Work Text:
Brekšti
(Lithuanian)
A verb used to describe a moment between the night and the dawn.
~~~
It’s late.
Or – early?
Carla can’t see out the window in their new bedroom to check. (Had only lasted all of one night with the glow from the lamppost shining in her eyes before they’d rearranged.)
(Before Lisa had wrangled Ryan into helping her rearrange.)
The change of view makes her miss the flat, just a little. The same way she misses the familiarity of slipping to the bathroom in the middle of the night without needing a light to guide the way.
(Or a robe to cover all her bits.)
She’s stubbed her toes too many times in the last week to not miss that.
And she knows it’s all for naught; that one day soon she’ll reach for a spoon in the kitchen without thinking or grab her cream from the vanity without needing to look and she’ll miss, instead, these moments where everything is new.
But it’s late – or early – and the house is quiet and so she gives herself permission to want for what once was – just for a minute. Just while there’s no one awake to catch her mooning over time gone by.
(Over the first place that was ever really, completely, her own.)
She sighs as her thoughts wander, nuzzling deeper beneath the covers, silently cursing her bladder for waking her at such an ungodly hour. And her brain, too, for refusing to shut off (wired as it is by how hard it had worked to get her safely to the toilet and back again).
The rustle of her movements earns her a tired huff from Lisa’s side of the bed – unconscious little limpet mumbling her displeasure with her face half-swallowed by the pillow shoved against her cheek.
(Doesn’t ever stir so much as wake or sleep; the sort to be up and functioning or dead to the world with no gray space in between.)
Her hair is splayed across the duvet behind her, near glistening in the darkness.
A light source of its own.
Carla reaches for it instinctively, drawn like gravity to the fine strands. She threads her fingers through them, revelling in the familiar feel of silk sliding against her skin.
In the familiar feel of Lisa beneath her hands.
~~~
Lisa Swain’s hair looks soft.
Carla nearly chokes on her gin and tonic as the thought pops into her head.
They’re sitting across from each other in the Bistro, sharing a meal at the end of a long week. Drinks and stories flowing freely between them, as per.
Lisa doesn’t seem to notice that Carla’s mind has begun to wander, simply carries on with her tale of the latest workplace drama.
(Someone stealing pens? Or lunches? Someone depositing items? God, Carla can’t even remember, her thoughts have meandered so far.)
(And it’s not that Lisa isn’t interesting – she’s endlessly interesting.)
(But so is her… hair?)
Carla clears her throat, attempting to dislodge the knot that’s formed and the intruding thought simultaneously.
“Are you alright?” Lisa asks immediately. She swipes at one of the little bits of fringe that’s fallen around her jawline, brushing it back into place with the tips of her fingers.
Lisa Swain’s hands look soft, too.
Carla nods, momentarily drawn speechless by the betrayal of her own mind. She can feel warmth spreading in her chest, threatening a path towards her cheeks. (A blush that will never come to fruition, she hopes.)
But Lisa narrows her eyes, disbelieving. She lifts her chin, eyebrow raised, and nods in the direction of Carla’s half-empty drink as if to say have you had enough?
Carla sets the glass down hastily, nearly spilling it in the process.
Gay panic, Ryan had called it. (The last time he’d teased.)
Only, Carla isn’t even sure she is gay (or bisexual, or pansexual, or whatever other terms the kids are using these days).
She just knows she likes Lisa.
Likes her company, likes her friendship, likes her… hair.
Lisa’s left it loose tonight and it hangs down around her shoulders, a slight wave present from the tight bun she’s probably had it in all day. (Nevermind that she’s still on leave an’ all.)
Any other signs of her formidable DS Swain persona have been shed this evening, too; a cozy-looking jumper replacing the usual buttoned-up collared shirt, a patterned coat tossed over the back of her chair instead of a structured blazer, that typically tense line of her shoulders wonderfully relaxed.
(Weeks of tiptoeing around each other nowhere in sight.)
She looks beautiful like this.
Carla swallows roughly, rubbing her hands against her thighs. Trying, desperately, to shake the desire coursing through her veins.
“Would you excuse me for a second?” she finds herself saying, rising quickly from her seat. She’s immediately grateful when it only wobbles from the sudden movement and doesn’t fall. (Would let the floor swallow her if it did.) “I’m just gonna nip to the ladies.”
She dashes off in that direction before she can see Lisa’s nod, before she can catch the worrying glance Lisa throws at her retreating back.
She has to get a grip.
(Which is exactly what she tells her reflection in the bathroom mirror.)
