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Nancy puts the bowl of rice and veggies in the microwave, hits ‘start’ and turns around to lean against the counter. From this position, she can still see the TV in the living room. “Really, Mom?” she says into the phone.
“That’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask,” says her mom. Nancy silently concedes, because this keeps happening.
“What is your hero doing for a living?” her mom asks again.
“Her name is Kelsey, Mom.”
“Heroine, then.”
Nancy turns back around and stares at the rotating tray inside the oven. The reflection across the microwave’s glass is bright and unclear, difficult to make out, but that’s the point. “That’s sort of complicated.”
Her mom huffs a little. “It’s not illegal, is it?”
“Mom!” Nancy protests, and it comes out sharper than intended.
If her mom notices, she ignores it well. “Well, I know she isn’t a co-worker, given that you met when she jumped into traffic for you and all.”
“Not for me, Mom, for Muffin,” Nancy corrects, but it’s a moot point.
“Well, then, what can she possibly do that is so -” beat. “- classified.” Another beat and then, in a very different tone of voice: “It’s classified, isn’t it.”
“Mom...” Nancy sighs.
Her mom says nothing.
“Yes,” Nancy sighs again after a moment. The oven beeps and she takes the hot bowl out, puts it on a plate, grabs a spoon and heads to the living room. “Yes, it sorts of is.”
Mercifully, her mom doesn’t ask.
Nancy puts the bowl down on the coffee table, flops on the couch and picks her dinner back up again before propping her feet on the table. Muffin comes out of the bedroom wagging her tail and hops up on the couch next to Nancy, even though she has to know she isn’t getting any of Nancy’s dinner. Nancy scratches her behind the ears, most of her attention on the television screen, where the HazRescue zord manoeuvres across broken and still-smoking asphalt, nearly rolling over as it simultaneously takes a turn and extends the steam shovel, slamming to a halt and catching the cement beam at the last second.
Her mom speaks again just when Nancy finally lifts the spoon to her mouth. “Seriously, Nancy?”
“What, Mom?” Nancy asks around a mouthful of steaming-hot rice.
“Are you eating your food too hot again?”
Nancy swallows, burnt throat be damned. “Is that what you wanted to ask?”
“I’m just saying,” her mom says and pauses. “That’s really not a good idea, Nan.”
“I’m not going to give myself internal burns,” Nancy says.
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about seeing another person in a demanding job.”
“Yes, because Jess worked out so well. And Joey. And -”
Her mom cuts her off. “So they weren’t cut out for this. But men have the right idea about this, Nan. If you’re going to work like you do, you need a partner who’s about you first and her job second.”
The battle is still rolling live on the TV before her, and Nancy has no idea how to explain. She lets her head tip back, stares up at the ceiling and thinks about the last time this happened, and waking up in the morning to find Kelsey asleep on the couch so as to not wake Nancy up and waffles in the freezer that Nancy had not bought and a basket of strawberries on the counter that Nancy has no idea where Kelsey found at two in the morning, and she knows how long Kelsey’s team’s post-combat briefs can run.
“Kelsey’s there for me,” she says eventually. Her voice is quiet and distant with the memory of the expression on Kelsey’s face, waking up to Nancy’s hand in her hair and lips on her skin, house smelling of coffee and waffles. “And she’ll continue to be here for me. No matter what.”
When her mom speaks again, her voice sounds different, more contemplative. “You sound very sure.”
“Oh, I am sure, Mom.”
“All right.”
“Seriously?” Nancy lifts her head back up and takes her feet off the table, putting them on the ground. Her voice is rising by the word. “You grill me for half an hour -”
“The last time you sounded this sure, Nancy, you went to a job interview at NASADA. And before that you decided to commission, and before that you went to CalTech. I stopped trying to argue you out of things after that first time, as you might recall.”
