Xoraxorel

  1.

  A snapshot of life after Madaline's arrival:

  Amber’s work schedule was set two weeks in advance, composed most often of nine to ten hour shifts, she usually departed in te morning or early afternoon and returned home in the evening after closing.

  Meanwhile, Simon was scheduled for a regur eight hour day and an hour lunch with Monday and Tuesday off, locked in at 8 to 5, he left each day at 7:15 AM.

  Madaline’s schedule was primarily Monday to Friday, usually starting work at a vague time in the afternoon and finishing at a vague time in the evening, normally around the time Amber returned home, except on Fridays when she seemed to finish several hours early, but if necessary Madaline picked the hours back up on Sunday.

  On her days off, Amber would cook Simon dinner.

  On his days off she would make a full set of meals.

  Throughout the week she maintained a rigorous routine of taking care of the house, she pnned ahead, sitting down every other Friday when her work schedule was posted, assigning specific days and times for the tasks to be done. This of course included trips to the grocery store in Simon's car, she would usually use the trip as an opportunity to stop at the library and check out a new book; during the week Madaline arrived she completed the Monk and switched it out for the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  At night, day off or day on, Amber would join her boyfriend in bed. Not much ter than that, Simon would pop an Ambien and switch off like a robot, leaving Amber to sit, awake, and in some respects alone, until 2 to 3 AM when she'd usually get herself to finally wind down into sleep.

  She made sure during those dark and lonely hours to remain as distracted as possible, things could go so wrong without the aid of anime or fan art or something to fix her attention on.

  Coffee was good if you needed a te night pick me up, but nothing beat a 2:30 AM panic attack to snap you to full alert; if she intended to sleep at all, it was best to keep her mind pleasantly occupied.

  At first, when Madaline moved in nothing changed, save for at night there was often the sense of someone else in the house, someone else who was awake.

  Through the thin walls Amber became familiar with the sounds of the new occupants life: the chatter of her keyboard, the mixture of heavy breathing with the gentle metallic click of her weights and most frequently there was the barely audible tones of a variety of music pouring out of Madaline's headphones, which Amber found her self straining to make out.

  For the first two weeks, almost to Amber’s surprise, Madaline kept mostly to herself. It was a feeling of surprise that to any honest observer would seem an awful lot like barely restrained disappointment.

  She'd returned home from work that first day, kissed Simon and rushed upstairs to change, but in an abrupt interruption to her routine she'd bypassed Simon's room and gone down the hall to check in on Madaline.

  Amber expected the door to be open and inviting, just as Madaline had been the day they'd met, just as the door had been earlier, instead she'd discovered it firmly shut, as it would continue to be whenever Madaline was inside. She'd shuffled back to Simon's room leaving her new roommate undisturbed.

  On the days Amber made meals she would offer Madaline a pte and Madaline would accept, eating with her and Simon.

  Amber was overjoyed to have her at the table, as the close 30 minute proximity between Madaline and Simon was enough to confirm that the verbal sparring between the siblings didn't seem to be intensifying into anything grossly hostile.

  That said, the continued existence of the fragile roommate/boyfriend truce was really the happiest news Amber would've been able to report, as she was also increasingly troubled to find that the friendliness Madaline had initially treated Amber to was now totally absent:

  No jokes, one's she got or otherwise.

  No reassuring statements or voice.

  No fascinating stories.

  No asking Amber to sit with her.

  No casual physical contact.

  No casual trans girl camaraderie.

  Which wasn’t to say she was mean or cold, just distant, otherwise occupied, distracted... disinterested.

  Simon seemed satisfied with Madaline's minimally invasive presence.

  For the first few days Amber had held on to the idea that Madaline's remote behavior might be down to her adjusting to her new job, that could be stressful, but...

  On the first Friday night following Madaline's arrival she went out, only returning in the afternoon on Saturday, slipping back inside looking as stunning as ever, but also appealingly disheveled, worn out and slightly wild eyed.

