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When Cass shuffles inside the workshop, arms full of blankets, she realizes quite suddenly she can hear the gentle sound of breathing.
At almost the same moment, she stumbles directly into something she guesses in the near-pitch dark of the room must be a machine part; she remains standing with little issue, but being that she’s Cass, the probably-machine part sails across the room and collides abruptly with the wall.
She’s not sure if Lacy’s still asleep in their blanket nest, but Luma’s mumbled “Cass?” is enough proof that Luma—stretched out on top of a comforter beside them—is definitely not.
“Shit, sorry,” Cass whispers. “I didn’t know y’all were back yet. I was just gonna—I just didn’t think there were many spare blankets left in here, ‘cause you just washed them all again before you went home, and Lacy’s nest was looking a little thin, but—you’re here now! When? …how?”
“We have a drop ship,” Luma points out, and Cass doesn’t have to see more than her outline to hear the smile that warms every word.
“Did Lacy turn Amelia into a ninja?” (She’s at least 80% serious. There’s no underestimating Lacy.)
“Babe,” Luma murmurs, like she’s trying to soften the impact of truly terrible news. “I think it might have something to do with you sleeping like the dead.” Before Cass can respond, Luma adds, “Come here.”
Cass gestures vaguely with her blanket arms, the soft glow from a couple nearby screens just enough to guide the rest of her approach, though she only hovers nearby. “We all agreed to rotate laundry duty,” Cass points out in a whisper, a little reproachfully.
“It helps me relax. You know that,” Luma says, exasperated. “Will you just—come here?”
Luma wraps an arm around Cass as she settles the blankets on the ground, tugging her down. “Are you sure? I can just go back to my—well, uh—your—the—room,” Cass says, clearing her throat.
“Stay,” Luma insists, nosing into her neck and securing her in place. (What she could never do physically she has more than enough power to do through force of will. There’s also the matter of Cass being head over heels about her, but Cass is pretty damn sure that’s more an asset than the enchilada.) “You weren’t sleeping in your room?” she asks after a minute, only audible for her proximity to Cass’ ear.
“Oh,” Cass says. “Well, do you…do you want me to? Because I totally can. Do that. If you want me to.” The truth is that Cass can’t remember the last time she slept in her own bed. The truth is that even the nights Luma spends away from the base, she leaves pieces of herself behind: a few sewing projects that never made it to her actual station, stray glitter buried between the sheets, never fully gone, the twinkle of tiny lights that outline her closet. There’s Luma in every decoration she’s hung from the ceiling, every spot of paint she’s added to the walls. Every frame of every image of all the people she loves most.
It’s the room Cass chooses when she’s practicing balance. It’s where she goes when she hears Anton’s voice before every inhale and behind every exhale.
And it’s weird, a place that feels both a little bit like home and a little bit like safe, all at the same time. It feels kind of like cheating.
It reminds her of nights spent at Uncle Charlie’s apartment with Oya, of laughing until she forgot how to breathe, of making games and stories and stupid jokes with all the puppets that—that used to—
Anyway, Luma has the best pillows.
“If you’re sleeping in our room, you really need to move more of your clothes in. I’ll clear out some of the stuff in the closet,” Luma says, and Cass turns her head and slides a hand along her cheek and kisses her with her heart stumbling inside her throat and the rhythm of our our our our behind her ribcage.
“Uh, but don’t worry about moving your stuff,” Cass says, when they part. “You’ve got a lot more to fill it with.”
Luma makes a vaguely indignant noise that has nothing to do with how much fabric she owns. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s plenty of space around the base. You’re not walking down the hall every single day just to change. It doesn’t make any sense,” she says, like the notion of Cass having to make a trip down two hallways is suddenly the most wildly intolerable concept anyone in the world could ever conceive of. “No more arguing. Just sleeping,” she adds, like she can sense Cass about to protest.
Not an hour later, the glow of the screens finds the three of them breathing evenly, the rhythm of their heartbeats bound together by the energy that thrums quietly beneath their skin.
*
“What’s wrong?” Cass says, startling awake; Luma’s climbed halfway into bed beside her, and she’s definitely supposed to be spending the night at her parents’, and Luma’s brothers haven’t exactly been known to keep themselves out of danger, which is super admirable, but there are, like, supervillains just hanging around, and—
“Hey, shh,” Luma says. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
--her brain catches up right about then, when she realizes Luma looks very not panicked, and she’s also getting into bed, which is a pretty good sign that there’s no urgent crisis.
Besides, all it takes is a moment, half of a breath, to feel the energy they all share; one tug, one reflexive thought, and Luma’s fills her: it’s tired, but it’s warm. It’s always warm.
“I thought you said you weren’t coming back until tomorrow,” Cass says, dragging the blanket up to wrap around them both.
