Chapter Text
Her claws tink against the glass of her second espresso. The streetlights blend gold into the indigo-dye of morning. Adora sits opposite her in a window booth at Jitters, the closest 24/7 diner. Craning a handful of fries over her mouth from the shared plate, Adora gives the impression of a burnt-out college student in her University crew sweatshirt and joggers.
“Not bad.” Adora says, licking the tips of her fingers mindlessly while squinting at the three-page menu. “I’m craving a good vegan sausage.”
Catra scoffs but doesn’t comment. Expecting vegan meat at a 24/7 diner is like asking for gruyère cheese at Burger King. The question is meat or no meat, not what’s your best plant-based alternative?
Her body is frenetic with excitement and dread, uncertain whether to want Adora or distrust her. That Catra chose to answer Adora’s call and then leave her apartment after dark in winter is unusual for her. If a girl flees her apartment after making-out and then calls her an hour later to talk, her reflex is to ignore the call and see if she’s even interested by morning.
Last February, she began experiencing regular anxiety attacks and optic migraines. Her year has been defined by the nights she spends alone in her apartment pacing, sweating, breathing through it. She masks her vulnerability in the tink-tink-tink of her claws and twitching tail, which could easily be interpreted as impatience.
Beneath the table, Adora has her legs sprawled wide so that occasionally her knees knock against Catra’s crossed legs, further frenzying her. She can’t remember the last time she stayed up all night with a girl who wasn’t going to have sex with her, just to lose her mind over the slightest brush of skin.
Adora continues, “What’s your favorite dish?”
“Nothing really, it’s a shitty diner.” Fried anchovies.
“No, I mean, what do you like to eat? Salty or sweet? Sour or savory?”
Catra frowns, tail flicking. This shouldn’t be a difficult question, it’s no different from asking about her taste in music or movies, which they’d already talked about; but her taste in media doesn't touch on basic needs. Any response she gives here will immediately emphasize her fucked-up childhood in that nobody taught Catra how to eat well, let alone how to cook. How Adora managed to learn how to cook as a vegan in the foster system is beyond her. She must have been loved. Food is survival, to be scavenged and scraped, not savored. Her body tenses under Adora’s gaze despite seeing nothing but open curiosity.
“I’m not picky,” Catra says quickly. “What about you?”
Adora’s eyes lighten with passion. “I love cooking. I usually go for umami flavors, like eggplant and tomato stew with chickpea. But in summer I really crave bright, fresh toppings, like red onion, jalapeno, lime. So tacos are a must.”
Catra’s ears flatten as she listens, feeling ashamed about her own lack of skill. She eats shelf-stable foods like canned anchovies, beans, and rice. She once tried making batter-and-bake tilapia but used cornstarch instead of flour, not understanding the difference, and hated every bite.
“That’s cool.”
Tink. Tink. Tink. Her claws against the espresso cup punctuate the silence. She should have stayed home.
“What do you like to do when you’re not working?” Adora asks. A sullen undertone has begun to creep into her voice but her body language is buoyant.
“I collect things.”
“Oh?” Adora perks up “Like what?”
Her apartment is full of stolen tokens from years of cleaning houses in ritzy neighborhoods. She seeks out elegance— perfume, potpourri, leather-bound books, Rococo ceramic dinner plates.
Catra shrugs, unwilling to elaborate.
“Come on,” Adora prods, “I’ve seen your apartment. You clearly have an eye for art, so tell me about it.”
Catra bristles with the extra push. “Is this how you talk to people in city council meetings?” She bats her eyes. “You clearly have an eye for design. What do you think about this bike lane?”
Adora looks embarrassed. “Whatever, I like to make people feel engaged in the change happening around them.”
“Okay. What do you do when you’re not saving the world?”
Adora’s right eyebrow twitches and a vulnerable expression passes over her eyes. Then she rolls her shoulders back and her expression hardens into an irritated stare.
“I like to bike around the city. I also volunteer at a mental health crisis hotline.”
Feeling stuck and miserable, Catra mutters, “Well, aren’t you Little Miss Perfect?”
Adora taps her fingers against the table and closes the menu. “I’m—not hungry anymore.”
“Great.” Catra responds, unable to look at Adora.
