Time Immemorial
Acepilot
8 - * - * - 8
"The house that we live in is falling apart
There's no guarantee, because we got it for free
And all the pretenders to somebody's throne
Are finding it out on their own."
- Neil Finn, 'Time Immemorial'
8 - * - * - 8
Ginger Foutley rubbed at her eyes. Staring at the computer screen for hours on end was a good way to send yourself batty, she decided. Endless notepad and Write documents littered her taskbar, and she wondered when she had become so unable to focus on any one thing at a time.
All this focussing was now rather starting to get to her, and she needed a break. She stretched out her feet under the desk, feeling her knees click back into place and the satisfying little crick noise her feet made as they bent back into shape. She pushed herself up from her chair, looking around her office.
They called it her office. In reality, it was a room that, once upon a time, Courtney probably would have dismissed as a walk-in-closet. Now it was her office, their 'chill out' room, and the second bedroom for when company came over. Not that company often did - they saw their friends a lot, but Ginger suspected that they were all happier to meet on neutral grounds. Calling the office a spare bedroom was pretty ambitious and she didn't blame anyone for not particularly wanting to spend the night in it.
She flicked the monitor off on her computer and padded through the house, resisting the temptation to slide on the tiles in the hallway in her socks. Her mother had often told her that wearing socks without shoes was a good way to wear through your footwear, but they were trying to save money on the heating and every little layer helped.
"Cort?" she ventured, unsure if she would recieve an answer.
"Kitchen."
Ginger entered the kitchen to find her girlfriend staring at...something in a frying pan. She raised an eyebrow as she crossed the room. Given the way they'd left things, she wasn't sure how to approach her, so settled for sidling closer and asking, "Cooking something?"
"Something is right," Courtney agreed, tipping the pan slightly and watching the...whatever slide slightly.
"It looks nice," Ginger lied.
"You're a terrible liar, Foutley," Courtney told her.
Ginger winced. So, they were back to Foutley. Apparently time didn't heal all wounds. Or at least a few hours didn't, anyway.
"It's meant to look like that," Courtney continued, pointing to a book propped up on the windowsill. Ginger recognised it as one they had inherited from her mother - one that she had cooked recipes from for most of her life, battered and well-loved, covered in assorted splashes and debris from decades in the Foutley kitchen. "I think I missed something."
Ginger looked at the picture and back at the pan. She suspected Courtney had missed rather a lot of things.
But the effort was sweet.
Ginger sometimes - not often, but sometimes - wondered what life might have been like if the Gripling's hadn't gone broke. Maybe she and Courtney would live a life of luxury. Courtney wouldn't dream of attempting to cook - and despite the years of practice, they really were still attempts. There were few things that Courtney couldn't do if sufficiently determined, but apparently cooking was one of them. They'd have ordered out, or had a cook on staff. They wouldn't have lived in a one-and-a-half bedroom...cottage, as Courtney liked to call it. They might have lived in a mansion, or a townhouse, or somewhere with hot running water that actually always ran hot, instead of intermittently.
Maybe Courtney wouldn't have asked her out if she hadn't gone broke.
Ginger kicked herself internally for allowing herself to think that.
She stepped in behind Courtney and wrapped her arms around the blonde's waist, resting her forehead on the back of Courtney's neck and inhaling deeply.
"You're holding me," Courtney said.
"You're warm," Ginger pointed out. "I'm sorry."
"I know."
"Thanks for cooking dinner," Ginger told her.
"You think we should actually eat that?" Courtney asked, looking doubtful.
"Did you use any eggs?"
"No," Courtney said.
"Chicken?"
"No," Courtney huffed. "I'm not a good cook but I can read a recipe well enough to not make that basic a mistake, Ginger."
Ginger chuckled. "I think we're probably safe then," Ginger told her. "I would definitely guess that it's not undercooked."
This seemed a pretty safe bet, as it was starting to go slightly black around the edges.