  She gave Amber a polite wave and when asked if she had a good time she responded, “I always have a good time." No further eboration followed. She just made herself coffee and disappeared to her room with a, "See you around.”

  The following Friday she went out again, promenading out the door, taking the murky twilight with her.

  It was strange, the way Amber could feel when she wasn’t in the house, there was a sudden absence.

  That Saturday after cleaning up and waiting on the undry to be done, Amber decided to brew a pot of coffee. She made double the amount she usually would when she was alone, not really thinking about Madaline having some when she returned, but not exactly not thinking about it either.

  She mixed cinnamon into her coffee when it was done and pnted herself on the couch with the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  Madaline came through the door at 1:45, half humming, half singing to herself, "We're burning up, we're burning up..." She kept going until she caught sight of Amber, turning her green eyes on her. Madaline's nostrils fred slightly.

  Amber chewed her lip, something in her belly fluttered.

  Madaline's eyes moved past her in the direction of the coffee pot. “Is that free?”

  The fluttering died.

  “Complimentary,” Amber said quietly, before realizing the joke was stupid.

  Madaline snorted a little ugh.

  The fluttering was renewed and Amber pressed forward. “No, but, I serve coffee for a living. Of course, you can have some.”

  Madaline went and got herself a cup and passed back by, giving her a, “Thanks Amber," once she was near the top of the stairs and out of sight.

  “You’re-”

  Amber listened to the somehow resounding boom of Madaline’s door clicking softly shut.

  “-welcome.”

  She frowned a little at Victor Hugo's cssic, a train of thought running into the central station of her mind, as it had nearly every day since the Wednesday after Madaline moved in.

  What exactly did I expect?

  2.

  If she was being honest with herself, which Amber avoided almost religiously, during the week between meeting Madaline and the move in, she’d been a little excited by the prospect of Madaline living there. She would finally have a new opportunity to be around and talk to another trans woman, not to mention the fact that the trans woman was her boyfriend's sister, meaning there was a reason to talk to her. Amber had a pre-built connection, plus Madaline had been so nice to her when they’d first met, she’d just thought-

  Well, now she wasn’t sure what she’d thought, but the prospect of someone else living with her and Simon, someone as interesting as Madaline, and really just the simple idea of change, had given her a scary little thrill.

  There were moments during that week of preparation for Madaline's arrival that the word just floated on her brain, like a lingering sigh, change.

  But by the Wednesday of the third week Amber had grown used to the idea that whatever some part of her had been hoping would happen wasn’t going to. Madaline clearly had no interest in talking to her more than required, whatever Amber had gotten into her head, what she had been quietly hoping for, was either the result of Madaline’s version of being polite or just that, purely in Amber’s head.

  Amber couldn’t bme her, why would a girl like Madaline want to hang out with Amber whose life was composed of taking care of a house, serving coffee, watching anime, reading books by dead people and of course struggling to keep away from the edge of a nervous breakdown.

  The fact that Simon was still dating her was incredible. She really couldn’t expect to be that lucky twice.

  Then there was the far darker possibility that it was Amber’s fault. It could be any number of things, but it was probably down to the dumb grin that first night when Madaline had told her story. Why had she done that? She'd probably come off as such a psycho.

  Amber gnced as Madaline strutted off to the downstairs bathroom, towel and mobile speaker in hand for a shower.

  Amber tried to concentrate on her book, she reread the current line several times:

  “You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.”

  It was a good line, but maybe a little too on the nose.

  She could hear the hiss of the water running and the music from Madaline’s portable speaker, such moments were one of the few times that Amber could properly hear the music she was enjoying. Today’s personal hygiene routine seemed to be punk themed.

  Snatches she caught between Hugo's prose included:

  “Sweetie, I advocate for anarchy... get fucked!”

  Followed shortly after by:

  “Heard you mentioned my degeneracy!

