★

"The same size," you agree. "But they're lumpy." A small frown graces your face. "You need to roll them more."

You'd do the whole thing if you could, Emily knows. But since you can't, she'll be trying her damndest. Even though she could argue that the cookies will be going into the oven anyway, spreading flat and even, with perfectly non-lumpy edges.

She could, but she won't.

"Okay." She gives in, setting down the scoop. Anything for your frown to ease.

And it does, and so she doesn't mind the trouble, but before she can reach for the sheet in front of you, you shift it further away.

"You're forgiven for these."

The kitchen cranks a few degrees warmer. It's hazy outside, not fully sunny, not fully cloudy, and the shifting light dances across your face. You have a sprinkle of sugar caught on your bottom lip, flour staining your sleeve where she'd spilled some of it on the counter. Your tone is light and your eyes are sunlit and it takes everything in her not to kiss you, sugar crystals melting on her tongue, your smile plush and soft against her mouth.

Emily tears her gaze away and instead bobs a minuscule bow. "You're so generous, honey."

You roll your eyes, but the corner of your mouth quirks.

It makes her heart all kinds of warm. She loves that you're getting more comfortable with her, flashes of your old self peeking through—in jokes, in mannerisms, in the split-second reactions that don't require thought. She missed more of you than she thought possible in just a week. Not just your easiness, your unfiltered nature, the naked truth of you—but also the tender drag of your touch on her skin, the sound of her name from your mouth.

God, she missed that. At first you'd said it stiltedly, your lips awkward around the syllables, Em-i-ly, stiff with formality, your tongue still shy, hesitant around it—then, eventually, warmer. Emily, soft as butter, all give. Em, almost unthinking, instinctive.

You're getting better, she knows you are. If not with remembering then with settling in, with healing. You're remembering bits and pieces here and there—old habits, frequent haunts. You remember Penelope and Dave and your closer coworkers. You tell her about them, replay the stuff that you remember so she can verify it, and she does, telling you good, see, you've got it, her heart lifting with each one.

It doesn't matter that you don't come to her with memories of herself. Emily doesn't mind, truly, whether you remember her or not. She ignores that voice in the back of her head, in her heart, that begs: remember me. Remember me and I won't ask for anything else.

She ignores it. Because you're making cookies and she's rolling out the dough and you're dipping it in cinnamon sugar, and she can see, despite your disapproval at her methods, that you're happy. So it doesn't matter that she's largely missing from your memory. You're here, you haven't left, you're still with her.

That's enough.

"How's this?" She asks, showing you the ball of dough she'd been rolling. It's smoother than a pebble, and it gains your approval.

"Perfect." You say, pleased. Then your smile collapses, a little, a crease dipping between your brows. "Sorry," you murmur. "I don't mean to be so anal about it."

"Hey, c'mon—they're Christmas cookies, aren't they? They have to be perfect." Emily says gravely. Your smile blooms back, pressed sheepish. She looks down at the cookie you're rolling in sugar and nudges your hip. "See, that won't do, chef. You missed a spot."

You laugh, dutifully roll the dough through the sugar again, and Emily ducks her head to hide her own smile.

-

The house smells sweetly of cinnamon. It's warm, familiar, curling around her like a hug.

Emily doesn't admit it, but she hovers. You watch her with poorly hidden amusement as you clean up the messes on the counters—she doesn't try to help, because you've already issued one warning, and, really, she doesn't want to risk a fight.

Her fingertips are still pruned from washing the dishes. She wipes them on her sweatpants and ducks again to watch the oven. Its heat wafts out to greet her, glowing red on her face as she peers in through the glass and watches the cookies melt from balls to puddles. Normal cookie progression—so far.

She nearly never bakes, only ever takes over the cooking. This is your domain, the sugar and butter and all the fuss, a thousand different ways for it to all go wrong—and they're Christmas cookies, for gods sake, and if she's fucked them up too—

"Emily," she can hear the laugh in your voice, can hear it without even having to turn, "you know you can't force them into baking any faster."