Nancy swallows. Yes, her mom has Opinions, with the capital letter ‘O’ and all, but it’s also true that she’d known which fights not to pick since that horribly bad one they’d had when Nancy had made it clear that she’d be going to CalTech and be a physics major and her parents had no say in the matter. “Thanks, Mom,” she says.
“You don’t thank me, Nancy Anne Cooper. You do this as right as anything else you set your mind to.”
Nancy wakes up even earlier than Carter and is clearly made of magic, because she has breakfast waiting when Kelsey steps out of her seven-minute shower, and between that and her own driving Kelsey manages to show up to morning practice on time and not at all looking like she’d slept less than two hours. She even manages to get through the track with perfectly okay scores that Captain Mitchell isn’t frowning at, even if she’s had better days.
She grabs a second breakfast at the mess and a post-practice shower in her quarters and promptly crashes in bed, and it isn’t until she wakes up four hours later that it occurs to her that her sweats smell like fresh laundry and had been waiting, neatly folded on top of her bed, when she’d come in earlier.
When she steps out of the room Dana is studying again: there’s a huge tome on her crossed knees, the couch she’s sitting on is invisible under all the notes and books, and her laptop is on top of the tiny table that she’d dragged over. She looks up at the swish of Kelsey’s door and smiles at her, genuine and affectionate even though her brain is clearly mostly taken up with biochem or anatomy or whatever it is today.
“You missed lunch,” she says, “but Chad saved you some pie.”
“Thanks,” Kelsey says. She flops on the floor because it’s easier than dragging a chair over and less awkward than standing. “Did you do my laundry?”
Dana tucks her hair behind her ear and, as always, it spills right back over her cheek again. “Yeah, I know it’s ocean and not lavender, but I also did Carter’s, and you know what he’s like.”
“You did my laundry,” Kelsey repeats, amused and partially horrified, because that’s just Dana for you, “and you apologize over the fabric softener?” Her fingers twitch and it’s a good thing there’s nothing throw-able within her reach. “Only you, Dana.”
Dana shrugs.
“Seriously, you didn’t need to -” Kelsey continues.
“Kelsey, the floor in your room was invisible under -”
“Look, I’m sorry -”
Dana extracts a pillow from under her notes and throws it at Kelsey. “Shut up,” she informs her. “It’s maybe ten more minutes’ work on something I was doing anyway.”
Kelsey throws the pillow back at her, with a little more force. “Yes, but -”
Dana catches it with one hand and puts it behind her back. “No buts,” she informs Kelsey. “The rest of my life fits in here, at least for now,” she says, waving her hand about their tiny apartment and then pointing down at her textbook, “and yours doesn’t. And I don’t know what your hangup about this is,” she continues blithely and Kelsey snaps her mouth shut because she hates having people just do things for her and of course Dana would notice, “but this is just the sort of thing friends do.”
Kelsey swallows before she speaks again and wishes she hadn’t thrown back the pillow. “Thanks,” she says, honestly. “But you keep noticing and doing these things, and it feels like,” she shrugs, because Dana’s unselfconscious caring in the face of Kelsey’s own laissez faire attitude always makes her uncomfortable this way, and of course this would be the one thing Dana doesn’t notice.
Dana smiles again, but this is more like an amused grin. “Yeah, you don’t notice your trail mix mysteriously disappearing, either.”
Kelsey stares at her for a moment, uncomprehending, because she always restocks her trail mix and energy bars, she checks her stocks daily - and then she gets what Dana just admitted to and laughs instead. “Okay, all right,” she says. “I give.”
It’s ten in the evening when Nancy gets home. She drives home herself even though her day had started at something like three in the morning, and included driving out to the spacebase, piloting a round trip to outer space and - just now - driving herself all the way back. She could have slept at the base had she not wanted to be with Kelsey, and she could have a driver except she’s a pilot and - after a year of working with one and nearly a year of being with another - Kelsey knows that all pilots are distinctively and patently crazy.
