text: A thud. The mattress wobbles. “Hey. Marry me.” Anoushka groans, and burrows further into the pillow. ______________________________________________________ Some unknowable number of hours later, Anoushka is finally feeling once more capable of being alive, though not without some bitterness. She finds Jade in the kitchen, sat cross-legged on a chair and hunched over a book. She looks up as Anoushka comes in, smiles at her, soft and warm. “Merry Almost Christmas.” “Back at ya.” She pauses on her way to the kettle, hand coming to rest on the back of her chair as she leans over to kiss her on the cheek. Her mug is already on the counter, she notices, next to the coffee that’s also been left out. She tips out some powder, forgoing the spoon, and then hops up onto the worktop to wait for the water to boil. Jade straightens slightly in her seat, eyes scanning words with marked intent. She finishes up her chapter and sets her book on the table, page marked with an old grocery receipt. The kettle finishes boiling. Anoushka finishes making her coffee. She holds the mug in both hands - the steam warms her face, just the right side of too hot. She looks at Jade. “So. Lunch at Anna’s today, right?” Receiving a confirming nod, she continues. “Presents?” “Still under our tree. We should pile them up before we get ready to go.” “Is Kiran’s -” “Yep. Wrapped it while you were asleep.” Anoushka sighs. “Thanks.” She takes her first sip. Jade shrugs. “No big deal. Nothing else to do anyway, and you were asleep a very long time.” “Awww,” she coos, dropping off her perch. “Missed my sparkling personality, huh?” Her tone is light and teasing, but she moves across the kitchen to drape an arm around Jade’s shoulders in something half-hug, half-apology. Jade leans into the touch, looks up at her. She sighs, though her tone doesn’t quite manage to hit the faux-exasperation Anoushka’s sure she was aiming for. “I am going to ask Santa to bring you so much coal.” They walk into the living room together, debating the various merits of being gifted coal. Anoushka, being over half a foot shorter than Jade, had dropped her arm at some point out of necessity, so it now rests loosely about Jade’s waist. Jade has her elbow at Anoushka’s shoulder and is leaning heavily onto it, shifting her weight over almost on instinct. The joint digs into her flesh. The tree stands in one corner, a garish, foil affair, loud and gaudy and balanced precariously atop an old cat scratching post that one or the other had appropriated from someone or the other many years ago. Lights smother the structure as if doing so could suffocate the spirit of Christmas itself - Anoushka has been buying a new string of LEDs every year for almost a decade now, and these days their makeshift tree more closely resembles a military dazzler, best only viewed out of the corner of the eye. Every colour found under the sun is present, and, as Jade likes to posit, likely a fair few that aren’t as well. A half metre above the tree, a small bookshelf has been temporarily cleared to make space for cards, while presents lie at the base of the post, scattered without consideration. Anoushka studies the pile, appraising. “We’ve been living together too long. People don’t bother giving us separate gifts anymore.” Jade evidently doesn’t think this observation worth a verbal response, but she presses her elbow a little heavier into her shoulder, deliberately, and Anoushka laughs. They sit down, legs crossed and angled just slightly towards each other. Anoushka begins rifling through packages, checking labels against a mental list of people she’s expecting to find at Anna’s annual pre-Christmas lunch. “Do we open one tonight?” She looks sideways after a moment, when she doesn’t get a response. Jade looks, not quite present. Not completely lost in thought, but certainly straying. She reaches out and nudges her knee. “Hey.” Jade blinks, twice, then looks up at her. Nods. “Uh, yeah. Same old.” Anoushka waits a beat, and then when it’s clear that Jade isn’t going to add anything else, goes back to stacking presents. “Pick something out then, I guess.” “You should, um, do mine. If, you know, you don’t mind.” She still seems vaguely preoccupied. She also still seems uninclined to elaborate, so again Anoushka lets it lie. “Sure,” she says, tugging out a long flat package, and nearly toppling the tree in the process. “Not that I seem to have many other options here,” she mutters, voice overdark, and she’s rewarded with a small smile. They pass the next half hour like that, side by side, laughing and trading quips and just enjoying each other’s company, as they sit relaxed in the rare stillness of an unrushed morning. But all things must end, and eventually the outside world comes creeping in in the form of an alarm Jade had set last night in anticipation of this very event. “We should get moving.” Anoushka groans, but time very rudely does not heed her wordless request to cease moving, so she pushes herself up to kneeling and does a final run through the gifts they’re taking. “Oh, I forgot to give Kiran a card.” “On it,” she answers, standing up and heading into the kitchen to dig one out. “Although, really I should be making you do this. He’s your friend.” “You’re my hero,” she hears called after her, and smiles despite herself. “Get rid of some of your friends,” she shouts back. “No can do, they’re common property now.” “Ah.” She thinks for a moment. “Guess there’s nothing else for it, we’ll have to split.” She hears a slightly choked sound from the other room, a stifled grunt of pain, and hurries back, worried and equally worried about betraying that fact. “I get Anna in the