Chapter Text
They name the rat Rosa.
Because she has a pink nose and little pink fingers and a soft, pale, pink belly beneath sparse white fur.
Nicky suggests it, Yusuf, naturally, immediately seconds the name, and by the time their plane has touched down at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Andy is so used to hearing the name that she can hardly think of the rat by any other.
And when Nicky says, “this is Rosa,” holding her up for Booker and Nile to examine, upon their arrival back to the house, they don’t argue.
“She’s kind of cute, actually,” Nile says, touching the tiny twitching nose with one finger.
Andy doesn’t agree and is validated to see that Booker seems less-than-thrilled by their new companion as well.
After an elbow to his ribs from Nile, Booker says, “I’m sure I’ll get used to her?” and Nile sighs at him but doesn’t push.
Andy decides to just…ignore the rat. Besides, she has homework to do.
Jet lag has her awake at 1am, though, and she’s working on an essay for her Social Studies course on the couch when Rosa starts making hopeful noises from her frankly massive enclosure which now takes up a good portion of the living room. Andy lets her out because she knows all too well what it feels like to be caged.
Rosa explores the coffee table and then politely requests that Andy share her plate of fruit and Andy, grudgingly, acquiesces.
She’s negotiating with Rosa over the last blueberry when her phone lights up with a text from Quynh.
I’m having feelings about Oscar Wilde
Haven’t we all. Andy responds. And then: Why are you awake?
I’m a graduate student.
Fair.
What are you doing up? Quyhn asks.
I’m feeding a rat, she answers honestly
Is that some sort of really weird euphemism?
Unfortunately, no. One of my brothers recently acquired one. She seemed interested in my midnight snack. And now I’m sharing.
Andy carefully maneuvers her phone around so that she can take a picture of Rosa, now holding the last blueberry.
Oh that’s cute as hell. I actually like rats. They get a bad rap.
Andy considers.
Would you like to meet her?
Is THAT a euphemism?
Could be. Or you could come share a fruit plate with me and a rat.
Thirty minutes later, Quynh is on the couch with them.
“Can’t say anyone has ever invited me over to meet their rat before,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss between Rosa’s admittedly cute ears.
“I’m special,” Andy says flatly.
“You certainly are,” Quynh agrees, but she doesn’t sound like she’s joking. She lets Rosa explore her fingertips, then watches as she wiggles up the back of the couch to perch above them.
Quynh turns her attention to Andy, crawling up to sprawl inelegantly on top of her. “Are you planning to sleep at all tonight? Or. This morning, I guess.”
Andy purses her lips. “Unlikely.”
Quynh kisses her collarbone. “Well, now that the rat has been fed, what’s keeping you awake?”
“Perhaps I’m also having feelings about Oscar Wilde.”
Quynh grins. “Oh?”
Andy runs her fingers up under the hem of Quynh’s shirt, pressing a little against the well of flesh just above the elastic band of her shorts. “I can resist everything but temptation,” she quotes.
“I wonder what he would think of the 21st century,” Quynh says, tucking her face into Andy’s neck with a soft little exhale that makes Andy’s chest do something complicated.
“He’d love it. Shame he didn’t get to see how far we’ve come.”
“I think he’d like that we think of him, though. I think he’d be pleased to be remembered.”
“Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time,” Andy murmurs.
“Sappho,” Quynh agrees. “Another one to have feelings about. The creator of the concept of being too gay to function.”
Andy laughs. “Sweet mother I cannot weave—slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl.”
“My Greek Lyric Poetry professor used Raynor’s translation in class last year,” Quynh mutters. “Like, just break my heart, why don’t you.”
“It was about a girl,” Andy assures her. “The rest of the poem was pretty damn clear about it.”
“You mean the rest of the poem that no longer exists?”
“Yes.”
Quynh sighs like she’s joking. “I wish there was a way to be certain.”
“You can be certain. I promise.”
Quynh shifts to squint at her. “Because you hold secret knowledge of Sapho’s poetry that rest of the world somehow is not party to?”
“Yes.”
Quynh sighs at her again. “Do you have anything concrete?” she asks morosely, flopping back to bury her head in Andy’s neck, “because I still haven’t decided what to write my dissertation on but previously undiscovered literature from a historical icon would be a good place to start.”
Andy goes still.
“Nothing by Sappho,” she says finally. “What, ah, period,” she asks. “I mean, if you could discover previously unknown literature or letters or…artifacts from a historical icon. What period would you prefer?”
“Well that would depend.”
“On?”
“How gay it was.”
Andy laughs. Something that apparently she just does around Quynh.
“Oh?” She manages.
“I’d care less about the period and more about the person—or content. You got any letters from suspected queer historical figures that makes their sexuality explicitly clear? Or even better—evidence that historical figures who have always been seen as like, hyper-masculine or the epoch of straight femininity were actually extremely homosexual?”
