A particularly frigid gust of wind is all it takes for Maya to realize that she has, maybe, gotten herself in too deep.
It tugs at the palm leaves that frame the entrance to the massive preserve, rustling lush fans that shelter the blazing cobble walkway on those scalding summer days. The thought of summer is really all Maya can do to stop herself from shivering—here, dead center in January, even the evermore California sun is feeling a little shy. The clock had barely struck five when it set, tonight, and while that had been to Maya’s benefit in theory… in practice, not even the pair of jackets she was wearing could do much to dam her dripping nose.
Absentmindedly, she locks her phone and squints at her reflection in the void of the screen. Maya’s angling it every which way, trying to take stock of herself in the darkness of the winter night, see herself from her date’s perspective. Franziska’s a little taller, so—
She raises it up, and her eyes catch the light, and that just makes her sneeze incredibly unattractively. Really, it’s a miracle she doesn’t throw her phone across the walkway and into the perfectly-trimmed hedges, or through one of the massive glass windows adjacent. No, by some miracle Maya holds tight, albeit while making a dreadful mess of her face. With great courage, she finds the heart to gaze at herself in the phone screen once more, and it’s…
Well, bad. Definitely bad. It’s so cold out she’s beginning to lose feeling in her face, which means she didn’t notice the chilly trickle of moisture racing down her cupid’s bow until she looked. Making an ugly face, she wipes at her nose with her wrist, sniffling emphatically in succession. The sting of it threatens to make her sneeze again, and she fights valiantly with watering eyes and lips pressed tight into an overlong line.
Bad. Very bad. But she can probably pass if she tries her damnedest and just turns the charm way up.
“What on earth are you doing to your poor telephone?”
Squeaking, and losing her grip on it like a hot potato, and messily bouncing it to and fro in her flailing hands as she attempts to regain herself, is the answer to that question. Maya manages just barely to finally grab hold of the thing, and when she turns around the sight of Franziska almost makes her drop it a second time.
Let it never be said that Franziska von Karma wasn’t the sharpest dresser in all of LA County. That’s probably why she never stayed in Cali long, it was simply unfair to everyone else in the city to walk around looking as though she had just come directly off a runway where the theme was hot vampires! They got bored with immortality and decided to pursue law degrees!
At present she’s dressed like some sort of gothic princess, jet-black ruffles running down her collar in an asymmetrical swoop that cuts across her neck and runs like paint down to her razorsharp heels. Most importantly, the one strap holding her dress up shows off that shoulder scar that Maya’s obsessed with kissing. Slightly less important is the amount of cleavage that is also happening.
She’s wearing her favourite necklace, of course—the bullet responsible for the aforementioned scar, preserved in resin and surrounded in proper jewels, crystal blue and glittering in the citylight. Those same urban stars fall upon every chiseled outline of Franziska’s flawless bone structure—high cheekbones, aquiline nose, those beautiful eyelids that looked menacing from afar but charmingly sleepy up close. She’s haloed and divine, a dark angel in the moonlight, her silvery hair glowing and gorgeous.
“Uh,” says Maya, clearing the rasp from her throat as soon as she hears it. “Selfie?”
The amused smile Franziska was already wearing deepens, and she reaches forward to brush a flyaway back into place behind Maya’s ear. Even after years, the ghosting of those long, elegant fingertips makes Maya’s whole face feel hot—she half expects her skin to start giving off steam, with how cold it is.
“In this lighting?” says Franziska. “I hardly think the starless LA sky does your beauty justice, dearheart.”
“Pshaw.” Maya goes sly-eyed, that crooked grin Franziska loves so much bunching up one chubby cheek. “Have you seen this face? I can make any angle look good.”
Impossibly endeared, Franziska stifles a laugh into one jet-black opera glove. Another soft breeze whistles through the palms, shivering up Maya’s spine and tugging at her sensitive nose, and she can’t help ruining her own point mere seconds after making it. Brow pinched, she wraps her arms around herself and sneezes another forceful sneeze into the lip of her jacket collar, blinking blearily over its shape as she re-adjusts. Then, posing with a finger-gun poised at her chin, she sniffles sharply and resumes the smouldering ladykiller smirk.
“...Maya Freakin’ Fey,” she says, leaning off-kilter, “voted World’s Sexiest Spirit Medium 2kforever.”
“Bless you. Of course. Forgive me for my foolishness.”
Franziska offers her handkerchief, then—lacy black to match the rest of her. This gesture is practiced, routine, comfortable—the dainty little way her Victorian noblewoman of a girlfriend proffers it, the inelegant and brash way Maya always grabs it in a wrinkled handful, and the way the both of them remain utterly enamoured with the contrast that collides in the center.
Sizing Franziska up once more from behind its cover, Maya can’t help but ask, “How are you not freezing right now?”