  Is it good for you? Cause it's good for me.”

  But it was in the middle of,“Riot femme pussy taste's like revolution,” that several non musical sounds occurred nearly on top of each other; gss shattering, a hard wet thump, like something tall smming against the shower wall, and finally Madaline’s voice dropping so low it almost breached into the masculine register with a resounding “Fuck!” in an obvious dispy of rage and pain.

  Amber jumped up and ran over to the bathroom door, her fist hammering, her voice frantic. “Madaline? Are you alright?” The hiss of the water ceased, followed by the rippling pstic of the shower curtain being ripped aside.

  “Yeah. Fuck. No. I knocked that fucking thing over and cut the shit out of my foot.”

  Amber didn’t think about it, she entered the bathroom. Madaline was sitting on the edge of the tub, her legs crossed, pressing a towel to the bottom of her foot.

  There was a ledge that extended from the sink to the shower. The edge closest to the tub was often a convenient location to pce items so you could easily reach out and get something while washing up. It had also formerly included a badly pced gss jar of cue tips and cotton balls.

  Amber immediately understood the chain of events.

  Madaline had reached out for something, perhaps to skip a song, and accidentally bumped the jar, the jar had fallen off the ledge into the tub, shattering. Madaline had jumped back in surprise, smacking into the opposite wall, and either come down on or slipped towards the shards of gss, slicing up her foot.

  There was a bloody print stamped on the bathmat where she’d hastily climbed out.

  Amber dropped to her knees and grabbed the clean end of the mat and tossed it out into the hall, before scooting forward, “Pull the towel away, please.”

  Madaline did, revealing several scratches and a long gash, bleeding away.

  Amber's head seemed to swim a little at the sight, but she shook it off and the sensation vanished.

  The speaker continued to fill the room with roaring voices, pounding drums and wailing guitars, the most recent song concluding with:

  “You taste so amazing,

  we should go to my pce,

  I know we're going to be real good friends!”

  The song smmed to a close with a high, demoniacal cackle that faded off into the silence between tracks. Amber took no notice, her brain filtering it out as inconsequential.

  She looked over the rest of the foot, checking from toes to tendon, but it was just the bottom. She didn't need an ambunce.

  “Keep pressure on it, don’t move.”

  Amber went to the closet in the hall and pulled out a rge tote bag, she brought it into the bathroom and dropped back to her knees. Unzipping the bag, she got to work, pulling on rubber gloves and taking a closer look at the cut.

  "Fuck, I'm going to need stitches aren't I?" Madaline sighed, her teeth slightly clenched.

  Amber shook her head. “No, I don't think so, you got off easy."

  Madaline gave a short puff of air from her nose.

  "It’s long but it’s shallow, you shouldn't need a doctor if I do this right. The bleeding is already slowing down.” Amber spoke with an authoritative calm, a steady voice that neither Madaline nor Simon would have thought her capable of.

  After sterilizing a pair of tweezers, she used them to pick out minuscule pricks of gss, three from the wound, seven more from the rest of the foot. Then she proceeded to systematically press her finger over each area of the foot.

  “Any of this hurt?”

  “Just the cut.”

  Amber nodded and changed her gloves once more, then she applied an antiseptic.

  “You seem to know what you’re doing?”

  “My dad tried to teach me a bunch of stuff as a kid, cars and tools didn’t really take, but patching people up, yeah, I learned that.”

  “Lucky me.”

  Madaline licked her lips, as Amber began wrapping her foot with a pad and gauze. "Could you give me stitches if you had to?"

  Amber didn't look up, staying focused on her task. "You won't need them."

  "I know, I'm grateful, but could you?"

  "You don't have health insurance?"

  "No, I do. I'm just curious."

  "I've never done them before, not on a person."

  "But you have the general idea?"

  "Dad showed me how," Amber nodded a little, a slightly confused expression passed over her face, she shook it off just as quickly. "Had me practice a couple times. Its not that hard." She finished with the gauze, "Any pain in your other foot?" she asked, gncing at the partner on the floor.

