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It isn’t a candlelit dinner.
Truly, Riley isn’t sure she’d know what to do with herself if it were.
When room service arrives, Riley wheels the trolley in by herself and tips her server to make him leave quicker. She locks the door as soon as it closes behind her, then spins in place to observe her room. The night sky is growing dark outside of her closed balcony doors, the drone of the television almost completely overpowered by the sound of September rain pelting against the windows. The room does not have a dining table, nor is it large enough for a settee suite.
Riley takes one look towards the bed, freshly made that morning and now disturbed by the body sprawled across it, and sighs.
“We’re not eating spaghetti on my clean, white sheets,” she decides, and Blake drops her head back against the headboard with a groan.
For all her complaining, she joins Riley only minutes later, where she’s smuggled the serving tray down onto the floor between the bed and the balcony windows. Riley watches the dark shape of her out of her peripheral as she prepares the food for eating. Blake has no reason to be here, tonight, and past the lingering kiss that she’d greeted her with as soon as she entered the room, she’s barely even touched her.
It’s almost like she just wants to hang out, but that isn’t something the pair of them do.
The thought spooks her, but then Riley drops her fork against the metal tray and makes herself jump.
When she next catches sight of Blake, there is an amused, only vaguely confused, smirk on her lips.
“Ugh, I’m so hungry,” Riley says, just to break the moment, but it isn’t exactly a lie. “This is the first chance I’ve had to eat since breakfast. Do you want any?”
Blake scrunches her nose up and shakes her head.
“Suit yourself.”
Leaning back against the side of the bed, Riley balances her bowl in one hand against her bent knees, where the hot ceramic burns through the fabric of her black trousers. Her first bite of food is comically large, messy, almost too much to swallow, but Riley groans in relief as soon as it hits her empty stomach.
Beside her, Blake snorts and stretches her legs out in front of her, crossing them at the ankles.
She’s quiet, but when Riley looks up and catches the pair of them reflected in the glass, the balcony doors serving as a near-perfect mirror of the room, she can detect no hint if displeasure in Blake’s expression. She observes the pair of them as though they’re strangers, the way that they sit close but not touching, the relaxed slope of Blake’s shoulders and the gentle definition of muscle in her bare arms.
“You need to take better care of yourself,” Blake says, surprising her, and rolls her eyes when she notices. “Take your breaks. They’re contractually obligated not to let you starve.”
“I don’t remember that being in my contract, actually.”
“Did you even read your contract?”
Riley blinks. “I’m sure Oriana did.”
Blake only shakes her head at her, but the corner of her mouth twitches, fond.
“Oh, and what, you read yours every time, do you?”
“Obviously.” Blake shrugs and does not look like she’s joking. “The fine print’s how they get you.”
Riley arches an eyebrow, but the conversation stalls as she takes another bite—smaller, this time, though just about. The pair of them sit in companionable quiet as Riley eats. At the window, the rain picks up in volume and makes Blake sigh and close her eyes. It’s nice, Riley thinks, which is weird. It makes her nervous and she isn’t exactly sure why.
She knows how to be around Blake when they’re teasing each other, when there’s banter and thinly veiled digs. She knows how to be around Blake when she’s in her bed. But this? This is different. This is new. It’s intimate in ways that they haven’t explored together before, even being forced to share a bus for as long as they have.
It makes Riley curious.
It makes her brave.
“What’s your thing with the food here, anyway?” she asks, causing Blake to sniff and open her eyes. “Not here, here,” she gestures vaguely with her fork, “but on this entire tour. You have allergies, or something?”
Blake looks at her oddly, like she’s torn between answering, and then shakes her head.
“Not exactly. It’s just… nasty.” She scrunches her nose again, side-eyeing Riley’s spaghetti. “I had a bad experience with buffet food on a shoot, way back. It’s kinda put me off caterers for life.”
Riley hums and continues eating. She does not point out that her current dish came direct from the hotel kitchen. As much as she enjoys riling Blake up, she recognises this for what it is: a rare opportunity to speak with her honestly. A chance to peel back the layers of Blake Winter and learn something new.
“Do you cook?”
That same expression from earlier clouds Blake’s face, only briefly.
“I can.” She juts her chin, defensive, then deflates. “Don’t get much of a chance to, these days.”
Riley nods her head, picturing it, and loses the next ten seconds of her life to the mental image. It means she misses the way that Blake watches her, intrigued.
“Do you?”
The question bursts Riley’s thought bubble. She turns to Blake and discovers that she’s claimed her full attention.
“I can,” she mirrors, unable to help herself. “I do. I kind of love it, actually.”
She is halfway to taking another bite of food when Blake asks her, “Why?”
There is a delicate frown between her brows, like she might be upset with herself for asking, or she’s just invested in the answer. Riley can’t tell. It sends a pleasant little buzz through her, causing her heartrate to spike, and she finishes her forkful to give herself a chance to gather her thoughts.
“It wasn’t really a thing in my house, growing up,” Riley answers, and expects the conversation will die there.
