let me know she was there
amber 🖤: isa
isa 🌙: i know
amber 🖤: she's the real thing
isa 🌙: yeah
isa 🌙: she really is
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: 🌙
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
Chapter 13 — Stay
——————————————————
Three weeks into officially is not so different from before, except that it is, entirely, in all the ways that matter.
The thursday coffee is the same. The playlist is the same — forty-two songs now, still growing, still unhurried. The texting is the same. The easy quiet of being in the same room is the same.
What's different is smaller than that and larger than that simultaneously.
It's the way she says boyfriend sometimes, not making a thing of it, just using the word naturally in the middle of a sentence the way you'd use any true thing. It's the way you reach for her hand without deciding to. It's the way the apartment has started to hold her in it even when she isn't there — a jacket on the hook by the door, a specific mug she uses that you've stopped putting back in the usual place because it's easier to leave it out.
Pepper has opinions about all of it. Positive ones, largely, communicated through the medium of sitting on Alysa's side of the couch with the permanence of a decision already made.
It's a Friday evening in late June when she comes over after training.
Late June means the city is warm in the way it only gets a few weeks a year — the kind of warm that makes the evenings feel longer than they are, golden and slow, the light lasting until it shouldn't. You've had the window open all day. The apartment smells like the bread you made this morning and the coffee from this afternoon and the particular warmth of a space that has been lived in well.
You hear the buzzer.
Pepper is at the door before you are.
She comes in with her training bag over one shoulder and her jacket already half off and the particular energy of someone who has had a good day but is ready for it to be over, which you recognize because you have the same energy on your good lab days — the kind where things went right and now you want to be somewhere quiet with someone you don't have to perform for.
"Hi," she says, stepping in.
"Hi," you say.
She reaches up — she has to, you have a few inches on her, which she has mentioned exactly once and you have not mentioned since because you could tell she didn't want it mentioned — and kisses you hello.
Quick. Easy. The punctuation of it, the way it's become.
She steps past you into the apartment and you close the door and turn around.
And she's there.
Closer than she was a second ago, her training bag dropped somewhere in the space between, and she's looking at you with an expression you don't have a full catalogue entry for yet — something decided, something that has been sitting with itself all day and has finally arrived somewhere.
She kisses you again.
Not quick this time.
The kind that has weight to it, intention, the kind that says I've been thinking about this without saying anything at all, and your back finds the door behind you and you let it, hands finding her waist, and for a moment the apartment is just this — the warm evening air from the open window, the city doing its Friday thing outside, and her, close and certain, kissing you like she means it completely.
When she pulls back she's close enough that you can see the exact expression on her face, which is warm and slightly satisfied in the way of someone who has done the thing they intended to do.
"Hi," she says again.
"Hi," you say. Your voice comes out slightly different than usual. You don't comment on this.
"I've been thinking about doing that since this morning," she says, simply, the way she says things when she's decided to just say them.
"Since this morning," you repeat.
"Training was long," she says, by way of explanation.
"Right."
"You're blushing," she says.
"I'm not."
"You are, a little." She says it without cruelty, the opposite of cruelty — warm, fond, like it's something she's adding to her collection of things about you.
"Can we not—"
"It's cute," she says.
"Alysa."
"Okay," she says, and she's smiling, and she steps back and picks up her bag from the floor and moves into the apartment like she lives there, which she doesn't, but the distinction has become increasingly technical.
You stand with your back against the door for a moment.
Pepper is sitting three feet away observing all of this.
"Not a word," you tell her.
She blinks.
Slow. Regal. Entirely a word.
You make dinner.
Nothing elaborate — you'd told her earlier it was going to be simple, and simple tonight is good bread and good olive oil and the leftover soup from yesterday that is better today than it was then, because some things are. She sits at the island and talks while you heat it, the easy back and forth of two people who have found the rhythm of a kitchen together, and at some point she steals a piece of bread before you've said it's ready and you point at her with the wooden spoon and she looks entirely unrepentant.
"I'm hungry," she says.
"It's ready in two minutes."
"I have two minutes less of hunger now," she says. "You're welcome."
You look at her.
She looks back.
You put the wooden spoon down and go back to the soup.
"You're impossible," you say.
"You like it," she says.
You do.
You don't say so, but she knows, and that's the whole thing with her — she knows the things you don't say because she's been paying attention since week one and she doesn't need you to confirm every one of them out loud.
Though sometimes you do anyway.
Because she deserves the out loud version too.
After dinner you end up on the couch the way you always end up on the couch, the playlist on low from your phone on the coffee table, the city going slow and golden outside the window. Pepper is on the back of the couch. Alysa has her legs tucked under her, turned slightly toward you, and there's a comfortable silence that has been going on for a few minutes, the kind that doesn't need anything done to it.
You're looking at the window.
She's looking at you, which you can feel without seeing.
"Can I ask you something," you say.
"Yeah," she says.
You look at her lap. Back at the window. Something slightly self-conscious in it, which she notices, which she files away without commenting on immediately.
"Can I—" you pause. "Can I put my head in your lap."
The apartment is quiet for a moment.
Then:
"Took you long enough," she says.
You look at her.
She's looking at you with the expression from the door — warm and slightly satisfied — except softer now, the evening version of it.
"I wasn't sure if—"
"[Name]," she says.
"Yeah."
"Come here," she says, and she shifts to make room, and it's that simple, the way the things between you tend to be simple once you've found the nerve to say them.
You settle slowly.
It takes a moment — you're careful about it, the way you're careful about things that matter, making sure you're not taking up too much space, making sure she's comfortable — and she waits with the patience she's always had for you, and then you're there, your head in her lap, looking up at the ceiling, and the apartment rearranges itself around this new configuration.
It's quiet.
The playlist moves through something slow, something she added two weeks ago that you've listened to probably thirty times since.
Her hand finds your hair.
Not immediately — there's a moment first, a breath, and then her fingers are moving through it, slow and without any agenda, the kind of touch that isn't trying to do anything except be there. You close your eyes.
The thing in your chest that has been at a low hum for weeks does something that is not quite a sound but is related to one.
You don't say anything.
She doesn't say anything.
Outside the window the city is doing its Friday evening thing, all golden light and distant sounds, and in here there is just this — the playlist, the warm air, her hand in your hair, the particular stillness of two people who have found a frequency and settled into it.
You're not sure how long it's been.
Long enough that the light from the window has shifted, gone from gold to the softer grey of early evening. Long enough that you've been through several songs and registered none of them consciously, just as feeling.
Her hand slows.
Then she leans down.
It's small, the thing she does — just a soft press of her lips to your hair, brief and warm, the kind of thing that happens before you decide to do it — and then she straightens back up, and her hand starts moving again, and she says nothing about it.
You open your eyes.
You look up at her.
She's looking at the window, the playlist, somewhere in the middle distance, and there's something in her expression that is entirely unguarded in the way she doesn't always let herself be — soft in a way that isn't performing anything for anyone.
She feels you looking.
She looks down.
And then she sees your face, which is apparently doing something, because her expression shifts into something warmer and more amused.
"Hi," she says.
You realize you're warm in the face. You realize this has been building since the hair and the kiss and the unguarded expression and you are, objectively, losing the composure you usually have a reasonable amount of.
"Hi," you say.
She tilts her head slightly. Studies you with the attention she usually reserves for things she's trying to understand completely.
"You're blushing again," she says.
"I'm aware," you say.
"That's twice tonight."
"I know."
"I'm keeping count," she says, soft and teasing, the smile doing the thing it does at the corner of her mouth.
You look at her for a moment.
She looks back.
And then you reach up — slowly, giving her every chance to see it coming — and your hand finds the side of her face, and you bring her down to you, and you kiss her.
Not the quick hello kind. Not the certain kind from the door tonight, though it has that certainty in it. Something else — slower than both of those, with more in it, the kind that says all the things you're still learning to say out loud, the kind that has the playlist and the wildflowers and the forty-two songs and the six weeks of carefully carried things all in it somewhere.
The kind of kiss that you haven't kissed her with yet.
When you pull back her eyes are closed.
They stay closed for a moment.
When she opens them she's looking at you from close up, close enough that you can see everything, and what's in her expression is warm and slightly undone and entirely real and she is — she is the one with color in her cheeks now, and you notice this, and you say nothing about it.
Or almost nothing.
"You're blushing," you say.
She closes her eyes again briefly. Opens them.
"I'm aware," she says.
"That's once tonight," you say.
She looks at you.
"Don't," she says.
"I'm just noting—"
"[Name]."
"For the record," you say.
"I will get up," she says.
"You won't," you say.
She looks at you for a moment.
Then she laughs — the real one, sudden, quiet, the one that gets out before she decides to let it — and her hand finds your hair again, and you close your eyes, and outside the window June is doing what June does, warm and unhurried and long.
"No," she says softly. "I won't."
Pepper, who has observed all of this from the back of the couch with the detached professionalism of someone who called this in week one, performs a slow blink.
Repositions herself.
Goes to sleep.
Later, when the playlist has cycled through twice and the city outside has gone from golden to dark and neither of you has moved toward leaving because neither of you wants to, she asks:
"What was that."
You know what she means.
"The kiss?" you say.
"That one specifically."
You think about how to say it.
"I've been wanting to do that for a while," you say. "I just needed the right moment."
She's quiet for a moment.
"What made it the right moment," she says.
You look up at her.
"You kissed my hair," you say. "Before you decided to. Before you thought about it." A pause. "That's you. The real version. When you're not thinking about what you're doing." You hold her gaze. "I wanted to kiss that version."
She looks at you for a long moment.
The something in her expression is back — the unguarded one, the one she doesn't always let out.
"You noticed that," she says.
"I notice everything about you," you say. Simply. The way you say things you mean.
She says nothing for a moment.
Then she leans down and presses her lips to your forehead, soft and deliberate, and stays there for a second.
"I know," she says quietly. "I'm still getting used to it."
"Take your time," you say.
She pulls back. Looks at you.
"You always say that," she says.
"I always mean it," you say.
She shakes her head slightly — not dismissal, the wonder version — and her hand finds your hair again and the playlist moves into something new and the city does its thing outside and you close your eyes.