“I would’ve left in the morning anyway,” Luma says. “So I’d rather spend the night with you.”
Cass is smiling a little too much when they kiss for it to last. “Missed you,” she mumbles against her mouth, anyway. “Is Lacy back too?”
“No, I think the dads have some…very specific breakfast plan in mind,” she says. “Tomorrow after that, though.”
“Great!” Cass says, brightening. “I stocked up on the, uh, ‘super gross caffeine drink things.’” Luma offers the disgust that any mention of Lacy’s drinks of choice are obligated to draw from her. “I didn’t know exactly where to put them all, so they’re kinda…in a few cabinets. A lot of cabinets.”
“How many did you buy?”
“…oh, you know, all the stock they had of all the flavors on the list.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Luma says, and Cass feels warmth expand to fill her chest, unsure if it’s Luma’s or hers or some combination of the two. These days, it's harder and harder to tell the difference--like they're all dipping into same pool, and any lines drawn are more chain link than stone.
“I know the next mission’s gonna be coding heavy,” Cass says. “…okay, that's kind of every mission.”
“Well, great, maybe Lacy can captain that one,” Luma says, a little sharp. “Or someone else who isn’t me. It’s been six in a row! When we decided to start this up again, we promised to rotate.”
“We’re still voting,” Cass protests.
“Yeah, for the same person. Every single time. What happened to different skill sets are better for different missions, everyone has a different specialty, we’ll take mission parameters or whatever into account. No one mentioned the fact that no one else actually wants to take on the job, here you go, Luma, you can take on all the pressure for all of us!” Her whispering borders on frantic, like she’s finally expelling all of the stress that must have been weighing on her; every breath comes a little uneven. Cass should have noticed sooner. “There’s a reason term limits were invented, you know!”
“Hey,” Cass says; she shifts back just a little, worried she might crowd her, but Luma makes a grab for her hand and pulls it back to her face. So instead, Cass cups her cheek, slides careful fingers through Luma’s hair. She’s never seen it so long. “You don’t have to do anything. Not ever. It’s not a punishment. You get to say no.” A pause before she adds, “And I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have been—that was our bad. It’s always your choice. But, just so you know? The reason you keep getting voted in is because of you, not because nobody else wants the job.”
“You don’t want the job,” Luma points out.
“I don’t want the job,” Cass affirms. “But everybody knows I’m not one of the leader types. And everybody knows you are. You do the whole thinking through the possibilities, you know all the strengths and weaknesses, you make us—you make us feel like we really could be...superheroes. We’re at our best when we’re fighting for you. No one’s dumb enough to argue that.”
“Cass,” Luma says—so, so soft, a pink tinge to her cheeks—as she turns her face to press a kiss into Cass’ palm, “I think maybe you’re a little biased.”
Cass shakes her head, emphatically. “Babe, you know everybody on this whole goddamn team would follow you to the ends of the fucking earth. Uh, but past that. Back to the moon. Jupiter. Into the land of mixed-up universes also trying not to die?”
“I left him behind,” Luma says, and it’s almost inaudible, like weeks worth of restless midnights closing her throat all at once.
“That’s not over,” Cass says. “You know that’s not over. We’re going back for him. We’re getting him back. We know he’s alive! And you have pretty much the coolest power ever, now—you literally tied up a supervillain hit squad with light!—and Oya’s actually a time wizard goddess person, and Lacy can hack multiple planets, probably at the same time, and Hopps can destroy literally everyone with lightning and also basically never miss, and—we’ve got Moonlight, and Sal, and Cobalt, and Kostchie, and Snaps, and—Shion, whose powers are…kind of terrifying, but really great, because they’re not using them to take over the world. Hell of a roster.” She turns her head toward the ceiling, adds, “Bring it on, asshole!”
“You can probably just lift him up and throw him into another dimension,” Luma says through something that’s nearly a laugh, and just slightly wet.
Cass grins, brushes their noses together. “I am…definitely up for trying.”
“I know you are,” Luma says, and this time the absurdity of it all draws a genuine laugh out of her. “You’ll just have to, I don’t know, start practicing on a few skyscrapers first.”
“As you wish, Captain Luma,” Cass says, brightly. “Captain-only-if-and-when-you-feel-like-it Luma.”
Luma kisses her like morning might not find them well rested at all.
*
“Are you sure about this? This is okay? They’re okay with this?” Cass asks, for maybe the seventeenth time—and only if you counted each flood of questions as a single instance.
“They invited you,” Luma reminds her, gently. “You don’t have to take my word for it.”
Cass is perched at the very edge of the bed, carefully not touching Luma; she looks a little bit like she did on the spaceship, like she doesn’t know quite what to do with her hands except hold them awkwardly out of reach of everything, this time driven singularly by uncertainty.