She looks up at you sheepishly, color rising in her cheeks. "I know that." She says, straightening. "I'm just—uh. Making sure they do their thing."

"They'll do their thing," you promise. "I set a timer."

You're overly fond, eyes soft as you reach over to tuck her bangs behind her ear. It's a half absent move, and she leans into the touch.

You've gotten bolder, these past two days. More prone to touching her, falling into the familiar rhythm of teasing. It all bursts explosively in her chest, and she's not sure if it's the hormones amplifying everything, or if it's the whole ordeal making her a thousand times more emotional, or if it's just, plain and simple, you. She's never been immune to your affections, but Emily thinks she hasn't been this terribly weak for you since you first met.

She's attuned to your every move. For every action you take, a reaction sets off in her.

She feels it, almost physically, when your eyes drift down to her mouth. It's a quick glance, your gaze shy, but Emily's pulse skips nonetheless. Her own eyes drop and find your lips—the familiar outline, the same shape and color, a little chapped from the cold. The crust of sugar is gone, swept away by an absent drag of your tongue.

Your hand drifts down to her elbow, and you weave your arm into hers.

"There's this movie I found," you say, tugging her out of the kitchen. "Some cheesy Hallmark thing. New release. Wanna give it a shot?"

Emily can only hum absently.

-

(The cookies turn out perfect. The relief is bubbly and sweet, and the cookies warm her from the inside out, vanilla and cinnamon and the taste of your hand, still carrying the heat of the oven as they slide down her throat. She presses kisses over your knuckles, mumbles, you're a magic worker, and watches as you visibly fluster, denying—Jesus, stop it, Emily, you practically made the whole thing. She steadfastly ignores you, brushing her mouth over the warm stretch of your wrist. Your skin still smells like the sugar, the sweetness of the dough, the earthy cinnamon.)

-

An exhale behind her alerts her to your disapproval.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," you say from your perch on the closed toilet seat, watching her in the mirror.

"Have a little faith." Emily says easily. It's true, she hadn't cut her own bangs since she was in her twenties, but it's Christmas tomorrow and a fresh look is in order. Before everything, she'd planned on booking an appointment for sometime this week, but, well—the thought fled her mind.

Emily untucks her bangs from behind her ears. You're still looking unconvinced, nipping at your lip—always a worrier.

"Besides, I've done this before," she adds, tying her hair up in a ponytail.

"When was that?"

"…College."

You laugh, and it sounds just like it would've, two, three weeks ago. Her heart clenches. It's so strange, all of it—how her body reacts like you're someone new, sometimes, the person she'd bound her life to but still unaware that she would. It takes her back to nights on your living room floor, early mornings through the city that neither of you would admit were poorly concealed dates. Not until far, far later.

Inhaling, Emily gathers her grown-out side bangs and grabs the comb from the counter, running it through her hair. Your face is visible in the mirror, peeking out from behind her as you witness her process.

"Cleaning them up is easier than cutting them from scratch," she says distractedly, more for your benefit than hers—though the reminder is helpful. "They just need shortening."

You hum behind her. "I've only tried doing it once. It was disastrous."

Emily's mouth twitches. She hadn't known that. "Didn't take you for the type to try," she teases, peering close into the mirror and picking up her scissors.

"I was—unfortunately—a lot more adventurous in my youth," you say wistfully. "Couldn't look into the mirror for a week."

Emily laughs. She remembers her own first attempt, all kinds of catastrophic. She was eight, and nearly all the French girls in her class had wisps of fringe on their foreheads. When first her mother, then her au pair, refused to take her to the hairdressers, Emily had grabbed the nearest pair of scissors, a handful of hair, and watched the jet-black strands float down into the sink.

Elizabeth wouldn't look at her for weeks.

Emily straightens her shoulders now, pushing the image of her mother's sour face out of her head. She begins trimming, absently. Without her permission, her mind drifts back to the phone call she'd gotten yesterday—at exactly the wrong time, a blot on her otherwise finally uneventful day, as if her mother had had it planned to the second.

When exactly were you planning on telling me that Y/N had gotten into an accident? Really, Emily, am I supposed to find out everything from one of your friends just because you won't pick up the phone?

