Archive of Our Own ^beta

晴れてゆく空も荒れてゆく空も

Whether the sky is clearing or getting stormy

僕らは愛でてゆく

We're gonna cherish them all

(ああ)

何もないけれど全て差し出すよ

Though I have nothing, I’ll give you everything

手を放す、軽くなる、満ちてゆく

Just letting go, feeling lighter, and becoming filled

Now Playing: Michi Teyu ku (Overflowing) - Fuji Kaze

---

The bell above the door chimed, a sound so anachronistic it might as well have been a gramophone, and Emi didn't look up from the negatives she was examining. 

The light table cast her face in cold white, making the dark circles under her eyes look like they'd been painted there with intention.

"We close in twenty minutes," she said, not unkindly, but with the particular exhaustion of someone who'd said the same thing every day for the past three years.

"I know. I'm sorry. I just- " The voice stopped. Started again. "The sign outside says you develop film?"

"That's what the sign says." Emi finally glanced up, and the words she'd been about to say next dissolved somewhere between her brain and her mouth.

The woman in the doorway was backlit by the mall's harsh fluorescent lights, which should have been unflattering but somehow wasn't. 

Emi's photographer's eye registered the technical details automatically; the way the light caught in strands of dark hair escaping from a messy bun, the softness of her oversized vintage band t-shirt, hands clutching a slightly worn-out shoebox with a careful tension that suggested fragility. 

There was something about her composition, the way she occupied the space, that made Emi think of those old portrait photographers who could make anyone look like they had a story worth telling.

This subject, she could tell, was an unforgettable classic. 

She blinked, refocused. 

Emi, you are a professional, stop gawking. 

Be professional.

"Film film?" the woman asked, taking a tentative step forward. "Not just, like, a euphemism for digital scans?"

Despite herself, Emi smiled warmly. "Film film. Chemical baths. The red light special. The whole obsolete package."

The woman's shoulders dropped with visible relief, loosening and her face lighting up, the particular vulnerability of someone who'd been bracing for disappointment. 

She crossed the shop in five quick steps; it wasn't a large shop, and set the shoebox on the counter between them with the reverence usually reserved for religious artefacts.

"My grandmother died three months ago," she said, and Emi's customer service smile froze on her face. "Sorry, that's- I don't know why I led with that. I'm Bonnie." She laughed, a nervous sound that somehow made her more human, more real. "Still getting used to introducing myself without her, I guess."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Emi said, meaning it. She'd gotten good at meaning condolences. 

The mall was dying too, slowly, and every closed storefront felt like a small death. 

"Thanks. I, um." Bonnie lifted the shoebox lid. Inside were dozens of film canisters, all carefully labelled in cursive handwriting. "She had these. Some go back to the seventies, I think. Maybe earlier. I've been putting off developing them because I don't know what's on them, and once I do, that's it. You know?"

Emi did know. She knew intimately. Every photograph was a small ending, the moment you stopped seeing and started remembering instead.

"Schrödinger's memories," Emi said softly.

"Exactly." Bonnie's eyes met hers, brown, Emi catalogued automatically, the kind of brown that went amber in direct sunlight, and their gazes held. "Is that stupid?"

"No." Emi reached for the box, then stopped, hovering. "May I?"

At Bonnie's nod, she lifted out one of the canisters. Kodak Gold 200, the label read in faded pen. Summer 1984. Beach house.

Emi was a professional, but for the first time, she did not want to disappoint, or worse, dismiss a hopeful client. 

"Bonnie, I have to admit, these are old," Emi said, turning them carefully in her hands. "Really old. Some of them might not develop at all. Color film degrades, especially if it wasn't stored properly."

"I know. I've been researching." Bonnie bit her lip. "The box was in her closet. It is cool and dark… So I'm hoping- I mean, I know it's a long shot."

"I'll do my best." Emi set the canister down with care. "It'll take time. Real amount of time. Not one-hour photo time. Maybe a week? I'll need to test the chemicals, adjust for the age- "

"However long it takes." Bonnie's intensity is startling. "I'm not in a hurry. I've waited three months. I can wait longer."

The thing was, Emi believed her. In an age of instant gratification, of digital immediacy, here was someone willing to wait. It felt like meeting someone who spoke a dying language - the language of patience, of deferred revelation, of trust in process.

"Okay," Emi said, pen clicking. "Let's start with the paperwork. I need your contact details. Payment is half-upfront, and the rest after it’s done."

---

Bonnie came back two days later, not for pickup - that was far too soon - but with a Polaroid camera dangling from her wrist.

"I couldn't help myself," she said sheepishly, setting a cup on the counter. "Matcha Coconut latte. I'm assuming. You look like someone who has opinions about milk alternatives."

Emi did, in fact, have opinions about milk alternatives, which was both embarrassing and somehow completely fair. She accepted the matcha with a raised eyebrow.

Ordinary customers rarely do this, but Bonnie isn’t a an ordinary customer.  

"The camera?" she prompted.

"Right. So I was thinking about what you said, about waiting, about patience, and I realized I've been approaching this all wrong." Bonnie held up the Polaroid - a vintage OneStep, Emi noted, not one of the new Impossible Project models. "My grandmother's photos are her story. But maybe while I'm waiting for hers to develop, I should start telling mine."

She raised the camera, framed Emi in the viewfinder.

"Wait- " Emi started, but the shutter had already clicked, the flash already fired. The camera whirred, spitting out the square of film that would slowly reveal itself over the next ten minutes.

"Sorry," Bonnie said, not sounding sorry at all. She shook the photo gently- a habit that actually damaged the development, but Emi didn't correct her. "I should have asked. But you have this face."

"I do have a face," Emi confirmed dryly. "It's pretty standard equipment for all humans on this earth."

"No, silly,” Bonnie chuckles, “I mean, you have this look. Like you're always observing but never participating. I wanted to catch you off guard." Bonnie set the developing photo face-down on the counter between them, the white backing a small mystery. 

Trying to be nonchalant, she continues cooly, "You can throw it away if you want. Or keep it. Or whatever. I'm not trying to be weird."

"You're definitely trying to be weird," Emi said, but there was no heat in it. She found herself staring at the back of the Polaroid, waiting. 

Wanting to flip it over, to see what Bonnie had seen. "Why a Polaroid?"

"Same reason as film, I guess." Bonnie leaned against the counter, and Emi caught the scent of her perfume- something woody, cedar maybe. "You can't edit it. Can't delete it. Can't take fifty versions until you get the perfect one. You get one shot, and then you wait to see what you've caught. It feels honest."

"Honesty through limitation," Emi murmured. It was something her photography professor had said, years ago, before Emi had dropped out to take over her father's shop. Before the shop became a mausoleum of the dying art form.

"Exactly." Bonnie smiled, and it transformed her face in a way that made Emi's fingers itch for her own camera. "I thought you'd get it."

The thing was, Emi did get it. 

She got it, the way she got the weight of a perfectly balanced camera, the acrid smell of fixer, the particular quality of light at golden hour. 

She got it in her bones, in the place where she kept all her losses and loves carefully preserved, perfectly exposed, never fading.

"It's been ten minutes," Bonnie said softly.

Emi realized she'd been staring at the back of the Polaroid the entire time, watching the timer on her phone count down without really seeing it. Her hand moved before her brain engaged, flipping the photo over.

There she was: Emi at her counter, caught in the cold light of the light table, looking up with something unguarded in her expression. 

Something like hope.

"Oh," Emi said.

"Yeah," Bonnie agreed. "Oh."

---

Emi kept the Polaroid.

She told herself it was professional courtesy - documentation of a client interaction, maybe, or simply too much trouble to throw away. But that night, alone in her apartment above the shop, she propped it against the lamp on her nightstand and stared at it until her vision blurred.

The woman in the photo looked younger than Emi felt. 

Softer. 

The kind of person who still believed in things. When hope wasn’t something to be scoffed at. 

She turned off the light and tried not to think about the way Bonnie had smiled when she'd left, promising to come back. 

People always promised to come back. 

And yet, the mall was full of empty storefronts that had once held promises.

---

Day four, and Emi was in the darkroom - the actual darkroom, not the converted bathroom most people imagined when she said the words. 

Her father had built it properly: light-locked door, running water, ventilation that actually worked. The red safelight above, casting everything in shades of blood and shadow.

She was on the third canister from Bonnie's grandmother's collection, and so far, two had been complete losses. 

Forty-year-old film was a gamble at best. The emulsion degraded, colors shifted, and sometimes the whole roll came out blank as a prayer that went unanswered.

But this one - this one was giving her something.

Emi watched the image emerge in the developer tray, that particular magic that never got old, no matter how many times she witnessed it. 

A woman, young, laughing at the camera. Behind her, the ocean. The colors were shifted, that particular cyan-magenta color cast that happened with aged film, but the expression was perfect. 

Unguarded. The way people used to look at cameras before they learned to perform for them.

The woman had Bonnie's smile. It was breathtaking.

Emi's chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the chemical fumes. She moved the print to the stop bath, then the fixer, working with the muscle memory of ten thousand prints before this one. 

When it was done, she hung it to dry and stared at it, this ghost of a woman who'd left behind a granddaughter and a shoebox full of undeveloped memories.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. She'd left it outside the wet area, a habit born from one too many close calls. Tapping the screen with her elbow, she sees a series of texts from an unknown number. 

Thankfully, she had message preview on: 

Hi, this is Bonnie (shoebox of film). 

I may have googled your shop to get this number. 

Is that creepy? I'm outside. Saw your lights on. 

Too late to stop by?

She checked her watch - 7 pm, well past closing. Yet, for the first time in a long while, Emi felt something flutter beneath her ribs and a small smile tugging at her lips.

After quickly washing her hands at the darkroom sink and scrubbing away the yellow tint of fixer, Emi climbed the stairs and found Bonnie pressed against the shop window, peering in with her hands cupped around her eyes like a kid at a toy store, phone still clutched in her other hand.

Adorable.