“I can walk you to the bus stop.” She offers, dampening the blow with politeness. “You’re probably exhausted. This was a bad idea.”
Catra shrinks from Adora and hisses. “I don’t need you to walk me anywhere. Go home if you want, I’m not forcing you to be here.”
“What?” Adora snaps in a hushed tone, leaning toward her in the booth. “I’m the one not forcing you to stay. You clearly want to leave.”
“I was fine until you started prying information out of me.”
“Prying?” Adora leans back with a frustrated laugh. “Oh, I’m so sorry for wanting to get to know you. I didn’t realize every detail of your life was off limits.”
Catra slams her hands against the table and growls at Adora. Eyes widening, Adora holds her hands up in retreat. Her stomach churns at the complete overreaction. Shame threatens to overwhelm her and rationalizations begin to form in anticipation: None of this would have happened if you had just asked easier questions!
“Hey, so…” The waitress’ deadpan voice cuts the tension. “Can you, like, not fucking do this here?”
Their attention snaps to the waitress. Catra’s claws are digging into the table. Adora's right eyebrow looks as though it could reconnect with her hairline and her skin flushes. The waiter crosses her arms against her chest and looks between the two. Her expression says, you heard me.
“I’m so sorry,” Adora gushes, pulling a money clip out of her sweatpants and placing a generous tip on the table. “We were just leaving.”
Tugging Catra’s arm, she pulls them both out of the diner and into the brisk winter morning. Walking silently under the gaze of the diner staff, she and Adora turn the corner and huddle under a streetlight next to a sheltered bus stop. Adora and Catra’s bus runs through this stop in thirty minute intervals starting from the first bus of the day, which according to her phone will arrive by 5:15am. They both have to wait an hour.
“Too bad you didn’t bring your bike,” Catra mutters. “Looks like you’re stuck here.”
“What is your problem?” Adora asks. She’s taller, more muscular, than Catra and intimidating when angry. Her jaw tightens as she stares down at Catra. Breath vapor touching her cheek. Red vascular lines flaring the edges of Adora’s nose in the frigid air.
Pressure constricts her chest, keeping her breath shallow and tight. The conditions of an anxiety attack— no sleep, caffeine, the loneliness from her year, from her life—coalesce. Had she stayed home huddled beneath the covers and rocked herself to sleep, she would have saved herself this humiliation: her confident persona imploding from simple conversation and revealing the strange loner freak beneath.
With a hiss, Catra pushes Adora back. “Just go, and delete my number while you’re at it.”
Adora softens at the torn-up sound of her voice. Her mind swirls with dizziness as the episode washes over her. Stars burst into her vision and scatter over Adora, briefly crowning her in gold light. Dazed by the sudden whirl of stars, Catra closes her eyes and leans against the support of the bus shelter.
“Woah,” Adora murmurs. Her hands hover over Catra, not touching but ready to catch her.
“I’m fine.”
Feeling for the bench, she sits down and tucks her head between her knees. Breathing in, she counts to four. Hold. Breathing out, she counts to four. Full exhale. She repeats the technique with her eyes closed until the stars dim to a shimmering distortion and finally return to black.
When it's over, Catra cushions her forehead on her crossed arms and waits for Adora’s presence to disappear. Just go. Just go. Just go.
Her presence shifts, seeming uncertain, and sits beside Catra on the bench.
Still breathing slowly, Catra opens one eye and peeks at Adora, who’s biting her bottom lip as if mulling something over. Catra closes her eyes again. Now that she's in her body, the exhaustion she’d been likely feeling for hours threatens to take control.
“How did you…do that?” Adora asks. “Like, come down, again.”
Catra lifts her head enough to rub her face, applying pressure to her temple and massaging down her jaw, releasing tension. Scorpia taught her the breathing technique. The tension-release routine has developed over many, many months of jaw, neck, and eye pain.
“I was going to lose my job if I didn’t figure my shit out, so a friend helped me— and apparently this is super common knowledge. Like, everyone knows this stuff,” Catra explains, pulling tension out of the muscle of her jaw. Adora’s stare flicks from eyes to hands to lips, back to eyes, to the pull of her fingers, back to lips.