Because Ryan had been right, that night on the couch: she does want to kiss Lisa. She wants to know what it would feel like to have Lisa’s lips on her own, to have her hands in Lisa’s hair.
To hold Lisa, properly.
Only, the last time they’d gotten close, Lisa had run.
(A panicked gay.)
And Carla can’t even fathom losing her presence like that again.
So, she pats at her cheeks with a damp wad of paper and washes her hands and fixes her own hair before slipping back out the door to the Bistro –
and almost running right into Lisa herself.
“Hi,” Lisa sputters, catching her by the elbows. “I was just coming to check on you. You sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah,” Carla says too loudly, “’Course.”
(Her arms burn where Lisa is touching them. Where Lisa’s soft hands are resting on her skin.)
“Thought you might’ve been feeling a bit sick,” Lisa confesses, leaning closer. She drops her voice into a whisper as though they’re sharing a secret.
(Butterflies erupt in Carla’s stomach at the sound of it.)
“Was coming to hold your hair, if you needed.”
Almost instantly, a little pink blush floods Lisa’s face, her smile shifting into something that screams unsure.
(And Carla knows – knows too well – that it’s always one step forward and two steps back. That it’s her turn, now, to be brave.)
Lisa shifts, attempting to put distance between them again. Carla grabs hold before she can, clutching tightly to Lisa’s bicep.
(Tries not to wobble herself at the sensation of muscle in her grasp.)
“Ta,” she murmurs, pushing past the raspy edges of her own voice in her throat. (Ignoring the anxious flutter in her chest.) “Haven’t had that on offer in ages.”
Lisa laughs, then, so warm and so inviting that Carla very nearly leans in.
(Very nearly brushes the hair off Lisa’s shoulder, strokes her fingers along her cheek, finds the shape of her mouth with her own.)
“Hopefully that part of our drinking days is behind us.”
(Reminds herself quickly that she can’t.)
“Yeah,” Carla nods. Squeezes.
Feels.
(Throbs.)
“Probably just jinxed it, though, haven’t I?”
“Nah,” Carla murmurs.
It’s not conscious, when her fingers wander. When they find their way to the ends of Lisa’s hair, twirling a strand that’s landed in that space between Lisa’s shoulder and the curve of bicep beneath Carla’s hand.
It takes no thought at all, to touch. To know for sure that Lisa Swain’s hair is soft.
Lisa smiles.
Rubs her thumb slowly across Carla’s arm.
(Doesn’t move away.)
“Shall I walk you home?”
~~~
She knows, even as she strokes at wispy, white-blonde ends, that she’s toeing a delicate line between waking and soothing. That one distracted brush of her hand against pajama or skin will be enough to pull Lisa from dreamland.
(How easy it is to be distracted; lost as she is in her memories.)
She clings – gently, carefully – to the former.
It’s too late (or early) to wake her bedmate.
Only, it’s impossible to resist the draw of Lisa Swain’s soft hair. Has been since their early days, when they were nothing more than just friends.
(When the intimacy of sharing a bed, a home, a life was nowhere near their radar.)
(Just friends sharing drinks in the Bistro, the pub, her kitchen.)
How quickly that desire has become muscle memory.
(Brushing fringe behind Lisa’s ears before a kiss; grabbing a fistful of ponytail to pull as she teases; twisting wayward strands between her fingers as they settle in each other’s arms.)
As effortless as tiptoeing to the toilet in the middle of the night.
And it’s so silly, suddenly, to be mooning over history, wanting for a flat that was so often filled with solitude. With familiarity, yes, but also loneliness.
Because she’d take a million stubbed toes, for the way Lisa’s hair falls across the pillow. For the mountain of sweaters in the wardrobe and Lisa’s shampoo next to her own in the shower. For Ryan and Betsy sleeping soundly in their bedrooms down the hall.
For the photos of the four of them on their living room walls.
She can’t see out the window in their new bedroom, but she can see Lisa. She can touch Lisa.
She can love her. And her soft, beautiful –
Without another thought, Carla steps over the line: digs her fingers in deeper, finds scalp beneath all the silk and scratches. Hums with contentment when Lisa purrs at the attention.
When Lisa instinctively shuffles backwards, into her hold.
“Time’sit?” her little limpet mumbles, eyelids already fluttering in search of the clock.
Carla pulls her closer, winding an arm around her waist. Burying her nose in the blanket of Lisa’s hair. She breathes; feels the missing start to slip away.
“Doesn’t matter,” she whispers as Lisa’s fingers find her own and tug.
Late – early.
Either way, she’s grateful for this.