#needthissobad

— The high-pitched sound of metal screeching rings through Tashi’s ears as she tries to work. It used to be awful, near deaf everytime she left the shop, even if she wore earplugs. 

It’s calming now, tranquil. It means you’re nearby, and it helps redirect her mind. She sits at a desk beside where you stand by a machine–you told her the name of it a while back, she’s since forgotten, something starting with an L, she thinks?–face scrunched in concentration. 

She traces your wrinkles with her pencil, her mind far from whatever essay she’s working on about the beauty of life and rebirth. Without her knee, she’s been trying to get her mind off the possibility of ‘what if?’ And nothing gets her mind off it better than clinging to your side, following you around Stanford’s student shop. She watches you, you in your safety glasses with your hair pulled back, white tank stained with grease stretched tight over your chest, skin covered in a sheen of sweat. Tashi thinks about how she’ll make good use of that image burned into her head later. 

She spends these shop visits with unwritten essays and unanswered questions as she watches your shoulders loosen and tense. As she watches you playing with the levers and wheels and buttons of the machines, listens to you explain whatever it is you’re doing, even if it’s all a bunch of code to her. 

She watches you bore into the threads of a nut, watching the metal go smooth, chips of metal going flying. She thinks back to when you showed the simple steel nut to her, your face lighting up for no apparent reason. The grin that followed was one she knew well, one you made every time you had a wicked idea. It crinkled the area around your eyes and even the coldest winter day would feel like summer if she could see that every day.

She watches you press the nut onto a rod of metal, the muscles of your arms flexing and the sun bouncing off the sheen of sweat as you raise and lower the lever. As you pick up the rod, turn around and wipe the sweat from your forehead. 

You set yourself up again at the machine, and get back to work, Tashi keeping watch as the sharp edges of the nut soften into a circular shape. Not unlike herself with you, she thinks. You have to be the softest person she’s ever met, under all the rough and tough of your work in the shop. She almost feels like you placed her on that machine and turned all her sharp edges yourself, smoothing them out the way the cutter does the nut. And in a way, you did. 

When she snapped her knee, she didn’t think she’d be able to live again. But sometime after, she felt like you picked her up, put her on that machine you’re using, and turned her. Bored into her soul, carved into her, exposing her ugliest parts and making her feel beautiful. Made her something completely new, from the same old Tashi she was before.

Any hint of sharp edges from before becomes completely invisible as the nut grows thinner and thinner, rounder and rounder. You stop, at a certain point, and turn off the machine, taking out the cutting tool. Walking around the shop, leaving it in its place and taking a new cutter, standing at the machine, sliding the cutter on, and getting back to work.

You cut the nut in half next, and press them off the rod. 

Tashi realizes they're starting to look like rings. 

Her brain goes fuzzy as she thinks about the idea that you’re handcrafting rings, rings that presumably–and hopefully–are for the two of you.

As the sun begins to set and dusk follows, you finish machining, turning off the lathe–she finally remembers–and start to clean up, placing the rings atop its shelf. She watches them sit there, as you seem to have no care in the world about the fact you machined these rings from your own hands. She knows what you’ll say. “It wasn’t that hard, the nut was already made and it’s easy to cut.” 

And the smile on your face when you hand one to her and slide it on her finger is one she wants burned into her memory. She’d take ten thousand ACL tears if it meant she could watch you make these rings over and over again, and place it on her finger with such gentleness and devotion. 

But she doesn’t have to.

“This is the simplest possible ring I could have made, but I just wanted to make sure I still knew how. I have plans, big ones, with future rings.”

“Thank you. For everything.”

“Don’t mention it, Tashi. It wasn’t that hard, the nut was already made and it’s easy to cut.” 

“Shut up. Seriously. Thank you.”

Tashi chuckles softly. So predictable, she knew you’d respond like that, and you know she knew too. You laugh too and take the time to oil your machine like it’s your baby, and she stands there, inspecting the ring that now sits on her finger. She thinks back to the nut, how you showed it to her, and understands why you were so happy. 

She thinks about the implications of one nut being carved into two rings, two halves of a whole, just like you are with her. She runs her finger over the small grooves the lathe made, running her fingernails over them. Grooves filled with love, with care, with promise. Sentiments that match the ring on your own hand. She slides it up and down her finger, and it feels like you’re peppering kisses in place of the ring. 

She feels herself tear up, and as she sees your feet turn to face her, she looks up at you, swallowing hard. She sees your small smile, your face softening as you see her swallow hard, and she swallows your air in a kiss as you open your mouth to say something. 

It’s soft and gentle and everything she needs, and just the touching of your lips on hers speaks more than she ever could with words. She soaks in the smell of you, feels the slick sweat on your skin, the slimy grease on your fingers. She feels your own ring resting on her waist, and a sensation that can only be described by burning. 

When she pulls away, something clicks, and she knows exactly how to write her essay. As Tashi looks at your sheepish lopsided smile that makes her want to kiss you again all over, chest heaving as you try to catch your breath, she realizes you rebirthed her into her own person. 

As you both gather your things, leaving the shop hand in hand, your rings brushing against each other’s, Tashi finally understands why you love these machines so much. Why you throw yourself into your projects whenever you have to use them, so much passion in everything you do. She’ll have to get you to teach her about them one day, even if it’s just an excuse to listen to you talk for hours. 

Maybe she will be able to do something other than just hit a ball with a racket.

Tashi Duncan doesn’t remember when she started falling in love with the smell of grease. Sometime after first semester started and she sat beside someone who would, in her opinion, be much better suited for modeling, especially with that face, than in this dingy chemistry lecture–

“What program are you in?” 

“Oh, I’m taking this as an elective.”

“You’re crazy.” 

“You?”

“Mechanical engineering.”

“You’re crazy.” 

–but now she can’t imagine going a day without finding it all over her. Her clothes, her skin, in her hair and in her lungs. It’s become synonymous with you. She swears she’s ingesting and inhaling toxins from it, and no matter how many times she tells you, it just gets a laugh. She laughs too. 

And you two laugh now. You laugh because she complains, but Tashi laughs because she’d spray that oil down her throat and die happy because you were a part of her.