"We're closed," Emi said as she unlocked the door, but she was already stepping aside to let Bonnie in.

"I know. I saw the lights on in back and thought- " Bonnie stopped, really looking at Emi for the first time. "Wait, have you been in there all day?"

Emi glanced down at herself: chemical-stained t-shirt, hands still slightly yellow from the fixer despite washing them twice. Her hair, which she'd put up that morning, had mostly given up and was hanging in dark tangles around her face.

"I lose track of time in the darkroom," she admitted. "Didn’t realise what time it was until I saw your text."

"Time for you to eat something?" Bonnie held up a paper bag that smelled like heaven. "I brought Thai food. I was going to leave it with a note, but since you're clearly alive in there..."

"You brought me food."

"I brought us food," Bonnie corrected. "If you want company. If not, I can just- "

"Stay." The word came out too quickly, too eager. Emi cleared her throat. "I mean, yes. Thank you. That's- unexpected. Nice. Unexpectedly nice."

Emi could swear that Bonnie's gummy smile would have powered the whole dying mall. "Should I be worried that you're losing the ability to form complete sentences? Is there a fume situation I should know about in that room?"

"The ventilation is excellent," Emi said with as much dignity as she could muster. "My father was paranoid about proper air circulation."

"Was?"

"Died six years ago. Left me the shop." Emi said it matter-of-factly, the way she'd learned to say it. Facts were easier than feelings. 

"Heart attack. Very sudden. Very- " She stopped herself. 

Why was she telling Bonnie this? 

"Sorry. You didn't ask for my tragic backstory."

"I don't mind tragic backstories." Bonnie was already unpacking containers, spreading them across Emi's work counter like an offering. "My grandmother raised me after my parents decided they were too young for kids. She taught me how to make pie crust and how to change a tire, and how to tell when someone was lying to you. Then she taught me how to let go." 

Her hands stilled over the pad thai. "So yeah. Tragic backstories. I get it, hey neighbour."

They ate in comfortable silence, sitting on Emi's work stools with their knees almost touching. 

The shop around them was quiet in the way only abandoned malls could be; not peaceful exactly, but expectant. Waiting.

"Oh, by the way, I got one," Emi said finally, wiping her mouth with a napkin. "One of your grandmother's photos. It developed."

Bonnie's fork froze halfway to her mouth. "Really?"

"Want to see?"

The darkroom felt different with another person in it. Smaller. The red light turned Bonnie's skin to copper, her eyes to dark pools. Emi was suddenly, acutely aware of how intimate this was- this space where she spent hours alone, now shared.

The print was still hanging, still slightly damp. Emi unclipped it and held it carefully by the edges for her.

Bonnie made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. Her hand came up to her mouth.

"That's her," she whispered. "That's- God, she must have been my age. Maybe younger."

"She was beautiful."

"She is beautiful. Was. Is?" Bonnie looked at Emi helplessly. "What tense do you use for someone in a photograph?"

"Present," Emi said softly. "In a photograph, it's always present. That's the whole point. The moment is preserved. Ongoing."

Bonnie reached out, not quite touching the print, her fingers hovering a careful inch away. "Can I- ?"

"Not yet. It needs to dry completely." Emi gestured to the print hanging above them. "This one's yours to keep. And once I finish developing the whole roll, I can make you prints of any others you want. On archival paper- they'll last a hundred years, maybe more, if you store them right."

"A hundred years," Bonnie repeated. "For a photo that's already forty years old."

"Time is weird in photographs," Emi said. She was very aware that they were standing close enough that she could count Bonnie's eyelashes in the red light. 

That Bonnie smelled like cedar and basil, a whiff of pad thai, and something underneath that was probably just her. "It collapses. Extends. Your grandmother is twenty-something and dead at the same time. You're here and not here. Everything happens at once."

"Are you always this philosophical about your job?"

Emi smiled. "Only with clients who bring me Thai food and take Polaroids without asking."

Bonnie laughed, and the sound filled the small space like light. "Speaking of which." She pulled a small instant camera from her bag (because of course she'd brought it) and held it up. "Can I document this? The darkroom. You. The photo of my grandmother. All of it."

"Why?"

"Because- " Bonnie lowered the camera, considering. "Because I'm trying to understand something. About preservation. About what we keep and what we lose and how we choose. And I think maybe you understand it too. The same way."

In her other hand was a little flashlight keychain. "I know I can’t use flash in here. But just a quick pulse of light, away from your trays, would that be okay? I want to remember this. The darkroom. You. Her."

Emi should say no. Should maintain professional boundaries. 

Should not let this woman with her grandmother's smile and her philosophical questions about time get any closer to the carefully constructed walls Emi had built around herself.

"Okay," but her walls were falling, and the words spilled easily. "But I get to take one of you, too."

"Deal."

Bonnie switched off the flashlight until the moment she was ready. Emi posed with the print, and for a heartbeat, the tiny beam clicked on, just enough for the camera to capture her. 

Emi did the same with Bonnie’s camera, catching Bonnie looking from the photo of her grandmother back to Emi, suspended between past and present.

They laid both prints on the counter, face down, the chemicals inside already working.

"Ten minutes," Bonnie said.

"Ten minutes," Emi agreed.

They stood in the red-dark silence, shoulders touching now, waiting for the images to emerge. 

Outside, the mall's evening rituals began around them, security guards' footsteps echoing through empty corridors, metal shutters rolling down over darkened storefronts, the food court settling into silence. 

Life was carrying on as it always did, indifferent and constant. 

The world continuing its slow, inevitable march toward tomorrow.

Here, though, time was doing something else. Stretching. Holding its breath. And somehow, in the darkroom's chemical darkness, light was still finding them.”

"Tell me about your father," Bonnie said softly. "About the shop. Why did you stay?"

And maybe it was the red light, or the lateness of the hour, or the way Bonnie had said tragic backstories like they were something to be shared rather than buried, but Emi found herself talking.

"He bought this place in the eighties, when malls were everything. When film was king. He used to say that photographs were the only honest way to stop time, that everything else was just negotiating with entropy." 

She smiled faintly, remembering. “He was dramatic. Loved big gestures. He taught me to see light.”

Emi straightened, and with exaggerated flair, in a perfect imitation of him, boomed: “To wait for the right moment! To trust the process even when you couldn’t see the results yet!”

Bonnie laughed, soft and bright. “Sounds like he was a good teacher.”

"The best. After he died, everyone said I should sell. That film was dead, and I was too young to be stuck in a dying mall with a dying art form. That I should cut my losses." Emi's voice went soft. 

"But this is all I have left of him. The darkroom he built. The equipment he chose. The way the light table hums, this specific pitch that I hear in my sleep. If I leave, if I close - he's gone. Really gone. Not just present tense in photographs but gone-gone."

In the quiet that followed, Bonnie’s hand found Emi’s in the dark. Not rushed. Not hesitant. Just inevitable. “He’s not gone if you remember him,” Bonnie whispered.

"But what if I forget? What if the details fade, the way old film fades? What if someday I can't remember the exact way he laughed, or how his hands looked when he loaded a camera, or- " Emi broke off, breath trembling. 

"Sorry. This is too much. You came here for Thai food and your grandmother's photos, not my existential crisis about memory and loss."

"Maybe I came here for both," Bonnie said. Her thumb was tracing small circles on Emi's palm, probably unconscious, definitely driving Emi slightly insane. “Maybe that’s what this is. Both of us, trying not to let go of the people who made us.”

The timer on Emi’s phone buzzed - time returning with a gentle vibration.

They turned over the Polaroids together.

In Bonnie’s photo: Emi was red-lit and serious, holding the past in her hands, like someone who believed in second chances.

In Emi’s photo: Bonnie looked like discovery, like someone on the verge of understanding something important about love and loss and herself.

“We look a little sad,” Bonnie murmured.

“We look honest,” Emi corrected.

Bonnie turned to her, and in the red light glow, her face ancient and new at once, every version of herself - child and adult, grief and hope - that had ever existed and ever would exist, collapsed into the now. 

"Can I kiss you?" she asked.

Barely louder than a breath.

Emi swears she had never seen a more beautiful person. 

"Or is that- too much? Too fast? Too weird given that you're developing my dead grandmother's photos?"

A startled laugh escaped Emi. “It’s definitely weird.”

“But?” Bonnie breathed.

Emi’s heart felt like a shutter opening. "But I've been thinking about it since you took that first Polaroid without asking. Probably since the first smile."

"So… that's a yes?"

"That's a 'yes, but slowly,'" Emi said. "Like film. Like patience. Like- "

Bonnie didn’t interrupt - she just closed the distance before she could finish the metaphor.

Softly. Carefully.

The kind of kiss that asked permission with every millimeter.

The kind of kiss that understood about proper development times, about not rushing the process, about trusting that good things took time to reveal themselves fully.

Their lips brushed once - barely there, like a proof strip to test the exposure, and Emi’s breath caught. 

They paused in the moment. Tried again.

Gentle. New. Bright enough to feel like discovery.

When they parted, Bonnie was smiling like she’d found a secret.

When they pulled apart, Bonnie was smiling. "Was that slow enough?"

"It was perfect," Emi said. And it was.

They stood there in the darkroom for a long time after that, not kissing again, but just existing in the red light together with their fingers intertwined, two small points of warmth in the hush of chemical air.

Beyond these walls, the city never stopped, neon signs flickering to life, traffic humming along expressways, millions of people moving through their ordinary, extraordinary lives. 

But in the darkroom, they were present tense.

Ongoing.

Preserved.

---

It became a routine without either of them explicitly deciding it would.

Bonnie would arrive around six-thirty, usually with food- sometimes Thai, sometimes pizza, once memorably with homemade sandwiches that she'd clearly stressed over because she kept apologizing for the "bread-to-filling ratio." 

They'd eat at the counter while Emi explained what she'd found in the day's batch of developed film: a birthday party from 1979, a Christmas morning with a tree that took up half the frame, a woman who might have been Bonnie's grandmother holding a baby who might have been Bonnie's mother.

