Work Text:
Here’s how it works: Leah is nineteen without her license.
Okay, well, that’s—that’s actually the gist of it. She’s a nineteen year old who doesn’t have her license. And of course that’d make sense if she lived in like—New York, or maybe if she was blind or something. Or maybe, maybe, she’s really poor. She can’t afford those expensive driver’s ed classes the state mandates, her parents never had time to teach her while working four jobs a day, they never had a car anyway, so what did it matter?
Or! Or! She can’t drive because it’s a protest thing. It’s bad for the environment and Leah will have no part of it. She’ll take the bus.
None of those are the case.
There’s a window above one of the gyms on campus, and a little window seat too. Leah likes to curl up there while she waits for LA’s robust public transportation system to arrive. She takes out whatever book her professor is making her read and curls into it and occasionally will glance down into the gym where the rowing team does their practice.
“She’s single.”
Leah jolts away from her book and looks at the girl now standing over her. She’s small, and maybe Leah recognizes her?
“Rachel.” The girl indicates down into the gym where Leah’s favorite rower is sweaty and busting her ass. She has a nice ass, not that Leah noticed.
“Um,” Leah swallows hard. “Is it that obvious?”
“To me,” the girl takes a seat beside her. “I’m Nora.” She holds out her hand and Leah takes it. “Rachel’s twin sister.”
Leah takes her hand away.
“Oh god I’m—”
“No worries.” Nora gives her a smile. “But she is single.”
So Leah doesn’t really have a choice does she? Do nothing and Nora tells Rachel that she has a stalker, or she can put herself out there. Gross gross gross.
She approaches Rachel and Nora as they head to their car and Nora dips away without a second glance leaving Leah and Rachel alone.
“Can I help you?” Rachel demands. Her voice is deep and throaty and already Leah is doing this wrong.
“Uh—I’m Leah,” Leah holds out her hand and Rachel glares. “Right.” She lowers it. “Would you um—wanna get coffee?”
Rachel blinks at her, “Did Nora put you up to this?”
“No? I—I always sit above the gym while I’m waiting for the bus and—”
“The bus?”
“So I just—”
“Listen, you expect me to believe your five ten ass wants to go out with the angry amputee? Fuck off,” Rachel bites at her.
“You’re an amputee?”
Rachel takes off her right arm and pokes Leah in the shoulder with it. It’s metal and hook shaped and Leah doesn’t know how it took her so long to notice.
“Fuck. Off,” Rachel snarls.
When they drive away Leah realizes it’s the first time someone’s ever thought she was ‘too cool’ to date them. She might be kinda proud?
Also distressed.
xxx
“How do you get someone to realize you actually like them?” Leah asks.
“Fuck if I know,” Fatin stares directly at Dot.
“You just have to be honest with them,” Dot says. “If they don’t believe you that’s on them.”
“Good luck,” Fatin tells Leah.
xxx
“You again.”
Leah looks up and Rachel is glaring at her, looking like she just finished up from a jog.
“Are you stalking me?” Rachel demands.
“It’s a public park and I’m reading,” Leah says. “Maybe you’re stalking me. Ever think of that?”
Rachel scoffs, “I’m not stalking you. You wish.”
Leah rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue, picking up where she left off in the book. Rachel sits down beside her and Leah does her best to ignore her. That ended up being Fatin’s advice anyway, not that she followed it when it came to a specific cargo pants toting lesbian.
“Why’d you ask me out?” Rachel asks.
“Fish for compliments much?” Leah mutters. Rachel doesn’t say anything but the silence gets thicker until Leah sighs. “Fine,” Leah says. “My bus always comes super late so I noticed you’re always the first to get to the gym and the last to leave. You barely talk to anyone on the team and whenever I see you around you’re always running or stretching. You’re just like… focused I guess. You’ve got this purpose that’s insane. But I get it. Like, I get that need to go after things, to hone in on something and never let yourself down. Also you’re like—I mean of course there’s the whole thing.”
“The whole thing?”
Leah’s cheeks heat up. “I’m leaving.” She gets to her feet.
“You can take me out for coffee,” Rachel decides. “But we’re not going to some vegan soul food place. Oat milk is the pits.”
“Cool,” Leah says. She clears her throat. “Yeah sounds good.”
Leah hands Rachel her phone and she puts her number in. When Leah is safely on the bus she deletes the name Rachel put in, carefully unsaving it from her contacts. She’ll be a cliche, Rachel seems like she’s worth it.
xxx
Their first date is terrible.
