Chapter Text
You close your eyes and fold your hands. You haven’t prayed even once without Annie chiding you during services, and you aren’t about to start without her. There’s a gurgling in your stomach, not painful but definitely nauseating. If you were to stand up from the wooden bench on the promenade you’re sitting at, you’d probably get dizzy. Nothing’s medically wrong with you, and it isn’t full-out anxiety like you live in constant fear of. Everything just feels like…
...a bad idea? Not really a bad idea. Just like… you don’t think you’ll get what you want. You just can’t imagine that it will happen. The more that the years have gone by, the more they have revealed a mystery that you can’t imagine one nice day solving.
You landed back in town six months ago, and in the wave of Everything Else You Had To Do, giddy moments where you realized you were in the same town as Nils again kept sneaking up on you, nostalgic memories of your childhood racing in before fading away. Then you were swamped for six months as you adjusted to life back in Johannsen's capital, Astrid Fjords. Well, that’s what you’ll say. You wouldn’t be lying, but you wouldn’t be telling the whole truth. The whole truth might be in how you keep thinking don't mess this up, don't mess it up, did I already mess it up?
You keep your eyes closed, though your mind’s eye can still see the promenade, see how the ocean arches into the cove of the shore, the shore that turns towards the west on one side and the north on the other, see how the sand is consumed by westward rocks too steep for you to have a prayer of climbing. The beach is too chilly to be a beach, but so many of them are around here, and you just have to get used to that.
Where you’re at, the promenade is decked by tourist traps and pseudo-quaint white wooden buildings that look like Pier One decorations and block off access to the ocean. It blocks off the hustle and bustle of the city that doesn’t pretend to be a quirky shanty like this beach does opposite it.
Your phone vibrates. You know who it is. He texts you at the same rate as he always has, but it feels like more now that you’re nervous. You can’t respond easily without feeling regretful and disappointed about so many things, but you still love him like you do everyone from Woodmorrow. You can’t bring yourself to shut off communication with him, even if it does hurt a little every time. Even though you don’t know.
You just can’t right now.
So you sit, hands clasped, eyes closed until you finally hear her voice.
“Shit, you left town for six years and came back all religious?”
You giggle, opening your eyes. You could sort of hear her footsteps as she marched on up in her favorite tennis shoes that you remember after all these years, but you probably would have reacted to every set of steps you heard that way.
You turn to the direction where the voice came from and see Nils, sloppy brown hair down to her shoulders, a giant basil green cargo coat, a baggy pair of jeans, and a big smile that reaches her eyes. She waits for you to hug her, and you don’t waste a second. You’re a little formal and distant at first until she says “Naw” and you lean in with force, face burrowed into her neck, giggling into her tan skin a little. It lasts for a long time, and she says “It’s so frickin’ nice to see you, Karo!” She sounds like she means it, too.
You feel all the blood rush into your chest in a way you haven’t for six years. “Nils…” Your arms wrap around her now, despite the big physical difference- her being six feet two and you barely making five feet. It feels weird not to grab hold of her shoulder blades for a comforting hug. A little wrong, but that’s how time works, you’ve found.
Eventually, you both step apart. Nils looks at you with a crooked grin, roughly checking your shoulder. “Look at you! Last I saw you, you were friggin’...” She places a hand atop your hair. “About yea high.” She cackles at her own joke like someone who should really be smoking less.
You glare at her with a playful edge, hand on hip. “Shut up!”
“It’s all cool!” she says. “You can’t help being bite-size!”
You bare your teeth. “I’ll show you bite-size if you keep it up.”
She cackles again. Her jacket looks warm, but it’s like barely any substantial fabric. “I’m pretty sure if any paps caught you it’d be a scandal indeed.” Instinctively, she looks behind her, the wind tearing up her hair so badly it was easy to see why she never bothered with it.
“I doubt anyone’s there,” you tease.
She snorts. “I know that.”
“Sure, sure.” You place your hand in your pocket.
On cue, she turns back to you. “That’s the most fancy I’ve ever seen you, for the record.”
You gesture to your button-up white shirt, black slacks and platform shoes underneath. (You wore the shoes to give you a little extra height. They didn’t.) She’s probably referring to your pixie cut and gold hoop earrings as well. “Yeah, I figured.”
“Well, last I saw you in-person you were still digging holes and climbing trees,” she points out lazily. “And you’re all adult now.”
“Yeah,” you sigh.
She takes a step next to you, staring at her feet as she stands by your side. It’s easier for her to get her thoughts out this way. “So, going political, right?”
You nod sadly. “Yeah, I mean… Oskar’s doing it. Annie… did it. I guess mom and dad did it but I barely remember that. I sort of have to, you know?”
Nils looks you over with uncertainty. It feels like she stops and starts about fifty sentences but a sound never leaves her mouth. She settles on “You’ll do good for yourself, you know?” She says it with a warm, amused grin, but it isn’t quite right. You strangely want to apologize but also don’t know why.
“Thanks,” you whisper instead.
Anyone could tell that the conversation took a somber turn, Nils’s just the one who acts on it. “Anyway, Karo!” she says, clapping suddenly. “I know you didn’t bring me down to the beach after six years for nothing. What’s going down here?”
You shrug. “I don’t really have anything planned,” you admit. “I just wanted to take some time to get out of the city.”
“Valid be,” she responds, even though she’s never been a city girl. “I just hope you’re prepared for cheap shit on not-cheap prices.”
“Trust me, Nils, kitsch sounds amazing right now.”