Then, they'd go into the darkroom together.

Emi had stopped pretending this was purely professional somewhere around day eight. You didn't bring someone into your darkroom just to be polite. The darkroom was a sacred space, the place where magic happened if you were patient enough to wait for it. 

Letting Bonnie in felt like handing over something vital - a rib, maybe, or a piece of her carefully guarded heart.

"Tell me what you're doing," Bonnie said on day twelve, watching Emi work on a particularly damaged negative. 

They were standing close, in fact, always standing close now, the darkroom demanding proximity - though Emi suspected they would have found excuses even in a larger space.

"I'm dodging," Emi explained, holding her hand strategically between the enlarger light and the paper. "See how the bottom corner is too dark? I'm blocking light from hitting that part of the paper, letting the rest expose normally. It's like - editing with your hands. Giving more attention to the parts that need it."

"That's beautiful," Bonnie said softly. "The idea that you can save something by just paying attention to it differently."

Emi glanced at her. In the red light, Bonnie's face was all shadows and angles, a study in contrasts.

"Is that what you're doing? With your grandmother's photos? Saving her by paying attention?"

"Maybe. Or maybe I'm saving myself." Bonnie leaned against the counter, their shoulders touching. 

This too had become routine - the casual contact, the way they gravitated toward each other like magnets, like complementary chemicals in the development process. 

"I never knew how to grieve her while she was dying. She was so present, even at the end. Telling jokes, asking about my life, and making me promise to water her plants. And then she was just - gone like that. And I had all this love with nowhere to put it."

Emi's hand stilled over the print. "So you're putting it here. Into the photos. Into the process of recovering them."

"Into you, maybe," Bonnie said, so quietly Emi almost missed it. "Is that okay? To say that out loud?"

The timer buzzed. Emi moved the paper to the developer tray, watching the image emerge- muscle memory allowing her to work while her brain processed what Bonnie had just confessed.

It was still for a moment, as Emi’s mind whirred to piece the right words together, with Bonnie’s heart teetering on a ledge.  

"You know, my father used to say that photographs are made of light and time," Emi said finally. 

"But I think they're made of attention. You can have all the light and time in the world, but if you're not paying attention - if you're not really seeing - you'll miss the moment entirely."

"And are you?" Bonnie's voice was careful. "Paying attention?"

Emi turned to face her fully, leaving the print in the developer. "I haven't been able to stop paying attention to you since you walked in with that shoebox, Bonnie."

"Oh," Bonnie breathed.

"Yeah. Oh."

They looked at each other in the red light, that particular crimson glow that turned everything into shadow and highlight, that made the world feel smaller, more intimate, like they existed in a pocket outside of time. 

The safelight cast Bonnie's face in planes of darkness and warmth, her eyes gone black and depthless, her lips the color of wine. 

Emi felt something shift in her chest, the same feeling as watching an image appear in the developer tray, the thrill of emergence, of potential becoming actual.

The air between them felt thick, charged. Emi could hear her own heartbeat, could hear Bonnie's breathing, quick and shallow, could hear the distant drip of the faucet marking time they were wasting by not closing the distance between them.

"Can I- " Bonnie started, her gaze moving from Emi’s eyes to her lips.

"Yes," Emi said, not needing to hear the end of the question.

This kiss was different from the first. 

Less careful. More certain. 

Bonnie's hands came up to cup Emi's face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones with a gentleness that made Emi's knees weak. 

Her own hands quickly found Bonnie's waist, pulling her closer, eliminating the last few inches of space between them until they were pressed together, hip to chest, sharing heat in the cool darkness.

Bonnie tasted like the mint tea she'd brought, like something sweet and sharp at once. Her lips were soft, questioning at first, then more insistent. 

Emi answered with a sigh that came from somewhere deep in her chest, a yes that didn't need words.

Contently, Bonnie's hands slid into Emi's hair, angling her head to deepen the kiss, and Emi made a sound she'd be embarrassed about later but couldn't quite regret now.

The red light painted them in shades of longing, all shadow and scarlet, the world reduced to the points where their bodies touched, where Bonnie's fingers pressed against her scalp, where their mouths moved together like they were learning a language only the two of them spoke.

When they broke apart, Bonnie pressed her forehead to Emi's, both of them breathing hard. 

In the crimson dark, Emi could see the flutter of Bonnie's pulse in her throat, could feel the tremor in the hands still cupping her face.

"I should, the print-" Emi gestured vaguely toward the tray, though she couldn't quite remember why it mattered.

"Right- Yes. The print." But neither of them moved. Bonnie's thumb traced Emi's now swollen bottom lip, and Emi had to close her eyes against the intensity of it. 

The want, the tenderness, the way being seen felt like being photographed, every detail noticed and preserved.

"It's going to be overdeveloped," Emi murmured against Bonnie's lips, not quite pulling away.

"How much does that matter?"

"On a scale of one to ten? About a three."

"Then kiss me again."

So Emi did, slower this time, savoring it. The red light washed over them like a baptism, like a promise, like the beginning of something that couldn't be rushed or developed on anyone's timeline but their own. 

Bonnie's hands moved from her face to her shoulders to her waist, mapping her carefully, and Emi let herself be mapped, let herself be seen in a way she hadn't allowed in years.

The print came out too dark, the blacks bleeding into the midtones, but Emi found she didn't care. 

Some things were worth ruining for. 

Some moments mattered more than perfect technique. 

And some images, the ones that were memorialised on their bodies rather than on paper, those were the ones that lasted longest of all.

---

On day fifteen, Bonnie brought her Polaroid camera again and a proposition.

"I want to do a project," she announced, setting up at Emi's counter now, like she owned the place. 

In a way, she did. Emi had given her the spare key three days ago, a gesture that felt significant- like a milestone in their relationship.

"A documentation. Of this. Us. The process of developing my grandmother's photos."

"An art project?" Emi asked, intrigued.

"A memory project." Bonnie pulled out a leather-bound journal, the kind with thick cream pages. 

"I want to pair each of my grandmother's recovered photos with a Polaroid from now. A then, and now sort of thing, but not about places. About feelings. About- I don't know, the way grief and joy can exist in the same moment. The way the past and present collapse into each other."

Just like how I’d like to collapse into your arms.

"Time is weird in photographs," Emi quoted back at her.

"Exactly." Bonnie's eyes lit up. "You get it. Of course, you get it."

"Show me?"

Bonnie opened the journal. On the first page, she'd mounted the photo Emi had recovered- Bonnie's grandmother on the beach, laughing. 

Opposite it, the Polaroid from the darkroom, Bonnie looking at her grandmother's image with that expression of fond longing and understanding. 

"See? Then and now. Joy and loss. Both true at the same time."

Emi moved to stand behind Bonnie, close enough that she could see the journal over her shoulder, close enough to catch the familiar woody scent and something softer beneath. 

She let herself do what she'd been wanting to for days, wrapped her arms around Bonnie's waist, rested her chin on Bonnie's shoulder, and held her while they looked at the spread together.

Bonnie went still for just a moment, then melted back against her with a soft exhale, one hand coming up to rest over Emi's arms, keeping them there.

"Bonnie, This- This is really beautiful," Emi murmured against Bonnie's shoulder, something tight unwinding in her chest.

The intimacy of the moment, holding Bonnie like this, both of them looking at the same thing, breathing in sync, felt almost more vulnerable than any kiss they'd shared.

"Yeah?" Bonnie's voice was quieter now, affected by the closeness.

Emi tightened her arms slightly, turned her head so her lips brushed the curve of Bonnie's neck, not quite a kiss, just contact, just connection.

"Yeah. You’re perfect. It's perfect. Very- what's the word? Liminal. You're documenting the space between."

"The space between then and now. Death and life. My grandmother and I." Bonnie turned in Emi's arms, the journal forgotten on the counter, and suddenly they were face to face, barely inches apart. Her hands came up to rest on Emi's shoulders. 

"You and me."

The vulnerability in Bonnie's expression, open, hoping, slightly afraid - made Emi's breath catch. She lifted one hand to cup Bonnie's face, thumb tracing her cheekbone.

"Yeah," Emi said softly, and then she had to kiss her, to press that certainty against Bonnie's mouth like a silent promise.

When they pulled apart, Bonnie was smiling. "The space between you and me," she repeated, like she was testing the words, finding them true.

"Is that what this is?" Emi asked, smiling and not pulling away. "A you and me?"

"I'd like it to be. If you would." Bonnie's fingers were tracing patterns on Emi's collarbone, light as exposure, deliberate as composition. "I know it's fast. I know we're both still figuring out our grief, albeit in different forms. I know darkrooms aren’t exactly the most romantic place to fall for someone- "

"I think it's the perfect place," Emi interrupted, thumb on Bonnie’s lips. "Everything important happens in the dark. You just have to wait for it to develop."

Bonnie laughed, and the sound was pure light. "Emi. That was so cheesy."

"It was a perfect metaphor, and you know it."

"Okay, yes, it was perfect." Bonnie kissed her again, so sweet and quick, it left Emi trailing after that ghost of a kiss. "So is that a yes? To you and me?"

"It's a yes to seeing where this goes. To being patient with the process. To- " Emi hesitated, then committed. "To paying attention. Really paying attention."

"I can work with that," Bonnie said, and pulled out her Polaroid.

The photo she took captured them at the counter, Emi's arm around Bonnie's waist, both of them smiling at the camera like they'd discovered something precious. When it developed, Bonnie wrote carefully beneath it: Day 15. The moment we decided to be deliberate.

She fans it lightly to allow the Sharpie ink to dry, and shows it to Emi. "Too precious?"

"No," Emi said, running her finger over the words. "It's honest. That's what we're doing, right? Being deliberately honest with each other?"

"Right." Bonnie breathes, closing the journal carefully. "So, honestly, what do you want from this? From me?"

Emi considered the question, giving it the weight it deserved. In the shop around them, the mall's PA system crackled with the closing announcement. 

Five minutes until security locked the doors. 