She thinks, fuck it, and shares the story. “The first time I got caught stealing from the store, it wasn’t a big deal. They’re very forgiving. But then, I got caught again.” Catra takes a breath. “This is their family business, so they convened a family meeting - Scorpia, her moms, her grandfather had me over for dinner and they tried to talk to me about it. They wanted to understand why and, obviously, wanted me to stop.”
“Oh.” Adora rubs her knuckles with her thumb, listening with intense focus. “And?”
Catra sighs, “And I freaked out.”
“What happened?”
“Scorpia really - cares about me, for some reason. I don’t know.” Catra admits. “She pulled me aside and held me really tight, I felt like I was going to pass out, and she started breathing, like that. Deep slow breaths. Counting each one. All the while, I’m scratching the shit out of her, and her family’s watching. They’re stuck at the dinner table, staring. I’m surprised no one called the cops. It was so weird.”
When she meets Adora’s eyes, she expects to see judgement or criticism as she had felt about herself; instead she feels a strange zip in her body as she connects with a warm, openly affectionate gaze.
Lips pulling into an odd smile, Adora says, “I think I know how that feels.”
A pleasant tingling sensation washes over Catra at having shared and been accepted and she deepens the eye contact. Then she registers what Adora said.
“How could you possibly relate to that?” She laughs, feeling slightly hysterical. “That was so specific.”
“I think my friends have tried to do that for me before. I just never realized it.” Adora replies. “A few times actually, now that I think about it. I figured Bow really liked slow 90-second-long hugs.”
“Wow, a minute and a half. That’s a long time to wait for a hug to end.”
“I figured that’s how normal people hug.” Adora laughs, embarrassed. “I didn’t mind.”
“It could be. I wouldn't know,” Catra considers.
Adora’s right eyebrow quirks again and this time Catra notes it as a facial tic. The expression looks young. She can almost imagine nine-year-old Adora’s eyebrow twitching, eyes wide with uncertainty. She smiles at Adora and a peaceful silence falls between them.
She nudges Catra’s shoulder. “So what happened? I’m guessing you didn’t get fired.”
She can visualize that night. Scorpia held her in a vise until her instinct to self-destruct passed and she followed the breathing which enveloped her. The confused tears that streamed down her face as she explained how stealing makes her feel (powerful, independent, dominant). Her shame and embarrassment as Scorpia’s mothers and grandfather, Almandine, listened to her, astonished by the dramatic turn of events, and accepted her apology.
“They grilled these long sticks of marinated chicken and served it over rice. I think it was the best meal I’ve ever had.”
“I love that for you,” Adora’s eyes beam, allowing the deflection.
Another pleasant shiver convinces Catra to share more. “Okay, fine. I’ve been with them for a few years, so they wanted to work with me, but it was hard for a while. I told them I was going through something.”
An unspoken question waits on Adora’s lips: Were you? Thankfully, she doesn’t ask.
The abrupt screech of mechanical brakes bursts their privacy. The 51R bus wheels into the curb and opens its doors. The destination sign blinking with Adora’s neighborhood. She stands and steps onto the bus before looking back at Catra.
Holding out her hand, she offers, “Come with me?”
*~*~*~*
Adora closes the blackout curtains in her bedroom as Catra observes her apartment. She notes the bike hanging on a hook in the hallway, the clean minimalist design, and workout equipment tucked into a chest in the corner. There is a framed diploma on the wall in Public Policy from Mystacore.
Wait. Catra leans closer to inspect. From beneath the laminated paper peeks an envelope, a curious secret.
“Interesting,” she whispers.
“Are you comfortable if I take a nap?” Adora asks, startling Catra away from the wall. “You’re more than welcome to join me, or you can stay out here. Whatever you want.”
Catra watches her face flush with an amused smirk. “I’ll take the bed, thanks.”
The bed is extremely firm. Adora pulls off her sweatshirt and wraps her arms around a pillow, looking small in her white cotton T-shirt. Her triceps bulk as she tightens the pillow around her chest. Catra lets her eyes flit from her dirty-blonde hair, shaved undercut, ear piercings, and the spatter of scars across her face—boxcars from acne and a curved row of white raked across her jawline. The impulse to press her lips against the scar along her jaw and drag open kisses down her neck burns in her mind.