Rachel sips at her coffee and types the calories into her phone. She won’t eat any of the pastry Leah got her, and every conversation devolves into an argument. They are so clearly not compatible they don’t text again and leave it at that. But maybe Leah will be put in a project with her for class or something. No reason to delete the number.
xxx
It’s Toni’s idea to start game night up again. There’d been an unspoken pause after the last one ended with Toni needing to go to the ER, so only her blessing could’ve gotten it going again. Well, Martha’s blessing really. Leah likes having something to do, her roommate is always running around partying, but it’s kinda depressing always being the fifth wheel. Fatin has Dot, Toni has Martha, and Leah loses at Uno. Consistently.
She gets there early, like usual, too anxious to consider not leaving with thirty minutes to spare, and Toni drops on her: “Oh yeah I invited a couple other people.”
And like, it’s their thing. It’s just the five of them. They don’t invite other people because it’s just the five of them.
“Cool,” Leah says.
“Their names are Nora and Rachel,” Martha adds in, Leah’s blood freezes. “Twins! Rachel’s on the rowing team and Nora’s in my seminar.”
“Yeah, Rachel’s always using the gym when I’m tryna practice,” Toni adds in.
“Cool,” Leah says again. Martha’s looking at her and Toni might be setting up the tiny dorm but Martha’s looking at her. “Fuck, fine. Rachel and I went on a date.”
“What?” Toni drops a glass and luckily it’s plastic. “How do you even know Rachel?”
Leah put her head in her hands, “Can we not?”
“So there wasn’t another?” Martha asks.
“Yeah, no there was definitely not a second date.” Leah rubbed the back of her neck, “It’ll be fine.”
“Good, because Rachel’s cool and I want this to be a regular thing,” Toni said. Martha elbowed her. “What? Fine, Leah I promise if it’s awkward you don’t have to come anymore.” Martha elbowed her again.
“Thanks Toni,” Leah said.
She has Martha shoot Nora a text to tell Rachel, hoping that would dissuade them, and Fatin and Dot arrive with vodka and pizza respectively.
Rachel and Nora arrive when they’re halfway through a game and Rachel’s eyes catch hers.
“The fuck is she doing here?” Rachel demands.
“Uh,” Leah swallows hard.
“Are you actually stalking me?” Rachel asks.
“No, no no no,” Martha cuts in. “Leah’s a regular. We’ve known her since orientation. I sent Nora a text!”
Everyone looks at Nora.
“I didn’t get it,” Nora says.
Martha frowns. “But you responded with: ‘I’ll let her know.’”
“Nora what the fuck?” Rachel turns on her.
Nora sat down. “I was told there’d be vodka?”
Fatin passes her the bottle. “I can already tell we’re gonna get along.”
They give up on the pretense of a game night at a certain point, chasers becoming less and less important as they get drunker and drunker.
Around three am the night seems to settle. Toni curls up under the bed fast asleep, Dot smokes a joint out the window, and Fatin sleeps with Martha on one of the beds. Nora’s under the desk, snoring. Leah thinks maybe they were playing hide and seek? Everything is kind of blurry and warm. Rachel slips in the dorm from the bathroom and plops beside her.
“You never told me,” Rachel says. Leah blinks at her. “The whole thing,” Rachel says. “What’s the whole thing?”
“The whole thing?” Leah struggles.
“Yeah you went on about how like, driven I am. Then said there was a whole thing.” Leah mimes a fishing rod and half expects Rachel to punch her. Rachel just smiles. “Riiiiiiilke.” She draws it out, almost whining and Leah smiles back. Rachel’s joy is kinda contagious, Leah would add that to the list if the girl ever asked again.
“I just meant that’d I’d like—” Leah gestures at Rachel’s body, “like lick your abs like a popsicle.”
Rachel blinked at her and burst out laughing.
Leah is too drunk to even feel embarrassed, but that laugh is making her laugh and all she wants to do is press forward and—
“Well I’d climb you like a tree Rilke,” Rachel says. “In case that wasn’t obvi—”
Leah kisses her.
It’s soft and warm and then hot, intense, Rachel is pushing forward, laying her down against the bed and she’s so driven. She’s got a goal and it’s insane. Someone like Rachel, who focuses on something so single-mindedly, to be the subject of that desire, to be the goal, it’s intense. And too much.