You think about frequencies.
You think about how some things, once you find them, change the way everything else sounds.
You think you could stay here a very long time.
She adds a song to the playlist at 11:52pm, from the couch, with your head still in her lap.
You feel your phone buzz on the coffee table.
You don't open it.
You already know it fits.
a/n: heyyy guys, hmm updates are gonna be slow cause lately i’ve been very busy with life so yeahhh , sorry 😞
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
Chapter 12 — The Right Frequency
——————————————————
The text goes to both of them at the same time.
Not the Blade Angels chat — a separate one, just the three of you, which has existed since before Alysa was part of the picture and which you use for things that are specifically yours. Family things. Important things.
you: can you both come over tonight
you: i need help with something
Amber replies in thirty seconds.
bubba 🖤: on my way
you: i haven't told you what time—
bubba 🖤: [Name] you have never once asked for help with something in your life
bubba 🖤: i'm already putting my shoes on
Isa takes a minute, which means she's reading it carefully.
isababy 🌙: is everything okay
you: yeah everything's fine
you: i just need to talk something through
isababy 🌙: 🥹
isababy 🌙: i'll bring food
you: you don't have to—
isababy 🌙: i'm bringing food
They arrive within ten minutes of each other, which means Amber was genuinely already putting her shoes on and Isa picked up food somewhere on the way that she absolutely didn't have time to stop for but somehow did anyway, because she's Isa.
Pepper greets them both with moderate enthusiasm, which for Pepper is practically a parade.
You're in the kitchen when they come in, coffee already made because your hands needed something to do, and Isa sets the food on the counter and immediately turns to look at you with the particular focus of someone who has been reading between your lines since before either of you could read.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi isababy."
"You look like you've been thinking very hard."
"I've been thinking very hard."
Amber drops onto the kitchen stool, both elbows on the counter, chin in her hands, looking at you with the expression she usually reserves for MTG hands she's very excited about.
"Talk," she says.
You put three mugs down.
You pour the coffee.
You lean back against the counter the way you do when you're going to say something you've been organizing for a while.
"I want to ask Alysa something," you say.
Silence.
Isa and Amber look at each other.
Look back at you.
"What kind of something," Isa says, carefully, like she's trying very hard not to project.
"I want to ask if I can be her boyfriend," you say.
The kitchen goes quiet for approximately one second.
Then Amber makes a sound that is not a word in any language and Isa covers her mouth with both hands and Pepper, startled by the energy shift, exits the room with dignity.
"Okay," you say. "I need you both to be normal."
"We ARE being normal—" Amber starts.
"Amber."
"I'm NORMAL—"
"You made a noise."
"It was a SMALL noise—"
"Bubs," Isa says, which works where nothing else does, and Amber closes her mouth and breathes.
You wait.
"Okay," Amber says. "Okay. We're normal. We're fine. Continue."
You look between them.
"I want to do it properly," you say. "I've been thinking about it and I know how I want to say it but I don't — I want it to be right. For her."
Isa's hands have come down from her face. She's looking at you with the expression she gets when she's being your sister and nothing else — soft, completely present, all the chaos set aside.
"Tell us what you're thinking," she says.
You tell them.
Dinner, you say — something good, something you've made for her before so the kitchen feels familiar and not like a performance. You were thinking cacio e pepe because it was the first thing she asked for when you told her to choose, and that means something to you, and you think it might mean something to her.
You were thinking flowers.
You say this last part slightly more quietly, which is how Isa and Amber know it's the part that cost something to admit, and to their credit neither of them makes a noise about it.
"What kind," Amber says.
"I don't know," you say. "I don't know what she likes. I know she mentioned once that she doesn't like anything too — formal. Too arranged." You pause. "She said she likes things that look like they came from somewhere, not from a shop."
Isa's expression does something.
"Wildflowers," she says.
You look at her.
"There's a market on Saturday mornings near her training rink," she says. "They have wildflowers. The kind that look like someone picked them from a field. Not arranged. Not wrapped in cellophane." She pauses. "She stops there sometimes after training. She's mentioned it."
You didn't know that.
You file it away.
"Wildflowers," you say.
"Wildflowers," Isa confirms.
"Okay," Amber says, leaning forward. "So dinner, wildflowers. What are you going to say."
You look at your coffee.
"I've been thinking about that," you say.
"And."
"I don't want to ask if she wants to be my girlfriend," you say. "That's not—" you pause, finding the right words, because the right words matter to you and always have. "That puts it on her. It makes her responsible for the answer. And the answer isn't — it's not in question. I know what she'd say."
Amber is very still.
"So what do you want to say," she asks.
"I want to ask if I can be her boyfriend," you say. "The difference is — it's me saying I want to be that. For her. It's not asking her to decide something. It's telling her what I want and asking if that's okay."
The kitchen is very quiet.
Isa makes a sound that is extremely small and extremely genuine and you look at her and she's pressing her lips together very hard and her eyes are doing something she's trying to control.
"Isa."
"I'm fine," she says.
"You're not—"
"I'm FINE," she says, and fans her face with her hand, which is not something you've ever seen her do before. "Give me a second."
You give her a second.
Amber reaches over and puts her hand on top of Isa's on the counter, and Isa takes a breath, and you wait with the patience of someone who loves these two people and has been loved by them through every version of himself he's ever been.
"Sorry," Isa says. "It's just—" she looks at you— "that's exactly right. That's exactly the right way to say it. For you and for her."
"Yeah?" you say.
"Yeah," she says firmly. "That's it. That's the thing."
Amber nods without speaking, which from Amber means she agrees completely and is too emotional to add anything, which happens approximately twice a year.
You look at your coffee.
"Okay," you say.
"Okay," Isa says.
A beat of quiet.
Then Amber straightens up, clears her throat, and picks her mug up with the energy of someone returning to functionality.
"Right," she says. "So. Wildflowers. Cacio e pepe. And then you say the thing." She points at you. "When."
"Saturday," you say. "She has training in the morning. I was going to text her after and ask if she wanted to come over."
"Does she know it's — planned," Isa asks carefully.
"No," you say. "I don't want it to feel like an occasion. She doesn't like when things feel like occasions."
Isa smiles. "You know her."
"I've been paying attention," you say simply.
They stay for two hours.
Not talking about Alysa the whole time — that part is done in the first twenty minutes, settled the way things settle when the people you love tell you you're doing the right thing and you believe them. After that it's just the three of you, Isa dealing MTG cards on the coffee table, Amber eating the food she brought with the dedicated focus of someone who considers this a personal responsibility, Pepper reinstalled on the couch between you and Isa like she's mediating.
At some point Isa looks up from her hand and says, without particular ceremony: "you're going to be really good at this, you know."
You look at her.
"Being someone's person," she says. "You're already good at it. You've just been practicing on us."
Amber points at Isa without looking up from her cards. "She's right."
You look at your hand.
You think about the things you do without thinking — the bag zipped, the blanket straightened, the tea made, the 2am carbonara, the second mug put out before you've been asked. The ways you show up for people that don't announce themselves.
"You think she knows that," you say. "About me. That that's how I—"
"She knows," Isa says simply. "She's been watching you the same way you watch everyone else."
You sit with that.
"She's good at it too," you say. "Showing up. She just does it quietly."
"I know," Isa says. "That's why it works."
Amber puts her cards down. Looks at you.
"Bubs," she says.
"Bubba."
"I just want to say something and then we're going to play and not talk about feelings for the rest of the night."
"Okay."
She looks at you with the directness she's always had, the thing that has never flinched from anything in the years you've known her.
"You deserve this," she says. "You've been taking care of everyone around you for a long time. You deserve someone who makes you want to ask for things. Who makes the asking feel safe." She pauses. "She does that for you. I can see it."
You look at the coffee table.
You think about the saturday in may, the morning after, picking up your phone and texting first for the first time because it had suddenly felt like the natural thing to do instead of the scary thing.
"Yeah," you say. "She does."
Amber nods once. Done. She picks her cards back up.
"Right," she says. "My turn. And I'm going to win."
"You're not going to win," Isa says.
"Watch me."
They leave at ten.
Amber hugs you at the door the way she always hugs you — long, firm, chin on your shoulder — and says nothing else because she said the thing already and Amber always knows when she's said enough.
Isa is last. She hugs you and stays there a moment, the way she does when something matters, and then she pulls back and holds your face in her hands the way your mom does, the gesture she picked up without meaning to, and looks at you.
"Saturday," she says.
"Saturday," you confirm.
She nods once. Drops her hands. Picks up her bag.
"Text me after," she says.
"You'll be the first to know."
"I better be." She points at you. "Before Amber."
"I'll text you simultaneously—"
"Before Amber."
"Isa."
"Please," she says, and it's genuine, and you look at your twin sister who has been in your corner since before either of you had words for what that meant, and you think about how lucky you are, specifically and completely, to have her.
"Before Amber," you say.
She smiles.
"Good," she says. "Goodnight, love."
"Goodnight, isababy."
Thursday. Friday.
The week moves the way weeks move when you're waiting for something — not slowly, exactly, but with a particular texture, each day distinct in a way ordinary days aren't.
You text Alysa both days, normal, easy, the way you always do. Nothing in your messages gives anything away because you're not performing normalcy — you are normal, or close enough to it. The thing you're carrying doesn't feel heavy. It feels right, which is different, which is the whole difference.
She sends you a song on Friday night.
You listen to it in the dark of your bedroom and add it to the playlist and lie there thinking about frequencies and how far you've come since the first night in the kitchen when you decided she was worth telling something true about yourself.
She adds things to the playlist that sound like the inside of her. You've learned to read them. This one — slow, a little aching, the kind of song that knows it's about more than it says — sounds like someone who has found something she wasn't looking for and decided to stay.
You think about that.
You add one back.
Not a question. Just a statement, the way you prefer things. Something that says I know, me too, I'm staying without using any of those words because the songs have always been better at the between-the-lines of it than you are.
Her reply comes twelve minutes later.
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: the one you just added
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: 🩵
you: goodnight alysa
alysa 🩵: goodnight
Saturday morning.