The house smells of soap and homemade pizza and Kelsey herself no longer smells like smoke. Muffin knows the sound of Nancy’s car and is scratching at the front door well before she gets there, and Nancy scoops her up and coos at her as she steps in, somehow managing a wave even as she drops her keys in the bowl and closes the door behind her. Then she puts Muffin down again and steps into the kitchen, smiling at Kelsey tired and unselfconscious, and when she kisses her by the kitchen island she tastes like hazelnut coffee and raspberry lip balm. Kelsey is smiling when they break apart because she could get used to this, and the thought of getting used to this is a high. Then Nancy punches her shoulder, hard.
“Aw!” Kelsey protests, massaging the spot. She knows what it’s for, though. “I put everything in the wash, I swear, nothing’s going to smell of smoke...”
Nancy raises her eyebrows. “You think that’s what that was for.”
Kelsey knows Nancy and so knows that nothing she’ll say or won’t say will change whatever speech Nancy has rehearsed in her head, so instead she blurts out: “When did you even find out?”
“Nick had the press folder waiting for me when we came out of debrief, what do you think?” Nancy retorts and continues, in the same breath, “Seriously, Kelsey? You just handed back your morpher, and you run into a fire?”
“It needed doing,” Kelsey says, more defensively than she’d like, but this is unfair, “and we’re all trained for it now, anyway.”
“Oh god, you silly,” Nancy says, smiling, and it just makes Kelsey feel even more like an eight-year-old. Then the smile disappears and Nancy frowns and wraps her hand around Kelsey’s shoulder, tentative. “Kels? I’m not angry with you. So long as you have your gear on, you can tackle all the structure fires and cliffs that you want. It’s just that I could tell all the way from the driveway that you were trying to not tell me about today.”
Kelsey takes a deep breath because she should know - she should know - but these many months in, she still sometimes forgets because Nancy is good in ways Kelsey is really not used to. “I love you,” she says.
“I love you too,” Nancy replies, and adds: “The pizza smells like heaven.”
“You would know,” Kelsey retorts, and the old joke makes her smile.
Nancy laughs a little, draws up one of the island stools and collapses on it.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Kelsey confesses, before the moment passes.
Nancy pulls her in and Kelsey half-sits in her lap, which has Nancy rolling her eyes. “You’re just coming off fighting a year-long war, the front line of which was your home,” she points out.
“I thought things would just - that I’d just go back to where I was except, y’know,” Kelsey adds quickly but Nancy just laughs at her, so she swats Nancy’s shoulder - lightly - and continues: “But then today and I just - it’s like I only caught up to it hours later, and that’s why it looks like I tried to,” she shrugs.
“Kels,” Nancy says and touches Kelsey’s cheek. “This is what comes after. This is what it’s like. Do what seems right every day, and we’ll think about things in a couple months, okay?”
This time when Nancy hugs her Kelsey lets her, resting her head on Nancy’s shoulders and lacing their fingers together.
Kelsey handed in her morpher earlier that day, and she can feel the withdrawal Angela warned them of seeping in, like being cut off from purpose, like her body losing its rhythm, sick and slow, as if all her senses are half-muted. Nancy feels soft and warm, though, and even like this Kelsey can feel the centered confidence of her that makes everybody not mind how very girly she is even in a jumpsuit, and every time Nancy says or does something that means I love you feels like being chosen for a Ranger did. It makes it easier to remember things, and it means Kelsey believes her, wholly and faithfully.
What she says out loud is “Okay,” and if she sounds zoned out then it’s because she really is.
Nancy presses a kiss to her hair. “You sound more tired than I am,” she informs Kelsey, and then carefully gets up and maneuvers Kelsey into the same stool. “I’ll get the pizza. And no wine for dinner for us tonight.”
“I don’t need wine,” Kelsey informs her.
She doesn’t get to say I’m drunk on you because Nancy announces, “Kelsey Winslow, don’t make me swat you,” and then they both laugh.