Five minutes until they'd have to leave this bubble of safety and face the real world.

She looked down at their hands, still intertwined on the counter, and ran her thumb across Bonnie's knuckle, a small, anchoring gesture.

"I want time," Emi said finally. "I want more evenings like this. I want to finish recovering your grandmother's photos with you. I want to learn what you look like in different kinds of light - not just the darkroom red, but dawn and noon and the blue hour."

Bonnie shifted closer, and Emi felt the warmth of her hip pressing against her own where they stood at the counter. The contact steadied something in her chest.

"I want to figure out if this feeling is just because we're both grieving and lonely, or if it's something that could last." She lifted her eyes from their joined hands to meet Bonnie's gaze. 

"Something worth preserving."

"That's a good list," Bonnie said, her voice thick. Her free hand came up to rest on Emi's waist, fingers curling slightly into the fabric of her shirt, not pulling, just holding. Grounding them both. "Can I add to it?"

"Please." Emi's hand moved from Bonnie's knuckles to her wrist, feeling the flutter of her pulse there.

"I want you to teach me to develop film. Really develop it, not just watch you do it." Bonnie's thumb traced small circles against Emi's hip, an unconscious rhythm that matched her words. 

"I want to take photos of you that aren't just Polaroids. Real photos, medium format maybe, the kind that require patience.” 

“I want to kiss you in places that aren't your shop."

Bonnie pauses, and Emi watches her bite her lip, considering. She reaches up without thinking, gently tugged that lip free with her thumb, then let her hand settle at the curve of Bonnie's neck, feeling the warmth there.

"I want- " Bonnie leaned slightly into the touch, her eyes closing briefly before opening again. "I want to be someone who helps you remember your father, not just someone who asks you to develop her grandmother's memories. If you would allow me to."

"Bonnie- " Emi's other hand moved to join the first, both palms cupping Bonnie's face now, thumbs stroking her cheekbones.

"I mean it. You've given me so much. This space. Your time. Your attention." Bonnie's hands moved from Emi's waist to her shoulders, then slid down her arms until they were holding each other's forearms, anchored to each other in multiple points of contact. "I want to give you something back."

Emi's eyes were burning. She let her forehead drop to rest against Bonnie's, their noses nearly touching, breathing the same air. "You already do. Every time you show up. Every time you understand without me having to explain. Every time you look at me like- like I'm worth the wait."

"You are." Bonnie's grip on her forearms tightened, fierce and certain. One hand slid up to the back of Emi's neck, fingers threading into her hair. "You're worth all the patience in the world."

The PA system crackled again. Final warning. The mall was closing.

Emi pressed a soft kiss to Bonnie's forehead, then her temple, then the corner of her mouth, small reassurances, promises made with touch rather than words. 

"Come on," she said finally, lacing their fingers together again and giving a gentle tug toward the door. "Let's go upstairs. To my apartment. I'll make you terrible instant coffee, and we can talk more. Or not talk. Whatever you want."

"I want whatever you want," Bonnie chuckles, but she was already gathering her things, already following Emi toward the door.

They walked through the dying mall hand in hand, past the empty storefronts and flickering lights. The security guard - Sing, who'd worked there as long as Emi had owned the shop- nodded at them with a handsome knowing smile.

"Night, Emi. Night, Emi's friend."

"Night, Sing."

Upstairs, in Emi's small apartment that smelled like fixer and vanilla, they sat on the couch with mugs of the promised terrible coffee. Bonnie's head found Emi's shoulder, and Emi's arm wrapped around Bonnie's waist.

"Tell me about him," Bonnie said quietly. "Your father. More than just the shop. What was he like?"

So Emi told her. 

About how her father used to hum while he worked, always the same song- "Souvenir" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. 

About how he'd take Emi to shoot photos every Sunday, calling it church, saying that worship was just paying attention to the divine in the ordinary. 

About how he'd had terrible, almost unreadable handwriting but kept meticulous notes on every photo he took, exposure and aperture, and the quality of light documented like prayers.

"He sounds wonderful," Bonnie said.

"He was. He would have liked you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He appreciated people who understood patience. About process." Emi pressed a kiss to Bonnie's temple. "About the way some things can't be rushed."

They sat in comfortable silence, watching the lights of the parking lot flicker through the window. Below them, the mall settled into its nightly quiet. Everything still. Everything waiting.

"Can I stay?" Bonnie asked eventually. 

Emi looked at her, surprised, and Bonnie blushed furiously, realising what it could have insinuated. 

Eyes wide with frantic hands, she corrected, "Not to- I mean, just to sleep. To be here. With you."

"I'd really like that," Emi chuckled and said, enamoured.

That night, Bonnie stayed.

They fell asleep on the couch, wrapped around each other like parentheses, like the borders of a photograph holding something precious in frame. 

And if Emi woke in the night to find Bonnie watching her with soft eyes, if she pulled her closer and kissed her slow and sweet in the dark, well, some moments didn't need to be photographed to be preserved.

Some moments lived in the body's memory, in the way skin remembered skin, in the patient accumulation of small intimacies that built into something larger. 

Something worth keeping.

Something like love, if you gave it time to develop.

---

Morning came soft through the apartment windows, turning everything golden. Emi woke to find Bonnie still asleep against her shoulder, one hand curled loosely in Emi's shirt like an anchor. 

In sleep, Bonnie's face was unguarded in a way it never quite was during the day, no performance, no careful composition, just the vulnerable truth of her.

Emi's photographer's eye catalogued the details automatically: the way Bonnie's eyelashes cast tiny shadows on her cheeks, the gentle curve of her nose, the exact angle of morning light that made her honey-toned skin glow warm. 

She wished for her camera, then was glad she didn't have it. 

Some moments were better experienced than documented.

Bonnie stirred, made a slight sound of protest at the light, then opened her eyes. 

For a moment, she looked confused before realising her surroundings as Emi came into focus. 

Her smile came easy, slow and real.

"Hi," she said, voice rough with sleep.

"Hi yourself."

"Did we really sleep on your couch all night?"

"We really did. My neck is filing a formal complaint."

Bonnie laughed and sat up, stretching. Her shirt - Emi's shirt, borrowed last night when coffee had been spilt, rode up slightly, revealing a strip of stomach. 

Emi felt her face get hot and looked away, giving her privacy, then felt Bonnie's hand on her chin, gently turning her face back.

"You can look," Bonnie said softly but teasingly. "I want you to look."

So Emi did. Looked at Bonnie in the morning light, rumpled and real, looking back at her with something like wonder.

Emi reached out, pushing a strand of hair away from Bonnie’s face. “I want to kiss you,” she said, barely above a whisper. “But only if you want that too.”

Bonnie’s eyes widened, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

“Oh no,” she mumbled behind her fingers. “Not right now. I haven’t even- I probably smell like sleep.” She gestured vaguely toward the bathroom, feeling heat creep up her neck.

Emi gave her the softest smile. “We both do. I don’t care about that.”

Bonnie shook her head, cheeks warming, still hiding. “You don’t understand. I really like you. And I don’t want the first kiss of today to be… gross.”

Emi’s heart twisted. “Bonnie, it won’t be. Please?”

Bonnie looked at her, at the openness in her expression, the way she was waiting without pushing. Something in her chest gave way. 

"Okay," she whispered. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

Their foreheads touched first. A pause. A shared breath.

Then Emi leaned in, eyes fluttering closed, lips brushing Bonnie’s in a kiss that was more hesitation than pressure- like a question waiting to be answered.

Bonnie answered with warmth, steady and patient, one hand cupping Emi’s cheek as if the moment were fragile enough to break.

There was no darkroom safelight to hide in, no red glow to soften the edges. 

Just morning, honesty and the taste of each other. 

Bonnie's hands slid into Emi's hair, angling her head to deepen the kiss, and Emi made a sound she'd be embarrassed about later but couldn't quite regret now.

When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Bonnie's lips were pink and slightly swollen, her eyes dark.

"I want- " she started, then stopped. "I don't want to rush this. But I also want to be honest about what I'm feeling."

"Tell me," Emi said, running her thumb along Bonnie's lip before resting on her jaw. "I want the honesty."

"I want more of this. More mornings. More nights. I want to learn every expression you make, every mood, every- " Bonnie laughed self-consciously. "God, I sound like I'm already halfway in love with you, don't I?"

Emi's heart did something complicated, like a little backflip, in her chest. "Would it help if I said I'm right there with you? Halfway, maybe more?"

Bonnie tilted her head, looking a little shy and a lot relieved. "Really?"

"Really. I think I started falling for you the moment you said 'film film' like it was a secret password. Like you understood that this- " Emi gestured vaguely at the apartment, the shop below, “- the whole dying art of analog photography, matters. That patience matters. That some things are worth the wait."

Bonnie kissed the corner of Emi’s lips again, softer this time. "You're worth the wait."

"So are you."

They stayed on the couch for another hour, trading kisses and stories and comfortable silences, morning breath long forgotten. 

Bonnie told Emi about her grandmother teaching her to bake, about the precise measurements and the way patience made the difference between bread and just flour and water. 

Emi told Bonnie about the first photograph she ever took- her father's hands loading film, slightly out of focus, but capturing something essential about him anyway.

"I kept that print," Emi admitted. "It's technically terrible. Blurry, poorly exposed. But it's the moment I understood what photography could be. Not just recording what you see, but feeling what you see."

"Can I see it sometime?"

"It's in the darkroom. I can show you today, if you want."

"I want everything," Bonnie said simply into the crook of Emi’s neck. "Every story. Every terrible first photograph. Every moment you're willing to share."

---

They showered separately, Emi first, then Bonnie, both of them navigating the new territory of intimacy with careful respect.

But when Bonnie emerged from the shower in a towel, hair dripping, asking if Emi had a hair dryer, Emi found herself saying, "Let me."

So Bonnie sat on the closed toilet lid while Emi stood behind her, carefully working the towel through her hair. 