Instead, the frown on Blake’s face intensifies.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Riley scoffs, then looks down into her bowl, “the whole home-cooked-meals thing, it kind of skipped my family. My parents were rarely home when I was a kid. They worked a lot, worked hard, and their schedules were kind of all over the place. I’d go over to friends’ houses, sometimes, and find it so weird when their parents made us sit around a table and only let us leave when we were dismissed.”
She tries to make a joke out of it, but when she catches the expression on Blake’s face, the laughter dies in her throat.
Riley clears it and drops her gaze back into her spaghetti.
“They made sure I ate, obviously, but it was a lot of TV dinners. Frozen ready meals, you know.”
“Mm,” Blake says, and Riley turns to her, feeling defensive.
“I spent a lot of time at friends’ houses,” she says, like it’s okay, but a lump forms in her throat when she thinks about Seven, when she thinks about Lucy. Swallowing tightly, she abandons that train of thought completely. “Anyway. Then I got my own place.”
“And you became a regular Martha Stewart,” Blake jokes, taking pity on her, maybe, but it brings a smile to Riley’s face.
“Hardly.”
“No?”
“No.” Riley grins. “I fell right into the same habits, actually. Frozen dinners, eating out. My friends used to hate coming over to my place, they said, because my fridge had more condiments in it than food.”
Blake snorts, shaking her head, like she’s only mildly perturbed.
“But then I kind of had an epiphany about it all, I guess. I don’t know. I wanted better. So, I saved some recipes, started throwing shit together myself. It was stupid easy, actually, I should’ve started way sooner. I wasted so much money on takeout.” She laughs, because it’s easy to, now. “And then I just… fell in love with it, a bit. I mean, I’m not saying it’s anything special, but it was one of those milestones, you know? That makes you sit back and go, wow, I really am an adult now.”
She feels vaguely self-conscious when she finishes, but Blake is smiling at her.
“Yeah,” she says, thoughtfully, resting her head back against the bed. “I get that.”
Ducking her head, Riley turns her attention back to her food, and Blake lets the conversation fall away while she eats. She turns to face the rain, again, and Riley breathes a little easier for it. She feels raw and exposed in a way that she just hasn’t around Blake, before, and wonders if she’s revealed too much. Her anxiety sits with her, spoiling her meal, until Blake speaks up.
“My mom taught me how to cook.”
It comes out of her so suddenly, unprompted, that for a second Riley only stares.
“Used to make me help out, when I was a kid, said it’d keep me out of trouble.” She smirks at the idea, or perhaps her contrary lifestyle, now. “I never really appreciated it until I got older.”
“Isn’t that always the case?”
Blake hums in agreement, but she’s smiling.
“Does this mean you have a wealth of generational family recipes stored deep in the recesses of your mind?” Riley asks her dramatically, which makes Blake laugh.
“Fuck, no. I wish!” Her expression turns serious, a little haunted. “She’s so protective over them.”
Riley can’t help it, she laughs—not quietly. It draws Blake’s ire, at first, but then it makes her grin.
“Shut up,” she tells her, nudging her leg with her fist. “Eat your shitty hotel dinner.”
Riley picks at it with her fork. “I’m kind of full. Good thing I didn’t get the cake, too, huh?”
“Waster,” Blake sighs, shaking her head. “Pass it here.”
Riley hands the bowl over and cannot help the little thrill she gets when Blake tucks into it, using her fork. She curls her hands around her belly and stretches her legs out limp towards the balcony doors. Despite her complaints, Blake cleans the dish, and shrugs at Riley’s pointed gaze.
“I hate to see food go to waste.”
“Mhm,” Riley deadpans. “It wasn’t so shitty after all, was it?”
“Eh, I could make you better.”
Riley bites her lip to keep the stupid grin from overtaking her face at the idea.
The dish is set aside on its serving tray, just out of the way of them. Riley leaves briefly to use the bathroom, but on her return, she finds that Blake has not moved from her position down the side of the bed. She is staring contemplatively at the balcony doors, and does not stir as Riley makes her way towards the bedside lamps lighting the room, only to switch them off. Without their yellow glow, the hotel room turns dark, lit only by the television screen that neither are paying much attention.
Riley returns to her spot by Blake’s side, shuffling close so that their shoulders are touching, but keeps her hands to herself.
Without the lamplight, the panes of glass give up their reflection and the waterlogged city skyscrapers become fully visible for them to see. Blurred by heavy rain, their lights look like stars against the night sky. By Riley’s side, Blake releases a breath so deep that it’s almost a sigh, and seeks out her hand. It’s so casually done that, for a moment, Riley simply stares at their intertwined fingers in surprise, before she relaxes.
The night feels long ahead of them, the competition more so, and whenever Riley tries to imagine where this budding relationship might lead once all of this is over, she draws blanks. But Blake’s hand in hers is solid, is present and real, and it makes Riley think of that future which she cannot picture.
And it’s warm. It’s bright.