You're at the market when it opens at eight.
The flower stall is toward the back, past the bread and the cheese and the small Italian woman who has been trying to sell you rosemary for three consecutive weeks and will probably succeed eventually. The wildflowers are in mismatched buckets, loose and unstructured, the kind that look like someone gathered them from a field at the end of the afternoon.
You stand in front of them for a moment.
You're not someone who has bought flowers before. You've thought about it — there are people in your life you'd buy flowers for, occasions that have warranted it — but you've never had a reason that felt like this reason, specific and quiet and certain.
You think about what Isa said. The kind that look like they came from somewhere.
You choose carefully.
Blues and yellows mostly, with some white, nothing too arranged, the kind of combination that looks like it made itself. The woman at the stall wraps them loosely in brown paper with a piece of twine and hands them over and says something warm in Italian that you only half catch but understand the spirit of.
You walk back to the car.
You drive home.
She texts you at 12:47pm.
alysa 🩵: just finished training
alysa 🩵: isa tried to race me on the back straight and absolutely did not win
you: how far behind was she
alysa 🩵: she'll tell you half a second
alysa 🩵: it was more than half a second
you: i'll ask her separately and compare notes
alysa 🩵: please do
alysa 🩵: i'm going to shower and then i have nothing
you: come over
you: i'm making dinner
alysa 🩵: it's 1pm
you: i'm making an early dinner
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: are you okay
You look at that message.
At the question underneath it — she reads you the way you read everyone else, Isa was right, she has been watching with the same attention and you haven't always noticed.
you: yeah
you: i just want to see you
A pause.
The kind that means she's sitting with something.
alysa 🩵: i'll be there at 2
You cook.
The apartment fills with the smell of it — butter, black pepper, the particular warmth of a kitchen being used properly — and Pepper sits on the counter in the spot you've told her not to sit in approximately eight hundred times and watches with professional interest.
The flowers are on the table.
You've moved them three times, which is two times more than you intended to move them, and they look right where they are now — in the glass you use for water, slightly imperfect, the paper still half around the stems because fully unwrapping them seemed like too much.
You look at them.
You think about what you're going to say.
You've been thinking about it all week and it hasn't changed, which means it's right — when the right words are the right words they stay still. They don't need to be revised.
You're still thinking about it when the buzzer goes at 2:04pm.
She comes through the door in a light jacket, the first one she's worn that doesn't need to be zipped, because it's June now and the city has finally committed to warmth. Her hair is down. She has her bag on one shoulder and she's already smiling when she sees you, which is—
That's the thing.
That's been the thing for weeks and you've been letting yourself know it quietly and today you're going to say it out loud.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
She steps in, Pepper arriving immediately, and then she looks past you into the apartment and she sees the flowers on the table.
She goes still.
Not the uncertain kind. The other kind.
"[Name]," she says.
"They're from the market," you say. "Near your training rink. The Saturday one."
She looks at you. "You knew about that market."
"Isa mentioned it." A pause. "She said you stop there sometimes."
Something in her face does something quiet and complete.
She puts her bag down. She walks to the table and looks at the flowers up close, the loose blues and yellows, the brown paper still half wrapped around the stems, and she touches one of them lightly with two fingers the way you touch things you want to be sure are real.
"They're wildflowers," she says.
"You said once you like things that look like they came from somewhere."
She turns to look at you.
You're leaning against the kitchen doorway, which is where you ended up, and you meet her eyes and stay there.
"I have something I want to say," you tell her.
"Okay," she says. Soft. Present. Entirely here.
You take a breath.
Not a nervous breath. A settling one, the kind before you play something you know by heart, the kind that says I'm ready and not I'm afraid.
"I know we haven't put a word on this," you say. "And I haven't wanted to rush it because I think it's been right, the pace of it. I think we've both needed it to go the way it's gone." You pause. "But I know what this is. I've known for a while. And I think you do too."
She doesn't say anything. She's watching you the way she watches things that matter — completely, without trying to get ahead of it.
"I'm not going to ask if you want something," you say. "That's not — that's not how I mean it." You hold her gaze. "I want to ask if I can be your boyfriend. That's what I want. To be that for you. Specifically and on purpose." A beat. "If that's okay."
The kitchen is very quiet.
Pepper makes a small sound somewhere behind you.
Alysa looks at you for a moment — a long one, the kind that is not hesitation but the opposite of it, the kind where someone is taking something in properly before they respond to it — and then she crosses the space between you and her hand comes up to your jaw and she's looking at you from close up, close enough that you can see everything in her expression, which is warm and certain and entirely real.
"Yes," she says. "That's okay."
You close your eyes for a second.
Just a second.
Then you lean down and kiss her, and she kisses you back, and it's the same as it's always been between you — quiet and certain, no urgency, just the particular rightness of something that has arrived the way it was always going to arrive, in its own time, at its own pace.
When you pull back she's still close.
"You bought wildflowers," she says, quietly, like she's still processing it.
"Yeah."
"From the market near my rink."
"Yeah."
"Because I mentioned it once."
"You mentioned it once," you confirm.
She shakes her head slightly. Not dismissal — wonder. The expression of someone who is still learning the shape of being known by you and finding it larger than they expected.
"Okay," she says.
"Okay," you say.
She steps back, but only enough to look at you properly, her hand still at your jaw.
"How long has dinner been cooking," she says.
"Twenty minutes."
"How long does it need."
"Another twenty, probably."
She nods.
"Okay," she says, and takes your hand, and leads you to the couch, and sits close in the way she's always sat close except that now it has a name, and Pepper jumps up between you immediately and installs herself with the authority of someone who has been waiting for this household to formalize what she already knew weeks ago.
You sit there.
Your hand in hers.
The wildflowers on the table.
The city doing its Saturday afternoon thing outside the window.
Everything exactly as it should be.
You text Isa at 2:34pm.
you: she said yes
The reply comes in eight seconds, which means Isa was holding her phone.
isababy 🌙: 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹
isababy 🌙: i'm so happy
isababy 🌙: i'm SO happy
isababy 🌙: are you happy
you: yeah isababy
you: i really am
isababy 🌙: good
isababy 🌙: that's all i needed
isababy 🌙: also the flowers??
you: yeah
isababy 🌙: she texted me
you: already??
isababy 🌙: she said he got wildflowers from the saturday market
isababy 🌙: and then she sent seventeen heart emojis
isababy 🌙: [Name] she sent SEVENTEEN
you: okay
isababy 🌙: that's the most emojis she's ever sent anyone
isababy 🌙: i have DATA on this
you: isababy
isababy 🌙: i'm just saying
isababy 🌙: i love you
you: i love you too
isababy 🌙: go have dinner with your girlfriend
You look at that word.
Your girlfriend.
Alysa is in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame, looking at you with the expression you've been cataloguing for two months and are now allowed to understand completely.
"Is that Isa," she says.
"Yeah."
"What did she say."
You show her the screen.
She reads it. Looks up at you. Looks back at the screen.
"Seventeen," she says.
"Apparently."
"I panicked and just kept pressing the button," she says, with zero apology.
You laugh — the real one, the one that doesn't get out often — and she smiles at the sound of it, and the kitchen smells like butter and black pepper and something that is going to be exactly right, and outside the window June is doing what June does, warm and unhurried and long.
"Dinner's ready," she says.
"Yeah," you say.
You get up.
You go to the kitchen.
You have dinner with your girlfriend.
In the Blade Angels chat, at 6pm:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
isa 🌙: BLADE ANGELS
isa 🌙: I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT
amber 🖤: ISA IT'S BEEN THREE HOURS WHY ARE YOU ONLY TELLING ME NOW
isa 🌙: i was giving them TIME amber
amber 🖤: ISA
isa 🌙: I KNOW
isa 🌙: OKAY
isa 🌙: SO
amber 🖤: SO
isa 🌙: alysa is officially my brother's girlfriend
amber 🖤:
amber 🖤:
amber 🖤: I'M NOT OKAY
isa 🌙: SAME
amber 🖤: HE ASKED HER PROPERLY??
isa 🌙: HE GOT WILDFLOWERS FROM THE SATURDAY MARKET
amber 🖤: THE MARKET NEAR HER RINK??
isa 🌙: THE VERY SAME
amber 🖤: I'M GOING TO CRY IN THE PARKING LOT
isa 🌙: amber you're at home
amber 🖤: I'M GOING OUTSIDE TO CRY THEN
alysa 🩵: you're both so dramatic
amber 🖤: ALYSA
alysa 🩵: hi 🩵
amber 🖤: HI 🩵🩵🩵
isa 🌙: are you still with him
alysa 🩵: yeah
alysa 🩵: we just finished dinner
alysa 🩵: isa the cacio e pepe
isa 🌙: i KNOW
alysa 🩵: how does he do that
isa 🌙: i've been asking for twenty two years
amber 🖤: alysa
alysa 🩵: yeah
amber 🖤: welcome to the family
amber 🖤: officially
amber 🖤: pepper already voted you in but now it's on record
alysa 🩵: 😭🩵
alysa 🩵: thank you bubs
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: okay go be with him
isa 🌙: stop texting us
alysa 🩵: you texted me first
isa 🌙: details
isa 🌙: go
alysa 🩵: goodnight 🩵
isa 🌙: goodnight 🌙
amber 🖤: night 🖤
amber 🖤: 🖤🖤🖤
The playlist notification comes at 11:47pm.
You're almost asleep, Pepper at your feet, the window open because June has finally made that possible, when your phone lights up.
alysa added a song to signal & static
You open it.
You read the title.
You lie in the dark and smile at the ceiling for a moment, private and unhurried, the way you do everything.
Then you add one back.
Her reply comes in four minutes.
alysa 🩵: 🩵
you: goodnight
alysa 🩵: goodnight boyfriend
You look at that word.
Put your phone down.
Close your eyes.
Signal & static. 38 songs. 2 contributors.
Still growing.
The way the right things do.
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
Chapter 11 — Not A Word For It Yet
——————————————————
Here is what it is.