It was intimate in a way that had nothing to do with nakedness, the trust of it, the care, the way Bonnie's eyes closed with contentment.

"My grandmother used to do this," Bonnie said quietly. "After swimming. She'd sit me down and dry my hair and tell me stories about when she was young."

"What kind of stories?"

"Love stories, mostly. She was a romantic. Had three great loves in her life, she said. My grandfather was the second. She never told me about the third." Bonnie opened her eyes, meeting Emi's gaze in the mirror. "I used to wonder if maybe the third wasn't a person at all. Maybe it was something else. A place. A passion. A way of being in the world."

"What was the first?"

Bonnie smiled mysteriously. "She never told me much. Just that it taught her everything she needed to know about joy and loss."

Emi set down the towel, ran her fingers through Bonnie's damp hair one more time. In the mirror, they looked like a study in contrasts. Emi dark-haired and pale, Bonnie warm and golden. 

But something about them fit, like complementary colors, like the balance of shadow and light in a perfect exposure.

"I think you might be my first," Bonnie said, so softly Emi almost missed it. "Great love, I mean. If we're- if this is- "

"I think it is," Emi said. "If we're patient with it. If we give it time to develop properly."

"Always with the photography metaphors."

"It's my love language, apparently."

Bonnie stood, turned, and suddenly they were very close in the small bathroom. She was still in just a towel, and Emi was hyperaware of every inch of skin, every place they weren't quite touching but could be.

"Can I- " Bonnie started, fingers finding the nape of Emi’s neck, and Emi nodded before she could finish.

The kiss was hungry this time, less gentle. 

Bonnie backed Emi against the sink, hands framing her face, and Emi's hands found Bonnie's waist, thumbs brushing the bare skin just beneath the towel. 

Bonnie made a pleasurable sound, pressed closer, and Emi felt like she was burning up from the inside.

"Wait," Emi managed, between breaths. "Bonnie, wait."

Bonnie pulled back immediately. "Too much?"

"No. Yes. I mean- " Emi took a breath. "I want this. God, I want this. But I also want to do it right. To not rush. To- "

"To give it time to develop properly," Bonnie finished, smiling even though her eyes were still dark with want. "Okay. Yes. You're right. I just- you make it very hard to be patient."

"Good," Emi said, and kissed her once more, quick and sweet. "That's good. As long as I'm not alone in the impatience."

"You're definitely not alone."

They separated reluctantly. Bonnie got dressed- in her clothes from yesterday, slightly wrinkled- while Emi tried to get her breathing back to normal. 

This was new territory. Wanting someone so much it felt like a physical ache, but choosing to wait anyway. Choosing to be deliberate.

"Breakfast?" Emi offered when they were both presentable. "There's a diner two blocks over. Best pancakes in the dying mall district."

Bonnie’s eyes light up at the sound of food. "That's a very specific accolade."

"I stand by it."

The diner was nearly empty at 9 AM on a Wednesday. They sat in a corner booth, knees touching under the table, and ordered too much food. Emi watched Bonnie drown her pancakes in syrup with the fascinated horror of someone who took her breakfast seriously.

"You're judging me," Bonnie said, not looking up from her syrup operation.

"I'm documenting. For future reference."

"Future reference, huh? Planning to stick around?"

"If you'll have me."

Bonnie looked up then, syrup bottle suspended mid-pour. "Emi. Of course I'll have you. I think I'd have you for as long as you'd let me."

The words hung in the air between them, heavy with implication. Emi reaches across the table, takes Bonnie's free hand and a deep breath.

"Bonnie, I just wanted you to know that I'm not good at this," she admitted. "Relationships. Being open. I've spent six years hiding in my darkroom, mourning my father, watching the world move on without me. I don't know how to- well, how to be someone who deserves your patience."

"Hey." Bonnie squeezed her hand. "You don't have to earn patience. That's not how it works. We just, we give it to each other. Freely. Because we want to."

Emi squeezes her hand back, finger absentmindedly tracing Bonnie’s knuckles again. "Is it always this scary? Falling for someone?"

Bonnie looks fondly at Emi, and her answer seems to reach Emi’s heart of doubt. "I think so. I think that's how you know it matters."

They finished the rest of breakfast slowly, trading bites of pancakes and toast, playing footsie under the table like teenagers. When the check came, they argued over it until the waitress suggested they split it just so she could close out and go on break. They left a generous tip and walked back to the shop hand in hand.

"I should go home," Bonnie said when they reached the entrance. "Shower properly. Change clothes. Maybe convince myself I haven't completely lost my mind by falling for someone I met two weeks ago."

"Only two weeks," Emi stretched and marveled. "It feels longer."

"Time is weird in photographs," Bonnie quoted back at her, grinning.

Emi quips playfully, "Then are you going to throw my own words at me for the entire relationship?"

"Probably. Is that okay?"

"It's perfect."

They kissed goodbye on the mall's front steps, soft and sweet and full of promise. A few passersby glanced at them, two women kissing in front of a dying mall at 10 AM on a Wednesday, but Emi found she didn't care. 

Let them look. 

Let them see that something beautiful could exist in the margins of the world's attention.

"Tonight?" Bonnie asked when they finally pulled apart.

"Tonight. I'll have more photos developed by then."

"And I'll bring dinner. And my Polaroid."

"Always with the Polaroid."

"Always," Bonnie agreed, and kissed her once more before reluctantly letting go of warm hands and leaving.

Emi watched her go, a woman in yesterday's clothes walking toward the parking lot with the sun turning her hair to gold. 

She pulled out her phone and snapped a quick picture - terrible quality, wrong light, completely unposed - but somehow capturing exactly what she felt in that moment.

Wonder. Hope. The particular ache of falling in love.

She saved it to her favourites and went inside to open the shop.

---

The day passed in a haze of work. Emi developed some rolls from other clients, and then three more rolls from Bonnie's grandmother's collection - a birthday party, a road trip, a series of landscapes that might have been from somewhere out west. 

She made careful notes on each image, documenting the technical details but also her impressions. 

Birthday cake with too many candles. Subject appears joyful. Colors shifted cyan, typical of aged Kodak Gold.

But beneath the technical notes, she found herself writing other things. 

Bonnie has the same way of tilting her head when she's happy. I wonder if she knows.

Around 4 PM, Sing stopped by with coffee and gossip.

"Saw you and your lady friend this morning," he said, waggling his eyebrows. "Looked cozy."

"Sing, you're incorrigible. Stop spying on me."

"I'm observant. There's a difference." He settled onto the stool that had become Bonnie's unofficial seat. "Known you six years, Emi. Never seen you look at anyone the way you look at her."

Emi blushes. "That obvious?"

"To someone paying attention? Yeah." He sipped his coffee. "Your dad would've liked her, I think. She's got that same - I don't know. Intensity. Like she sees more than what's right in front of her."

Emi felt her throat tighten. "You think so?"

"I know so. Your dad, he used to talk about you like you hung the moon. But he worried, you know? That you'd get so caught up in preserving the past you'd forget to live in the present." Sing stood and patted her shoulder. "I think maybe this more-than-friend, is helping you remember."

After he left, Emi sat in the empty shop and cried a little. Good tears, mostly. Grief and relief mixed together. 

Her father would have liked Bonnie. 

Would have approved of the way she made Emi feel, seen, understood, worth the effort of knowing.

She pulled herself together and got back to work. There were still photos to develop, still memories to recover. Still patience to practice.

And tonight, there would be Bonnie.

That was enough. That was more than enough.

That was everything.

---

By day twenty-three, they had fallen into a rhythm that felt almost dangerously domestic. Bonnie had started keeping a toothbrush at Emi's apartment. 

Emi had learned how Bonnie liked her coffee (oat milk, no sugar, always in the blue mug). 

They'd kissed in every room of the shop, the apartment, and once memorably in the mall parking lot during a rainstorm that had left them both soaked and laughing.

The grandmother's photos were yielding their secrets slowly. 

They'd recovered maybe forty percent of the rolls, some too damaged by time, some perfect despite the decades. Each successful print felt like a small miracle, and Bonnie documented every single one in her journal with its corresponding Polaroid.

But on day twenty-three, something shifted.

Emi was in the darkroom alone, Bonnie had texted that she'd be late, something about her mother calling, when she developed a photo that made her hands still in the chemical bath.

Two women. Young, maybe early twenties. 

Standing close enough that their shoulders touched. One of them was clearly Bonnie's grandmother, recognizable now from dozens of recovered photos. 

The other was a stranger, dark-haired, beautiful, laughing at something off-camera.

But it was the way they were looking at each other that stopped Emi's breath. 

She'd seen that look before. In the mirror, a glimpse, right when Bonnie kissed her. 

On Bonnie's face, when she thought Emi wasn't paying attention to her staring.

It was the look of people in love.

Emi finished processing the print with shaking hands, hung it to dry, and stood staring at it. The photo was from the early seventies, judging by the clothes and the color quality. 

Before Bonnie's grandfather. 

Before everything.

The bell chimed upstairs.

"Emi? Sorry I'm late, my mom was- " Bonnie stopped in the darkroom doorway. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I think I have," Emi said quietly, and handed her the print.

Bonnie stared at it for a long moment. 

Then she started to cry, not the sad crying Emi had seen before, but something else. 

Something that looked almost like relief.

"That's her," Bonnie whispered. "That's the first one. Her first great love."

"You knew?"

"I suspected. Growing up, there were hints. The way she talked about her friend Ashley. Old letters she kept locked in a drawer. But it was the seventies, you know? And then the eighties. And she married my grandfather and had my mom, and it was like that part of her just- got packed away. Preserved but hidden."

Bonnie traced the edge of the photo with one finger tearfully, careful not to touch the surface. "She never told me directly. But at the end, when she was dying, she asked me if I'd ever been in love. And I said no, not yet. And she said, 'When you do, don't hide it. Don't waste time pretending to be someone you're not.' And then she told me about the shoebox. Made me promise to develop the photos."

"She wanted you to know," Emi said softly with understanding.