  "No."

  Amber nodded and stripped off her gloves. “We're going to need to watch this, you should try to stay off it as much as possible, some time tonight after I get back from work I’ll-” The words got stuck as Amber inclined her head upwards looking at her patient. "I'll- um," Amber's already rge eyes widened as she realized what she’d done. "I-" Amber tried once more as her anxiety reached up from inside her and tried to squeeze her throat shut.

  Madaline peered down at her with her standard nearly bored expression, she was glistening wet. Amber watched as a water droplet passed by a green eye, falling from a sh.

  What was not standard about Madaline’s appearance was her utter nudity, which befitted someone who up until everything went tits up was in a state of tits out, tits and everything else.

  Huh, she doesn't have tattoos? I just kind of assumed with everything else she'd have tattoos, somewhere. The thought was quickly swallowed up by the scratchy scramble of shame and panic that had eaten her brain.

  Amber swallowed, with it's task done her former composure had clocked out. “You’re- you’re naked?” Amber's ears appeared as though they might burn someone if touched.

  Madaline nodded down at her. “Yeah, I am.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For?”

  “Barging in here.”

  “To help me and do what seems like a really good job?”

  “I should have asked first."

  "To help me?"

  "To come in."

  Distantly Madaline’s music with its raucous female singer was still pying:

  “...you and him, it's driving me mad!

  Flowers and Chocotes and Guns and Bombs:

  Hey, pretty thing, you should let me be your boyfriend!”

  Madaline ran her tongue over her teeth and shot a sharp gre at the speaker; the crack of her thumb blurred into the music.

  “Hearts and Matches and Hatchets and Love songs:

  I’m serious, baby girl, I’d kill to be your boyfriend!”

  Madaline reached over to her phone on the ledge and tapped.

  “Come on, beautiful, just let me kill your boyfr-”

  The speaker went silent.

  Amber took several deep breaths and looked away from Madaline.

  Madaline continued to watch her.

  “I’ll-” Amber began to rise, pressing her hand to her sternum as though she were choking.

  Madaline reached down and touched the side of Amber's face, making her freeze. She pressed gently, angling Amber's head back towards her so their eyes could meet and then finally after three weeks, there it was, that reassuring pressure returned to Madaline’s voice. “It's okay. It's alright. You've done nothing wrong. Thank you for coming in to help. You put me back together better than I could. Try not to worry about this.”

  Amber nodded, a comfortable warmth trickling down from Madaline's fingertips. The digits remained in pce just long enough for Amber to feel a little better, before Madaline almost hastily pulled away.

  Amber began rubbing her own fingers over her wrist.

  Madaline took note of the action.

  Amber took a breath, counted back from ten and exhaled. “We’re- we're both girls, we're both-, so it doesn’t have to be a big deal. We-” Amber tried to think of what she was trying to express. “We’d share, like, a locker room if we went to- school together or something, so it’s no big deal, you know. It’s not,” she swallowed, “inappropriate.”

  Madaline cocked her head slightly and stared down at her, her neutral expression falling into a slight frown for just a moment. Her eyes darted to the ceiling and back. At st she nodded, “No, definitely not inappropriate.”

  Madaline's voice made Amber feel feather light, like she might blow away. She rose back up, pocketing two final pairs of rubber gloves, before she hauled the tote back to the closet she'd retrieved it from, exchanging it for a clean towel for Madaline and a thick garbage bag.

  She handed Madaline the towel and her clothes, then donned the rubber gloves, pcing the bloody bath mat and towel into the garbage bag, tying it off. They could wait in the undry area until the next assigned undry day.

  She changed out the liner in the bathroom waste bin, took the bags, and began backing out of the bathroom, Madaline was still sitting, watching her, waiting for her to leave.