It's thursdays at the coffee place, the wobbly table, two cortados. It's the playlist growing — thirty-one songs now, the additions slowing down not because the thread has run out but because they're both more careful about what they put in, like the space has become something worth being deliberate about. It's texting most days, sometimes long, sometimes just a song title or a physics observation or a photo of Pepper doing something that required documentation.
It's her coming over on a wednesday evening with food and staying until the city goes quiet. It's you meeting her after physio once, just because you were nearby, just because it seemed like the thing to do, and walking back to the coffee place and sitting at the wobbly table for an hour talking about nothing in particular and everything that matters.
It's easy.
It's specific.
It doesn't have a name yet and neither of you has reached for one, which feels right in the way of things that are still becoming what they're going to be. You're not in a rush. She's not in a rush. You've both learned, in your different ways, that the things worth having are worth letting arrive properly.
Isa knows this. She watches it with the patience of someone who understands that you need to do things in your own time, which doesn't stop her from smiling every time Alysa's name comes up, which is frequently, because Alysa is around frequently now, woven into the edges of the week in ways that have become expected without being announced.
Amber knows it too. She texts you separately sometimes, not about Alysa specifically, just checking in, the way she always has — how's the lab, bubs, are you eating enough, did you sleep — and you read between those lines and appreciate them.
It's been three weeks since the saturday in may.
It's early june now, which in this city means the mornings are finally warm enough to not need a jacket and the evenings are long and golden and the rink is quieter because competition season has wound down and people are resting before it starts again.
Which is how you end up at a public skate.
It's Amber's idea, which should have been warning enough.
blade angels + [Name] public skate Sunday, she'd put in the group chat, it's been decided.
You'd replied: i didn't decide anything.
you're included in the angels for this purpose, Amber had said, it's an honorary thing don't worry about it.
Isa had sent seventeen moon emojis.
You'd gone.
The public rink on a Sunday in early June is a different creature entirely from the training rink on a weekday morning. It's loud in the particular way of recreational spaces — kids careening into the boards, music from the overhead speakers that nobody agreed on, the general organized chaos of people who are here for fun and not for excellence.
You've been here before, plenty — it's where you used to come when you were kids, you and Isa, before she moved to the serious rink, before skating became something she did with intention instead of joy. You have complicated feelings about it that are mostly fond.
You lace up on the bench while Amber talks to someone she apparently knows from everywhere, because Amber knows someone from everywhere, and Isa is doing the thing she does when she's trying not to be recognized in public, which is wearing a hat that does approximately nothing.
Alysa sits beside you on the bench.
Not touching. Just beside you, close in the way she's been close for three weeks, the proximity that has become its own language.
"You're a good skater," she says, without looking up from her own laces.
"I grew up on ice," you say. "I'm functional."
"Isa said you're better than functional."
"Isa is biased."
"Isa is accurate," she says, and glances at you sideways, and there's something in it that makes you look back down at your skates.
"You're going to show off," you say.
"I'm going to skate," she says. "What other people do with that information is their business."
You look at her.
She's already smiling at her laces.
The four of you step onto the ice and it's immediately clear that the general public has no idea what's about to happen.
Amber goes first, fluid and easy in the way of someone who has been on ice since childhood, immediately gravitating toward the center with the instinct of a performer. Isa follows, hat pulled down, hands in the pocket of her hoodie, doing the thing she does where she looks entirely casual and is skating with perfect technical form anyway because she literally cannot help it.
You fall into your own pace. Steady, unhurried, the ice familiar under your feet.
Alysa skates beside you.
She's not showing off — she's not doing anything that would draw immediate attention — but you can feel it. The quality of her movement, the way she takes up space on the ice, the precision underneath the apparent ease of it. She's skating at about thirty percent of what she's capable of and it still looks different from everyone else here.
"You're being restrained," you say.
"I'm being considerate," she says.
"It's not working."
She glances at you. "What do you mean."
You nod toward the center of the rink where a small child has stopped skating entirely to stare at her.
She follows your gaze.
Waves at the kid.
The kid waves back with the full-body commitment of someone who has just seen something wonderful.
"See," you say.
"That's just a friendly child," she says.
"That's a child who knows they're watching someone different."
She's quiet for a moment.
"Does it bother you," she says, more carefully. "People noticing."
You consider the question the way it deserves.
"No," you say. "You're remarkable on ice. People are going to notice that." A pause. "Does it bother you."
She thinks about it.
"Today it doesn't," she says. "Today it just feels like skating."
"Good," you say.
She glances at you. "Yeah," she says quietly. "Good."
It's Amber who causes the incident.
This is, in retrospect, entirely predictable.
She's been doing increasingly ambitious things in the center of the rink for twenty minutes, which has been drawing its own small audience of impressed strangers, and she's in the middle of what she would probably describe as just having fun and what a professional skating judge would describe as a technically solid combination when she spots someone on the other side of the rink and waves with full-body enthusiasm.
The someone waves back.
The someone is a sports journalist.
You know this because Isa materializes at your side approximately four seconds later, hat pulled further down, with the expression of someone executing a tactical maneuver.
"We should go to the other side," she says.
"Why."
"That's Jung-ho from SportWeek."
You look across the rink. The journalist is already looking back, phone out.
"Is that a problem," you say.
"Not a problem," Isa says carefully. "Just — Amber is Amber and Alysa is Alysa and if he gets a photo of all of us together the caption is going to be a whole thing and I don't know if Alysa wants—"
"I heard my name," Alysa says, appearing on your other side.
Isa points.
Alysa looks across the rink. Something in her face does a quick internal calculation — not stressed, just assessing.
"Jung-ho's fine," she says. "He's not that kind of journalist."
"He's going to take a photo," Isa says.
"Probably." She glances at you briefly, something in it that you read the way you read everything about her — clearly, without needing it spelled out. A question without words. Is this okay with you.
You answer the same way. A small nod. It's fine.
She looks back across the rink.
"It's fine," she says. "We're just skating."
Jung-ho does take a photo.
He takes it from a respectful distance, the way he does things, and he waves at Amber who waves back with full theatrical commitment, and Isa skates a wide arc around the situation while maintaining plausible deniability, and you end up at the far end of the rink without entirely meaning to, away from the small congregation of interested onlookers that has formed around Amber like a force of nature.
It's quieter at this end. Less chaotic. A few small children wobbling gamely along the boards, a couple moving slowly in their own world, the overhead music doing something from the nineties that echoes off the ceiling.
Alysa skates beside you.
"Sorry about that," she says.
"Don't apologize," you say.
"It's your Sunday."
"It's a public rink," you say. "You exist in public." A pause. "It doesn't bother me."
She looks at you. "I don't know what photos like that do," she says carefully. "If he posts it. There might be — comments. People noticing."
You understand what she's actually saying.
Not about you. About you and her. The proximity of it, the way it might read, the questions it might generate.
You think about it honestly, the way she deserves.
"I know," you say. "I'm not worried about it."
"Yeah?"
"We're just skating," you say. "That's true whether someone photographs it or not."
She holds your gaze for a moment.
"Okay," she says.
"Okay," you say.
You skate another half lap in quiet, and somewhere in the middle of it her hand finds yours, not reaching for it so much as arriving there, easy and unhurried, and you close your fingers around hers without looking at it and the overhead music does something from the nineties and neither of you says anything about it.
You're just skating.
That's true.
It's also more than that.
Both things are true at the same time and you don't need to resolve them today.
Jung-ho posts the photo three hours later.
It's a good photo, actually — Amber mid-laugh in the center of the rink, Isa caught in a turn behind her, the light from the overhead panels catching the ice in a way that looks almost professional. In the background, slightly soft, two people skating side by side at the far end of the rink.
You're not tagged.
Alysa isn't either.
The caption is: post-olympic rest era looking good on these three ⛸️
The comments are mostly about Amber, who is the clear focal point. A few people notice Isa in the background and tag her. A few more notice the two figures at the far end and say nothing specific, just variations of wait who's that that go unreplied to.
You see it because Isa sends it to the group chat.
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
isa 🌙: okay so
isa 🌙: [image]
amber 🖤: I look incredible
isa 🌙: amber
amber 🖤: WHAT i do
alysa 🩵: you really do
amber 🖤: thank you alysa
amber 🖤: [Name] what do you think
You look at the photo.
At the two figures in the background, slightly soft, close in the particular way of people who have found each other's frequency and stopped pretending otherwise.
you: amber you look great
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: okay but the background
isa 🌙: you two look
isa 🌙: i'm just saying
amber 🖤: she's right you do look
alysa 🩵: we look like what
A pause.
isa 🌙: like something that doesn't have a word for it yet
isa 🌙: 🌙
You read that.
You look at the photo again. The two soft figures, close, the ice between them and everything else.
You think Isa is right.
You think that's okay.
The best things usually don't have a word for them yet.
you: goodnight isababy
isa 🌙: goodnight 🌙
amber 🖤: night bubs 🖤
alysa 🩵: goodnight 🩵
You put your phone down.
Open the playlist.
Thirty-one songs. Two contributors.
You add one.
Three minutes later your phone buzzes.
alysa 🩵: the new one
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: it fits
you: i thought so
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: today was really good
You look at the message.
Think about her hand in yours at the far end of the rink, easy and unhurried, the nineties song echoing off the ceiling.
you: yeah
you: it really was
alysa 🩵: 🩵
you: goodnight alysa
alysa 🩵: goodnight
Across town, in her apartment, Alysa opens the playlist.
She scrolls to the new song.
She presses play.
She lies in the dark and listens, and thinks about a photo with two soft figures in the background that don't have a word yet, and thinks that's okay, and thinks that some things are worth letting arrive properly.
She thinks she's learning that from him.
She closes her eyes.
She lets the song play.
Signal & static. 32 songs. 2 contributors.
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
Chapter 10 — Morning In May
——————————————————
You wake up at 7am because you always wake up at 7am, which has never once felt like a gift until this morning.
The city is doing its early May thing outside — that particular light that comes before the world gets loud, pale and unhurried, coming through the curtains at the angle that means it's going to be a good day. Pepper is on your chest, which is where she ends up when you don't move around enough in your sleep, which means last night you slept like something that had finally put a weight down.