"She wanted me to know that she understood. That she saw me. That it was okay to- " Bonnie's voice broke again. "God, Emi. She was telling me it was okay to be who I am. To love who I love. And I didn't even realize until just now."

Emi pulled Bonnie into her arms, held her while she let the emotions run freely.  

The darkroom was quiet except for Bonnie's breathing and the distant hum of the mall's HVAC system. 

Somewhere above them, fluorescent lights buzzed in empty hallways. The building settled into its night-time sounds, creaks and sighs, the architecture breathing. 

Time did its weird collapsing thing here, past and present folding into each other like exposed negatives laid one over another. 

"Thank you," Bonnie said finally, pulling back to wipe her eyes. "For finding this. For being patient with all of it. For- for being you."

Emi smiled as she looked at Bonnie with the same loving, empathetic eyes as she always did. "I didn't do anything."

"You did everything. You gave her back to me. Not just the photos, but the truth of her." Bonnie kissed her cheek softly. "I love you. I know it's fast, I know we're still figuring things out, but I love you and I needed to say it."

Emi's world tilted on its axis. "You love me."

"I love you," Bonnie confirmed. "You don't have to say it back. I just needed you to know."

"I love you too," Emi heard herself say, and realized it was true. Had been true for a while now, maybe since that first Polaroid, maybe since the moment Bonnie had understood about patience and process. "I love you and it terrifies me but I never want to stop feeling this way."

They kissed in the red light, surrounded by ghosts and warm memories and the chemical smell of fixer. When they pulled apart, Bonnie was smiling through her tears.

"Help me with the journal?" she asked. "I want to do this one right."

They worked together, mounting the photo of Bonnie's grandmother and her first love on a fresh page. Opposite it, Bonnie set up the Polaroid on its timer, and they stood together in the corner of the darkroom, arms around each other, waiting for the flash.

When the photo developed, they were both smiling, that particular smile of people who'd found something they didn't know they were looking for. 

Bonnie wrote beneath it: Day 23. The moment we said it out loud. The moment everything changed.

"Not everything," Emi corrected gently. "We're still us. Still taking it slow. Still being patient."

"Still falling," Bonnie added.

"Still falling," Emi agreed.

---

The next week was a study in contrasts. They progressed to be more openly affectionate now - the "I love yous" came easier, the kisses lingered longer, the nights Bonnie stayed over became the default rather than the exception. 

But they also maintained their careful boundaries, still choosing patience over urgency, still old-school, getting to know each other slowly.

Emi started teaching Bonnie the technical side of development. 

How to load film onto reels in complete darkness, fingers working by touch alone. 

How to mix chemicals to the right temperature. 

How to read a negative, seeing in reverse, understanding that dark would become light and light would become dark.

"It's like learning a new language," Bonnie said, struggling with a particularly stubborn roll of film. They were in the darkroom with the lights off completely, working by feel. "My brain keeps wanting to rush, to force it."

"That's when you tear the film," Emi said. She moved behind Bonnie, wrapped her arms around her, hands covering Bonnie's hands. "Here. Feel the sprockets? Let them guide you. The film wants to go on the reel. You just have to listen to it."

Together, their hands working in tandem, they loaded the film. When it clicked into place, Bonnie made a small sound of triumph.

"I did it!"

"We did it," Emi corrected, but she was smiling against Bonnie's neck. Like this, in complete darkness, with only touch to guide them, it felt like the most intimate thing they'd done yet. 

More vulnerable than kissing, more honest than words.

"Emi," Bonnie said softly, leaning into Emi. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Are you happy? Like, actually happy? Not just content or comfortable, but happy?"

Emi thought about the question, giving it the weight it deserved. Was she happy? For six years, she'd been going through the motions, maintaining the shop, processing the occasional order, existing in the amber of grief and routine. 

Happiness had seemed like something that happened to other people, in other lives.

But now, the answer was simple.  

"Yes," she said. "I'm happy. Scared sometimes, because happiness feels fragile. But happy."

"Good," Bonnie said simply. "Because you deserve to be happy. You deserve everything."

They stood in the darkness for a long time, just breathing together, hands still intertwined.

The mall's closing announcements echoed distantly through the corridors, polite reminders, final calls. Sing's keys would be jangling soon, his familiar circuit through the dimming building. 

But the darkroom held them separate from all that, wrapped them in their own pocket of existence where nothing else could reach. 

"We should turn the safelights on," Emi said eventually. "Process the rest of this film."

"Or," Bonnie said, turning in Emi's arms, "we could stay here a little longer. In the dark. Just us."

"Bonnie- "

"I know. Patience. Process. But sometimes I just want to exist with you without any distractions. Without light or time or anything but this."

Emi understood. God, she understood. 

The urge to stop time, to preserve this moment forever, to never have to face the uncertain future. 

But that wasn't how life worked. 

You couldn't stay in the darkroom forever, no matter how safe it felt. 

If she hadn’t left the darkroom, she wouldn’t have found Bonnie.

"Five more minutes," she compromised. "Then we have to be responsible adults who process film correctly."

"Responsible adults yes. Five minutes," Bonnie agreed, and kissed her.

In the darkness, without sight to guide them, the kiss was all sensation, and all tenderness. The soft press of lips, gentle at first, then deeper with a quiet intensity that made Emi's chest ache. 

Bonnie's hands cupped her face like she was something infinitely precious, thumbs brushing across her cheekbones with such careful reverence that Emi felt tears prick behind her closed eyes.

She kissed back with everything she couldn't say: I see you. I cherish you. I'm so grateful you're here. 

Her hands found Bonnie's waist, not grasping but holding, grounding them both in this moment. 

The warmth of their breaths mingled, soft and unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world despite knowing they didn't.

Bonnie made a small sound, not quite a sigh, not quite a sob, something vulnerable and achingly sweet. 

Emi responded by pulling her closer, wrapping her arms fully around her, turning the kiss into an embrace, an answer, a promise she wasn't sure she knew how to keep but desperately wanted to.

This was a sense memory that no photograph could capture: the feeling of being held like you mattered, the weight of quiet devotion, the way love could make you brave and terrified all at once.

When they finally parted, Emi realized she'd stopped counting entirely. Five minutes had become ten, maybe fifteen. 

Some habits died hard, but some things were worth losing count for.

"The safelights," she whispered against Bonnie's temple.

"Okay," Bonnie whispered back, but neither of them moved for another long moment.

When they finally turned on the red light and got to work, there was a new softness between them. The film they'd loaded together yielded beautiful results: street photography from the eighties, candid shots of people living their lives, unaware they were being documented for posterity.

"Your grandmother had a good eye," Emi commented, examining one particularly striking composition. "See how she's framed this? The negative space, the way the light hits?"

"She was always watching," Bonnie said. "Always paying attention. I think that's where I get it from. This need to document, to preserve."

"It's not a bad thing to inherit."

"No," Bonnie agreed. "It's a gift. Maybe the best one she could have given me."

They worked in comfortable silence, processing print after print. By midnight, they had twelve new images for Bonnie's journal, twelve more pieces of her grandmother's hidden history recovered and preserved.

"Can I stay?" Bonnie asked as they were cleaning up. "I know it's a work night for both of us, but- "

"Yes," Emi said, not needing to hear the rest. "Always yes."

Upstairs, they fell into bed exhausted, clothes discarded in a trail, but too tired for anything but sleep. Emi curled around Bonnie's back, one arm wrapped around her waist, nose pressed to her neck.

"I love you," Bonnie murmured, already half-asleep.

"I love you too," Emi whispered back. "So much it scares me."

"Good scared or bad scared?"

"Good scared. Like standing at the edge of something beautiful."

Bonnie let out a contented sigh and laced her fingers through Emi's. Within minutes, her breathing had evened out into sleep.

Emi stayed awake a little longer, watching the shadows on the ceiling, feeling the happy weight of Bonnie in her arms. 

This was happiness, she realized. 

Not the absence of fear or grief or uncertainty, but the presence of something strong enough to coexist with all of it.

She pressed a kiss to Bonnie's shoulder and let herself drift off.

---

Day thirty-six brought unexpected news.

Emi was pricing out new chemicals, the shop's supply budget was getting tight, when her phone rang with an unknown number. She almost didn't answer, but something made her pick up.

"Is this Emi Thasorn Klinnium? From Klinnium Photography?"

"Yes, speaking."

"Hi! This is Milk Vosbein from the Downtown Arts Collective. I'm curating a show on analog photography, and your name came up in our research. I was wondering if you'd be interested in participating?"

Emi's brain stuttered to a halt. "I'm sorry, what?"

"A show. We're doing a celebration of film photography; the process, the history, the art. We'd love to have you involved. Maybe demonstrate some darkroom techniques? Display some prints? We can discuss details if you're interested."

"I- yes. I'm interested. Very interested."

They talked for twenty minutes about logistics and timelines and what the show might involve. 

When Emi hung up, her hands were shaking.

The shop phone rang immediately. She answered without thinking, still stunned.

"Emi? You sound weird. What's wrong?" Bonnie's voice, concerned.

"Nothing's wrong, Bonnie. In fact, something's- I think something might be right."

She explained about the call, the opportunity, the chance to show people that film photography wasn't dead, just sleeping. 

That the old ways still had value. 

That patience and process still mattered in a world of instant gratification.

"Emi, that's incredible!" Bonnie's excitement crackled through the phone, and Emi could practically see her bouncing adorably on her toes the way she did when she got enthusiastic about something. "We should celebrate. I'm coming over. No, wait- meet me at Garibaldi's. The Italian place on Thirty-sixth? Seven o'clock?"

Emi's eyebrows shot up. She looked down at her stained work apron, then around the cluttered shop. "That's the fancy place. We don't need to- "

"We absolutely need to. This is big, Emi. Let me take you to dinner, properly. Like a real date." There was something in Bonnie's voice, a kind of determined joy that made Emi's chest feel warm and tight at the same time.

Emi smiled, the expression softening her whole face even though Bonnie couldn't see it. "We've been together over a month, silly. Haven't we been on real dates?"

