The shaking subsided into a fine, humming tremor, the aftershocks of a fault line that had split them open and sealed them back together. Eleanor's lips were swollen, hummingbird heartbeats against Willow's inner thigh where she still rested, spent and breathing heavily. The taste of her, metallic and deep, was a language Eleanor had learned by heart.
Willow shifted first, a slow, boneless slide off of Eleanor's chest. She collapsed onto her back beside her, one arm flung over her eyes. The afternoon sun had crawled across the floor, painting a stripe of gold over their tangled feet.
"Jesus," Willow breathed, the word a laugh and a sigh. "I think you dislocated my soul."
Eleanor turned her head on the pillow. She watched the rapid rise and fall of Willow's chest, the sheen of sweat making her skin look like polished marble. "It's still in there. I can feel it rattling around."
"Good." Willow peeked from under her arm, a sliver of blue eye glinting. "Keep it safe for me."
The words hung between them, lighter than they should have been, heavy with what they meant. Keep it. For me. Because soon, she wouldn't be here to keep it herself.
Eleanor pushed herself up on one elbow. She reached out with her other hand, tracing the path of a single bead of sweat as it slid from Willow's temple, down the delicate curve of her jaw, to the hollow of her throat. She followed it with her finger, then bent her head and caught it with her tongue. Salt. Life.
Willow's breath hitched. Her hand came up, fingers threading into Eleanor's dark hair, not pulling, just holding. "You're gonna get me started again."
"Is that a threat or a promise?"
"Both." Willow grinned, but it was soft now, edged with a tired sweetness. "I'm sticky. And you have... well." She gestured vaguely at Eleanor's face.
Eleanor swiped her own cheek, coming away with a smudge of moisture. She looked at it, then at Willow. A slow, deliberate smile spread across her face. She brought her finger to her own mouth and licked it clean, never breaking eye contact.
Willow watched, her gaze darkening. "You're impossible."
"You made me."
Silence settled again, comfortable, charged. The distant sound of a lawnmower buzzed from somewhere down the street. A normal sound. A sound from a world that existed outside this room with its sunlit dust motes and its secrets sealed in lavender air.
Willow sat up suddenly, the sheets pooling around her waist. "I'm starving. Actually starving. Like, my stomach is trying to eat my spine."
The shift was so abrupt, so utterly mundane, that it punched a quiet laugh from Eleanor. It was protection, this sudden talk of food. A retreat from the edge they'd been circling all afternoon. "When did you last eat?"
"I had a yogurt this morning. I think. Before I… distracted you." She swung her legs over the side of the bed, the long line of her back flexing. The childhood drawings on the wall behind her—a lopsided sun, a stick-figure family with too many arms—seemed to watch her move with benign approval. "I want pancakes. The kind with the crispy, lacy edges. And bacon. So much bacon it forms a meat blanket."
"A meat blanket." Eleanor leaned back against the headboard, pulling the sheet up. The domesticity was a lure, a safe harbor. She wanted to swim toward it. "That's a horrifying and beautiful image."
"I'm a horrifying and beautiful person." Willow stood, stretching her arms over her head with a groan that was entirely theatrical. The light caught the fine, downy hairs on her stomach. "Come on. You have to make them. My pancakes are sad, coagulated frisbees."
"Your similes are also horrifying and beautiful." Eleanor made no move to get up. She wanted to freeze this moment: Willow, naked and drowsy and demanding pancakes, the late sun gilding her like a saint in some irreverent painting. If she moved, the spell might break. The clock would start ticking again.
Willow turned, hands on her hips. "I can see you thinking. Stop it. Thinking is forbidden in the kitchen after… well." She waved a hand at the bed. "It's in the rulebook. Now move your beautiful, lazy ass."
"There's a rulebook?"
"Chapter four, section two: 'Post-coital pancakes are a right, not a privilege. The responsible party—' that's you, '—shall provide said pancakes with expedience and a generous application of maple syrup.' Now up."
Eleanor laughed, a real one this time, feeling it loosen something tight in her chest. She threw the sheet aside and stood. The wooden floor was cool under her feet. She followed Willow's naked form out of the bedroom, through the short hall, and into the modest chaos of the kitchen.
Willow grabbed an old, soft t-shirt from a hook by the doorway and pulled it on. It draped to her mid-thigh. She didn't bother with anything else. Eleanor found her own robe, a faded silk thing, hanging on the back of a chair and shrugged into it. The fabric felt alien against her sensitized skin.
She moved around the kitchen on autopilot: flour, baking powder, a bowl, the whisk. Willow perched on a counter stool, watching her, chin propped in her hands. She pulled the carton of orange juice from the fridge and drank directly from it.
"You are a creature of pure id," Eleanor said, cracking an egg one-handed against the rim of the bowl.
"Takes one to know one." Willow wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "So. Are we going to talk about it?"
The whisk stopped. The batter was only half-mixed. "Talk about what?" The question was cowardly, and they both knew it.
Willow's eyes, clear and too-knowing, held hers. "The packing. The plane ticket. The fact that my room is going to smell like lavender and regret instead of lavender and you." Her tone was light, almost sing-song, but the words were needles.
Eleanor resumed whisking, focusing on the swirl of yellow and white. "What is there to say? You're going. It's an incredible opportunity. Barcelona isn't Mars."
"It's an ocean, though."
"It's a flight. A long one, but just a flight." She said it to the batter, not to Willow.
"You could visit."
"I will."
"When?"
Eleanor looked up. Willow's face was a careful mask of nonchalance, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the stool. "Soon. After you're settled. I don't want to be the clingy mother clogging up your new life."
"You could never clog anything," Willow said softly. Then, the mask snapped back into place. "Besides, I'd introduce you as my eccentric, reclusive aunt. No one would bat an eye."
"I'm forty, not eighty."
"Same thing in Barcelona. You'd be a cougar. A puma. They'd love you." She grinned, but it didn't reach her eyes.
Eleanor poured batter onto the hot griddle. It sizzled, a happy, normal sound. She watched the bubbles form and pop. "I don't want to be your aunt," she said quietly.
The kitchen was silent except for the crackle of cooking batter and the distant mower. Willow slid off the stool. She came around the counter and leaned her hip against it, close enough that Eleanor could feel the heat from her body. She didn't touch her.
"I know," Willow whispered.
They stood there, in the smell of browning butter and impending departure, as the pancakes cooked. The first one was perfect, crisp and golden. Eleanor flipped it onto a plate and handed it to Willow, who tore off a piece with her fingers, too hot, blowing on it before shoving it in her mouth.
"Good," she mumbled around the bite, closing her eyes in exaggerated bliss. "See? This is the stuff. This is what I'll miss. Not the… other stuff. Just the pancakes."
It was such a bald-faced lie, so lovingly offered, that Eleanor's throat closed. She turned back to the griddle to hide the sudden, stupid press of tears. "Liar," she said, her voice thick.
Willow's hand, warm and sure, settled on the small of her back, under the robe. Just a touch. A grounding wire.
"Yeah," Willow sighed, her forehead coming to rest between Eleanor's shoulder blades. "Yeah, I really am."