Leah puts a hand on Rachel’s shoulder and to Rachel’s credit she stops, instantly.
“I need—” Leah takes a deep breath. “I just need—I’m drunk.”
She takes another deep breath.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asks.
“I—” Leah nods. “I’m—I just need—”
Rachel scoots back, “Are you sure you’re—”
“I gotta go,” Leah says. She gets to her feet and has to remember what it means to walk as she sways. There’s a metal hook around her hand and she blinks at it. “Anyone ever call you captain hook?”
“No one who lived to tell the tale,” Rachel says.
“Cool,” Leah says.
“I’m gonna take the top bunk,” Rachel swings up the ladder too easily, and isn’t she supposed to be drunk?, “see you in the morning?”
Leah sits back down, sways a little there on the mattress too, “Yeah.”
When she wakes up her head pounds and Rachel hands her a glass of water. “How ya doing, Rilke?”
Leah groans.
“Shut up,” Toni calls and about four other people tell Toni to shut up and the back and forth lasts far too long.
“We’re going on a food run,” Rachel says. “Drink up.”
Leah’s head pounds, and the room is unsteady, but she drinks, grabs an ibuprofen from Martha’s bedside drawer, and struggles to her feet.
Rachel shoves her out the door and they’re stumbling down the stairs towards the dining hall. She doesn’t know how Rachel’s so conscious but she is and she keeps pushing Leah around through the loud and bright room, picking out muffins and pancakes for the other girls, assigning Leah to fruits and hydration.
“Toni’s favorite,” Leah says around a yawn when Rachel raises her eyebrow at the orange gatorade. “Plus electrolits.”
“Electrolytes.”
“Those.”
Leah’s slightly more awake as they stumble back, that cool Californian winter breeze doing its job.
“About last night,” she begins and Rachel looks at her.
“Well?”
“Sorry I thought’d you’d like—interrupt and fill in for me.”
Rachel would cross her arms if they weren’t filled with food and Leah can sense that deep in her soul.
“Right,” Leah swallows. “So, I can’t drive. Because like—well I could—my parents took my license. I mean, fuck.” Leah looked away and desperately tried to gather herself, make herself at all coherent. “So there was this guy who I dated in high school,” she decided on. “And now I don’t drive and I just—I need to go slow? If that’s okay? If that’s even what you want. If you want this.”
This being the object that is Leah’s body. This being the jumbled up mess that is Leah’s mind. This being the obsessive, painful love that is the only kind Leah is capable of giving or receiving. This being shaking hands, insomnia, depression, delusions, psychosis.
“Can you do that?” Leah asks. “Or we. Can we like, go slow I guess?”
Every time Leah has ever seen Rachel she’s been in motion, and Leah has just been sitting there. Watching her. Now it feels like Leah’s hands will never stop shaking and Rachel is watching Leah so carefully, like if her gaze was any heavier Leah might crack in half.
She’s not so sure she wouldn’t.
“You got into a car accident over a guy?” Rachel asks.
Leah’s stomach drops.
“Whatever.” She turns away and walks back into the dorm building.
“Fuck, Leah.” Rachel’s hook wraps around her wrist. “That came out wrong.”
“How was it supposed to come out?” Leah asks. Her voice doesn’t crack because she’s not gonna let some jock she’s known for a few weeks make her cry.
“I just meant—fuck. I meant that was stupid. And you shouldn’t have done that. But like, I’ve done my fair share of stupid things.” Rachel holds up her prosthetic. “Remember when you said in the park about having purpose and shit? I don’t have that. Not really. I hate rowing, I’m just doing it because it’s the only fucking water sport I can do with this.”
“Okay?” Leah narrows her eyes, trying to figure out what Rachel’s point is.
“Fuck,” Rachel says again. “I just. Would you just.” She groans. “I was freaked out during the coffee thing alright? You thought I was all driven and shit and to be honest I think I’d be more likely to drive myself off a cliff.” Rachel flinches. “Okay bad metaphor. My point is, I don’t really eat in public.”
Leah blinks, “That was your point?”
“Yes,” Rachel says. “So ask me out again.”
“Uh.” Leah thinks quickly, non-eating dates. “Wanna go for a hike?”
Rachel blinks, “Wait really? I mean yeah. Yes. I’m in.”
She nods and Leah barely remembers the car accident, barely remembers the moment that would so clearly and definitively change her life. But she thinks she might remember this one.