“Oh. Should I have said no?” Cass mumbles. “Was I supposed to say no?” Luma thinks quite suddenly of Lacy, sees a shadow of them in the crinkle of Cass’ brow. She thinks of two people she loves more than she knows what to do with: always, always trying. Always forward. So much better than they know.
“Do you really think anything could make my mom invite my girlfriend to spend the night if she didn’t really want to?” Luma asks. She reaches out slowly, slowly with her hand, lightly brushes her fingers along the bottom of Cass’ chin, tips her head upward with the kind of pressure that would be feather light even to someone who wasn’t Cass.
It doesn’t matter – Cass follows her guidance like a reflex, though just barely meets her eyes. “I get to answer that, by the way, because I’ve known her for literally my entire life, and the answer is no. It’s…actually not really something she’s ever done.” Luma smiles, careful that the only contact between them remains the gentle brush of her fingers against Cass’ chin, the outline of her jaw. “Besides, I’ve caught my dad watching that footage of your jump twice now.” (She doesn’t point out that he would need an exponential multiplier to get on her level, but Cass kindly refrains from calling her out on that.) “I knew they loved you.” A beat—a smile—before she adds, half to herself, “But how could they not?”
Cass—whose face has spent the last several moments caught between a half dozen different emotions, whose cheeks have flushed just a little pink, whose arms are still outstretched strangely—surges forward and kisses her for the first time since they stepped through the door to her parents’ boat hours before.
“I’m sorry,” Cass says, a breath later, “that you always gotta leave it behind. They’re really, really great. Your whole family’s great. And—this boat is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Is that anchor thing really from that 900-year-old pirate lady’s boat?”
Sometimes Luma thinks her entire heart might be full to bursting; Cass’ eyes are wide and bright and earnest, and Luma can do nothing but kiss her again. “Don’t trust my dad,” she says. “I think it was two hundred years old the first time he told that story.” Cass just nods, so Luma adds: “And…honestly, I think that’s the normal part. Leaving home. Taking the leap and figuring out somewhere along the way if your wings actually work yet or not.”
“I mean, you can literally turn into a bird,” Cass points out. “Flying shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You’re one to talk,” Luma says, and Cass’ answering grin is a combination of sheepish and shit-eating in a way so perfectly true to form as to be settling. It feels like staring at her first attempts at bedazzling, a project hung permanently behind her headboard. It feels like rummaging through her nearby drawers and finding her whole history spread out before her: the sleeve of an aqua-colored sweater sewed haphazardly onto a tank top by an eleven-year-old insistent on the promise of a redesign, a dark-blue dress splattered with brown paint Marco had stolen from her for some kind of improvisational game of paintball in the middle of the living room, a worn band T-shirt Hawk had left behind that she kept telling herself she would return all the way up until she couldn’t.
They’re comfortable, and they’re familiar, and they’re shaped a little like Cass’ easy smile.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not hard,” Cass says, drawing Luma back into the original conversation and away from the gentle trembling of her heart inside her throat.
“It’s an open invitation,” Luma says. “If you ever want somewhere to go that isn’t—well, if you want somewhere to go where everyone’s your biggest fan.” She pauses, considering. “Or if you’re starving, because you’ll probably get seventeen helpings before my mom’s satisfied that you’ll survive to see sunrise.”
Cass is no longer looking at Luma; her shoulders are drawn forward, curled into herself, and she’s small and coiled and utterly silent. “It’s also not an obligation,” Luma says. “I know my parents can be—a lot, and I know they ask way too many questions sometimes, and just because they mean well doesn’t make them…easy, always. Trust me, I get that.”
“You don’t need to…” Cass mumbles, her eyes firmly fixed on the pillow. The pillowcase her mom sewed for Luma when she was barely nine, while she watched with wide, wide eyes and eager hands, a million possibilities unveiled with a single stitch. It’s light purple, a perfect reflection of the strands of Cass’ hair that have become a gentle lavender in recent weeks. (They’ve all been a little distracted.)
“It’s an ‘I want’,” Luma says, watching Cass tighten her jaw against whatever it was she’d almost said next. “It’s not an ‘I need’.” There’s a beat before she adds, “I’m not joking about my dad, by the way. I really think he might be running the Raft City chapter of your fan club.”
It makes Cass exhale something almost like a laugh—sheepish and uncertain and sincere. “That’s not a thing,” she says.
“Babe, it is absolutely a thing. I’m pretty sure they have weekly potlucks in your honor.” She shares her view of the site with Cass—maybe a little too quickly for someone who definitely, totally, absolutely didn’t have it bookmarked—and watches with amusement the bewilderment-horror-delight-mortification-pride mixture that battles its way across Cass’ face.
She slides an affectionate thumb over Cass’ now-warm cheek as Cass begins to unfurl.