Her kneading catches Adora’s attention, whose eyes swell with affection. She seems to consider touching Catra, but smiles and murmurs, “Get some rest.”
Without a word, Catra curls into a fetal position at her feet, reminding herself that Adora had fled the last time she’d acted on impulse. Only friendly touches unless Adora says otherwise.
Twenty-minutes pass with the slow, relaxed exchange of breath. Adora nuzzles her pillow, murmuring under her breath for comfort and letting out soft sighs. Catra watches as her face relaxes, lips part, shoulders and neck release tension, everything growing heavy.
There is something so satisfying to Catra in watching—
Adora kicks Catra through her sheets. With a yelp, Catra readjusts and thwaps her tail against the duvet as she stares at Adora, now once again completely relaxed.
This continues in intervals of increasing frequency—she absorbs a kick to the thigh, stomach, and face—before Catra loses it and pounces on Adora, pinning her body to the mattress, wrists above her head.
“Stop kicking me!”
With a startled yelp, Adora jolts awake with a firm headbutt, causing them both to cradle their heads and shift to opposite sides of the bed.
After a few adjustments, they settle on their sides facing each other, nose to nose, legs and hands intertwined. Catra rakes her fingers along Adora’s wrist and forearm, eliciting pleasant shivers as they both close their eyes.
“Is this okay?” Catra asks.
“Yeah,” Adora shivers again.
Hours pass. Light broadens into day, casting haze into the edges of the curtains. Catra wakes first, somewhat rejuvenated, and watches Adora’s face as she sleeps. Her expression has changed with the hours, sinking into a grimace. Fingertips brushing against Adora’s temple, she feels the stir of her resting pulse. Whatever’s upsetting her lies beneath conscious awareness.
Catra risks another touch along the hairs at her forehead split by her ponytail. The combination of their body heat and their bus-stop conversation feels like an aphrodisiac. Adora’s expression had been rapt with attention while Catra shared, for the first time, one of the most humiliating moments of her life. The image drums in her mind, reverberating warmth in her core. She’s felt attracted to bodies and aesthetics all her life, but never to this feeling of connection. She removes her hand and nuzzles into the bed sheets, inhaling their mingled scent.
As if called by name, Adora opens her eyes with a hollow, sullen expression. When she sees Catra, their eyes connect, and a look of recognition flashes across her face. Sensing her sexual desire, Adora pushes her body flush against hers. Her seduction moves in slow-motion, dragging her cheek across the skin of Catra's forehead to the bridge of her nose and rubbing cheek to cheek. Catra has to hold back a moan as she feels the skin contact and her body thrums with excitement.
“Can I kiss you?” Adora asks. Her voice mirrors the gloom in her eyes.
Catra’s breath hitches, scanning her expression. “Do you want to?”
Adora’s eyes soften and she smiles, “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
When Adora presses her lips against Catra, she can sense the difference from last night. Her body feels removed as though observing her performance and not experiencing it. Adora pulls her closer with her shirt, deepening the kiss but not the passion.
With a turn of her head, Catra breaks the kiss. “Let’s just rest.”
Her eyebrow tics, expression bare. “Did I do something wrong?”
Catra opens her mouth, baffled by that response. Feelings of bitterness, hurt, and desire twist inside her chest.
“I don’t know. I just feel like you’re lying about wanting this.”
“Not at all!" Her eyes well with fear.
“Then why are you acting so weird?”
“I-” Adora sputters, looking to the side. “I don’t know!”
“Well, I don’t know what to do with that.” Catra crosses her arms with a huff.
“Okay, bu—wait,” Adora stops, listening closely. “What’s that sound?”
Catra listens, noticing at once a gentle knocking at the door. Her hackles raise and ears pin back.
“Someone’s at the door, genius.”
Adora flies off the bed in search of her phone. Her face, cast in blue, looks mortified.
“My friends are here.” She grimaces. “I’d asked them to help me decorate this weekend but never said when.”
Scrolling through texts and missed calls, she groans. “I did ghost them a bit.”
"What time is it?"
"Two p.m."
From behind the door to the apartment, a voice peals, “Ado-r-aa!! You’re gonna love the supplies I brought!”