“It is a perfectly comfortable twelve celsius.”
“You’re insane.”
“You sit under waterfalls in all manner of disrobe.”
“Yeah, and it suuucks!” Maya throws out her free hand. “That’s the point! If it was easy it wouldn’t be training.”
Franziska waves her off. “I’d be sweltering were I to dress like you. That said, you do look quite dashing tonight, Maya Fey.”
This far into their relationship (two years, ten hours, thirty-seven minutes, not that Maya was counting) it’s honestly still surprising—and somehow, not surprising at all—that every little grain of praise still feels like fireworks popping technicolour in the stadium of Maya’s heart. Their heat simmers and rises and lingers warm across her face, dizzying her head and making her feel kind of stupid all the time. That might also be a fever climbing. Whatever.
“Glad you think so, literal hottest girl I have ever met.” Maya fights the lethargy to lurch forward and yank Franziska’s hand in her own. “Hey, date time. I know you’re itching to get in there.”
As always, she leads. Through the massive double doors, down the long hall and to the elusive garden gates. There’s a swell of pride in her heart when she catches the sparkle in Franziska’s eyes—that childish gleam she tried so hard to bank, to hide, to keep a lid on. With certainty, now, Maya knew—Franziska was at her most beautiful when she was excited like a grade-schooler, disguising her total geekery as intellectualism and study.
With a confirmation of their reservation—curious, Franziska’s twisting expression seems to say, why would one need a reservation for a botanical garden?—the single employee standing stationary heaves the lock off the gates. They part as if heralding the arrival of something far grander than two young prodigies celebrating an anniversary—not even a proper one, something far more juvenile. Still, Maya feels nothing short of royal as she’s entering the sprawling, lush grounds—and the wonder sewn into every square of Franziska’s face tells her she’s not alone.
“Maya,” Franziska says, wandering toward the boundless stretch of camellia bushes, “what did you… the whole place is…”
“Empty?” Maya grins. “Yeah, happy anniversary, babe. Go wild.”
And Franziska looks at her like she’s hung the stars. How long Maya has waited for that look.
Because Franziska is rich. Loaded, even. There was so little you could buy for the woman who could buy herself anything, especially on Maya’s comparatively meager income. Her only saving grace was in the fact that Franziska was a workaholic to a fault who rarely thought of leisure, or pleasure, or earthly desires—so much so that the religious acolyte from the mountain commune was somehow less detached from those pleasures than she. Maya couldn’t often pay, but she could conceptualize.
This time, though. A year’s worth of saving, and planning, and praying… and finally, with all her ducks in a line, Maya was able to find a gift befitting of the wonderful creature who’d allowed her a space in their shared life. A few hours in the moonlight, wandering around the emerald sprawl of the biggest botanical garden in all of SoCal, with no one to bother them but the bugs chirping in the thicket.
A Franziskan paradise. A perfect night. Or it would be, if not for…
Another muffled sneeze escapes into the collar of her winter jacket, and it takes all of Maya’s willpower not to groan in sore irritation on the tail end of it. They’re starting to hurt, now, barreling through her with little regard for the shredded state of her throat or the date with the pretty girl she is currently trying to go on. It’s been relentless ever since last night, and Maya had hoped and prayed to Mystic Ami herself that she not be sick on her two-year anniversary that she’d spent ages arranging. As fate would have it, though, even Mystic Ami could not cure the common cold.
(Despite what the dusty tomes buried in the archives back home said….)
Luckily, even overdoting Franziska seems far too distracted right about now to notice that’s what’s happening. If this were any other situation, Maya’s sure Franziska’s searing blues would lock onto her like a vulture that’s just spotted a bloating corpse. Thankfully, the flowers are very distracting.
“It’s all…” Franziska is powerwalking from bush to bush in an erratic, excitable zigzag. “Maya Fey, is this whole garden nothing but camellias?”
“I dunno babe,” Maya sniffles once, twice, “you’re the expert. You tell me.”
Coming to a slow halt, Franziska allows herself to look out across the expanse—flowers as far as the eye can see, still in full bloom despite the bite of winter. In all colours, in all sizes, lit only by the far-off insomnia of the city, the moonlight peeking through the cloudy skies.
“I just—” Franziska turns back to Maya, glowing brightest of all, “—can’t believe the variety here, look at all this…”
Maya wanders closer to her side, feeling sunlit despite the chills that are quickly growing harder to ignore. Franziska kneels down to graze a gloved thumb across a velvety red petal, and Maya squats far less elegantly beside her, tilting her head awkwardly back in an attempt to keep her nose from running.
“I can’t believe it,” Franziska marvels, “Maya, this is quite literally a historical specimen. You’ve brought me to the home of the oldest camellia in all of Southern California.”
