“Um,” Gunnersly says into her cellphone, slick with anxious sweat, worrying that at any second she’ll drop it for no reason at all and — and be really stuck. “Roanna, I know you’re off tonight and it’s, like, it’s late, but I’m at the yard and I’m. Having a problem with the big magnet.”
“You okay, there?” Ro says.
“Um,” Gunnersly says, aware she sounds — well, she sounds terrified, honestly. “I could use a hand, if it’s no — I don’t want to put you out, Ro, but I could use a hand.”
“I’m five minutes round the corner, you know that,” Ro says.
“Yeah, I—” am thanking whatever gods may be. “I’ll. See you soon?”
Gunnersly came out of the kind of neighbourhood that ends up as a case study in such-and-such a nineteen-syllable industrial chemical was eventually banned, except that the banning-and-history-books stage is still in the future. Her hometown starting seeing scads of kids born with their hands mutagenically whittled down to immobile single-digit hooks; her parents were not the kind to know or have truck with the social model of disability, had them lopped off her as young as the doctors would do it, started the cyberware replacement process.
The junkyard is not what her folks would want for her, but for a whole lot of reasons, Gunnersly doesn’t go back any more, stopped telling them her address three moves back, and has an elaborate email setup that forwards anything from them unseen to a trusted friend who’ll tell her if she really, really needs to know anything.
She doesn’t mind the junkyard. It’s — and this feels ironic on some level, somehow, somewhere — it’s nice to work with her hands.
Ro barks with laughter, just once, when she arrives. “Did you forget to turn the magnet off?” she says.
“No,” Gunnersly says, and it comes out shaky and like she might leak tears any second, and Roanna instantly gentles and puts a hand on the small of her back and makes a soft noise to soothe her. “I checked it and I double checked it, but it’s — you know the owner won’t spend a bent cent on the place and you know it sometimes turns itself back on—”
The big overhead crane electromagnet, for shifting heavy ferrous loads around, is parked about arm’s-length height overhead, and Gunnersly walked near it because it was off, and it snatched her off balance because of course it wasn’t; she threw up an arm to steady herself, stumbling, and the closer it got the harder the magnet grabbed it, and then she was stuck, heel of one hand jammed up overhead to the humming metal, being desperately careful how high up she raised her other hand and her phone, fighting it, to do the only thing she could think of.
“Hey,” Ro says. “Hey. It’s okay. No laughing. I’ll head up on the gantry and turn it off—” and makes as if to go.
“Ro,” Gunnersly says, quick and panic-desperate. “Ro. Ro!” and Ro sways back, moves the hand from the small of her back to wrapped around her waist from the side, frowns at her. It takes a minute, Gunnersly gulping and shaking.
“Guy across town stabbed someone a couple of months ago,” she says, pressed into her upraised arm. “Not — not the type you’d think, college student, smart, hippie-looking, you know? Eco-fash. Knifed a kid for having a visible, like, chest implant, some kind of — blood monitoring thing? None of the details made the news, there was a little more chatter on the chrome-blogger sites, the guy just — he just saw metal and he went unnatural and he — it’ll take you like half an hour to walk over there and shut it off and back and oh god don’t leave me down here, Ro.”
“I won’t,” Ro says instantly, and goes quiet in the stewing-butch way that means she’s thinking about saying something, and it might come out in a minute, or it might come out later brewed extra dark. “I didn’t — it was on the news?”
“Just that, you know, Guy Stabs Guy? For like a headline.” Gunnersly tries to bite unobtrusively at the flesh of her bicep.
“You didn’t say anything,” Ro says, quiet and slow. “You’re out here closing the yard on your own?”
“It was,” Gunnersly says, high and strained, “it was one guy. What, I’m, I get to be afraid that there’s an ecofash with a knife in every shadow, gonna carve my arms off for affronting Mother Nature?”
“Yes,” Ro says.
“Magnet’ll power down for inactivity in like, thiry, forty more minutes,” Gunnersly says, after a pause. “I’ll just. If you just wait with me. I’ll finish closing afterwards, you can go back to — aw geez I don’t even. You were probably having a nice evening.”
Ro heaves a huge sigh, slides around to Gunnersly’s front, holds her. Gunnersly whimpers against her shoulder. “I’ll wait with you,” she says. “Then we’ll close, I’ll walk you home, take your shift tomorrow.”
“No, I—”
“Yes,” Ro says, with the kind of finality that Gunnersley doesn’t argue with.
Gunnersly comes back the week after, to find the owner has had an unaccustomed mood of capital investment, replaced the antique magnet grab with one that’s probably only second hand, and not more than a decade old, and turns on and off reliably; and had all the security floodlight bulbs replaced. (That’s how Gunnersly learns they have security floods.)