You lie there for a moment.
You think about last night.
You think about it the way you think about the things that matter — carefully, turning it over, making sure it's real and not something you've constructed out of wanting. But it's real. The Thai food containers still stacked by the door are real. The two mugs drying on the rack are real. The bass slightly out of its usual position because you picked it up again after she left is real.
She's real.
You pick up your phone.
This is new.
In six weeks of texting you have never texted first in the morning. You've replied within minutes, you've sent things throughout the day, you've been the one to keep a conversation going — but the opening, the first message of a day, has always been hers. Because you always talked yourself out of it. Because you always found a reason why she was probably busy or probably didn't need to hear from you yet or probably—
You open her contact.
You type.
Delete it.
Type again.
You think about what she said last night. He's observant about everything except when it's about him. You think about week one, and the crane wives, and someone carrying something carefully for six weeks because you needed time and she gave it to you without being asked.
You type.
You send it before you talk yourself out of it.
you: the song you added last night
you: i played it four times
You put the phone on your chest.
Pepper opens one eye.
"I know," you tell her.
Your phone buzzes.
alysa 🩵: four times
you: five actually
alysa 🩵: 😭
alysa 🩵: you're texting me first
you: i'm aware
alysa 🩵: you never text first in the morning
you: i'm aware of that too
A pause.
alysa 🩵: i like it
you: good
you: how did you sleep
alysa 🩵: really well actually
alysa 🩵: better than i have in a while
alysa 🩵: you?
you: same
alysa 🩵: yeah?
you: yeah
Another pause, shorter this time, the kind that isn't empty but thinking.
alysa 🩵: i've been lying here trying to find the word for how this morning feels
you: did you find it
alysa 🩵: no
alysa 🩵: it doesn't feel like a word kind of morning
you: feeling song kind of morning
alysa 🩵: exactly that
alysa 🩵: 🩵
You look at that for a moment.
you: are you doing anything today
alysa 🩵: training until 1
alysa 🩵: then nothing
you: i'm making pasta
you: if you want to come over
A pause that you sit with more patiently than you would have yesterday, because yesterday you would have already started talking yourself out of having sent it.
alysa 🩵: what kind
you: whatever kind you want
alysa 🩵: that's a dangerous thing to offer
you: i know
alysa 🩵: [Name]
you: yeah
alysa 🩵: are you asking me on a date
You look at the ceiling.
Pepper looks at you.
you: i'm asking you to come over for pasta
alysa 🩵: that's not an answer
you: yes
you: i'm asking you on a date
alysa 🩵: okay
alysa 🩵: then yes
alysa 🩵: i'll be there at 2
you: okay
alysa 🩵: goodmorning
you: good morning
You put the phone down.
Lie there for a moment.
Look at Pepper, who is already looking at you with the slow blink of someone who has been waiting for you to get here for approximately six weeks.
"I know," you say.
She closes her eyes.
You get up.
You go make coffee, and you think about what kind of pasta to make, and the morning feels like the sixth song on a playlist — the kind that requires stillness, that asks you to just let it happen.
You let it happen.
Isa calls at 9am.
Not texts. Calls.
You answer on the second ring because it's Isa and you always answer on the second ring.
"Hi isababy."
"HI," she says, with a volume that suggests she has been awake for a while and has been waiting for a socially acceptable hour to do this. "How are you. How was last night. How are you feeling. Are you okay. Are you happy. What happened. Alysa said something happened—"
"Isa."
"—and then she sent a heart emoji which could mean ANYTHING—"
"Isa."
"—and I've been awake since seven—"
"Isabeau."
She stops.
Breathes.
"Hi," she says, smaller. "Sorry. I'm calm."
"You're not calm."
"I'm adjacent to calm." A pause. "Are you okay?"
And there it is — underneath all the noise, the thing she actually called to ask. The way she always gets there eventually, through the chaos and out the other side to the real question.
You lean against the kitchen counter.
Coffee in hand, morning light coming through the window, the apartment quiet in a way that feels different than it did yesterday.
"Yeah," you say. "I'm really okay."
A breath on the other end of the line.
"Yeah?" Her voice has gone soft.
"Yeah, darling."
Silence for a moment. The comfortable kind.
"She told me you played for her," Isa says.
"Mm."
"You never do that. You know that right? You never just — let someone be there for that."
"I know."
"What was it like."
You think about it. The apartment going quiet around the music. The way the thing in your chest released and stayed released. The specific feeling of someone being in the room and the room still being yours.
"Like the right frequency," you say.
Isa makes a noise on the other end of the line that is very small and very genuine and you think she might be pressing her face into a pillow about it.
"Isa."
"I'm fine," she says, muffled.
"Are you crying."
"No."
"Isabeau."
"A little bit." A pause. "Happy crying. There's a difference."
"I know there's a difference."
"She's coming over today isn't she."
You look at the pasta you've already started thinking about.
"Yeah," you say. "She is."
Another small noise from the pillow.
"Good," she says. "That's really good."
"Yeah."
"Are you going to tell me what happened or do I have to wait."
"You're going to have to wait."
"That's fair," she says, with the grace of someone who knows when to not push. "But you're happy."
It's not a question.
"Yeah," you say. "I'm happy."
She sighs — the good kind, the relieved kind, the kind that means she's been holding something on your behalf and has just put it down.
"Okay," she says softly. "Good. That's all I needed."
You smile at your coffee.
"Thank you for calling, isababy."
"Always." A pause. "Also I want details eventually."
"You'll get the details I decide to give you."
"That's going to be nothing."
"Probably."
"Rude," she says warmly. "I love you."
"I love you too."
"Tell pepper I said hi."
"She won't care."
"Tell her anyway."
"Yeah," you say. "Yeah okay."
You spend the morning quietly.
You practice for a while, not anything in particular, just the way you play when the day is open and unhurried. You do some reading for the lab. You clean the kitchen with the particular attention of someone who is making lunch for someone and cares about it, which you do, which is not new information but feels more specific today.
At 11:43am your phone buzzes.
alysa 🩵: training is going really well today
alysa 🩵: isa keeps looking at me like she knows something
you: she does know something
alysa 🩵: she's going to combust
you: she called me at 9am
alysa 🩵: she texted me at 9:01
you: she waited a whole minute
alysa 🩵: very restrained of her
you: genuinely her best work
alysa 🩵: 😂
alysa 🩵: she keeps smiling at me on the ice
alysa 🩵: coach asked if something was wrong with her
you: what did she say
alysa 🩵: she said she was just having a good day
alysa 🩵: and then skated directly into the boards
you: that's her excited tell
alysa 🩵: the boards??
you: when she's really happy she loses about thirty percent of her spatial awareness
you: amber knows to stay to the left
alysa 🩵: this is the most important information you've given me
you: i thought you should know what you're dealing with
alysa 🩵: 😭
alysa 🩵: okay i have to go back
alysa 🩵: see you at 2
you: see you at 2
She arrives at 2:07pm.
You hear the buzz of the intercom and Pepper is at the door before you are, stationed with the authority of someone who has assigned herself head of security.
You press the intercom.
You open the door.
And when she appears at the end of the hallway — jacket on, hair down the way it was last night, a small smile already on her face when she sees you in the doorway — something in your chest does the thing it does.
Quietly.
Certainly.
Like a frequency that has found what it was looking for and settled there.
"Hi," she says, walking toward you.
"Hi," you say.
She reaches the door.
She looks up at you, close now, and the smile is the real one, and you lean down and kiss her hello the way you've apparently decided is a thing you do now, which it is, which feels entirely right.
When you pull back she's looking at you with the expression from last night — easy and unhurried and entirely real.
"You said whatever kind I want," she says.
"I did."
"Cacio e pepe."
You look at her.
"You have the ingredients?" she asks.
"I always have the ingredients."
"Good." She steps past you into the apartment, crouching immediately to greet Pepper, who accepts the greeting with the graciousness of visiting royalty. "Then what are we waiting for."
You watch her — coat off, already moving toward the kitchen island like she belongs there, which she does, which stopped being a new thought sometime around week three — and you think about frequencies and patterns and the way some things, once you find them, make everything else make more sense.
You close the door.
You follow her into the kitchen.
You make cacio e pepe for two on a saturday afternoon in may, and the playlist plays from your phone on the counter, and outside the city does its thing, and none of it is particularly extraordinary except that it is, entirely, in all the ways that count.
In the Blade Angels chat, at 2:13pm:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
isa 🌙: amber
amber 🖤: yeah
isa 🌙: she just got to his apartment
amber 🖤: how do you know
isa 🌙: she read my message and didn't reply
isa 🌙: she only does that when she's distracted
amber 🖤: or happy
isa 🌙: or happy
amber 🖤: 🥹
isa 🌙: 🥹
amber 🖤: bubs
isa 🌙: yeah
amber 🖤: he texted her first this morning
isa 🌙: I KNOW
amber 🖤: he's never done that
isa 🌙: i know i know i know
amber 🖤: she's good for him
isa 🌙: she really is
isa 🌙: 🌙
amber 🖤: 🖤
A pause.
Then:
isa 🌙: also i skated into the boards today
amber 🖤: i heard
isa 🌙: i was HAPPY
amber 🖤: i know bubs
amber 🖤: i know
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
hiii people of the universe, im gonna post some chapters later today. life has been fucking busy so yeahhh sorry for not posting lately
I just want to say your writing is truly beautiful. The way you describe each of their emotions, thoughts and who they are as a whole it’s just … wow …. Honestly I’ve reread the Isa story -like - 3 times over and keep coming back to the Alysa one. Not just because I’m excited about your writing (though that is one of the reasons) but because I just love reading what you’ve written!!
I think you just need to hear this because everyone deserves to know their hard work is loved!
omg, thank you soooooooo much, that means a lot 🥹🫶🏻
Hiii love ur writing! Was wondering for Soft Landing, how would they celebrate their birthdays differently? Any ideas in that?
as i said before from time to time im gonna post bonus chapters, and one of them i can write how they would celebrate 🤗
but for now im focusing on static and blades 😋
ALREADY LOVE STATIC & BLADES!!!!!
thank youuuuuu
Chapter 9 — Let It Ring
——————————————————
Six weeks.