“Yo, for real?” Maya stares at the flower, completely unremarkable to her own untrained eye. “Did this bitch know the dinosaurs?”
“No, nothing like that…” Franziska chuckles, continuing to cradle the flower in her hands as though it is the most precious thing in the world. “They’re Asian in origin. This one in particular is one of a kind, having traveled here from Japan in the 1800s.”
“Woah. Just like me for real.”
As she says it, Maya presses her cheek against Franziska’s own, that brand of endearing obnoxiousness that the two of them loved so much. Their hair bunches and tangles in between them, but Franziska leans into her beloved rather than away.
“I didn’t know winter flowers were a thing,” Maya lies, prompting her girlfriend to spring back to her feet, gesticulating vastly and passionately with her arms.
“Oh, they’re some of the loveliest flowers in existence!” God, she’s so cute when she’s infodumping. “Camellias are some of my favourite of all, in fact I’d even heard of the breadth of this collection of them before coming to the states! It’s comprehensive reputation is largely the work of a single German botanist who traveled here in 1878, so naturally I was already in the know…”
Ever the savant, she carries on. Maya thinks she could listen to a phonebook being read, so long as it was drenched in Franziska’s wonderful, captivating, rounded accent.
Far in the northernmost corner of the garden lives a shady respite—a little too large to be a gazebo, a little too small to be a proper pavilion. It’s decorated in fairy lights, haphazardly looped across the scaffolding that crowns it, with a single bench beneath its shelter. Nearby, the creek that bisects the upper half of the preserve turns the air from nippy to frigid, and Maya curls closer inward and leans into a still-rambling Franziska.
“...in Japan they call it tsubaki,” Franziska’s saying, “Symbolically, they’ve come to represent most everything good one can think of. Beauty, grace, devotion, tenacity most of all…”
There on Franziska’s good shoulder, Maya’s eyes feel leaden and sore. It wouldn’t be right to fall asleep on their super special date that she’d spent all this money on, but in the hour they’ve been here she can feel herself nosediving quick. Once she’d sat down it seemed to hit her like a truck—her throat stinging from the cold, her limbs all feeling kind of achy and wrong, and the incessant crawling itch in her nose has intensified into a burn that leaves her feeling stuffy and dull. The urge to reach into her pocket and make use of Franziska’s handkerchief is nearly buried by how herculean of a task it seems, moving her arm even a little.
“...Maya?”
Mentally slapping herself awake, Maya straightens her back, blinking at the sound of her name. “Huh? What? I spaced out.”
“I just asked if you were feeling alright.”
“What?” She feigns ignorance, whipping her head around as if to look for the answer, performatively dumb. “Of course! I’m hanging out with my favourite person in the world, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just…” Franziska tilts her head, peering closer into her, her eyes going impossibly soft. “You’ve been quiet. And… you look rather flushed.”
“Whaaat? Come on!” She puffs those (allegedly) flushed cheeks out, as if to prove her vitality. “That’s not fair! You’re gushing to me about nerd sh*t, Franzy, you know I fall a little more in love with you every time you do that.”
“I—” The praise steals her words away, paints her own cheeks twice as red, perfect turnabout. She clears her throat, attempting to regain herself. “You were looking a touch pink long before we entered the venue, but I thought it might be the weather…”
“That’s probably it, I feel fine!” Maya insists. “I’m just—just a little c-cold—”
That buzzing, burning prickle in her sinuses snatches her will away, and in the moment before she’s sneezing it really does feel like some sort of divine retribution for lying to her eagle-eyed girlfriend. These are not the endearing, over-exaggerated outbursts from before, either—they’re rough and wrenching things, sounding like infection and inflammation and a pressing need for industrial-grade disinfectant. They bend Maya in half, and despite how disgusting she feels, Franziska holds her all the same, propping her back up only when she’s sure Maya’s done.
“Did I not give you my handkerchief?”
Maya sniffles the thickest, most unladylike sniffle imaginable. “They happen too fast!”
“Yes, well, you do tend to get like that when you’re ill.”
“I’m not!” Maya’s got the lacy thing in her palm, finally, crumpled in the hand that’s pointing indignantly at Franziska. “I j-just—”
She sneezes thrice more, this time into the square of fabric, to the best of her ability. She spares herself the curiosity to look at what she leaves behind as she’s blearily pulling out of it, her throat feeling sandpapery and wet.
“Well, darling?” Franziska crosses her arms, periscoping around the girl like some sort of curious serpent. “I’m waiting on tenterhooks. Just what?”
“I’m just—” she rasps out, “—allergic to all the flowers!”
“Oh are you now?” Franziska leans back, rolls her eyes. “And since when does any paramour of mine have pollen allergies?”
