warrior nun, ava silva/sister beatrice, M, chapter 7/9
“Is that a hickey?” Lilith yanks at Beatrice’s gi again, and
Beatrice nearly yelps at the way it exposes her collarbone and the mark
that is, in fact, absolutely a hickey from two days ago. She could
grapple her way out of this, but then the chances of Lilith letting the
whole thing go will evaporate and she’ll keep pushing until Beatrice
answers.
“It– no,” Beatrice says indignantly. She’s never been a very good liar when Lilith is concerned, but it’s worth a try.
“It is,” Lilith says, fingers tight at Beatrice’s gi. “Those are teeth marks, Beatrice.”
Lilith slams her tray down on the table before sinking down on the bench across from Shannon. She makes a loud display of organising her cutlery until Shannon’s headache has ratcheted up to near jackhammer levels.
Shannon tips her head just enough for her sunglasses to slip down her nose and levels a glare at Lilith that would have tended towards murderous if it didn’t hurt to contort her face like that. “The fuck do you want?” she snaps, before shoving her sunglasses up on top of her head.
“What happened to you?” Lilith asks, the sound of her cutlery shuffling more muted now.
“Doesn’t matter. What do you want?”
“Am I not allowed to sit here?”
Shannon leans forward and presses her face to the gloriously cool tabletop. Anything to stem the tides of pain that threaten to pull her under. “Yeah, but since it’s you, you’ve definitely got an ulterior motive that I’m in no mood to try and tease out of you.”
no hear me out. give me a second here, history major beatrice n astrophysics major ava meet completely by chance one night late in the library where they both somehow get locked in bc no one thought to check for stragglers and they end up talking all night, tucked into the back between astronomy n anthropology. ava tells beatrice about the stars, how the cosmos flows in their veins and how the study of space is just the study of themselves, the study of how to return to the place from which they came, “it’s us who gets discovered,” she says, talking of satellites and telescopes, of the mars rovers and how they’re programmed to sing songs to themselves, love against the void. and beatrice tells ava about what it is to be human, about how the one thing that remains constant throughout the many many years is kindness, about how the first hint of civilisation was that healed femur, “connection is the most important thing,” she says, talking of music and scriptures, of how stories are just a palimpsest of memories, of the longevity of olive trees, how you can stand under the branches of one and know that two hundred years ago someone else did the same, how love echoes constantly backwards and forwards. the next morning when the library is unlocked again they stumble into the closest open cafe, order the biggest coffee they’ve got, and ava has a seminar to attend and beatrice has a lecture to go to but they exchange numbers and a handshake that turns into a hug and that’s how it begins.
She outfitted Beatrice with one of Michael’s rain jackets, which hung off her, slightly scarecrow-like. It was charming. Ava was charmed. Beatrice, on the other hand, looked grumpy.