Emily's laugh had burst out of her in disbelief, bitter and sucked dry of humor.

She doesn't fault Penelope. She's more astonished at her picking up the phone in the first place, but what clouds it most of all is the shame. At herself, at Elizabeth, at the gaping rift between them that can't seem to stitch itself over. She hadn't needed the reminder, but Emily was plunged into it anyway—without you, she doesn't really have anyone to call her own.

Longer curls of hair float down into the sink, stark black against white. She thought she'd given up on it, mending this wretched thread connecting them—after so many years, after countless fruitless attempts that left her bitter that this is all she'll ever get from the woman that birthed her. But Emily still—naively—wishes she could glue the frayed bits together, make the string just strong enough for it to take some weight, for it to handle something as impossible as confiding in her mother. Admitting that she's pregnant, or that her wife has lost her memories, or that she's drowning trying to wade through it all. Just for her mother to be a mother, and for her to be her child; to have a place, momentarily, where she could lean.

But the shards of her hair fall into the sink, and Emily knows she wouldn't be able to bear having her mother look at her, see into the gaping hurt that tore her open. It'll be easier, it always has been easier, for her to turn away.

She swallows hard against the thought and focuses instead on the scissors in her hand. She had been trimming, carefully, bit by bit, and now her bangs dip just past her eyebrows. She adjusts a few strands then pauses, pursing her lips.

Maybe she could shorten them a bit more. It's a good length, she hasn't totally ruined anything, but if they're this long they take even less to grow out. She fluffs them out, runs her fingers through them. Maybe another centimeter or two.

Her stillness alerts you; your face, she just notices, has blipped out of the mirror.

"Something wrong?" You ask. Before she can answer, she hears your limbs unfolding as you stand. "Let me see."

Emily sets the scissors down and turns. "I haven't sabotaged my dashing good looks, if that's what you're wondering—"

Her heart plummets when she meets your eyes, glossy with unshed tears.

"Hey," she breathes. She's plunged back into being eight years old again, her veins slowly freezing over when her mother's gaze turned cold. "Hey, what is it, what's wrong?"

You swallow, shaking your head. "Nothing," you say thickly. The word comes out choked, and her hands twitch at her sides, restless, about to reach for you when you lean in, so close she can see the dampness making its way through your lashes.

Emily goes still. Your hand rises up, briefly hesitating, before you reach over the rest of the way and gently nudge her bangs over one brow. Your knuckles graze her temple. The touch is soft, exploratory.

She hardly breathes.

You sift your fingers through them, parting the hairs around her forehead. Fixing them. Adjusting them to fit the picture in your head—the memory.

The memory.

Emily sucks in a breath. Recognition blooms wide and beautiful in your eyes, unmistakable, draped like gossamer over your pupils. She feels it all at once, buried free and now bursting, the tremble running along her bones, squeezing the breath in her throat.

She doesn't know how she finds her voice again.

"I don't look that terrible, do I?" She manages to croak out.

You laugh tearily, pulling your hand back to wipe at your eye. She gracelessly helps you out, drying the shimmer of wetness from your skin, feeling it dampen her thumbs. Baby, she whispers under her breath, her lungs clenching tight. Baby, baby. Tears still flood your eyes; your attempt to blink them away is futile. They slip out, hot on her skin. She kisses their wet paths.

You clear your throat, your dewy lashes ghosting over her thumbs. "You know," you mutter, sniffling, "I'm kind of sick of all the crying."

Emily's smile is wobbly in its own right. You and me both.

"I know what you mean."

Careful, she dabs beneath your eye with her knuckle. Your gaze flicks back up to her. It's no less sharp, no less piercing, despite your tears. She feels your eyes hot on her face, sweeping. Emily warms beneath them, a flush rising where they trail.

"I remember you," you eventually say, quietly. "Not just your voice—you."

Her breath catches. Her hands go still, cupped around your face. "Yeah?" She manages, hoarse and low.

"Yeah." You step even closer, your bent arm gently pressing into her. She can still see the damp spots on your skin where your tears haven't dried yet. Where she's missed.