  “Try to stay off it if you can, the foot, I mean." Amber chided herself for stating the obvious. "Sometime tonight when I get home, I’ll change the bandage. I have to get ready for work," she said, her voice pitching higher as she expined where she was going.

  “Okay, sounds good.”

  “Just, when you’re done, close the door, I’ll clean all that up when I get back.”

  Madaline made a noncommittal sound.

  3.

  Once she heard Amber head up the stairs to her own bathroom, Madaline sighed and cracked her knuckles one after another in silent consideration.

  Sweet little thing isn’t she? Jumpy, wired, tightly wound, but sweet, Madaline thought to herself.

  She dried off and pulled on her clothes.

  Picking up her things, she gred at her speaker once more, as though it was its fault the entire situation had been with two randomly chosen, highly suggestive, highly inappropriate songs, while she sat there with zero clothes and Amber Orlet kneeling on the floor, looking up at her with her-

  Fucking hell, her eyes are so-

  Yes, of course, it was obviously the speaker's fault, not the phone, not the 100 song pylist she’d made at some point, no it was the speaker.

  What was going to come up next if I’d left it on? Any song from Lords of Acid? Seriously, how the fuck does that happen, why?

  She unlocked her phone and skipped to the next song, Shit Luck by Modest Mouse started up for two seconds before she shut it down. Well, that wouldn’t have been too bad and it answered her question, didn’t it.

  She closed the bathroom door and moved carefully down the hall, unable to strut with her foot aching under each step.

  Amber was reminding Madaline more and more of the first car she'd ever owned, a strangely cheap 1994 Foxbody that looked and ran great, until you hit the highway and then each and every fastener in the poor girl seemed to want to loosen all at once, making the entire body shake and quake. Each entrance ramp she'd hit left her anticipating the vehicle's apparent inclination to come totally undone, parts blowing off at high speed, stripping it down to the frame. Nothing had ever actually blown off, but it assumably only ever remained in one piece and running through the furious concentrated willpower of a very pissed off teenage trans girl.

  In the kitchen she selected a pair of apples from the fruit bowl on the counter, one red and one green.

  Almost too thin for comfort though... somebody should talk to her about that.

  Since arriving, other than her meals with Simon, Madaline hadn't seen Amber eat anything more substantial than a cup of bck coffee, which she dumped a ton of cinnamon into, not cinnamon sugar, cinnamon.

  Then again, she hadn't been watching too closely either, she really couldn't conclude anything.

  Madaline settled at the table and yanked out the apple stems with her teeth. As she brought the red apple to her mouth, she paused and considered it. She turned back to look at the fruit bowl.

  Amber kept the pce tidy, taking particur care with the kitchen, it seemed to be part of a clockwork like routine, along with many other domestic duties, including taking Simon’s car to go grocery shopping once a week or so. It was actually the cleanest, most well organized living space she’d ever seen from anyone in their age group.

  Madaline hadn't had to deal with the dishes, Amber always took care of them, but more importantly that fruit bowl hadn't been there when she arrived. Did she? Eh, no way to know without asking.

  She bit into the apple, it was very sweet. Could be full of surprises too.

  Another bite. She wiped a trickle of juice from her chin with her thumb.

  And she’s pretty.

  This wasn’t exactly a fact that had escaped her awareness until now, it was actually a fairly recurrent observation in one form or another since opening the door at her parents, but Madaline had been working hard at ignoring it. A process, that unlike Amber herself, Madaline was not partial to nor practiced at.

  Madaline ripped a huge bite out of the apple, trying to use its sweetness to sooth the sensation of acrid dissatisfaction coursing through her.

  Amber passed through in her cute little barista uniform, not staying to talk. “I gotta go, I have to catch the bus, I can't be te.”

  Madaline for all her many faults and bad habits had the protocol do not talk with food in your mouth hard coded into her by her mothers forefinger snapping against her ear as a child, she accelerated her mastication and swallowed. “Hey, hold up, I’ll-” Madaline started, but the door was shutting. “Drive you.”