"We've been eating takeout in your shop and making out in your darkroom. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but I want to take you somewhere nice. Somewhere I can stare at you across a table with a tablecloth." Bonnie's voice had gone softer, more intimate, and Emi could hear the smile in it, that particular smile that made her dimple appear on just one side.

Emi felt heat rise to her cheeks, grateful for once that they weren't face to face. "When you put it that way."

"Seven o'clock. Wear something that makes you feel beautiful." Bonnie's tone was gentle but firm, brooking no argument.

"Bonnie- " Emi started, her smile turning helpless, knowing she'd already lost this battle.

"Seven o'clock, my love."

The line went dead. Emi stared at her phone, a disbelieving laugh caught in her throat. 

Then she looked at the empty shop, shaking her head with a mixture of exasperation and pure affection, and finally burst out laughing. 

This woman. This impossible, wonderful woman who brought light into all her dark corners.

She closed up early and went upstairs to stress about her wardrobe.

---

Garibaldi's was, in fact, fancy. White tablecloths, candlelight, a wine list longer than some novels. 

Emi felt underdressed in her nicest black jeans and the deep blue button-up she saved for special occasions.

Then Bonnie walked in, and Emi forgot how to breathe.

She was wearing a dress, an actual dress, not the casual clothes Emi was used to seeing her in. 

Dark green, hitting just above the knee, with her hair down in waves around her shoulders. She looked like someone from an old photograph, timeless and elegant, something that belonged in a gallery.

"Hi my love," Bonnie said, sliding into the seat across from her. "You're staring."

"You're beautiful."

"So are you. I love that blue on you. Brings out your eyes."

They ordered wine they couldn't quite afford and pasta that was definitely worth the splurge. 

The conversation flowed easily,  it always did with Bonnie, but there was an undercurrent of something else tonight. 

A sense of occasion, of crossing some invisible threshold.

"I've been thinking," Bonnie said over the tiramisu they were sharing. "About my grandmother's photos. About the project."

"Yeah?"

"I want to show it. The journal. The complete thing, her photos and mine, the whole story of recovery and grief and finding you. I want other people to see it." Bonnie's eyes were bright with conviction, her fingers fidgeting with her napkin the way they always did when she was working up courage.

Emi's fork paused halfway to her mouth, her expression shifting from casual contentment to careful attention. "Are you sure, love? That's incredibly personal." She set the fork down gently, giving Bonnie her full focus.

"I know. But it's also it feels important?" Bonnie's hands stilled, pressing flat against the table as if grounding herself. "Like maybe other people are going through something similar. Maybe they need to know that it's okay to grieve slowly, to take your time, to find beauty in the process." She leaned forward, her face earnest and a little vulnerable. "What if we did it together? Your demonstration at the Arts Collective, my journal. A joint show about preservation and patience and love."

"Love?" Emi's eyebrows lifted, something tender and uncertain flickering across her features.

"Well, yeah. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Loving people enough to preserve them. Loving the process enough to do it right. Loving- " Bonnie's voice softened, her gaze dropping to where her hands rested on the white tablecloth before lifting again to meet Emi's eyes. 

"Loving each other enough to be honest about it."

Emi's breath caught visibly, her shoulders rising with it. 

She set down her fork with deliberate care. Reached across the table to take Bonnie's hand, her thumb brushing over Bonnie's knuckles. "You want to tell people about us?" Her voice was quiet, careful, like she was holding something fragile.

"I want to tell people about everything. If you're comfortable with it. I know you're private, and I'd never pressure you, but- " Bonnie's words tumbled out quickly, her free hand gesturing, anxious energy radiating from her.

"Yes." Emi's answer was simple, immediate, and the relief that washed over her face was unmistakable.

"Yes?" Bonnie blinked, momentarily stunned, like she'd braced for a different answer.

"Yes, let's do it. Let's tell the story properly. Your grandmother would have wanted that, I think. The truth. The whole truth. The project felt as much as mine as it was yours. It was ours, Us." Emi squeezed Bonnie's hand, a small smile playing at her lips.

Bonnie's gummy smile could have powered the entire restaurant, her whole face transforming with joy. Her eyes went bright and a little wet. "God, I love you."

"I love you too. Even though you're making me participate in public events, which is my nightmare." Emi's smile turned wry, affectionate, her head tilting slightly as she watched Bonnie with open adoration.

"I promise I'll hold your hand the whole time." Bonnie lifted their joined hands as if to demonstrate, pressing a quick kiss to Emi's knuckles.

"Deal." Emi's smile softened into something radiantly happy.

They finished dessert, now hearts and bellies full, then walked through downtown hand in hand. 

It was May now, the air warm and full of possibility. 

The mall district looked different in the evening, less dying, more sleeping. Like something that could wake up again if given the right circumstances.

"Come home with me," Bonnie said when they reached her car. "Not to your place. To mine. I want you to see where I live."

"Okay," Emi said, even though this felt significant. 

A new level of intimacy, seeing Bonnie's space, understanding how she lived when Emi wasn't around.

---

Bonnie's apartment was a third-floor walkup in an old building with good bones. Inside, it was exactly what Emi expected and nothing like it at the same time. 

Books everywhere, art on the walls, plants in various states of thriving. A record player in the corner, milk crates full of vinyl. And photographs, on the walls, the fridge, scattered across surfaces.

"Sorry about the mess," Bonnie said, though it wasn't messy so much as lived-in. "I wasn't expecting company."

"It's perfect," Emi said, meaning it. "It's so you."

She wandered around, examining the photos. Many were Polaroids, some from their time together, others older. 

There was one of Bonnie with an elderly woman who had to be her grandmother, both of them laughing at something off-camera.

"That was two years ago," Bonnie said from behind her. "Her birthday. She made me take her to get her nose pierced."

"She what?"

"She was eighty-three and decided she wanted a nose ring. Said she'd wasted too much time caring what people thought. So we went to a piercing place, and she held my hand and did it." Bonnie laughed wetly. "It got infected immediately, and she had to take it out, but she was so proud of herself."

Emi turned, pulled Bonnie into her arms. "She sounds like she was an extraordinary woman."

"She was. God, I miss her."

They stood like that for a long time, just holding each other. Then Bonnie pulled back, wiped her eyes, and smiled.

"Okay, enough crying. I brought you here for a reason."

"Oh?"

"I want to photograph you, love. Really photograph you, not just Polaroids. I borrowed a medium format camera from a friend, and I've been practicing, and I want- " Bonnie bit her lip. "I want to capture you the way you capture things. With attention. With care. With love."

Emi's breath caught. "Bonnie."

"Will you let me? Will you trust me with that?"

There was only one answer Emi could give. "Yes."

Bonnie set up in her living room, moving furniture, adjusting the floor lamp for better light. 

She loaded the camera with practiced ease, Emi had taught her well, and gestured for Emi to sit on the couch.

"Just- be yourself. Don't perform. Let me see you."

It should have been awkward, being the subject instead of the photographer. 

Emi spent her life behind the camera, observing rather than being observed. 

But with Bonnie looking at her through the viewfinder, it felt safe. Intimate. Like being seen and accepted all at once.

"Tell me about your father," Bonnie said, clicking the shutter. "A memory I don't know yet."

So Emi talked. 

About Sundays spent shooting, about the way her father would hum Bon Jovi, about the last photo they took together, her father at his light table, examining negatives, totally absorbed. 

She'd snapped it on impulse, not knowing it would be the last photo she ever took of him alive.

Click.

"Tell me about the first time you knew you wanted to do this forever."

Emi recalled, a trip down memory lane. "I was fourteen. My father let me develop my first roll of film alone. And I stood in the darkroom watching this image appear, a photo of our backyard, nothing special, and I felt like I was doing magic. Like I was stopping time itself. I knew then that this was it. This was my language."

Click.

"Tell me about us. About what this means to you."

This was harder. Emi looked at Bonnie directly, not at the camera, at the woman behind it. Her expression was unguarded, vulnerable in a way she rarely allowed herself to be.

"It means everything," she said quietly, her voice steady despite the emotion clearly working through her. 

"You walked into my shop with a box full of someone else's memories, and somehow you gave me my own life back. You made me remember that preservation isn't the same as living. That patience can coexist with passion. That I don't have to choose between honoring my father and being happy." Her voice cracked, and she pressed her lips together for a moment, eyes shining. 

"You make me want to be present tense. Ongoing. Not just archived."

Click.

Bonnie lowered the camera slowly, her hands trembling slightly. Her eyes were wet, her expression a mixture of love and awe and something that looked like wonder. "Emi." It came out barely above a whisper.

"Come here," Emi said, her voice rough with emotion, one hand already reaching out.

Bonnie set the camera aside carefully, reverently, then crossed to the couch with purpose. Emi pulled her down, into her lap, and kissed her like she was drowning and Bonnie was air - urgent, deep, pouring everything she couldn't articulate into the press of their mouths. 

Bonnie kissed back just as desperately, her hands fisting in Emi's shirt, anchoring herself, her small sounds that went straight to Emi's gut. Her breath came in quick gasps between kisses, her whole body trembling with want.

"I want- " Bonnie started between kisses, her forehead pressed against Emi's, eyes squeezed shut.

"Tell me," Emi said, her lips moving to Bonnie's jaw, her neck, reverent and hungry all at once. Her hands splayed across Bonnie's back, holding her close. "Tell me what you want."

"More. Everything. You." Bonnie pulled back to look at her, cupping Emi's face in both hands. 

Her eyes were dark with desire but also clear and sure, no hesitation. "I want to stop being patient. I want- Emi, I want you. All of you. Tonight."

Emi's heart was trying to exit her chest, her breathing shallow. She searched Bonnie's face, needing to be certain, her own expression both hopeful and slightly afraid. "Are you sure?"

"I've never been more sure of anything." Bonnie's voice was firm, her thumb tracing Emi's bottom lip with deliberate tenderness.