Andy does, is the thing. Some she would never share, because she knows they wouldn’t have wanted her to. But some—
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, and Quynh sighs at her like she’s still joking, settling her head back on Andy’s chest. Her fingers move, distracting but in the best kind of way, on Andy’s arm. Purposeless. Soft.
“It’s weird,” Quynh says.
“Hm?”
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve known you forever,” she murmurs.
“I’d like to,” Andy says quietly. “Whatever is left of it.”
Quynh doesn’t answer, and they go silent for several minutes.
“Do you want to go upstairs?” she asks finally.
Quynh makes a noise that is vaguely affirmative. “Will I have to sneak out in the morning if I stay?”
“No,” Andy says, and then, after a weighty pause. “I’d like to introduce you to my family.”
“I expect breakfast.”
“One of my brothers was trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.”
“Sold.”
They put Rosa back in her enclosure and then they go upstairs and Andy watches Quynh in front of her—the flex of her calves, the fall of her hair, the curve of her fingers around the stair railing under the pale stripes of streetlamp light from the window.
She watches and she wants and for the first time in a very, very, long time, she allows herself to want without inhibition.
***
Booker doesn’t really try to sleep.
He goes through the motions of getting ready for bed and then, freshly showered and in the boxers that Nile once noted she liked, he begins unpacking. Because apparently he has become incapable of leaving a suitcase in the corner for a future version of himself to deal with.
He hears Nile coming up the stairs only a few minutes later and he wonders if she’d been waiting—listening as he showered and then started opening dresser drawers.
“Hey,” she says, leaning against the door frame.
“Nile,” Booker says, glancing up to give her a small, private, sort of smile that always seems to make her feel inordinately proud. Perhaps he should smile more.
“So, we’re back,'' Nile says.
“Yes?” Booker agrees.
“Jesus. I’d be mad at you but I don’t even think you’re doing it on purpose.”
“Doing what on purpose?”
“Exactly.”
He just blinks at her and she sighs.
“You’d said we would talk about…things. When we got back.”
He falters in folding a sweater. “We’ve been back for five hours.”
“You didn’t specify a time frame.”
He laughs, despite himself. “Fair.”
“So,” she says.
“So,” he agrees.
“So you’re into me,” Nile says. “And I’m into you. And I’d really like for us to do something with that information. But if you’re not ready I don’t want to—” she stops. She starts again. “Do you want me to pretend I don’t know? I mean. Are you ready?
“No, but—”
He isn’t sure how to end the sentence: No, but I want to be. No, but I’ll try, for you. No, but please.
He’s been grieving for so long that the grief has turned into being, into a part of him—he has grown so used to longing, to a crushing and terrible sort of loneliness that begged to be assuaged except for the longest time he did not know how.
Now, he thinks, he knows how. But the theory is far easier to consider than putting it into practice.
He thinks he could love her.
He thinks he may already.
He is terrified.
“I’m out of practice at being in love,” he says, because he may as well put all his cards on the table. “And I’m even more out of practice at being happy. And I’m working on that. But I don’t know if I could love you the way you deserve. Right now.”
His voice doesn’t break because he’s two hundred years old and he’s not a juvenile and his voice doesn’t break.
It might break. A little.
Nile moves to crouch beside him. Close. Close enough he can smell her.
“Well, it’s my first time,” Nile says, “being in love, I mean. So that’s probably okay. We can figure it out together. We have time.”
They do, at that. For the first time in a long time, it feels like a blessing.
“So we’ll wait, then?” Nile says. “And we’ll just. Be. Until you’re ready to be more?”
The words are such a relief that he’s left briefly winded.
She takes the sweater that he’s clutching, perhaps a bit too hard, now, out of his hands and tucks it into the open drawer.
“Please,” he says. “Yes. Please.”
“Okay,” she agrees. “Can we still sleep together tonight? Just sleep.”
“Please,” he says again.
“Can the rest of the unpacking wait for tomorrow?”
“Yes,” he says, and he musters his wits enough to stand and curl his fingers around her wrist and lead her to bed.
She settles into the cup of his body like a habit and when he tucks an arm around her to pull her even closer she exhales like—he doesn’t even know. Like she’s safe. Like she’s happy. Like he’s done those things—made her safe and happy.
For someone who has spent so many decades sleeping alone, he thinks he could get used to this.
He hopes he has the opportunity to get used to it.
“Goodnight, Book,” Nile says.
He thinks of Paulo Coelho. Of The Alchemist. Of: I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.
He thinks of Joe and Nicky downstairs, no doubt tangled together in their bed. He thinks of how certain, how adamant, they are and have always been that destiny brought them together.
He used to mock them for it. He might not be able to anymore.
“Goodnight,” he answers.