divorce though.” She rounds the corner of the door and stops, surveying. Jade has stopped moving, but nothing else seems out of place, and she doesn’t look like she’s in pain. She’s on one knee by the tree, right hand pressed into the carpet for balance, and Anoushka feels the corner of her mouth lift as she leans against the doorframe, expectant. Jade looks up at her. She raises an eyebrow. “Divorcing me before I even got a chance to ask? That’s cold.” Anoushka bites the inside of her cheek and breathes, trying to keep a straight face. “That the best you’ve got?” Jade grins. She reaches for her ponytail and tugs it loose, holds out the newly liberated hair band between both thumbs and middle fingers, proffered like a ring. Anoushka brings a hand up to her mouth to stifle her laughter, hoping the mimicry of joyous shock is obvious. “Anu, darling. Light of my life, brighter than even a thousand LED bulbs, a comparison I do feel qualified to make based on my own personal experiences.” Here she nods over at their tree. Anoushka tightens her grip on her face. Jade ignores her. “For days now, I have wandered, lonely as a cloud that exists against the odds in a region where it is in fact unusual for there to be clouds and the sighting of one would be a rare and isolated event, of how, in this house we share -” “It’s a flat.” She gets a mock glare in return. “Fine. Home, then.” Such a beautiful sentiment has never been expressed with such disparagement . “Wondering how, in this home we share, to ask if you would be willing to forever more share your life with me in this way. For so long did I deliberate over how to ask you, until here and now, sitting with you during this, the most wonderful time of the year -” Anoushka shakes, sliding further down the doorpost. “- all my feelings came rushing out, and suddenly without conscious thought did I find myself here: just a girl, waiting on one knee in front of another, different girl, asking her to marry her.” Don’t laugh out loud, don’t laugh out loud, don’t laugh. Jade stares straight at her, eyes bright, hair long and loose about her shoulders, daring her to crack. Slowly, Anoushka brings down her hand and straightens up. “In other words, you stumbled and fell trying to get up?” Jade slips her hair bubble over her wrist and finally puts her hands back down. “Would be a different but not entirely inaccurate version of events.” “Need a hand?” “Perhaps.” Anoushka does laugh this time, and walks over. “Come on then, lover mine. Let’s head out.” ______________________________________________________ “Hey, toss us an orange.” Something bright comes hurtling at her face. Anoushka just barely brings up her hands to catch it. A round object, red and smooth. “This is an apple.” “Is it.” The words are flat, the intonation not questioning, and deliberately so. Anoushka continues to stare at her. Jade just smiles back, a sweet, butter won’t melt smile. She picks up the correct fruit and stands up, empty hand reaching for her cane, and starts to walk towards Anoushka and the door. Anoushka keeps staring at her. She keeps staring even as another bright round object is pressed into her hand, and she’s left standing in a doorway in some parody of a modern art piece, weighing up two pieces of fruit. “Comparing apples and oranges, a commentary on modern black and white-ism.” Jade does not drop her vacantly saccharine expression once. “In Ancient Greece... “ she starts, uncertainly. Jade slows on her way towards Anna’s living room, dawdling, the movements of a person desperate to hear what a person has to say, but not at the expense of that desperation being discovered. It comforts Anoushka, makes her think she may be along the right lines as she tries to piece together the various oddities of the day, and emboldens her to continue. “In Ancient Greece, they used to propose like this sometimes. You’d throw an apple at a girl, and if she caught it, she’d accept.” Jade turns around. She looks her in the eye. They hold each other’s gazes for a heavily pregnant minute. “You know, that’s actually a common misconception, it doesn’t have any factual basis or precedent in the historical record.” And with that, still smiling, she turns back and goes to join everyone else in the main room. “Wait, what? Jay!” ______________________________________________________ It’s late when they finally leave Anna’s and head back home. There was a time when she would have balked at the thought of making such a short journey by car. These days she just drives, hand on the wheel and Jade in the passenger seat. It’s not like she drinks that much these days, anyway. Neither of them do. The same cannot be said for the majority of their friends, and they’re kept out another forty minutes dropping people off. But eventually it’s just the two of them, driving through darkness. Anoushka looks to her left. “So. You gonna tell me what’s going on?” She can’t read her expression. Part of that is no doubt due to the inconsistency of illumination provided by the street lamps they pass, and part will also likely be the fact that she can’t take her eyes off the road for too long, in the interests of safety. But little she does see is guarded, and though no less apprehensive she is at once sure her suspicions are right. Silence. Not an uncomfortable one, but not easy either. The air is expectant, anticipation. “I was gonna wait till we got home.” She sighs. Anoushka says nothing. They’re maybe twelve minutes out now, but she has the wild urge to take a sudden wrong turn or four, just to give them time. Jade breathes. “Look. We don’t know how long I have left.” Invisible bands wrap around Anoushka’s chest and pull