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Gura strides through her sands.
Her footsteps are marked in scars. The breeze is in the wispy, broken ends of her hair. The sea salt is still on her tongue. There’s a cry of a seagull in the way her nails scrape across the table. Her sand is infinite and spreads so far across thousands of years. She doesn’t know what to look for. She can’t pick it apart and find any memories worth keeping in those sands.
Atlantis is a part of it. It’s in the seashells dotting along her memories. Those memories are covered by a film of grief that she doesn’t poke at. She doesn’t lift it up to see what’s underneath. She walks through her sands and observes an empty beach.
Amelia’s sands are different.
It’s an hourglass, of course it is. It’s so small to her she could cradle it in her palm and close her fist around it and it’d disappear entirely. The hourglass is filled. It’s not falling no matter how many times she turns it upside down. Amelia is human but that sand won’t run out. She won’t tell Gura when it will. Gura imagines she won’t find out until she’s standing in front of a written name and the hourglass is cracked and empty.
It’s fragile. She wants to protect it, to hold it dearly and tenderly and never let it escape. She doesn’t want to find it broken.
“I’m not made of glass.” Amelia tells her with a crooked grin. “You don’t have to worry.”
“I’m not worrying.” Gura grumbles. It’s not entirely what she feels. It’s only a portion of something that’s not in her sands, something that turns the skies the colors of blue and pink. It makes her heart run and her palms sweaty.
Do lipstick kisses show up on pillowcases? Gura wonders. Her pillows feel too blank. Her face burns thinking about a blonde with her hands on either side of Gura’s head. Blonde hair tickles her cheek. The detective is smiling, a mix between shy and smug like she isn’t sure herself but she’s doing her best. Gura lays awake with her pulse thundering in her ears.
Gura isn’t the only one walking through sand. Amelia steps onto her beach of memories and draws her own lines in the sand. She’s digging her fingers into the thick of it and wrapping her fingers deep into Gura’s chest. She’s not even doing anything worthwhile, Gura notes grumpily. Her crush is going nuts just seeing Amelia wandering around with bedhead in the early morning hours. It’s not the absence of perfection, because she’s not looking at it like that. It feels like trust.
Or maybe Ame doesn’t care what I think, Gura notes dryly.
But it’s more than that. Gura inhales sharply when Amelia does walk on her sands. She leaves traces of her where she goes. She buys Gura a blanket because her tail keeps falling off the bed. She gets her a special toothbrush because she keeps shredding each one she buys. She brings Gura snacks on her lunch break. It’s little footprints along a beach and it keeps going. Everyday it’s a trial not to grab her by the tie and drag her down until the sky is always blue and pink.
Gura is brave. She’s brave until Amelia’s bravado leaves her and the blonde’s face is red and she’s shyly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. It’s endearingly cute. It’s so fragile. Gura can barely move. She doesn’t want to upset anything between them.
“Just kidding.” Gura smiles.
Amelia smiles weakly back. It’s the worst band aid either of them could give. It’s a weird form of littering that only grows worse. Little apologies when bumping each other, flirts that fall so flat it feels like nails, Gura desperately hoping Amelia isn’t home so she can have a normal resting heart rate.
It litters her beach, these accidents. Gura grimaces at them. She'd rather forget them out of embarrassment alone. From the nauseous look Amelia wears she shares her sentiments. It’s nice to know they share that in common. Gura isn’t alone. They’re both sitting in the same hole they’ve dug for themselves.
Amelia seems content with this. Gura isn’t so sure she is. Amelia’s sands are tiny but they don’t change inside that little hourglass. Gura feels like she can only stand so much before the littering drives her nuts. She doesn’t know if she prefers an empty beach to one cluttered with cringe friendzone banter.
She’s the first to break. She thinks Amelia expects it or probably knew it would happen, dumb time traveler. Gura feels like she should be angry about that. If Amelia knew something was between them and that it could be something then she’d say something, right? But what if it isn’t?
Gura stares. Amelia looks hunted, her gaze to the floor and her lips pulled between her teeth. She’s leaning back against her desk and gripping it tightly.
“Time is not linear.” Amelia murmurs. “The future is a guidebook, but it’s not what will happen. It’s what could happen. It’s the branch of a tree. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” It felt like she’d said that many times to the bathroom mirror.