“We spoke,” is all Ro will say, deliberately hamming up the laconic.
For a few Christmases running, Ro’s invited Gunnersly up to her cabin out in middle of snowy nowhere, where there’s an old maybe-once-a-root-cellar which is now the brightest, airiest, most terrifying-equipped bondage dungeon Gunnersly’s ever seen, and Ro basically rides her hard and puts her away wet for a week.
They don’t do anything any other time. They don’t really talk about it. Gunnersly’s sort of afraid to bring it up, in case, y’know, next time Ro doesn’t turn to her, late in the year, and ask “Christmas?” with a particular gleam in her eye. Not just because nobody else is gonna ask her, either, as shitty as the holiday season feels when all you’ve got is you. They’re friendly at work, but Ro’s basically friend-shaped, so....
“I’ve got some time booked off,” Ro says, Septemberish; “got some work to do on the cabin. Off in a couple weeks; might not be back before the end of the year.”
“Oh,” Gunnersly says, resigning herself to the shitty after all, and Ro tilts her head and squints at her.
“Oh, you are not thinking—” she says, and ruefully grins. “I’m just asking if you’re okay to drive yourself up to me, when it’s time, kiddo.” She pauses. “And if the answer’s no, I’ll come get you.”
“Oh, okay.” Gunnersly flushes and fiddles with her hair, like a cartoon teenager. “I can — I’ll make it up there.”
“Good,” Ro says, like it’s supposed to convey something important, and Gunnersly walks around like her chest is full of helium — a poorly-steerable novelty item that’ll end in childish tears — for a week.
So Gunnersly makes it up there for Christmas, when it feels like ages since they’ve seen each other, and tries not to spend the drive feeling like it’s Opening Presents Eve and being around Ro is what she gets to unwrap at the end of it.
“There you are, kiddo,” Ro says, meeting her at her car outside and already pushing a mug of hot chocolate into her hands, and Gunnersly’s I am in my late twenties and you are only in your early thirties, Ro, evaporates with the brush of callused fingers on the nape of her neck, and she lets her head fall onto Ro’s shoulder, exhaling tension and just living in the pool of heat in base of her belly.
“Get in there, grab a blanket, nap on the couch,” Ro says. “I’ll bring your bags in,” and Gunnersly surrenders her keys without a peep.
She naps a little, wakes to the smell of slow-simmered stew and Ro evicting a loaf from her breadmaker. Gunnersly dozes a little again, afterwards, melted against Ro’s shoulder.
“Hey,” Ro says finally. “You awake? Want to show you something.”
Gunnersly wakes up quick when Ro takes her to the stairs down, swallowing and leaning into her.
“Whoa,” she mutters, when the big warm lights flick on. “Did you put in a lighting gantry—?”
There’s a crisscross of girders across the ceiling; but no, it’s not a lighting gantry, it’s supporting one of the little trundling warehouse-ceiling grid cranelets. And that—
“Oh,” Gunnersly says, almost soundlessly.
The yard’s old magnet grab is looming above the room. It’s cleaner—
“Got the old guy to sell it me, scrap value,” Ro says, behind her shoulder, solid and warm. “Stripped out the old control circuits, fixed the fault. It’s all—” she waves a tetherless pendant in the corner of Gunnersly’s vision.
“Wow,” Gunnersly mouths, and Ro turns her a little, ducks her head, puts their foreheads together.
“You okay?” Ro says quietly, and Gunnersly nods a little, thinking about the big magnet, nestled at home amidst the St Andrew’s cross and the bench and all Ro’s — equipment. “After I saw you stuck to it at the yard, I thought — I bet you’re tiny enough I could haul you up, all four points, just by the hands and steel toecaps.”
Gunnersly shudders all over at the pleased curl of Ro’s voice, the crinkle at the corner of her eyes.
“If you don’t like it—” Ro says, a little quieter again, and Gunnersly puts a hand on her waist.
“Ro,” she says, in a strangled sort of way. “This is. This is a really big and really permanent addition and — how many girls do you even know who’d stick to a magnet?” and Ro takes a deep breath.
“Kinda…tapered off inviting anyone else in here,” she says, and Gunnersly turns all the way to her to peer up into her face.
“Since when?” Gunnersly says hoarsely.
”…Two years ago,” Ro says, and hesitantly strokes Gunnersly’s hair.
“How many girls do you know who’d even stick to a magnet, Ro?”
“Just one,” Ro whispers, a little fragile.
“Does—” Gunnersly swallowed. “Does that mean I can get more than just Christmas?”
Ro’s smile breaks like a godray through clouds.
“Oh hell yeah,” Gunnersly says, and puts her hands over her head. “Stick me up like a fridge magnet, babe, I’m ready to scream.”