Six weeks since the rink parking lot and the boyfriend comment and a hand extended over the boards that started something neither of you named. Six weeks since a grey hoodie went home in the wrong car and came back on a Sunday morning on ice that was empty enough to be honest in.
Six weeks, and somewhere in the middle of them the playlist grew to twenty-three songs, the coffee place became a thursday thing without either of you deciding that, and your phone has her name on it more than almost anyone else's.
You notice things. You've always noticed things.
You're just slower to notice them when they're about you. Isa has said this. Amber has said this. You've always filed it away as something they say because they love you and not necessarily because it's true.
It's true.
It's a Saturday in early May when it lands.
Not loudly. Not with any particular ceremony. You're on the floor of the living room, back against the couch, bass in your lap, not playing anything in particular — just feeling the weight of it, the string tension under your fingers, which is something you do when your head needs somewhere quiet to go.
Pepper is on the couch directly above your head, which is her version of company.
The apartment is clean. Isa was here last night and she always tidies without being asked, which you've given up arguing about because she finds it calming and you've learned to recognize the things she does when she needs to use her hands.
She'd stayed until midnight, the two of you playing MTG on the coffee table with the volume low on some film neither of you were watching, and she'd fallen asleep on the couch somewhere around eleven and you'd put the blanket over her and cleaned up the cards and gone to bed, and in the morning she'd made coffee and left before you were fully awake, which is the particular choreography of someone who wanted company and then was ready to be alone again.
You understood. You always understand.
It's quiet now.
You pluck a string. Let it ring. Feel it in your sternum the way you always do, that particular resonance, string to body to chest, the physics of feeling something.
Your phone is on the coffee table.
You're not looking at it.
You're thinking, which you've been trying not to do in any organized way about this specific thing for approximately six weeks, and the quiet of the apartment has finally made organized thinking unavoidable.
Here is what you know.
You know that she texts you most days, and you text her back, and the conversation finds its own level every time — sometimes one message, sometimes two hours, and you've stopped being surprised by either.
You know that the thursday coffee thing started as one thursday and is now simply thursdays, lowercase, standing, assumed by both of you without being discussed.
You know that the playlist is at twenty-three songs and you know which ones she added because you've listened to each of them the way you listen to things she says — carefully, trying to understand what she heard in them, what she was thinking when she followed the thread to that particular place.
You know that she came to Isa's last competition three weeks ago and sat with you in the stands while Amber was with the coaching team, and you'd watched Isa's program side by side in the particular silence of two people who understand what they're watching, and when Isa landed her combination you'd felt her grab your arm without either of you looking away from the ice, and she'd held on for the rest of the program, and you'd let her, and afterward neither of you mentioned it.
You know that Pepper sits next to her now every time she comes over, which is its own kind of information.
You know that you notice when she's in a room. Not in a searching way — not the anxious kind of noticing — but the quiet kind, the way you're always aware of where the music is coming from.
You pluck another string.
Let it ring.
You think about what Amber said, six weeks ago in a parking lot: something is happening. it's just happening quietly.
You think about the way Alysa said goodnight the first night, leaning against an elevator wall with your name in a contact saved under a guitar emoji, and how that was already something even then, even before the playlist, even before the thursdays, even before the stands at the competition with her hand on your arm.
You think about frequencies. The ones that find each other.
You think about the fact that you named the playlist that before you'd fully understood why.
Pepper drops from the couch onto your shoulder, which is architecturally impractical and yet she does it every time, and you reach up and hold her there without thinking about it, and she puts her nose against your jaw and stays.
"Yeah," you say, to no one in particular.
To yourself, maybe.
To the six weeks of quiet accumulation that has apparently been building toward this obvious and inevitable conclusion.
You like her.
Not in the vague ambient way of finding someone interesting. Not in the careful way you hold most things at a slight distance while you figure them out. In the specific way. The staying kind. The kind that makes you rearrange how you think about thursdays and standing plans and the empty chair across the wobbly table that apparently hasn't been empty very long but already feels like it was always going to be hers.
You sit with it.
You don't panic, because it isn't a panicking kind of thing. It's quiet and certain and settled, which is how the real things tend to feel once you finally let yourself look at them directly.
Pepper pushes her head into your jaw.
"I know," you say. "You knew first."
She has no comment on this. She knew first and she's moved on.
You pick up your phone.
Not to text her — not yet, because you're still sitting with the shape of this and there's no urgency, it doesn't need to be said today — but because her last message is still there from yesterday and you want to read it again for reasons you're now allowed to understand.
alysa 🩵: found the song for today
alysa 🩵: [added to signal & static]
You'd listened to it last night before sleep. Something slow and guitar-forward, the kind of song that has weather in it, that feels like a specific time of day. You'd lain in the dark and thought she found this and thought of the playlist and now you're thinking about that differently.
She finds things and puts them somewhere you'll both be.
That's what she's been doing for six weeks.
You open the playlist.
Twenty-three songs. Two contributors. Hers and yours interspersed without pattern, following no rule except whatever felt right, and looking at it now it looks less like a playlist and more like a conversation that's been happening in the margins of all the other conversations.
You scroll to the beginning.
You press play.
You sit on the floor with Pepper on your shoulder and the bass in your lap and the afternoon light coming through the window at the angle it gets in May, just starting to feel like something has shifted in the season, and you listen to all twenty-three songs from the beginning for the first time, in order, the way they've accumulated.
It takes a while.
You don't mind.
Somewhere around song fourteen — one of hers, the crane wives, the first thing she ever added — your phone buzzes.
alysa 🩵: are you doing anything tonight
You look at the message for a moment.
you: no why
alysa 🩵: isa and amber are doing a movie thing but i'm not feeling it
alysa 🩵: i don't know i just wanted to not be in my apartment
You read it twice.
you: you can come here
you: i was just going to play for a bit
A pause.
alysa 🩵: i don't want to interrupt
you: you won't
you: you can just be here
Another pause, shorter.
alysa 🩵: okay
alysa 🩵: i'll bring food
you: you don't have to—
alysa 🩵: i'm bringing food
you: okay
alysa 🩵: see you in an hour
You put the phone down.
Look at the bass in your lap.
Look at Pepper, who has migrated to the floor beside you and is watching you with her slow blink.
"Don't," you say.
She blinks again.
You get up and go put the kettle on and try to remember the last time you invited someone over to just — be here. While you play. Without an occasion.
You can't think of one.
You put two mugs out.
In the Blade Angels chat, forty minutes later:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
isa 🌙: wait alysa are you coming tonight or not
alysa 🩵: not tonight sorry 🩵
alysa 🩵: i'm going to [Name]'s
amber 🖤:
amber 🖤: sorry
amber 🖤: you're going WHERE
isa 🌙: !!!!!!!
alysa 🩵: he said i could come over while he plays
alysa 🩵: i just didn't want to be alone tonight
isa 🌙:
isa 🌙: isa has left the chat
amber 🖤: ISA GET BACK HERE
isa 🌙: i'm back i'm back i'm fine
isa 🌙: alysa
alysa 🩵: isa
isa 🌙: he's never played for anyone
isa 🌙: i mean he plays when i'm there but i'm his sister
isa 🌙: he's never just. had someone there. for that.
alysa 🩵: he said i won't be interrupting
amber 🖤: because you won't be
amber 🖤: because he wants you there
amber 🖤: alysa i say this with my whole chest
amber 🖤: my little brother is going to play bass for you tonight
amber 🖤: in his apartment
amber 🖤: just the two of you
amber 🖤: do you understand what that means
A long pause.
alysa 🩵: i'm starting to
isa 🌙: 🥹🌙
amber 🖤: 🥹🖤
alysa 🩵: okay i have to go i'm almost there
isa 🌙: go go go
isa 🌙: text us tomorrow
alysa 🩵: goodnight 🩵
amber 🖤: GOODNIGHT 🖤
isa 🌙: 🌙🌙🌙
Isa puts her phone down.
Looks at Amber across the couch.
Amber looks back.
"He's going to play for her," Isa says quietly.
"I know," Amber says.
Isa pulls her knees to her chest.
She thinks about every bad day you've ever had, every time she's heard you play through the wall of your bedroom when you didn't know she was still awake. She thinks about the MTG games and the 2am carbonara and the way you zip her bag up without saying anything about it. She thinks about Milano, and the stands, and six weeks of a playlist growing one song at a time between two people learning each other's frequencies.
She thinks about the chair across the wobbly table. Two years empty.
"He really likes her," she says.
"Yeah," Amber says. "He really does."
Isa leans her head on Amber's shoulder.
"Good," she says softly.
Outside, May is doing what May does at the edge of evening — the light going golden and unhurried, the city settling into the slower frequency of a Saturday night.
Somewhere across town, in an apartment where a black cat is already stationed by the door, a kettle has just finished boiling.
Two mugs.
She buzzes up at 7:43pm.
You know it's her because Pepper is already at the door, which she does for exactly two people in the world and Isa texted twenty minutes ago saying she was staying at Amber's. You press the intercom without checking it.
You've already brewed the tea. Already moved your textbooks off the coffee table. Already done the small unconscious choreography of making space for someone, which you only notice you've done after you've done it.
The knock comes and you open the door and she's there in a oversized cream sweater and her hair down, which you haven't seen before — she's always had it up at the rink, pulled back at the coffee place — and she's holding a paper bag that smells like the Thai place three streets from her apartment that she mentioned once, two weeks ago, in passing, and you filed it away the way you file everything.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi." You step back to let her in. "You found the Thai place."
She looks at the bag. Looks at you. "You remembered I mentioned that."
"You said it was the best thing within walking distance of your building."
"That was like two weeks ago."
"I remember things," you say simply, and take the bag from her, and she steps inside and Pepper is immediately at her feet, which is not a surprise to either of you anymore but still does something to the general atmosphere.
"Hi," Alysa says to Pepper, crouching down.
Pepper pushes her head into Alysa's hand with a completeness of commitment that she has never once offered you upon arrival, which is frankly rude.