“You said these flowers are all super freakin’ rare and exotic and sh*t!” Maya throws out a hand toward the unsympathetic stars. “I probably just never knew ‘cause I’m used to, like, mid-ass normie camelli—ah—!”
That handkerchief is going to be naught but unspooled thread by night’s end. A pity, really, as it is one of Franziska’s favourites… but she supposes it’ll die doing exactly what it’s supposed to, such is the way of things. Maya whines a truly addled-sounding whine into her hand, and it sounds gummy in her throat, sticking to its walls. All Franziska can do is begin the slow process of yanking her long glove off finger-by-finger, pressing her bare knuckles to what little there is of her poor darling’s exposed face.
“Bless you, again,” says Franziska, studying the warmth. “I don’t think you’re quite running a fever just yet, but I’m not confident this weather is doing you any favours. Why don’t we—”
“Noooo!” Maya tilts her quickly-reddening features up toward the sky, crying out in half-hearted agony.
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“I know what you’re gonna say!” She pouts. “You’re gonna take me back home and put me to bed and adore and pamper me like crazy, and I’m gonna love every freakin’ second of it.”
“Well… indeed, yes, that was my intention.” Franziska tilts her head, brow pinched. “Why the resistance, then?”
“You always spoil me!” Maya balls her fists, trying her damnedest to look passionate and fierce through how utterly waterlogged her whole face is. “Tonight I was finally going to spoil you. I saved up all this money to rent this place out for a couple hours, I was going to hold your hand and kiss you all romantic-style and woo the sh*t outta you! But now my stupid body’s trying to ruin it and—ugh! Franzy, I just want to make you half as happy as you make me.”
As she says that last bit, she turns balefully to the side, directing all her ire and regret toward the bugs that chirp idly in the thicket. Franziska can hardly help herself, then, inching her still-bare fingers toward Maya’s own where they rest in the space between. Molecule-by-molecule, ever so meticulously, Franziska weaves their digits together until that space ceases to exist.
“Oh, my heart,” Franziska coos, and Maya’s blush deepens as her lip trembles a bit, like the sentiment is simply too beautiful for her to process. “The thought alone is more than enough, you know.”
“I know,” says Maya, “but you’re such a damn workaholic, I just wanted you to relax for a night. Now you’re gonna spend it running around fussing over me, it’s all just more work.”
“How many times must I tell you, Maya?” With her free hand, Franziska cups Maya’s face once more. “That is not work. Taking care of you is a gift all its own. One of the most precious you give me, I dare say.”
Maya looks at her with big, tired brown eyes. “More precious than looking at all these dopeass Japanese flowers?”
Franziska smirks, rubbing that pretty pink flush on Maya’s cheek with a thumb. “Schatzi, you are the most beautiful Japanese flower of them all.”
“God, I walked into that one.” Maya sniffles again, this time dryly and unproductively—the congestion seems to have settled tight in her head, a fact she can feel as it thickens and presses against her aching skull. “Ugh. Franzy, I’m sorry.”
“None of that,” Franziska hardens her expression, something she only ever has to do when she’s looking at Maya. “There’s no better way I’d like to spend the rest of the evening than fussing over you.”
Maya’s eyes feel wet. From the illness or the sentiment, she really can’t say—much in the same way she can’t seem to discern if the heat still lingering on her face is Franziska’s doing, or her faulty immune system’s.
“Can you like, keep infodumping about flowers while you’re fussing?” Maya asks. “I like listening to you when you’re excited.”
Franziska gives her a shut-eyed smile, huffing elegantly out through her nose. Slowly, then, she rises to her feet, not letting go of Maya’s feverwarm hand and encouraging her to follow. The smaller girl stumbles ungracefully up, legs tangled like a baby foal’s as they remember they have function. Doting as ever, Franziska uses her free hand to adjust the zipper of Maya’s jacket where it’s slipped almost imperceptibly downward, tuck her beloved’s collar closer to her neck.
The scarlet flowering there beneath her lashes only deepens, but this time Franziska’s content in knowing it’s probably not the fever.
“I’ll tell you first and foremost about Camellia sinesis,” Franziska smiles that von Karma smile, closed-mouth, lidded eyes, charm, “the newborn leaves of which are the source of all oolong, black, and green teas.”
She guides Maya along, then—away from the glow of the hanging lights, toward the babbling creek where the golden koi dart from rock to rock, over the delightful cobblestone bridge. Slowly, so as not to exacerbate the ache in Maya’s limbs, toward the exit. Toward home.
“Now, if you’ll allow me to escort you back inside…”
Franziska wraps an arm around Maya’s waist. Feeling her shivers settle down a smidge, Maya leans in, letting Franziska do just that.
“...I believe it’s better if I serve you a proper demonstration.”