Nils chuckles lowly and holds her arm out, hand on her hip. “Come on then,” she says invitingly.
You link arms with her. She is still so much taller than you, but she feels safe. You had no idea how much you missed this until you had it again.
Probably what's easiest to notice about you is that you have a very giving nature. Well, you’d probably dispute that. You have a lot. You have much. You have the ability to do right by people and you’ve always liked doing that. It’s a bit compulsive. You’ve never been able to take the wealth and resources that a prominent political family had for granted. If you could help someone, you did.
It wouldn’t feel right to do otherwise. You never wanted to be a spoiled child.
It was always easy to help Nils. You never minded covering lunches and things and she stopped protesting when you asked/told her to. Your dynamic became of two friends, one of which just happened to be pretty loaded, and the other just happened to really deserve kindness as it was.
Being back with her is like you never left. Never changed? Probably not. Life changes. Still, the way she sits legs-outstretched at the booth of the worn-down seaside restaurant can really fool you. You instinctively fold your hands in the same praying motion that calmed you down earlier, keeping your elbows off the table as per the errant etiquette lessons you’ve received over the last half-year, even though it is far more convenient to.
Nils looks through the menu and announces the entrees that interest her like reading off of a phone book, interjecting with “Wow, they really want you to know they’re a seafood place, like for real.”
You giggle. Nils tends to fit in as many barbs into her sentences as possible, and she tends to voice every thought she has, so you hear a lot of them. Another way you’re fooled into thinking things haven’t changed.
“You decided?” she asks, peering over her menu she for some reason doesn’t close.
You shrug. “Not yet. Might go with the scallops.”
She flips to the scallop options on her menu with a protracted uhhhhhh . “Which one?”
“Probably the one with the, uh…” You check the menu. “Beans and spinach.”
She cracks a disbelieving laugh. Gesturing at you with a fork that keeps switching between her hands: “Okay, Karo, cut your hair and, like, dress lawful butch all you want, but I know for damn sure you didn’t suddenly start liking spinach.”
You crinkle your nose, and she laughs more. “Spinach is okay!” you defend. You’ve built up a tolerance for it over the last couple of months. No one questions you if you eat spinach. The most you get is Oskar giving you an odd look when you do like he knows but isn’t gonna say anything.
Nils sets the menu down with a profuse thwap on the table. “Okay. Let me ask you this then. What do you actually want?”
You open your mouth, then close it before your mouth gets ahead of your thoughts. It’s just Nils, you say. No one else is watching you. Still, deciding takes you too long. You know what you want. You’ve put it out of your mind something fierce when you entered, but now it’s roaring to the front. It’s just deciding whether or not to order it. To become a kid again.
You toss the menu to the table, where it nearly hits both of your water cups. Nils looks alarmed for a split second, but it’s gone before you can call her on it. “Lobster mac ‘n’ cheese,” you say with finality.
“Hell yeah, Karo.” She beams. Every time Nils looks pretty, like pretty pretty and not just idiosyncratically so, you’re caught off guard a little because you know she can’t help it. That feeling in your chest returns, but it’s better than stomach gurgles.
“Thanks,” you respond too quietly.
“I didn’t do nothing, but I’ll take it.”
“Sure, sure.” Best not to argue with her, but she knows you think she’s wrong. She raises her eyebrow with a smirk, and you giggle to yourself.
There’s something about Nils that always has felt different than your other friends. Maybe putting her on a pedestal is wrong. Samara can’t help being shy and flustered, and Helena can’t help being bitter and clingy. Imari probably can help these things, and he’s always been nice to you and basically everyone. Nils is just… easier. She gives a lot and doesn’t seem to expect a response. For the first time, you can breathe.
When you place your orders with the waitress, she orders the “uhhhh, the fuckin’ fish and chips” and adds “they’re beer-battered, right?” You kick your seat giddily, giggling while the waitress nods and takes her order with an unamused look on her face. You order the lobster mac with some confidence that you have to squeak out, but thankfully she doesn’t question why a suited-up wannabe-professional woman is ordering something so graceless, or the fact that she keeps company with a foul-mouthed sloven. The first you’d probably agree with, head bowed, but if she talked any shit about Nils you’d have her head.
When the two of you are alone again, you lean back in your booth across from Nils, hands resting at your side. Nils smiles back at you. It’s familiar. Neither of you really speak until the food comes out. She doesn’t ask about you diving deeper into politics, or about your life when in Woodmorrow, or why you left for six years and only called her up recently. You don’t ask about her stocking job, her friends that you usually see with her on social media partying up a storm, or if she can tell that you missed her.
She chews with her mouth open but thankfully waits to swallow before speaking. “So I’ve never actually had fish and chips,” she admits before licking the inside of her mouth. Picking up a fry and gesturing with it, she adds “Kinda bummed that it doesn’t come with actual chips.”
You snort, but you would have made the mistake as well. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Nils grins. “Yeah, I tend to not do that.”
That’s really the truth of the matter. It isn’t that things never changed between you two. It isn’t that you’ve never changed in ways you struggle to control but think is probably right. It’s that she hasn’t changed. She hasn’t really changed from when you were fourteen to now when you’re twenty. She might have refined herself as she approaches adulthood, but she hasn’t really changed, and it makes you strangely nostalgic.
Nothing makes you feel as nostalgic as the heat in your chest and a desire to be close to her, a desire that is a lot more alien to you now than it was then. It makes you feel like it was silly to ever be nervous, but you think ahead to what you set out to do and the gurgle in your stomach returns.