"Traitor," you say.
Pepper ignores you entirely.
You eat on the couch, containers open on the coffee table, and the evening does what evenings do when they're not trying to be anything in particular — it just moves, easy and unhurried, the city going quiet outside the window as the last of the May light goes from gold to grey.
She asks about the lab session from Thursday. You tell her about the resonance test, the results that were almost right and the one variable that's been bothering you for a week, and she listens the way she always listens — present, following, asking the question that gets to the center.
"What if it's not the variable," she says. "What if the material just has a different baseline than you're accounting for."
You look at her.
She looks back. "What."
"Nothing." You turn back to the food. "That's actually a good thought."
"You sound surprised."
"I'm not surprised," you say. "I'm just — you followed that faster than most people in my program do."
She's quiet for a moment, something pleased in it that she's not quite performing.
"Frequencies," she says simply.
"Yeah," you say. "Frequencies."
The food is finished and the containers are stacked neatly by the door and you've made tea, which she accepted without ceremony, and the apartment has settled into the particular stillness of a Saturday evening that has nowhere it needs to be.
You're sitting on the floor with your back against the couch.
She's on the couch, legs tucked under her, both hands around her mug, and Pepper is a perfect loaf on the cushion beside her.
The bass is in its stand in the corner.
You look at it.
You're not sure how long she's been looking at it too, but when you glance at her she's already looking back at you with an expression that isn't asking anything, isn't pushing, is just — open. Available. Patient in a way that doesn't demand.
"You don't have to," she says.
"I know," you say.
You get up and get the bass.
You don't explain it.
You don't say this is what I'm going to play or tell me what you think or any of the things that would make it a performance. You just settle back onto the floor, bass across your lap, and you play.
Not anything specific at first. Just finding the feeling of it, the weight and the warmth, string tension under your fingers in the familiar way of something that has always fit. You play the way you play when you're alone — unhurried, following one thing into another, not trying to land anywhere in particular.
Alysa doesn't say anything.
She doesn't move around or check her phone or do the thing people sometimes do when they're not sure how to hold silence while someone else is in it. She just stays. Legs tucked under her, mug in her hands, eyes on you or on the middle distance, present in the way she's always present.
You notice this.
You let yourself notice it.
You play something low and slow, repetitive in the way of things that are building without announcing it, and somewhere in the middle of it something in your chest releases — the particular tension of a day spent in your own head, the six weeks of unnamed things, the hour this afternoon on the floor with the playlist going and the quiet accumulating — it just. Goes.
The way it always goes on the ice, for Isa.
The way it goes here, for you.
Except tonight there's someone in the room and the thing releases anyway.
That's new.
You play for a while.
You're not sure how long. Long enough that the tea gets cold, long enough that the city outside has gone fully dark, long enough that Pepper has migrated from the couch to the floor beside you, which is her highest endorsement.
You slow down eventually, not stopping so much as arriving somewhere, the way a song ends not because it runs out but because it's said what it needed to say.
You let the last note ring.
Silence.
Then Alysa says, quietly: "you do that thing you said."
You look up at her.
"You're never just playing the note you're playing," she says. "You're always playing it in relation to everything around it." She pauses. "I could hear it. The way it all connects."
You look at her.
She's looking at you with the expression you've been cataloguing for six weeks — the soft one, the real one, the one she doesn't always know is there.
Except this time she knows.
This time she's not performing neutrality about it, she's just — looking at you, directly, with the full weight of whatever has been building between you in coffee shops and playlists and competition stands and sunday mornings on ice, and there is nothing in her expression that is asking you to look away.
You don't look away.
"Alysa," you say.
"Yeah," she says, like it's an answer, like you asked something.
Maybe you did.
The room is very quiet. Pepper is a warm weight against your leg. The bass is still in your lap and your fingers are still on the strings and the city is doing its late Saturday thing outside and none of it is particularly urgent, none of it is asking anything of you, and that's — that's the thing, actually. That's the whole thing.
Nothing about this has ever felt urgent.
It's just felt true.
"I was going to wait," you say. "To say anything. I wasn't sure—" you stop. Start again, because you owe her the honest version. "I didn't want to get it wrong."
"Get what wrong," she says, carefully.
"This." You hold her gaze. "You."
She's very still.
Not the uncertain kind of still. The other kind — the listening kind, the kind she gets when something matters and she wants to be sure she hears it right.
"I like you," you say. Plain. No decoration. The way you say the things you mean. "I've been — I've been trying to find the right time to say it and I think I've mostly just been trying to find the nerve."
A beat of silence.
"You," she says slowly, "who notices everything about everyone."
"Yeah."
"Couldn't find the nerve."
"It's different when it's about you," you say. "It's always different when it's about me."
She looks at you for a long moment.
Then something in her face does something quiet and certain and she says: "I added the first song because of how you said goodnight."
You look at her.
"The crane wives one," she says. "The first one I added. I found it and I thought — this is what it felt like when you said goodnight. Like something that hadn't finished yet." She pauses. "That was week one."
Week one.
You've been reading those songs for six weeks, following the thread, and she's been — she's been putting things in there since week one, since before the sunday at the rink, since almost the very beginning, and you have been slow and she has been patient and the playlist has been sitting there the whole time being more honest than either of you were saying out loud.
Frequencies that find each other.
You named it that and didn't fully understand why until right now.
"Week one," you say.
"Week one," she confirms, and there's something rueful and warm in it, the smile of someone who has been holding something carefully for a long time and has finally put it down somewhere safe.
You set the bass aside.
Carefully, the way you always handle it, but your eyes don't leave her.
You move from the floor to the couch in the unhurried way of someone who has decided something and is not in a rush about it, and she doesn't move away, she just turns toward you slightly, and you're close enough now that the city sounds from outside are louder than they were, which doesn't make sense but is true.
"Can I—" you start.
"Yes," she says, before you finish.
So you do.
It's not dramatic. It doesn't need to be. It's quiet and certain and warm, the way the real things tend to be, and she tilts toward you like she's been waiting to, and your hand finds the side of her face without making a decision about it, and for a moment the whole apartment is just this — the soft specific weight of something that has been true for six weeks finally being said in the only language that gets all the way there.
When you pull back she's looking at you with her eyes still closed for a second, and then she opens them, and she's close enough that you can see exactly what's in them, which is something easy and unhurried and entirely real.
"Hi," she says softly.
"Hi," you say.
Pepper makes a small noise of complete indifference and repositions herself on the floor.
Alysa laughs — the real one, sudden, quiet — and you feel it more than hear it and you think that this is the frequency, this is the one, the one that has been there since a parking lot and a borrowed hoodie and a playlist that kept growing between two people who were both too careful to say the thing until tonight on a saturday in may with the bass still warm and the tea gone cold.
You think you're going to be very glad you didn't wait any longer.
She stays until midnight.
Not because anything else happens — nothing else happens, or rather everything that needed to happen has happened and the rest of the evening is just the two of you on the couch, close in the way you're now allowed to be close, talking about nothing in particular and everything in general, and Pepper distributes herself across both of you with the equanimity of someone who called this weeks ago.
When she leaves you walk her to her car because that's what you do, except this time at the car she turns and looks at you in the orange glow of the streetlight and you lean down and kiss her again, briefly, the kind that isn't a goodbye so much as a see you soon.
"Goodnight [Name]," she says.
"Goodnight," you say.
You watch her drive away.
You stand in the parking lot for a moment.
Go back inside.
Your phone lights up before you've even taken your jacket off.
alysa 🩵: i'm adding a song when i get home
you: what song
alysa 🩵: you'll know when you see it
You smile at your phone.
you: okay
alysa 🩵: goodnight
you: goodnight
You put the phone down.
Pick the bass back up.
Play for a little while longer, just because you want to, just because the apartment feels different tonight in a way that has nothing to do with anything being different and everything to do with something being right.
The notification comes twenty minutes later.
alysa added a song to signal & static
You open it.
You read the title.
You sit with it for a moment, the way you sit with things that matter.
Then you put your headphones in, and you press play, and you let it be exactly what it is.
In the Blade Angels chat, at 12:47am:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
alysa 🩵: hey
alysa 🩵: so
alysa 🩵: something happened
isa 🌙: ALYSA ITS 1AM
isa 🌙: WHAT HAPPENED
amber 🖤: I'M AWAKE I'M AWAKE
alysa 🩵: he told me he likes me
isa 🌙:
amber 🖤:
alysa 🩵: and i told him about the crane wives song
alysa 🩵: and then
isa 🌙: AND THEN???
alysa 🩵: 🩵
Three seconds.
isa 🌙: ISA HAS LEFT THE CHAT
amber 🖤: ISA
isa 🌙: I'M BACK I'M BACK
isa 🌙: ALYSA
alysa 🩵: 🩵🩵🩵
amber 🖤: i'm crying in the bubs
isa 🌙: I'M CRYING IN THE ISABABY
alysa 🩵: you're both so dramatic
isa 🌙: WE ARE NOT DRAMATIC WE ARE EMOTIONAL
isa 🌙: he played for you didn't he
alysa 🩵: yeah
alysa 🩵: isa he's
alysa 🩵: he's really something
isa 🌙: 🥹
isa 🌙: i know
isa 🌙: he really is
amber 🖤: okay i need everyone to know i called this
amber 🖤: parking lot
amber 🖤: week one
amber 🖤: i said something is happening
alysa 🩵: you did
amber 🖤: i'm just saying
isa 🌙: we know bubs we know
amber 🖤: 🖤
isa 🌙: goodnight alysa 🌙
alysa 🩵: goodnight 🩵
amber 🖤: goodnight 🖤
amber 🖤: also
amber 🖤: welcome to the family officially
amber 🖤: pepper already voted you in weeks ago
alysa 🩵: 😭🩵
Across town, in an apartment where the bass is back in its stand and the tea mugs are washed and Pepper has claimed the center of the bed with the authority of someone who has been waiting for the household to sort itself out—
You're still listening to the song she added.
You've played it four times.
You'll probably play it a fifth.
Signal & static. 24 songs. 2 contributors.
You think about week one.
