Cassiopeia The First - Tumblr Posts

19, 28, 34

Cassiopeia / Nigella

Cassy/Nigella - #19, #28, #34: Vulnerable, unexpected, desperation 

(For the one-word fic prompts ask game here. It’s a long weekend, so I’ll accept another if you still have a request! Anon is fine! Zero stakes - just vibes!) 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a dyke in possession of a tiny, council-subsidized flat above a ceramics studio, must be in want of a repressed English lawyer without functioning gaydar. 

N— had never intended to become the protagonist of an English romance novel—nor, later on, had she intended to become a colorful side character in a convoluted, four-volume sci-fi epic—but what can you do? If she were being completely honest, she had never intended to seriously date C— at all. 

She was cute, sure. She’d fancied her accent and her open, earnest sense of naivete. Her lack of experience, however, had been a bit of a turnoff from the start. On paper, C— had moved to New Zealand for a job, but the way she’d told it, she’d actually accepted the role to safely experiment with women. 

It was a big responsibility to be someone’s first girlfriend, and after a lifetime as the caretaker to her epileptic single mother, N— felt she’d enjoyed quite enough responsibility, thanks.

That was why, the year her mum died, she’d packed it all up and moved to the south island for art school. It was a well-deserved second adolescence after years spent doing freelance graphic design during the day and tending bar when respite showed up in the evening. 

They’d called her a ‘mature age student,’ and she’d sure as hell felt like one next to all the fresh-faced babies in her program. She’d made a lot of art and had a lot of sex, and she’d finished the program after writing an impressive honors thesis in Ceramics (only partially for the bit).  

She’d fallen in love with the Earth in Dunedin, as anyone with eyes would. It was the closest thing she’d ever had to a religious experience. 

You couldn’t spend any time in Otago Harbour and not develop an evangelical urge to save the world. It was why she’d gone for the ceramics qualification, in the end—the urge to take the earth in her hands, to feel it under her nails, to shape it and love it, and make humanity love it, too. It ended up that it was a good thing to turn the Earth into art at the End of Days. There was grant funding for the precise types of projects she was interested in pursuing. 

Somehow, despite her rough start, she was living the dream. She’d become a working artist at the end of the world. 

She’d also ended up moving back north again, but that was neither here nor there. She had a flat and a studio. She got to travel. She had friends, and funding, and a purpose, which was far more than she’d expected when she’d fucked off to uni. And, as a young, queer woman whose only living relative was a deadbeat dad, she knew a thing or two about finding community and choosing her own family.  

The issue was that her flat was small. Nearly everything she owned had been her mum’s first, and there was a weird sentimentality attached to much of it. Part of it was that she was frugal and couldn’t see replacing perfectly serviceable things with new ones. In other words, her place looked like she was attempting to squat at an unfortunate garage sale. It was cozy and lived in. Hell, she loved it. When it came to bringing girls up, however, she became self-conscious and stupid. 

Sure, she ardently believed that all clothing was costume and all gender was performance, which made the world a stage… but her flat was the weird prop storage facility at the back of the theatre. And could you really blame her if she wasn’t entirely keen on having sex in her dead mum’s bed? 

Inevitably, however, a night came when neither she nor C— had been ready to go back to their own flats after dessert, but neither was willing to invite the other over. N— knew her reasons, but C— was supposedly living in some ritzy, brand-new flat paid for by her employer. 

She was left to assume that C— was nervous. Frankly, N— had been a bit nervous, too. She had no idea if she was about to be this poor girl’s first time, which was even more responsibility she hadn’t asked for. 

She liked her, though, was the thing. And she seemed very competent. Maybe she’d get lucky, and she’d be competent in bed as well. 

(N— tried not to think about the day they’d met… at her lesbian gallery opening at the lesbian library and archive centre. N— had been wearing a pin that said ‘lesbian.’ C— had very politely used about a hundred thoughtful and respectful words to ask her if she was, by any chance, gay?)

Somehow, after hemming and hawing for about an hour, they’d found themselves in front of a truly opulent Victorian Colonial building in Greytown, where they’d hemmed and hawed a bit more before the doorman (the bloody doorman?!) asked if they were planning on coming inside. 

N— had wondered, briefly, if C—’s employer was, perhaps, God… or one of His associates. There was something a bit horror movie-esque about their silent, side-by-side walk beneath the lobby chandelier, into the lift, down the very long, very quiet hallway, and up to the door of C—’s flat. C—’s hands were shaking as she fumbled with the clanging keys, making awkward small talk and chuckling nervously as she slowly, slowly unlocked the door. 

The flat was huge and white-washed, with high ceilings and wooden floors. The place was ostensibly tidy, with a dozen separate organizational systems fighting for dominance, but not in a way that would have made sense to anyone but C—. There were a lot of piles and stacks. All of the furniture was in an awkward line in the middle of the sitting room. There was no real decor, either. It looked unexpectedly utilitarian. 

To put it kindly, the flat looked like a serial killer’s secret hideout. 

Upon inspection, there was a clock somewhere that made an honest-to-God ticking sound, and it echoed in the cavernous space. N— found a room that contained a single, plastic-covered floral loveseat and nothing else. There were far too many ornamental teapots and a single, sad mug in the middle of the counter with a corporate logo on it. 

After a good few minutes of walking around in silent shock, N— still wasn’t entirely sure where (or if) she’d been sleeping. 

It was all a bit sus, to be honest. It was like… if a museum… was bad. It was simultaneously fascinating and viscerally repulsive. She felt weird wearing her boots in there but would have felt weirder taking them off. 