  Probably for the best.

  She sighed and concentrated on her apple, but quickly ended up pitching it away and putting the other one back, her appetite for them had vanished.

  But, yeah, she’s very very pretty.

  4.

  Amber got back at 10:15 PM. She kissed Simon hello in front of his televised sports, before sweeping into the downstairs bathroom with rubber gloves, a broom, and a dustpan to take care of the broken gss in the tub, but found it spotless.

  She put her supplies back, thinking about how nice it was for Madaline to take care of it.

  She went back out and sat with Simon until he was ready for bed, pushing forward into Hugo’s Hunchback.

  At 10:45 PM the happy couple went to bed and had their nightly congress, which was as efficient and satisfying as it always was.

  At 10:54 PM Simon popped his Ambien and id back.

  Amber y in the dark, listening until the moment she heard his breathing change, it was 11:22 PM.

  At 11:23 PM she got up, crept back downstairs and grabbed what she’d need out of the medical tote her father had sent her to college with, before returning back upstairs, passing by Simon's door, down the hall to Madaline’s.

  She was prepared for Madaline's door to be shut, to have to knock, but at 11:27 PM the door was open.

  Madaline was stretched out on the bed, her eyes shut, her earphones mounted on her head. She’d changed from earlier, her long body was now encased in a sleek bck jumpsuit.

  Her skin looked slightly slick, as though Amber had only been gone a couple hours instead of nearly 10, and her bandage was damp.

  Amber could hear the overflow from her earphones, an uplifting combination of sweet synths and heartbeat drums. Snatches of lyrics floated through the air at her:

  “...back and forth, left and right,

  just you and me for the rest of the night…”

  Sickly guilt twinged in Amber’s chest at the thought of disturbing her when she looked so rexed. It was the most engaged she'd ever seen Madaline; her feet tick tocking, her head bobbing in time with the drums, her long fingers on her left hand twitching and curling randomly, blissfully jamming out.

  Amber wanted to let her be, to wait for a better time, to not upset her, but that bandage needed to be changed and checking the wound wasn't something that could be put off. She took a deep breath and pushed all her feelings down, trying to keep on top of them so they couldn’t interfere.

  She pnted her feet at the threshold and knocked.

  Madaline didn’t respond, her music continued:

  “...let me invite you to dance….”

  “Madaline,” Amber said in a near whisper, before realizing how stupid that attempt was and trying again a little louder, “Madaline.” She waved her arms, but Madaline still took no notice.

  In some ways this felt to Amber like a cute, miniature model of their retionship since Madaline had moved in with Simon.

  Amber took a deep breath wondering what to do. She sighed and stepped into the room.

  “Madaline,” she said, a little more insistent.

  “...Oh god... grey...”

  A red thread of irritation wove itself into her anxiety, she pressed her lips together, suddenly getting an idea, but before she could think over whether or not it was a good one she was already doing it. “Maddy!” she snapped, before realizing what she’d done, cpping her hands to her mouth.

  Madaline just kept on enjoying her music.

  It was obvious that Madaline didn't like her name being shortened, Simon used it to irritate her, but Amber had done it and she hadn't noticed, she'd lucked out, she'd gotten away with it. It made something in Amber feel, almost, giddy.

  Another step forward, she was standing over her now, her knees pressed to the side of the bed. “Madaline, I'm sorry to just walk in, but the door was open and I need to change your bandage.”

  “...she has blue …”

  Finally with no other recourse Amber steeled herself and reached out to tap Madaline’s leg, pausing at about two centimeters from making contact.

  “... oh god she has…”

  When she closed the second to st centimeters Madaline’s nostrils fred and her lids banged open like shutters.

  "... green eyes."

  Amber wrenched her hand back as though she’d reached too close to a fme.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly, taking several steps away.