You mold your own hand to her cheek. Light as a feather, you sweep your finger along her cheekbone, dusting off stray shards of shorn hair. Then, you kiss her.

You kiss her.

She can't help the sound that punches out of her, half gasp, half sob, muffled against your mouth before she can stop it. Sorry, she wants to say, god, fuck, I'm sorry. But you're undeterred, rubbing a soothing path across her skin, and it's just the same, you're just the same—your lips and the way you go into it, your hand around her cheek—and Emily…shit, Emily kisses you back through the loud rush of her heart.

She's been deprived of your kisses before, of your affection—for a week, sure, sometimes longer. But it was never anything close to this. Nothing could ever cut as deep as this had.

She's almost embarrassingly breathless, chasing you despite herself, itching to keep the distance closed between you. She wants to stitch it shut, wants the knots buried and every inch of you against every inch of her, too close for naught but the air to slip through. Her mouth burns, aching for yours again, but you draw back, press your forehead against hers, swipe at the tears that dip out of her eyes.

"Em…" You mumble.

"Sorry." She shoves at them roughly, blinks, hard—and finds your own eyes teary again.

The state of you both.

A weak laugh huffs out of her. It cuts off, her breath hitching when you cradle her face in your hand, tug her in again, for a soft press of your lips.

A choked sound wrangles out of her throat, and twin streams of tears burn their way down her face. They mingle with yours, dip down to soak her lips; the kiss is wet with salt, and she wraps both arms around you, breathes out your name, kisses the damp edge of your jaw. Then your chin, then the soaked corner of your mouth; a kiss anywhere she can, any part of you she can reach, and back, again, to your lips.

She's too frantic with it, she knows. But her blood rushes, hands trembling as she digs them into your flesh.

I remember you.

I remember you.

-

Christmas Day is a mostly uneventful affair. You wake up slowly, reluctant to leave the heavy warmth of the bed. Emily is, too. She finds a cocoon in your arms, nestling into the warm space on your chest, between your shoulder and your neck. It's quiet there, soft and gently rising, falling, with your breathing.

Between the tranquil thumps of your heartbeat, she finds herself imagining how different it'll be next year. All this silence, shredded, warped. A five-month-old, give or take, playing with torn wrapping paper, enjoying it more than her freshly bought gifts—in Emily's head, it's a girl. It's always a girl. She'd have your eyes, your laugh; the same curl of your hair and the exact way you tilt your head, brows cocking, when you're confused.

Your girl. Your girl and hers, entirely hers, and entirely yours, too.

She's hazy with the daydream, as if wrapped in a cloud. You ask her what's on her mind and she can't say it, so she says you and it's true enough, your posture shrinking inward as you fluster. She kisses the heat from your cheeks and hopes your baby inherits that, too.

The day is soft and pale, a blur of white outside, the cold rising and ebbing in waves. You're mostly entangled, huddling more for the company than for the warmth. Your legs twine together, and you stretch your side along Emily's, your good arm curled around her, the chilled tips of your fingers sneaking under her sweater to trace over her skin.

There's just enough room between you for shy kisses on your end. You space them out, dot them on her jaw and the middle of her cheek and her chin and wherever else you can reach, before you edge closer to the corner of her mouth, then the middle of it, as if you're trying to pace yourself.

Emily almost finds herself in tears.

Sergio curls close, lethargic in the absence of carelessly tossed wrapping paper and empty boxes—simple joys of his feline life. Emily gives him a few special treats to make up for it. Snow blankets the streets, frosting the windows; a neighbor, Martha, drops off a plate of gingerbread cookies ("Merry Christmas, dears", and, strangely, Emily feels warmer for it). The fire crackles, melting down the sharpness of the cold. Your tree is brightly lit and empty of presents.

"I got you something," Emily confesses, thumbing along your cheek, "of course I did, it's upstairs. I'll get it if you want me to. I didn't know if—"

"Can I open it later?" You murmur. Emily nods, of course, yeah, hon, definitely—"I—thank you. I know I'll love it, I will, I'd just…I'd rather wait, a bit."