Strangely, it made her feel homesick for the overstuffed basket of multicolored pilling Afghans in her clusterfuck of a home. She wanted her outdated couch, and her magnetic poetry, and her three wobbly, mismatched dining chairs. 

N— could have chosen to be polite about it. She could have pretended it was a unique aesthetic choice. She could have slept with her on a plastic-wrapped floral loveseat in the center of an otherwise empty room while the noisy clock ticked down the seconds until she could run for the hills. 

Instead, she’d turned to C— and very gently asked, “Uh, you right?” 

And that was when C— had turned completely red, chomped down on her lower lip, and began to weep in earnest. 

“It’s my first solo flat,” she’d wept openly, perching awkwardly on the edge of the world’s most awkward sofa, head buried in her hands. “It’s massive, and I’m in a new country all on my own, and I’m not sure how I’d fill all this space even if I wasn’t. It’s paid for, so I can’t, in good conscience, say I don’t appreciate it, but it’s—” she’d floundered, pausing to catch her breath, “It’s not home. It’s lonely. I spend all my time trying to avoid coming back. My colleagues are lovely, really, and they tend to work late, which helps, but I thought, by now…” she trailed off, aggressively wiping tears from her cheeks with her fists, shaking her head. 

When N— moved to sit down beside her, the plastic covering on the sofa squeaked. For about five solid seconds, it was silent. 

That was all it took for C—, already at the end of her rope, to crack wide open.

She began cackling frenetically in that high-ceilinged room, her unhinged giggles bouncing off the walls like a deranged myna. It was bloody adorable, was what it was. More than that, it was contagious. Before she knew it, N— was laughing so hard her eyes began to tear up, too, leaving her puffy-faced and gasping to get her breath. 

It felt like 2 AM at a slumber party or the bathroom at a club—a bit heightened and surreal and more intimate than it had any right to be. 

“It’s awful,” N— gasped after tossing her head to rest on the filigreed back of the loveseat. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I think—I think it might actually be hell,” she’d snorted.

“I tried!” C— exclaimed passionately, her voice half-whine, half declamation. “I swear I tried. I don’t fail often, but when I do, I aim for top marks. What do you think?” she’d asked, eyes huge and searching for some sad sort of approval. 

“Good lord,” N— laughed. “Yeah,” she said decisively, “Yeah, nah. Well done. Gold star. This is the worst anybody’s ever done it.” 

“Oh,” C— had said, giggling, “Well, that’s good, then.” 

The reply was so soft and so earnest that N— couldn’t help herself. She learned across, pulled her in, and smooched her right there on the worst sofa in the world. She smelled like practical, generic 2-in-1 shampoo, and she tasted like salt tears and warm saliva and nothing in particular. Her cheeks were hot from crying, then from laughing, and the deep flush that went down to her chest only grew deeper the longer they tasted one another. 

And yes, the plastic covering squeaked and squeaked and squeaked under their shifting weight, a piercing counterpoint to that absurd ticking clock. It was music. It was magic. It couldn’t have been less romantic if they’d tried. And yet. 

By the time they came up for air, N— knew her makeup was utterly fucked and she didn’t care. At some point, she’d lost her flannel. 

“And how was that?” C— asked, still a bit breathless from the effort, so much like a child looking for the teacher’s approval. 

As she looked up at her, brows hovering toward her hairline, N— suddenly understood three things very clearly: The first: this woman was positively mental in the most aggravatingly endearing way imaginable.

The second: god damnit, she was actually about to become this woman’s first girlfriend, wasn’t she? 

And the third? “Come back to mine?” she offered, dead mum’s bed be damned. 

“Gosh. Yes. Please,” C— had said desperately, jumping to her feet at once as if she’d been waiting for any excuse to get up and go. 

“A bit eager, yeah? But alright.” At N—’s smirk, she flushed again, grinning lips going slack. “Oh. Ah. I didn’t mean—” she rambled, her eyes darting from one too-white wall to the opposite… perhaps searching for a window to leap out of. “I only meant I would love to not be here at the moment. Or, frankly, ever. And I’m not picky about where I end up. I mean, obviously, I do enjoy your company very much, so your flat would be. Ah… preferable? That is, preferable to, say, the streets, or some sort of hostel, for example.”

“Reckon that’s the most romantic thing anybody’s ever said to me.” “Is it?”  

“Not at all. 

Tick, tick, tick. 

“Right. I’ll just—my toothbrush,” C— said suddenly, skittering out of the room to stand behind her shower curtain and take a series of deep breaths. 

And that was how N— found herself making up her mum’s old couch with hand-me-down pillows and afghans from the 80s (and later, moving it all to the bed). That was how C—’s mass-produced mug with the corporate logo was replaced by a hand-thrown and glazed earthen mug from the studio downstairs. It was how N—’s collection of magnetic poetry began spelling out silly love letters and why strange piles began appearing throughout the flat. 

Before long, N— had a girl in the stands during every cricket match, and C— had a willing ride to her sketchy job at the freezing works. C— had someone to cook for, and N— had someone to come home to. 

And it was nice to have someone in the passenger seat as N— took long drives to beautiful places to gather the last local clay on Earth. It was a pleasure to have a lover of language reviewing her grant applications.  Most importantly, it was a big help to have a second set of hands when she finally replaced her dead mum’s bed with something new.

(And brought the floral loveseat to the op shop for good.)

Me, in the dead of night, delicately whispering my desperate pleas into the universe,

PLEASE DONT LET ALL THE OG LYCTORS BE WHITE, PLEASE DONT LET ALL THE OG LYCTORS BE WHITE, PLEA