I wrote this to 'From Eden' by Hozier and I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to this song again without thinking of these two and Raven in particular.

"Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago..."

When people come over and we're both home, they look at us like we make no sense. They see all the ways we're different, all the parts of our lives which should never have merged. And they squint a little, you know? You can see it happen. It's like a wince, like they're in pain, but there's fascination there because as much as they think we shouldn't make any sense, we do.

It's been like this since day one. It's been months now, and the only part of it that's weird for me is that nobody else gets it. I want to be able to take a picture of it somehow, of the way I feel safe, of the clockwork mode in which we operate around each other, like all the pieces of the two of us are necessary to make things work. I want to be able to show that to people and say, See?

Abby gets it. I suppose that's all that matters.

When we packed Clarke's things into the back of my pickup, the three of us drove 200 odd miles, four hours or so, and then all of a sudden it felt like Abby was leaving her heart right there on the grounds of Columbia. Fuck. She cried the entire first hour home. It was Jake, it was guilt, it was her little girl, it was everyone, and no one, and I drove the car and nodded when she asked if it was normal to feel real pain, and I squeezed her hand when her shoulders shook again because, fuck.

I knew leaving. I knew that as well as I knew quadratic equations like the back of my hand the first day they were introduced in class. Because finally something represented the unknown, you know? Finally I'd learn a way to find the answers. I also knew long drives.

The back of my grandmothers car when the hospital stopped trying with Mom because, why wouldn't they. There were people who wanted to live that needed saving. The back of my uncle's car from Philly to somewhere the week after Gran died. I walked six blocks to church by myself for a year after she that because I thought she would have wanted me to, and Uncle Andy and his third wife, the one with all the hair, thought it was a 'load of rot'.

Living with Abby was the first time I'd lived with anyone by choice, the first time anyone had really seemed to want me there. And she held my hand from somewhere in the middle of Connecticut like I was doing her a favor by moving in, as if everything about it wasn't the planets aligning for the first time in my life, as if I didn't need it is as much as she did.

We'd met through Sinclair, about the time I started college. A good one for advice, Abby fielded questions about all manner of things, and classes, and guys and girls. Three years in and she was phoning me to clarify details, ask to collaborate on a project, talk about the dude at work who wouldn't leave her alone but she really wasn't interested, no thank you. Now way.

Three more and she was recommending me to her colleagues, sending people my way, driving me to the airport for my internship in Stockholm and picking me up, in the middle of the night, two months later. When the job I scored was a twenty minute drive from Abby's she said there were two rooms empty from September. The rest is history.

And we just worked, you know? Right away. It's was as simple as that.

So when Clarke came home for the summer it took us a while, Abby and I, to realize we were also something Clarke didn't understand.

You taught her to cook, she said. Like I'd done the wrong thing by showing her how to make a sauce which would be the basis for twelve different things.

If I didn't, she'd eat take out on the nights I'm not home. It made sense, I said.

What I didn't say was that I enjoyed it, that I teach all day and yet coming home to teach Abby a new recipe, to help her expand her repertoire beyond toast and eggs, was the best part of my day. I'd taught plenty of people to cook. I'd had to learn quick when Gran got sick, and what she couldn't show me herself I learned from the books above her microwave, the ones she'd written in for half a century, the ones her mother wrote in before that. I still have those books, they're in a box under my bed now and I know most of the best recipes by heart, but sometimes I still like to open up the pages which have yellowed a little with time and trace my fingers over her words, over the ink which came from the pen she held. It was better than church to touch something she created with her hands.

Why do you guys always sit on the couch with your legs on each other, she said. She looked at Abby as she said it that one night with a plate full of food on her lap that Abby had cooked, a recipe from one of Gran's books, and we were sitting like that at the time, you know?

If she'd asked it later, or another day, or if we weren't at the house and we were outdoors, or anywhere and anything which meant Abby didn't turn to me right then, her hand stilling where it had been massaging my bad leg just above the knee, her body stiffening enough to make my heart hurt like she thought we'd done the wrong thing. Like she thought she'd done the wrong thing by Clarke.

And I looked at Clarke as she started hoeing into her food, as she reached for the TV remote to flip the channel to something more to her liking, and I felt the six years between us blow out beyond themselves, beyond the point where I could pass off her moods and undertones as anything other than impolite, and I had to bite my tongue.

She took off to phone a girl later. Lexa. With the hair and eyes she'd talk about when Abby was in the room, and the legs and ass she mentioned when she heard I'd seen a girl or two myself, and her mother was out of earshot. And she bounced her eyebrows like we shared a secret when we didn't share a thing.

I'd shifted by then, shortly after Clarke switched out the documentary Abby had been watching for the latest version of American Idol, or whatever. There was a couch cushion between Abby and I after she fetched us both a plate of food which took me right back to Gran's kitchen and my heart did the thing it always did when that part of my life collided with Abby. It grew a little, fixed itself, felt whole.

Do you think we make her uncomfortable, Abby said. Her voice was far away, like if she whispered it and I didn't hear she wouldn't have to listen to my response. I moved closer to her on the couch, then. I patted her legs the way I always did and she hesitated, glanced up the hallway, before turning her body and stretching out her legs across my lap.