You think about how long she carried that carefully, quietly, putting it into songs because that was the language you'd both found, and how patient she was, and how you were slow and she waited and neither of you pushed and it happened anyway, the way the real things do — not because you forced it but because you followed the thread long enough.
Frequencies that find each other.
You named it that before you understood it.
You understand it now.
You close your eyes.
You let the song play.
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy
Chapter 8 — Accidentally On Purpose
——————————————————
Three weeks pass.
Not empty weeks — full ones, the kind that accumulate without you noticing until you look back and realize how much has settled into routine. The playlist grows. Slowly, a song every few days, sometimes less, never forced — you'll add something on a Tuesday morning and she'll add something Thursday night and neither of you comments on it directly, just occasionally sends a message that's only the song title and nothing else, which has become its own language.
You text most days now. Not always long — sometimes it's a physics thing you found interesting, sometimes it's a photo of something Pepper did that required documentation, sometimes it's her sending a video of something at the rink that made her think of a song on the playlist without saying why. The texture of it is easy. Comfortable in the way of something that has found its own rhythm without being asked to.
Isa notices. She doesn't say anything, which means she's being strategic about it, which is somehow more concerning than if she just said the thing.
Amber notices too. She says everything, which is at least predictable.
It's a Thursday in late March when it happens. The city is doing that thing it does at the edge of spring — cold enough in the morning to need a jacket, warm enough by afternoon to regret it — and you're between a lecture and a lab session with an hour and a half of nothing in particular.
You're at the coffee place two blocks from campus, the one with the good cortados and the slightly wobbly table in the corner that you've claimed through consistent occupancy, when your phone buzzes.
[Name] 🎸
alysa 🩵: okay random
alysa 🩵: are you near campus today
You look at the message.
Look at the wobbly table.
Look back at the message.
you: yeah between classes why
alysa 🩵: i have a physio appointment near there at 2
alysa 🩵: and i'm early and i don't know anywhere to get coffee around there
A pause that you don't mean to take but do anyway, because you're reading it twice to make sure you're reading it right.
you: i'm at a place two blocks from the engineering building right now
you: cortados are good
alysa 🩵: are you offering
you: i'm providing information
alysa 🩵: 😐
you: yes i'm offering
alysa 🩵: okay i'll be there in like 10
She doesn't ask for the name of the place. You realize a second later that she didn't need to — you're going to send it and she's going to come and that's already decided, the logistics are just details.
You send her the name anyway.
You also move your bag off the chair across from you, which you're not going to examine.
She arrives in nine minutes, which means she was already closer than she said, which means she'd already decided before she texted you.
You notice this and say nothing about it.
She comes through the door in a jacket that's slightly too light for the morning but makes sense for the afternoon, hair pulled back, and she finds you in the corner without looking around for very long, which means she looked for the corner first, which means she knew that's where you'd be, which means Isa has said something about your habits at some point and you are going to think about that later.
"Hi," she says, sliding into the chair across from you.
"Hi." You push the menu toward her even though it's a small place with six things on it. "Cortado is what I said."
"Then that's what I want."
You flag someone down. She takes her jacket off and drapes it over the back of the chair and looks around the place the way she looked around your apartment — taking it in without performing the taking-in of it.
"You come here a lot," she says. It's not a question.
"Between every class that ends before 3pm."
"They know your order?"
"Elena makes it when she sees me come through the door."
Alysa looks over at the counter, where Elena is in fact already making something without having been asked.
"That's nice," she says, and means it.
"She also tells me when I look tired, which is less nice but probably fair."
Alysa smiles. "Does she have opinions about the wobbly table?"
You look at her.
She looks at the table.
She nudges one leg with her foot and it rocks slightly, confirming its character.
"I've been coming here for two years," you say. "I think I'm attached to it."
"You could ask them to fix it."
"I could," you agree, and say nothing else, and she laughs — the quick one, the real one — and the table wobbles slightly and neither of you moves to fix it.
The cortados arrive and the hour and a half opens up in front of you like something unscheduled and unhurried, which it is, which neither of you addresses directly.
It's different, being here with just her.
Not worse. Just — more specific. Without Isa filling the edges and Amber providing running commentary, there's more space, and you're both in it together, and you find that you don't mind the space at all.
She asks about the lab session you're heading to. You tell her about the experiment — something involving resonance frequencies in composite materials that would take an hour to explain properly and you give her the condensed version, and she follows it the way she's been following things since the first night in the kitchen, with actual attention, asking the question that gets to the center of it rather than the surface.
"So you're basically teaching the material to expect certain frequencies," she says.
"More like — finding the ones it already wants to respond to. Then working with that instead of against it."
She turns her cup in her hands. Something moving behind her eyes.
"That's what good choreography does," she says slowly. "You don't fight what the music is doing. You find where it wants to go and you go there first."
You look at her.
She looks slightly surprised at herself, like the connection came out before she decided to say it.
"Yeah," you say. "Exactly like that."
She looks at her cup. "You're going to make me see physics everywhere now."
"It's already everywhere," you say. "You're just starting to notice."
"Is that your fault?"
"Probably."
She shakes her head but she's smiling, and you look back at your own cup, and outside the window the city is doing its late March thing, caught between two temperatures, not quite one thing or another.
At some point — you're not sure when, exactly, because the time has been doing something strange and unhurried — she pulls out her phone.
"Can I show you something?"
"Yeah."
She opens Spotify. Not the playlist — something else, a song you don't recognize.
"I found this yesterday," she says. "I almost added it but I wasn't sure if it fit."
She plays it.
You listen.
It's quiet at first — piano, then a voice, something that builds in the particular way of things that know how to make you wait for them. You listen to the whole thing without saying anything, which she seems to understand is not disinterest but the opposite of it.
When it ends you pick up your phone and add it to the playlist.
She watches you do it.
"It fits," you say.
"Yeah?"
"It's a good addition." You set your phone down. "You're getting better at following the thread."
"I had a good starting point," she says, and says it simply, the way you say things, and you notice that — the way she's picked up the rhythm of it, the plainness, the thing said without decoration.
You look at her.
She looks back.
The table wobbles slightly in the silence and neither of you looks at it.
Her alarm goes off at ten to two.
She silences it, starts gathering her jacket, and you both do the small choreography of ending a conversation that neither of you particularly wanted to end — unhurried, a little reluctant, the way you linger at the door of a place that was warm.
"How long is the appointment?" you ask, because you're curious and because asking extends things by thirty seconds.
"An hour, maybe." She stands, jacket on, bag over one shoulder. "Old ankle thing. Nothing dramatic."
"Does it give you trouble?"
"Less than it used to." She pauses. "Isa says you always wait for her after physio."
"She takes forever after appointments. She gets distracted talking to the therapist."
"That's not what I asked."
You look at her.
She's not quite smiling but she's close.
"I have lab until five," you say.
"I know," she says. "I wasn't asking."
She says it exactly the way you said I'm providing information, which is deliberate, which means she's been holding it the whole conversation and waited until now to use it, and something in your chest does the thing it's been doing with increasing frequency for three weeks.
"I'll text you," she says, and heads for the door.
You watch her go.
Sit with the empty cups and the wobbly table and the quiet of the coffee shop for a moment.
Open Spotify.
The crane wives song she added three weeks ago. The one from this afternoon. Eleven songs that are now thirteen, two contributors, growing by something that isn't quite a system but has become one anyway.
You put your headphones in.
You have forty minutes before lab.
You follow the thread.
That evening, a text.
alysa 🩵: ankle is fine. physio said i'm boring which is the best possible outcome
you: boring is good
alysa 🩵: that's what i said
alysa 🩵: also elena waved at me when i passed the window on the way back
you: she waves at everyone
alysa 🩵: she pointed at me specifically and gave me a thumbs up
You stare at your phone.
you: i'm going to have to find a new coffee place
alysa 🩵: 😂
alysa 🩵: you won't
you: i won't
alysa 🩵: goodnight [Name]
you: goodnight
You put your phone down.
Pepper jumps up and sits on it immediately, which is her opinion on the matter.
"I know," you tell her.
She blinks.
Slow.
Regal.
Entirely unsympathetic.
In the Blade Angels chat, eleven minutes later:
🗡️ THE BLADE ANGELS 🗡️
alysa 🩵: so i may have gotten coffee with him today
isa 🌙: WHAT
isa 🌙: WHEN
isa 🌙: WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME
alysa 🩵: i'm telling you now
amber 🖤: how was it
alysa 🩵: good
alysa 🩵: really good actually
alysa 🩵: we talked for like an hour and a half without noticing
isa 🌙: 🥹🥹🥹
amber 🖤: did he walk you out
alysa 🩵: i had to go first he had lab
amber 🖤: okay but did he seem like he wanted to walk you out
alysa 🩵: amber
amber 🖤: i'm asking a reasonable question
alysa 🩵:
alysa 🩵: yeah
alysa 🩵: he did
isa 🌙: 🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙
amber 🖤: also elena gave her a thumbs up through the window
isa 🌙: WAIT
isa 🌙: ELENA FROM THE COFFEE PLACE
amber 🖤: apparently
isa 🌙: he goes there literally every day she's seen EVERYTHING
alysa 🩵: that's what i'm saying
isa 🌙: alysa she has watched him sit at that wobbly table alone for two years
isa 🌙: of course she gave you a thumbs up
alysa 🩵: oh
alysa 🩵: oh that's
amber 🖤: yeah
alysa 🩵: 🥹
isa 🌙: 🥹
amber 🖤: 🥹
amber 🖤: okay we all need to go to sleep
isa 🌙: agreed
isa 🌙: goodnight 🌙
amber 🖤: night 🖤
alysa 🩵: night 🩵
Alysa puts her phone down.
Lies in the dark.
Thinks about a wobbly table in a corner of a coffee shop, claimed through two years of consistent occupancy, and a chair across it that has apparently been empty until today.
She opens Spotify.
Signal & static. 13 songs. 2 contributors.
She adds one more.
Then she puts her phone down and goes to sleep.
taglist: @canvascoloredin @couchdweller @yellowfellow004 @urwavvy