tight. She can’t move, can barely breathe. She has the strangest, most fleeting thought that it’s good the car’s already in third gear, because she’s sure she wouldn’t be able to relax her grip enough to release the wheel and change it, right now. Her knuckles, she knows intuitively, are already white. Jade must notice. Her next words are hurried. “And I mean that genuinely, we really don’t know, it could be years - hell, it could be decades. This isn’t some grand farewell tour or anything. It’s just...” “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask, but, you’re it for me. I know we’re not, together, like that, but there’s no one else I’d want to share my life with, you know? You’re my family. “And...” She hesitates. “I’m pretty sure, or, I mean, I’d like to think, that, well... That it’s the same for you.” Her voice has grown quiet. Silence. She soldiers on. “So, I’m asking you to marry me, because I love you, more and better than I will ever love anyone else. And because friends or partners or roommates aren’t inaccurate labels for what we are, but they fail to express the depth of my commitment to you. And I’m asking you, because I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years, I just know that I want you by my side for it. And I want people to know how important you are to me without my having to explain it, and maybe it’s somewhat misleading, but I’d rather people understand the significance of our relationship if not the relationship itself, than undervalue it.” Jade’s breathing a little heavier now. Good , Anoushka thinks. She can pick up the slack for both of them - her own lungs are empty. She’s reading between the lines, and the thousands of unspoken words paint a devastating picture. Jade's eyes are shut - it seems she’s decided the best course of action is to simply not look at Anoushka until she’s done. Usually Anoushka would try and fix that, try to comfort and reassure, but her hands are still glued to the wheel and she still can’t move. Her voice is more measured when she opens her mouth again. “And I’m also asking you, because I don’t want to live the rest of my life with this cloud hanging over me, and I don’t want to have to keep worrying about updating my will, or making sure you’re listed as next of kin in case I’m suddenly hospitalised somewhere and can’t tell them to let you in, and maybe it isn’t fair to put any of that on you, but I’m not sure fairness still has a place around here, so I’m asking you anyway.” It’s impossible to think that they could still be moving. Anoushka’s world has, jarringly, for a moment ceased its inevitable slow spiral out of orbit, and so it is only rational that the rest of the world follow suit. But the engine still rumbles and the shadows dancing across Jade’s face are still in flux as they pass under lamp after lamp. Anoushka notes it all, vaguely, as though from a great distance. She is thinking, lost in these revealed glimpses of an unwelcome future: a Jade weakening; a Jade lying motionless in some cold, unfamiliar bed, and just as terrifying, the thought of that bed becoming familiar in time; a Jade nowhere to be found, the worst vision of all. She blinks hard. Beside her, Jade has opened her eyes. Her tone now is firm, if slightly sharp, as though the words escaping her mouth left a lemon-sour taste behind. “And besides, there’s the Marriage Allowance - you could get some sort of tax break. Plus, I think there’s less inheritance tax or something if you leave stuff to your spouse. So, you know, there’s something in it for you too.” And Anoushka still doesn’t feel completely present. But the idea that Jade might not be enough, that she’d need something to sweeten the pot - well, suddenly it’s the simplest thing in the world, unclenching her hand to take Jade’s into hers. She clasps their fingers, left hand not quite dexterous enough for anything more complicated and squeezes slightly. “Regardless,” she says. “I would be honoured.” Jade stays quiet, and the bands around her chest don’t fall away, but the heavy silence shifts to something lighter, more comforting, and Anoushka can breathe again. “You and me, together till the end. Partners in crime, and now also in law,” she says, as the car finally pulls into their hard-won parking space, and Jade rewards her with a slight snort. She straightens out, then stops the car and pulls the key from the ignition. “Besides,” she starts, opening the door. “I refuse to believe you own anything that could be worthy of inheritance tax.” She’s grinning wide, and won’t make herself stop. “No take-backs,” she adds as she jogs over to open the front door, chased by Jade’s insistence that she rescinds every nice thing she said, and also hopes Anoushka dies. ______________________________________________________ They’re in Jade’s room, sitting on her bed. Two wrapped parcels had lain atop the covers, one each. Jade now wears a beautiful new watch, elegant with deep leather straps. It proclaims the time to be a minute to midnight. Anoushka’s gift is in a tiny square box, topped with a small gold bow. She pries it open to find a ring, nestled in velveteen lining. She looks at Jade, who shrugs. “I have a book stashed somewhere, I was gonna swap them out depending on how you reacted today.” She looks back at the ring. A plain black band, with a single silver line. Carefully, she lifts it from the box and offers it to Jade. Jade seems startled for a moment, but then her face clears and she shuffles a little on the floor to face Anoushka more fully. She takes her hand. “Marry me?” She feels the cool metal against her fourth finger, and answers: “I will.” The minute hand reaches twelve.