I think she misses you, I said. I think she's missed you so much but she doesn't know how to say it. You're both stubborn like that, I said. This made her laugh. Not a throw your head back, maybe injure your neck laugh, but the type which spills out for a second because you weren't in the mood and something surprised you. The type that is unexpected.

You think I'm stubborn, she asked. She rested her head against the back of the couch and I felt her relax for the first time all evening. And I wanted to lean in and kiss her. I could feel my cheeks growing warmer the longer I tried not to stare at her lips, and maybe this is what she was talking about, maybe Abby knew I'd had thoughts like that for a couple of months now. But we'd been sitting together on the couch like that since the first night I moved in.

I'm a genius, Abby, but that coaster right there, I pointed to the one her beer was on, that thing knows you're stubborn, I said. She laughed again and I felt it in my chest, and maybe in my spine and for all the science I've studied and for everything I know about the world, I couldn't make sense of the ways I felt her when she did the smallest things.

She shifted, then. She swung her legs down off the couch, off where they rested against my lap and tucked one up under her, a knee pressing against my thigh. Leaning her elbow on the back of the couch, she rested her head against her hand and I could feel her breath like a breeze against my skin as she spoke.

You're beautiful, you know. You amaze me all the time. I saw the way your face changed when I moved tonight. When she asked why we sit the way we do. I didn't want you to be uncomfortable, she said.

I couldn't turn to look at her. I was still blushing from the first thing she said, my heart was racing from the second, and I didn't know if I should nod or shake my head but I didn't trust myself to speak. I looked along the hallway and willed Clarke to stay in her room for the rest of the night, or at least for the next ten minutes until I could get my head around Abby, and her words, and so much of her body so close to me.

And then, she touched my hand.

Look at me, she said. Please, she said. God, what could I do when she was asking like that but bite down on the inside of my cheeks to distract my mind from the places it wanted to go. I turned into her and felt my eyes close as her thumb moved across the back of my hand. This was different, and please god, and why tonight of all nights, but, okay.

I've missed her this past year, Raven. I've missed her so much, but not once have I felt the way I felt the day you drove me home, she said. Her smile then, god, the type that dances in her eyes, the one I can't look away from, it held me there. But, you, Raven, she said, you've been here through all of that. You've been here and taken care of me and let me be down, and let me feel lost, but you've been an anchor, you know. You've kept me steady, you've kept me feeling whole when I expected to fall apart, she said.

And it was that word which interrupted my overthinking, which made me forget about the color in my cheeks and how my tank top felt like a sweater instead. Whole.

I haven't felt whole in so long, Abby, I said. Until now. Until you, I said. She searched my eyes like she was waiting for a But… but there was nothing. She was everything and I wanted to say that, I wanted to use that word exactly, but I didn't want to be too much, too big, too soon.

She lifted my hand to her chest, then. I was surprised to actually feel her heart, to feel it out of control against my palm, and where mine had been lagging, scared to believe that what I thought Abby was trying to say was true, it caught up and rose to my throat and, god, I don't think I'd ever wanted to cry from being happy before. Not even when I graduated. I knew I deserved that.

What would happen if I kissed you right now, she said.

And.

Um, well, maybe my mind would explode a little, but that's okay, I said. And I laughed a little as I said it. Nerves and surprise, and utter disbelief.

I gave the hallway another glance and Abby's hand on my cheek brought me back. Don't worry about her. Don't think about that. She's a big girl, she can handle it, she said. And her thumb caressed my skin, then. I rested into her touch and closed my eyes for a split second, and when I opened them again she was right there.

Somehow I managed to get my brain and my body to cooperate. I leaned in and I swear to god nothing has ever felt like that kiss did. And it wasn't just her lips, which were a type of amazing I'd never known, but her hands on my neck and the sounds she made like, yes, this was the single thing she wanted more than anything else. It was the thing she needed.

And of course the door opened and of course Clarke walked out, but Abby kept one hand against my neck, her fingers trailing up and down, telling me it was all okay, don't panic, and her other one dropped back down to hold my hands, both of them in place.

I reckon that's something I could do without seeing again, guys. Thanks, she said. But then the corner of her mouth turned up just a little, and she shook her head like she figured that's what she was going to walk into, and she curled herself back up in the same chair she'd occupied before. Before she'd walked down the hall, before my life changed forever, and pressed the mute button on the remote again to bring up an intrusion of applause from another show I didn't know the name of.

She turned her head again, breathed a laugh out through her nose, shook her head a little, and smiled at us before turning back to the TV.

Us.

Jesus.

Abby kissed my cheek, then. I turned and looked at her and I was sure my grin was as lopsided as hers. She shuffled beside me, shifting her body again, but this time she pulled me back against her, an arm slung over my shoulders and reaching across my chest. Safe. It had been a lifetime since I'd felt that.

Maybe we shouldn't work, you know? But the rest of that summer with Clarke at home felt like dating when I was sixteen. And the weekend after she left felt like nothing I've ever known before. And still people look at us like we don't quite make sense.

But Abby gets it. I suppose that's all that matters.