The first winter they spend sharing a bed is a strange experience of testing each other’s boundaries and developing their relationship in a way that they’d never had a chance to before. When Cat had arrived in New York, she had just turned twenty eight and November was easily as cold as a London January, the night time in an awkwardly heated apartment meant sleeping in two sweaters and grumbling about it to each other. One year on, Cat is fresh over the twenty nine mark, Bass is thirty six, and yet the pair of them are no better than a pair of nine year olds.
Perched on top of him, straddling his hips, Cat scowls from beyond the thick, ungainly cloak of duvet she has made for herself, clutching it tightly as Bass half-heartedly tries to tug it from her grasp, tug it - and her - down over himself, because neither of them remember how this fight started, only that Cat doesn’t want to be the one to finish it. It had begun near the door (one of those days where their shifts ended at similar times, and they met in the subway to go home together), and it had migrated across their small apartment to the kitchen until somehow she’d caught him off guard; and here they are now.
“What are we even fighting about?” Bass asks her pointedly, suddenly, still clutching parts of the duvet in both hands even though he stops trying to pull it away from her.
“What? Don’t be an idiot.” Cat frowns, her brow creasing, the freckles on her nose crinkling with annoyance and uncertainty, as if she’s suddenly unsure as to the subject of their tussle is. “I wanted to turn the bloody heating up, that’s what. Look, I can practically see myself fucking breathing in here--”
“After we spent all that money fixing the boiler and the repair guy told us to take it easy?”
“But it’s so goddamn cold! It could start chucking it down with snow in the next five minutes and you still wouldn’t give a shit, would you?”
They both suddenly come to a very similar realisation at this point. How they manage it is entirely beyond them, maybe it’s the case in point of the very thing that they realise; they’re more than a little bit domestic. Arguing and fussing over bills, boilers and heating, they’re all things that neither of them could have ever dreamed up a few years ago, not when they were knocking around Hamlets, not when they were fanning the flames of whatever fire consumed the two of them. Cat stiffens, briefly, and Bass’s grip on the duvet spontaneously tightens (she has a tendency to step back from the obvious signs that this is an actual, tangible relationship, bolting away from it as if it poses some kind of danger to her; he still sees the way that “I love you”, rarely as it is spoken, stumbles out of her mouth, words forcing themselves off her tongue, not because she doesn’t mean them, but because she’s still learning what affection is).
“Fuck it, if that’s the way we’re playing it, then ‘m having your thick sweater and you’re not doing a damn thing about it, understand?” Her voice has quietened into a rough mutter as she leans down, her hair sweeping over her shoulders and tickling his cheek for a short moment before she bumps her forehead against his - hard, of course - releasing her death grip on the duvet and finally allowing him to pull it around his shoulders. They’re both still fully dressed, but neither of them particularly care, not sandwiched here between each other, the mattress, the duvet. Bass feels a momentary tightness in his chest ease once again, and he moves his arms to loop around her, smiling vaguely as he mumbles yes, of course he understands, but she’ll have to fight him for it--
He relents when she nips him sharply on the nose, laughing and indignant all at once at the sheer stupidity of the way that they loved each other.
( kings & queens | cat+bass )
Perched on top of him, straddling his hips, Cat scowls from beyond the thick, ungainly cloak of duvet she has made for herself, clutching it tightly as Bass half-heartedly tries to tug it from her grasp, tug it - and her - down over himself, because neither of them remember how this fight started, only that Cat doesn’t want to be the one to finish it. It had begun near the door (one of those days where their shifts ended at similar times, and they met in the subway to go home together), and it had migrated across their small apartment to the kitchen until somehow she’d caught him off guard; and here they are now.
“What are we even fighting about?” Bass asks her pointedly, suddenly, still clutching parts of the duvet in both hands even though he stops trying to pull it away from her.
“What? Don’t be an idiot.” Cat frowns, her brow creasing, the freckles on her nose crinkling with annoyance and uncertainty, as if she’s suddenly unsure as to the subject of their tussle is. “I wanted to turn the bloody heating up, that’s what. Look, I can practically see myself fucking breathing in here--”
“After we spent all that money fixing the boiler and the repair guy told us to take it easy?”
“But it’s so goddamn cold! It could start chucking it down with snow in the next five minutes and you still wouldn’t give a shit, would you?”
They both suddenly come to a very similar realisation at this point. How they manage it is entirely beyond them, maybe it’s the case in point of the very thing that they realise; they’re more than a little bit domestic. Arguing and fussing over bills, boilers and heating, they’re all things that neither of them could have ever dreamed up a few years ago, not when they were knocking around Hamlets, not when they were fanning the flames of whatever fire consumed the two of them. Cat stiffens, briefly, and Bass’s grip on the duvet spontaneously tightens (she has a tendency to step back from the obvious signs that this is an actual, tangible relationship, bolting away from it as if it poses some kind of danger to her; he still sees the way that “I love you”, rarely as it is spoken, stumbles out of her mouth, words forcing themselves off her tongue, not because she doesn’t mean them, but because she’s still learning what affection is).
“Fuck it, if that’s the way we’re playing it, then ‘m having your thick sweater and you’re not doing a damn thing about it, understand?” Her voice has quietened into a rough mutter as she leans down, her hair sweeping over her shoulders and tickling his cheek for a short moment before she bumps her forehead against his - hard, of course - releasing her death grip on the duvet and finally allowing him to pull it around his shoulders. They’re both still fully dressed, but neither of them particularly care, not sandwiched here between each other, the mattress, the duvet. Bass feels a momentary tightness in his chest ease once again, and he moves his arms to loop around her, smiling vaguely as he mumbles yes, of course he understands, but she’ll have to fight him for it--
He relents when she nips him sharply on the nose, laughing and indignant all at once at the sheer stupidity of the way that they loved each other.