Living on their own, Ginger decided, was an interesting adventure - and a pretty rough one at that. They seemed to be fighting a lot more these days, and Ginger wondered if it had all been too much, too fast. Last night had been particularly terrible - a shouting match that had run the length of their small house, over Ginger needing to get a job. Courtney insisting that no, she could manage it on her own, she didn't want Ginger to work - culminating Ginger telling her that she needed to wake up and face reality. They needed money. Courtney couldn't afford to live in her little fantasy world any more.
Courtney hadn't spoken to her for the rest of the night. She hadn't even come to bed - Ginger had found her that morning, curled up in their armchair.
"I'll get plates," she told Courtney, finally pulling away from the other girl's warmth and fetching their crockery from the cupboard.
"Thank you," Courtney told her, pulling the pan off the heat and carrying it over to the sink, where she tried to lift the bizarre creation with a spatuala. It resisted quite strenously.
Ginger watched her girlfriend's struggle as she pulled down two of their completely mismatched plates, and had just set them down on the table when she heard Courtney swear, once, and loudly.
She spun around to see Courtney lunge for the tap, cranking the cold water wide open and running her left hand under it. Ginger, nervousness over their fight completely overridden by Courtney's yelp of pain, all but leapt across the room to the other girl's side, wrapping her arm around Courtney and trying to observe the hand under the tap. "Are you alright?"
"Burned it on the pan," Courtney told her, biting her lip.
Ginger blindly opened the cupboard above the sink and fished around in it for a tube of antiseptic, and a pack of band-aids, letting Courtney continue to enjoy the relief of the cold water and waiting. She now wished they had some aloe vera lotion, but that wasn't exactly something that sprang to mind as a necessity on the shopping list week-to-week. Hindsight was generally twenty-twenty, of course.
She gently drew Courtney's hand away from the water, and tenderly dried it with a piece of paper towel before rubbing some of the Savlon on it. The blonde winced but allowed her to continue, staring at her hand as Ginger sealed over the antispetic with a band-aid, careful not to stick it down on the burn itself.
"Thank you," Courtney told her.
"Anytime."
"I'm sorry," Courtney offered.
Ginger, still staring at her hand, looked up, startled. "What are you sorry for?"
Courtney shrugged. "A lot of things," she said. "I'm sorry about last night. I didn't mean to...tell you what to do, or anything."
"I just...I just don't understand why it means so much to you that you don't want me working."
Courtney sighed, pulling away from Ginger and treading softly over to the tiny dining table, sitting down at it heavily. "I always had hoped that when I finally...worked up the courage to tell you everything, and we could start out our lives together...I wanted to be able to do it all for you - to give you fireworks and the house of your dreams and all that - and all you'd have to worry about would be writing. And me."
Ginger laughed, before clamping a hand over her mouth and nodding. Courtney didn't seem worried about her reaction, though, and just kept talking.
"I know it's not easy for you to be starting out in this kind of field and I just wanted you to not have to worry," she told her. "And not being able to give it all to you - you just deserve so much more than I can give you now."
"I don't care about that," she said. "Courtney, I never cared about the money. Or the lack of it."
"I know," Courtney assured her. "It doesn't make it any easier."
"You being here makes it easier for me," Ginger told her. "I love you."
"I love you too."
Ginger pickded Courtney's hand back up and kissed the finger she had just bandaged tenderly. "Will you be in bed tonight?"
"Yes," Courtney said. "Sleeping in the armchair may have made a point but it was cold and no good on my neck."
Ginger smiled at her. Their one and a half bedroom cottage might not have been high on the luxuries that Courtney wanted to give her. But she was there. And that was enough.
8 - * - * - 8
Okay, this is actually really old. I only just got around to finishing it - I've been going over a lot of half-finished stuff lately. Some Phoebe/Arnold experiments, bits of Tertiary spin offs and the like. Hopefully I'll be able to slip some endings on things and share them with you.
I do love this couple. A lot. I think it just...works so well. Might be something I come back and play with in the future. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is appreciated.