Emily's smile is small. "It's not going anywhere."

You nod, biting your lip. "Which is a bit hypocritical, I think, but—" You disentangle yourself from her and cross the living room in a couple hurried steps. Emily frowns, but you return quickly, inhaling a big breath, holding something in your hand.

A box. A gift-wrapped, bow-topped box.

A present.

"Merry Christmas." You smile softly, nervously.

Emily blinks. She sits up on the couch, her eyes pricking with heat. "Wh…? When did you—" She swallows the lump in her throat, reaching for your wrist to gently tug you back down, next to her. "When did you get this?"

"At the market," you admit. "I'd been trying to find something while we were looking around. I almost gave up, honestly—didn't know how I could get it without you noticing—but then you got that call." Your smile presses thin, a little sheepish. Then it fades, your face sobering. "I know I must have gotten you something, before, but I don't remember it and it didn't feel right to—I don't know, give you something I didn't know the value of. Not that I could find it, anyway." A laugh bursts out of you, more breath than anything, "I mean, I'm not sure if you'll like this, either, but it's—"

She pulls you into as fierce of a hug as she dares with your arm still in its sling. You're close enough that she can feel your breath as it gets trapped in your lungs, your free arm curling around her neck, fingers dipping into her hair. Heat throbs in Emily's skull, a thin film of tears blurring everything out.

She's too scared to speak, for a while. The lump is too big in her throat, even though she knows you feel everything else—the ragged edge to her breathing, the tears smearing on your skin, the fabric of your hoodie. Emily buries her face in your shoulder.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"There's nothing to thank me for." You murmur, rubbing wide circles between her shoulder blades. You let her stay there for a moment, undone by the entirety of you, wholly wilted against your chest. When she tries to force some stiffness into her shoulders, you lean back, thumb at the wetness under her eye and press a kiss there. "I'm sorry it couldn't be more."

"Hey, no." She shakes her head, her voice hoarse. Your smile softens. You brush another kiss on her cheekbone then press the box into her hands.

It's small, barely larger than her palm. Emily carefully unravels the wrapping, blinking the heat from her eyes.

What lays beneath is familiar: a jewelry box. She opens the lid to find a necklace glinting inside, gold and dainty, flames of a sun surrounding a pale gemstone.

"It's your birthstone," you explain, quietly.

Her nail catches on the delicate chain. She lifts it out of the box and thumbs the opal center of the sun, the stone still cool beneath her skin. It's something she would've picked for herself, a similar style to the necklaces she wears regularly, all strung up on your vanity.

Emily once again marvels at you.

-

She had never enjoyed the holidays. It was all too superficial, right from the start—the picture-perfect decorations, her mother's impeccably painted smile, the flawless dinners Elizabeth hosted. The show they put on, a loving family of three, a pretty ornament ringing hollow.

There was always a sense of fragility to it. Like if Emily fumbled, misstepped, said the wrong thing, all of it would come crashing down.

Celebrating on her own wasn't much better—the space around her always felt too empty, the shadows mocking. A pathetic tree in the corner of her living room with barely any ornaments was no Christmas. She didn't have anyone to exchange gifts with, no one closer than a colleague, anyway. Even in the silence of her various apartments, she'd feel like she was playing a part, yet again, her mother's too-firm grip on her shoulder, Emily's own voice whispering in her head—how futile it was, how desolate. Why even bother celebrating for a religion she abandoned decades ago?

But, she later realizes, a small party of two makes all the difference.

-

Before long, you've wound up back in bed.

If Emily weren't forcing her way through a bottle of ginger ale, she'd have found this a little bit amusing. You're both sprawled amidst the sheets, her with a blanket around her and you with Sergio on your chest, nursing your separate aches. Your eyes are closed, but she knows you're not asleep; you open them every once in a while, blink against the dim light and the rom-com playing halfheartedly on the TV, then close them back, a brief attempt at respite from your headache.

It's fully dark out, the spirit of Christmas carried into the bedroom by way of muffled music and colorful lights from the neighbors. The two of you are too limp to greet it.