Cass dismisses the site and closes her eyes; silence fills the space between them for several minutes, gentle and undemanding, until Cass shifts suddenly closer to Luma, on a single breath. “I like being here,” she mumbles, almost childish, once she’s buried her head against Luma’s shoulder. Like a yes to an invitation she doesn’t quite know how to accept.
“Just don’t look behind those drawers,” Luma says. “There’s a huge stain from the time Luca went through his monster phase and decided to draw yetis on the wall in permanent marker.”
“Oh, you mean—like, he liked monsters.”
“Oh, yeah,” Luma says. “No, being a monster isn’t a phase, that’s just his whole personality.” She grins, mirroring the smile she can feel Cass press into her skin. “Ogres. Demons. The entire history of the Loch Ness Monster. No, that kid was an encyclopedia for monster lore. Honestly, you should see him DM.”
Finally, Cass lifts her head, eyes bright and a little hopeful. “Wow, yes,” she says, like a D&D game with Luma’s little brother is just this side of safe enough. And then, “Okay, where else should I definitely not look?”
“So don’t tell Mom I told you this,” she begins, and Cass settles in beside her, breathing easier than it’s been all night.
~
It’s in the middle of Cass taking too-huge bites of pancake – apparently unaware of the syrup spilling out of the corner of her mouth, but earnest enough in her desire to impress Luma’s parents that she’s offering compliments only between mouthfuls – that Luma’s mom says, “Please tell me you’re both being safe.”
Cass splutters loudly, only just sidestepping choking; Luma rests a hand lightly on her knee, naively says, “We’re doing our best. We have our headquarters back now, and Lacy’s added all kinds of precautious to protect it. It might be the safest we’ve ever been.”
“Yes, but, sweetheart, she’s very strong. I just hope you have a safe word.”
“Mom,” Luma says, feeling suddenly fourteen again, mortified in a way she didn’t remember she could be until this exact moment; in her field of vision appear several texts from Lacy, all of which amount to incoherent strings of letters.
“Luma, I’m only looking out for you. For both of you,” she clarifies, glancing at Cass, as if that will in any way alleviate this situation. “Sometimes things can get out of hand.”
“We’re careful,” Luma hisses. She can feel that Cass has gone absolutely still beneath her hand, which is rare enough as to verge on terrifying, and she’s suddenly certain the events that led to her mom spending a full forty-eight hours in the dungeon do not compare even a little to this particular form of torture. “In every way. In all conceivable ways. We’re fine. I promise.”
“Don’t you two have superhero duties you’ll be late for?” Luma’s dad pipes up from beside them, eyes on Cass, and Luma feels an overwhelming surge of gratitude. An open invitation to her family’s home probably weighs a little differently underneath the heavy discomfort of parents who aren’t yours grilling you about the nature of your sex life. “Go on, go save the world,” he says. And then, more seriously: “And come home safe.”
It’s a promise they can’t make, but Luma nods and squeezes Cass’ knee, apparently reanimating her in the process, because she begins to stumble through an answer: “Uh, yes. Safe. Right. We’ll be safe. I mean, come—come back safe. Luma will be home safe.” She’s flushed bright pink when Cass glances at her, but follows Luma’s lead as she emerges from her chair, swallowing the last half of a bite she’d apparently shoved into her mouth.
“And you too, Cass,” Luma’s dad says. “You come back to us in one piece, too.”
Cass swallows around nothing, this time, nods shakily and then more firmly, and holds tight to the boxes full of too many helpings of leftovers that Luma’s mom shoves into her arms on their way out.
“I am so sorry,” Luma says, only two steps down the dock. “She’s not usually that…” She gestures wildly, finding no words to fully capture the extent of whatever they both just witnessed.
But Cass grabs for Luma’s hand with her free one—for the amount of leftovers they’ve been (forcibly) given, no one but Cass could manage a spare hand—and pulls her to a sudden standstill. “Luma?” she says, looking at their hands until she isn’t. Until she’s met Luma’s eyes. “Thank you.”
Cass is shifting back on her heels, then forward, then back, flexing her hand against the stack of boxes just enough to set them trembling. Even without the wild, anxious fluttering of the energy that belongs to them both, that kicks Luma’s heartbeat into double time, it’s not hard to read that it’s taking every last vestige of courage Cass has to keep herself rooted in place.
When Luma leans down just a little to press their foreheads together, her other hand gently holding the side of Cass’ face, Cass breathes out in a rush, shaky with nerves and thick with emotions she can’t bring herself to name and heavy with something Luma thinks might be relief.
“How do you feel about funnel cakes?” Luma suggests, tracing gentle patterns along the back of Cass' hand.
“I...love them,” Cass says, and when her voice catches on the raw edges of every syllable, Luma knows exactly what she means.