Hey @philiaaaaaa, @farren-elwood, @iffasart, @lordcryosrealmoftrash, @devoteeofthetombraider, @croftshadows, @the-ashen-hunter, @haxxorblue, @sheepstomach, @gayujb, @temseria1, @the-carulia-archive, @julethiefs, @jazzy-aria, @quanta-44, @flame-of-a-candle, @roxanazava, @layceline, and many others as this has Carmen thinking about Julia/Jules Argent, and Lara thinking about Sam throughout...

Also @femslashrevolution, @femslashfandomevents, @femslashbigbang, and others, you may be interested.

“Sweet Pea Vanilla Coconut Sunrise or whatever. I nearly choked. And I told her—I cannot have that near me. What happened to discretion? What happened to Black Pashmina?”

Damien, who had heard this rant before in six different registers, only nodded as he answered emails, immersed in his phone. “Yeah. You did tell her. Twice.”

“No, three times,” Deborah corrected, hand flitting toward nothing in particular with theatrical purpose. “I told her three times and she still showed up wearing that god-awful sugary scent. I mean—” She paused, calculating her words. “Why can’t anyone choose a beautiful scent anymore?”

“You should write a perfume ad,” Damien sighed, still not paying complete attention, and it was dry enough that she gave him a look. He finally met her eyes and raised his brows. “What?”

“Just go, and take this to Jimmy, will you?” she said instead, pulling an envelope from her bag and waving it toward him.

“Sure.” Damien took it and disappeared toward the front, leaving Deborah alone in the silence that fell like a weighted blanket the moment his footsteps faded.

She moved toward the sink, half-grumbling, half-humming under her breath, reaching for a glass.

And then, she paused.

You didn’t look up when she walked by. You were leaning against the far counter, flipping through something—notes, probably, or edits she hadn’t approved, or had pretended not to see. Your expression was neutral, like always these days, a little guarded, a little bruised. The sting between you had dulled but not healed.

Still, she slowed when she passed you as she took in your perfume.

You were wearing something new, and entirely unsanctioned by Deborah. Indigo, though she wouldn’t learn the name until later.

It moved through the room with quiet intent—fig first, lush and dark, soft at the edges, as if it had ripened in shadow. Blackberries followed, low and rich, like they’d been warmed by sun and left to fall gently into the hush of late August. Smoke curled through cedar—aged and burnished, deep with memory. There was floral there too, but softened, pressed down to its essence: petals surrendered to linen, to skin, to time.

Tea leaves steeped somewhere in the distance. Musk lay beneath it all, fine-grained and breath-warm, the scent of closeness without intrusion.

It carried the weight of something intimate, remembered—silk over old wood, warm stone at dusk. It was the kind of scent that stayed behind long after its wearer left the room—anchored, elegant, entirely at ease with being noticed slowly, if at all.

Her hand tightened slightly on the glass.

She didn’t speak—only lingered, suspended in the charged stillness between you, where the scent drifted like a confession neither of you meant to offer. Proximity made it sharper, more intimate—the air itself bending around the alchemy of your nearness. Some quiet collision of biology and chemistry had transformed it on your skin, altering the structure of the perfume into something richer, more deliberate.

The sweetness she always disdained had collapsed into depth; the brighter notes dimmed to shadow. It wore itself in a restrained manner—opulent, elegant, and impossible to place. It carried the resonance of a memory folded into flesh, the quiet ache of longing kept intact by distance, and something more volatile—the trace of a threshold neither of you had yet stepped across, but now stood impossibly close to.

She started to move again, voice quiet now, a shade lower, caught somewhere between an afterthought and a slip. “Now that’s stunning.”

You looked up from the pages in your hand, irritation flickering first—she always had a knack for interrupting when you were mid-thought, mid-sentence, mid-anything.

“What is?” you asked, the words clipped, automatic, tinged with annoyance.

But the sharpness faltered as your eyes met hers. There was heat there—unmistakable, unguarded—and it caught you mid-breath, your irritation dissolving beneath the heat of her gaze.

She didn’t answer at once. Her glass met the counter with a kind of reverence, the motion slow, deliberate, as though marking the end of one moment and the beginning of another.

Then she crossed the kitchen, unhurried but certain, each step drawn from something quiet and resolute. The air shifted as she moved, the room cinching inward around her, as if everything peripheral had fallen away, leaving only her approach and the silence that followed in its wake.

Something in you stilled, held suspended in the space she’d already begun to close.

When she stopped in front of you, she was close. Closer than you expected. Close enough to feel the slight shift in the air between you, the warmth of her presence like static at your skin.

“You.” Her gaze locked with yours, steady, electric, and something in it held you still—molten, edged with intent that sent a hum through your spine. “May I?” she asked—low, deliberate—as though the question itself was already halfway to being a touch.

You swallowed, throat tight, the air suddenly too thick to draw cleanly. Heat bloomed at the base of your neck, flickering out across your skin, sharp and breathless. Your pulse surged—high, quick, impossibly loud in the quiet. You nodded quickly, eagerly, and even that felt like surrender.

You half-expected her to reach for your wrist, but she didn’t.

Instead, she stepped closer, the space between you tightening to a breath.

Her presence pressed at the edges of your awareness, heavy with intent, and the air felt charged enough to split. Heat gathered at your throat, coiled low beneath your skin, and you could feel the shift in her focus—the way her attention pinned you open.

She tilted her head, slowly, mouth hovering near your neck, her breath close enough to stir the fine hairs along your skin.

When she inhaled, it was slow, deliberate, a pull that felt precise and consuming, as if she meant to take something from you and keep it. It wasn’t perfume anymore. It was you—risen, unguarded, shaped by the tension between her restraint and your surrender.

Your breath caught at the base of your throat—silent, suspended—as if the air itself refused to move with her that close. It trembled there, held captive in your chest, the stillness between inhale and exhale stretched thin and trembling, like a wire pulled too tight.

Her closeness said more than anything she could have spoken—the way she lingered in that sliver of space, her mouth near yours, her breath warm and shallow against your skin. Her eyes stayed fixed on you, heavy with heat, and the air between you felt impossibly thin, as though one more breath might tip you into contact. When she finally leaned back, it was only by inches—just enough to let the ache remain.

Her voice was lower than before.

“That’s… very well chosen.” She paused, and a faint smile barely registered but reached her eyes. “It suits you.”

Deborah stepped back just enough to break the line between you, not enough to let the air settle.

You could barely get the words out, your voice caught halfway to breath. “Thank you,” you managed, quiet, unsteady.

And then the moment seemed to dissolve, softened by movement, by the clink of glass or the rustle of paper—something ordinary reclaiming the space. But the heat of it lingered like a hand still hovering near your skin.

Later, alone, you swore to yourself you’d wear this scent sparingly. Carefully. Only when you wanted her to do that again. Whatever that had just been.