"Look at the state of us." She mumbles wryly.

You make a sound in the back of your throat. "Some Christmas."

Emily still wouldn't have it with anyone else.

You open your eyes again and give Sergio a few slow pets. He melts into you, and your gaze flicks up, to hers. There's a smile there, half-hidden beneath the faint blur of pain.

"Can you tell me something?" You ask softly.

"Anything."

You rub Sergio's velvet nose. "What was it like, when we first met?"

Emily presses her cheek to the ginger ale bottle. She still remembers it like it was yesterday.

You were in the apartment across from hers. You'd both glimpsed each other in your comings and goings, acknowledged each other with faint smiles on the way out to work in the morning, in the elevator, but you hadn't really talked. Not until Sergio darted out of her apartment and into the open door of yours as you were bringing in groceries.

"I'm sorry," she apologizes profusely, her cheeks hot, "he's just a few months old—doesn't look like it, but he's a baby, really. I think he gets antsy when I'm not around." He'd been meowing at her ankles as she gathered her keys, and before she could catch him, he'd slipped out the door and across the hall.

"It's okay," you smile. The culprit is cradled in your arms like a baby, his purring audible even from where Emily stands at the threshold. He blinks slowly at you, yellow-green eyes slitting closed as you scratch between his ears.

Traitor.

"I'm Emily, by the way." She holds out her hand.

You shake it and introduce yourself. "Y/N. And who's this handsome guy?" You look down at him, your voice going tender.

Emily's mouth twitches. "Sergio." She confesses.

His ears perk up at the sound of his name and you laugh, bemused. "Well, hi, Sergio." You give him one last pet and hold him out for Emily to take. She slips him into her arms in the same baby-like hold.

He meows pitifully into her chest.

You shift against the doorframe, your smile hesitant. "I—uh, I don't mean to pry, but I noticed you're not around often. If you don't mind, I could watch him for you."

"Oh—" Emily's mind blanks. The sun hits you in this angle, turning you gilded. "Oh, no, I couldn't trouble you—"

"I don't mind." You interrupt. "Really, it gets kind of lonely here. We could keep each other company."

He does seem to like you.

Emily hesitates. "Are you sure?"

"Of course."

"It was…I don't know, it was unexpected." Emily says, smiling into the rim of her ginger ale. "We'd been seeing each other around, you know? Coming in and out. But we hadn't talked for…I'd say maybe two, three months."

"Shocker." You mumble into Sergio's fur.

Emily laughs quietly. She drains the last of her ginger ale, feels it settle in her roiling stomach, and rolls onto her side to face you. Her fingers sink into Sergio's fur, lightly sifting alongside yours.

"Someone made a timely escape." She murmurs fondly. Sergio turns his head and butts it against her hand, chirping. Emily drops a kiss on his forehead.

"I was…I was taking the groceries inside." You recount under your breath.

Emily perks up. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right." She knows she probably shouldn't, but can't help herself. "What else can you remember? Tell me."

She presses so close that Sergio protests and clambers off of your chest. You loop your arm around her neck, pull her down, close, your noses an inch apart.

"He jumped up on the coffee table. Knocked my phone off." Your mouth quirks. "I offered to watch him, and you gave me your number. You were going out somewhere, but," you pause, thinking. "You invited me over. The day after. I…" your brows scrunch. "I made—cinnamon rolls, I think? No, that's not it. I made something. Was it…those snickerdoodles, maybe?" You frown.

"Don't force it," Emily soothes, rubbing your arm. "You'll make your headache worse."

Your eyes shutter closed, a thick hum pouring from your throat. "Yeah, it's really killing me here. Think I need a kiss," you mumble. "To make it go away, y'know?"

Emily bites down on a smile. "Just one?"

You open your eyes and pretend to think.

Her heart thumps hard in her chest. She leans in and gives you your kiss, careful not to crush you or your arm. It's short, and you tilt your head up for another one, and another, and Emily's head goes perfectly quiet.

I love you. I love you.

"I love you," she mumbles.

You say it back.