Gura whispers, “Does the future upset you?”
Amelia looks at her. She opens her mouth and closes it. When she finds the words they are quieter than a breeze, “I don’t want to force you into something, Gura.”
“Oh I,” Gura laughs and it feels way too loud for Amelia’s office, “Dude I wouldn’t, that’s not something I would, hey.” She grasps for her words and spits out, “Can you ask me?”
“What?” Amelia looks at her strangely. Gura imagines she looks a little crooked, laughing like that.
“Ask me.” Gura pleads, “I’ll answer you.”
Amelia tilts her head down. She’s pale. Gura doesn’t want to crowd her. She fights back the urge to close the distance, to do something with her hands that isn’t allowed in offices.
“Do you want to kiss me?” Amelia asks.
“God yes.” Gura exhales shakily, “I really really want to.”
Amelia stares at her. Gura doesn’t know what to do. Is that an invitation? Did she overstep and come off as too clingy? The overthinking makes her tail lash. Amelia’s eyes flick down to the movement. Her lips twitch up and she doesn’t look like she’s standing in front of a guillotine anymore.
“Ame?” Gura whispers.
Her detective holds out a hand. It's a shy and awkward movement. Gura’s heart tumbles over it, drags her over until her palm is sliding into Amelia’s. Her face is burning and she can see where red is painted over the detective as well. It makes Gura smile.
“Ame.” She says again and it’s mischievous, happy, elated, “Ame. Let me see.”
Amelia sighs, her bangs still hiding much of her face from Gura. She can see a little smile there and it’s making her brave again. She reaches out, hesitates, but Amelia isn’t flinching from her. She takes her chin in hand and tilts it up. Amelia looks at her petulantly with a face as red as a tomato.
Gura grins, “Hey fire truck.”
“Okay.” Amelia blows air on her face, “I wasn’t going to make a joke but you had to go and-”
“I’m yankin’ your chain, Watson.” Her tail is wagging. “C’mere.”
That shuts Amelia up. Blue eyes watch her tremulously. Gura feels just as stricken by this development. Her thumb and her finger are touching Amelia’s face and Amelia isn’t pushing her away. Something charged is between them. The air is tense but it’s not a bad thing.
“You gonna stare at me all day?” Amelia mutters.
“I’d hang you on my wall if I could.” Gura dares to lean closer. Amelia inhales, the pink of her eyes standing out starkly. Her breath is shaky. Gura feels like she’s a loose bolt on a metal beam suspending an entire bridge together. She’s falling but she’s not. All her vision is filled with Amelia and it’s stealing something from her.
Amelia notices. The detective has the gall to smile at her, “Cat got your tongue?”
“No.” Gura breathes, “but something else will.”
Amelia’s eyes spark. Gura crosses that distance. She finds Amelia’s lips and pushes, her hand clamping onto her shoulder and turning her down until her back is on her desk. There’s sand around them and an empty beach. Gura has her hands in blonde hair. Amelia hums, her teeth playing games with her bottom lip and makes Gura’s toes curl. She can feel legs winding around her waist and it’s making her head fuzzy.
“You’re dangerous.” She breathes.
Amelia smiles through a lipstick smear and looks wild, “I’m crazy.”
Gura laughs. She lets Amelia’s arms rope her down for another. She kisses her until Watsons shoes are lost in the waves and her jacket is further down the sand. She trails her lips over her shoulder and listens to the noises in her ear. Gura teases her teeth along her skin. She leaves cherry red skin in her wake.
“Can I have this?” Gura whispers against Amelia’s ear. “You’re not gonna run away on me, right?”
Amelia laughs breathlessly, “Why would I want to leave you, dummy? Better yet,” Her fingers tug at snowy hair, “Who told you to stop?”
Gura smiles. She turns her nose into Amelia’s neck and finds the skin there and kisses it until Amelia says her name again, again, again-
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Gura strides through the sand.
There’s an adornment of things along this beach. There’s a desk she smirks at, potted plants she regards fondly, a puppy dog bowl she walks around with a smile. Each precious item stretches along this beach. The sky is blue and pink. There’s a hand holding hers.
“Where to next?” Amelia asks.
Gura squeezes her hand, “A date sounds nice.”
Amelia smiles and it’s sunshine, “A date it is.”
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