  Madaline slid her earphones off, looking over Amber in her pajamas, vice clutching her supplies to her chest. She looked ashamed of disturbing her. She looked like a rabbit ready to bolt.

  Madaline's chest ached and she sighed internally, It's not going to work. I can't do it. I really tried, but I just can't deal with this. I can't stay here for however much longer and watch her act like I might yell at her for existing, I just can't py this how I have been, cause, I mean, Modern Way gets it: Oh god, she has brown eyes.

  Yeah, she had brown eyes alright, brown eyes that were now burnt into Madaline's brain. Brown eyes looking up at her while their owner kneeled on the floor. Brown eyes, so huge and hooded and expressive and dark. Yeah, that image wasn't going away any time soon.

  All of that passed through Madaline's mind in the time it took for her headphones to reach her neck.

  The next thing a telepath would have heard as she accepted her somewhat precarious situation and made her decision, would have been a rge bang as Madaline shifted gears.

  A friendly smirk sprang onto her face, she twisted her head and torso towards Amber, "Hey, princess, where are you going? Sorry, I didn't hear you come in."

  “Oh, um, it’s cool.” Amber didn’t move, continuing to squeeze the items.

  "Come here, you're going to change this for me right?" The fingers on Madaline's right hand curled for Amber, her left ones were still twitching to the finale of Modern Way's Craving.

  Amber nodded, relief falling over her face. The awkwardness of the situation, of being in the room, of having the gall to inconveniently exist subsided with Madaline’s insistence on the agreed upon treatment, at her smile and the bright, pleased tint that had spread through her words. It was the vocal equivalent of an image shifting from grayscale to full color, it was like Madaline was so happy, delighted even, to see her.

  “Do you need me to move?” Madaline asked.

  “Just shift it off the bed, that would be easiest.”

  Madaline did as she asked.

  Touch by Daft Punk started softly around Madaline's neck. Madaline thumbed the headphones off and decided then and there she was torching her entire collection of music, it was clearly cursed.

  Amber dropped down at the edge of the bed and got started.

  "How was work?"

  "Not bad," she said, working quickly. “Yeah, it's looking good, as long as we keep changing the bandage and keep it from getting infected it should be fine. Does it hurt?”

  "A little bit, I've had worse."

  “It should feel normal in the next couple days, just try to stay off it.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Amber began wrapping her foot back up. Gncing over at the weights in the corner, she thought about the dampness of the bandage and the sheen of Madaline's skin. “Were you working out earlier?”

  “Yep.”

  “Were you on it while you did?”

  “For a little bit, but then I switched to stomach crunches.”

  Amber nodded and finished bandaging Madaline’s foot.

  She disposed of her gloves and stood up, gathering her things. She seemed a little more at ease than when she’d come in but now that her task was completed, she resumed trying to make herself even smaller than she already was. “Well, you know, try to stay off it, just to be safe. Um, I'm all done, so, I guess goodnight. Enjoy your music.”

  Madaline nodded and watched her start to hurry out the door, arms clenched, shoulders and neck starting to curve down.

  “Hey,” Madaline said, making Amber jump slightly and turn back to her.

  “Yeah?”

  Madaline looked at her, brushing her long hair from her eyes with a flip of her hand, “Do you want to watch more of that Dungeon show?”

  Amber blinked at her, uncertain if she’d heard her right. “Do you want to watch more?”

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “Okay, um, with me?” she asked. She sounded embarrassed, as though the idea was presumptuous.

  “With you.”

  “Right now?”

  "Is Simon sleeping?"

  "Yeah, he takes Ambien, so he sleeps easier than me."

  "Then yes, right now, downstairs. If you're free?"

  “Um, yeah, I'm free. Okay," Amber nodded.

  Madaline rose off the bed, moving carefully on her foot, keeping the weight to its side. She walked to Amber and pced a hand on her back, escorting her downstairs, “Come on, I think I saw popcorn in the st round of groceries you got, we should have popcorn.”

  Xoraxorel