"Okay," Emi breathed, a smile breaking across her face even as tears pricked her eyes. "Okay. Yes. Show me where."

Bonnie stood, her movements fluid despite the obvious nervous energy thrumming through her. 

She took Emi's hand, fingers lacing together naturally, and led her to the bedroom. Her grip was steady, certain - an answer to every unspoken question.

---

The bedroom was softly lit by the streetlights filtering through sheer curtains, casting everything in gentle shadows. Bonnie turned to face Emi, suddenly shy despite her earlier certainty. Emi stepped closer, cupping Bonnie's face with both hands, her own breathing unsteady.

"We can still wait, if you want," she said softly, though the tremor in her voice betrayed how much she didn't want to. "There's no rush."

"I don't want to wait anymore," Bonnie whispered back, covering Emi's hands with her own. Her eyes were dark with want. "I've been waiting for a while. I want this. I want you."

The kiss that followed was different from all the ones before - deeper, more urgent, restrained desire finally unleashed. Emi's hands moved from Bonnie's face to her waist, pulling her close with a need that made them both gasp. 

Bonnie's fingers found the buttons of Emi's shirt, fumbling slightly in her eagerness, and Emi had to still her hands, press a kiss to each of her knuckles, breathe through the wave of want threatening to overwhelm her patience.

"Slowly," Emi murmured, though her own hands were shaking. "I want to savor this. Savor you."

What followed was tender but hungry, a conversation in touches that had been building for months. 

Emi took her time, but there was intensity in that patience now, learning Bonnie's responses with devoted attention, the catch of her breath, the way she said Emi's name like a prayer and a plea, the trust in how she let herself be completely undone. 

They moved together with careful reverence, yes, but also with the kind of yearning that made them clutch at each other like they might disappear, like this might be a dream they'd wake from.

There were whispered reassurances and soft laughter when nervousness made them clumsy.

There were moments of overwhelming emotion where they had to pause just to breathe, foreheads pressed together, hearts racing, reminding themselves this was real, they were finally here, finally being completely vulnerable. 

And through it all, there was love and desire so intertwined they couldn't tell where one ended and the other began, evident in every gentle-but-urgent touch, every murmured word edged with need, every time their eyes met in the dim light with something that looked like devotion and felt like coming home.

---

Later, much later, they lay tangled in Bonnie's sheets, skin to skin, hearts still racing. Emi traced lazy patterns on Bonnie's shoulder, memorizing the landscape of her body, the way she fit perfectly in the curve of Emi's side.

"That was- " Bonnie started.

"Yeah," Emi agreed.

"I mean, really- "

"I know."

They dissolved into laughter, giddy and sated and so in love it hurt in the best way.

"No Polaroid for this one," Bonnie said. "Some moments are just for us."

"Agreed. Some things don't need to be documented."

"Just remembered."

"Just felt."

They drifted toward sleep, wrapped around each other. Before she succumbed completely, Emi heard Bonnie whisper, "Thank you for being patient with me. With us."

"Thank you for allowing me to," Emi whispered back.

And in the morning, they would wake up tangled together. 

They would make breakfast, laugh and plan their joint show. They would continue recovering the grandmother's photos, continue building their own archive of memories. 

They would choose patience when it mattered and passion when it didn't.

But for now, they slept. Present tense. Ongoing. Perfectly composed.

---

The next two months were a blur of preparation. The Arts Collective show was scheduled for August, which gave them just enough time to get everything ready. 

Emi threw herself into printing, creating a series that documented the evolution of a single photo from negative to final print, the technical process laid bare, every step explained.

Bonnie completed her journal, all forty-eight recovered photos paired with contemporary Polaroids. The narrative was clear even without captions: loss and recovery, past and present, grief transformed into art.

They worked side by side in the shop most evenings, Emi in the darkroom while Bonnie assembled her presentation upstairs.

The physical separation felt necessary somehow; they were each creating something independent even as they built something together. Like proper exposure, they needed both shadow and light.

"How's it going down there?" Bonnie would call through the floor.

"Good! This print is fighting me, but I think I'm winning, it’s coming out great!"

Bonnie chuckles. "That's my girl. Want tea?"

"Always."

Bonnie would appear with two mugs, steal a kiss, and disappear back upstairs. The rhythm of it felt right: together but not codependent, intimate yet maintaining their own identities. 

They were learning how to be a couple without losing themselves.

Sing watched their preparation with barely concealed amusement.

"Never seen you so alive," he told Emi one afternoon. "Place has more energy than it has in years."

"Is it too much? Are we disrupting- "

"Emi. It's perfect. This is what your dad would have wanted. The shop filled with purpose again. You filled with purpose again." He paused. "He'd be proud, you know. Of the work. Of you. Of the fact that you're finally letting yourself be happy."

Emi had to turn away, blinking back tears. "Thanks, Sing."

"Anytime, Emi."

---

Three weeks before the show, Bonnie's mother came to visit.

Emi had never been so nervous. She changed outfits four times before Bonnie finally took pity on her and chose for her, the blue button-up from their first real date, dark jeans, the boots that made her feel capable.

"She's going to love you," Bonnie promised, straightening Emi's collar. "How could she not? You made her daughter happy. You helped recover her mother's history. You're basically a hero."

"I'm basically having a panic attack."

"That too. Come on, she's meeting us at the shop."

Bonnie's mother- Love- turned out to be a slightly older version of Bonnie herself. Same smile, same way of tilting her head when she was listening. She arrived exactly on time, carrying flowers and a look of open curiosity.

"So you're Emi," she said, pulling Emi into an unexpected hug. "I've heard so much about you. Thank you for taking care of my girl."

"She takes care of me just as much," Emi managed.

"Good. That's how it should be." Love pulled back, studied her. "Bonnie tells me you've been helping with my mother's photos. That can't have been easy."

"It's been an honor, actually. Your mother - she had a real eye. A gift for capturing moments."

"She did. I wish I'd known her better when I was younger. Wish I'd asked more questions." Love's expression was complicated. "But I'm grateful Bonnie is getting to know her now, through you. Through this process."

They gave Love the full tour - the shop, the darkroom, the recovered photos spread across Emi's work table. 

Love lingered on the photo of her mother with Ashley, the first love, and started crying quietly.

"I always wondered," she said. "There were signs, but we never talked about it. She never felt like she could tell me."

"She told Bonnie," Emi said gently. "In her own way. Through these photos. Through making sure Bonnie knew it was okay to be who she is."

"My mother was braver than I ever gave her credit for." Love wiped her eyes. "Living her truth, even if she had to hide parts of it. Loving fully, even when it was complicated. Making sure the next generation wouldn't have to hide the same way."

Bonnie took her mother's hand. "She gave me permission to be happy. To love who I love without shame. That's everything, Mom."

"I'm glad," Love said, her eyes crinkling at the corners with genuine warmth. 

"I'm so glad you found each other." She reached out to squeeze both their hands, her smile soft and grateful.

They had dinner together - just sandwiches from the deli, eaten at Emi's counter- but it felt momentous.

Love asked thoughtful questions about the show, about Emi's work, about their plans for the future. Her head tilted attentively as she listened, nodding with understanding, her expression open and encouraging. 

Emi found herself relaxing more with each question, her shoulders dropping from their nervous tension, her answers becoming less careful and more natural.

When she left, Love hugged Emi again, holding her just a beat longer than expected, and whispered near her ear, "Take care of her heart. She's giving you something precious." Her eyes were serious when she pulled back, searching Emi's face.

"I know," Emi whispered back, her own expression solemn and sincere. "I promise I will."

After Love left, Bonnie collapsed dramatically on the couch, one arm flung over her eyes, her whole body deflating with released tension.

"That went well, right? I think that went well." Her voice was muffled, uncertain, like she was still processing.

"It went perfectly." Emi sat beside her, gently pulling Bonnie's arm away from her face so she could see her. "Your mom is wonderful."

"She is." Bonnie's expression was vulnerable, hopeful. "And she likes you, which is, what matters to me. A lot." Her eyes searched Emi's face as if trying to gauge just how much this meant.

"It matters to me too." Emi's smile was tender, reassuring.

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, Bonnie's head dropping to rest on Emi's shoulder. Then Bonnie straightened slightly, her expression turning thoughtful, almost shy. "I was thinking. After the show. Maybe we should take a trip?"

"A trip?" Emi's eyebrows lifted with interest and surprise.

"Yeah. Somewhere we can just- exist. Not be preparing or grieving or processing. Just be together." Bonnie turned to look at her directly, her face earnest and a little wistful. 

"I want to take you to the ocean. Want to photograph you in natural light. Want to wake up somewhere that isn't one of our apartments and make love and eat breakfast and just live. Is that okay? To want that? Would you like to?" There was something almost pleading in her expression, like she needed permission to want something purely happy.

"It's more than okay." Emi's face softened with emotion, her eyes shining. She kissed Bonnie softly, cupping her cheek. "Let's do it. The ocean sounds perfect."

"Yeah?" Bonnie's expression brightened immediately, hope blooming across her features.

"Yeah. After the show, we'll go. We'll be present tense somewhere new." Emi's smile was warm, certain.

Bonnie's smile was radiant, her whole face lighting up, eyes crinkling with joy. "I love you so much."

"I love you too. So much it still scares me sometimes." Emi's expression turned vulnerable, honest.

"Good scared?" Bonnie asked gently, brushing a strand of hair from Emi's face, her touch feather-light and reassuring.

"The best scared." Emi leaned into the touch, her eyes closing briefly, a small smile playing at her lips.

---

The night before the show, neither of them could sleep. They lay in Emi's bed, talking in the dark about everything and nothing.

"What if no one comes?" Bonnie worried. "What if people think it's boring or pointless or- "

"Then we'll have created something beautiful just for us," Emi interrupted. "That's enough. That's always been enough."

"You're right. I know you're right. I'm just nervous."

"Me too. But we'll be nervous together."

"Together," Bonnie echoed, fingers finding Emi’s in the dark, interlacing them. "I like the sound of that."

"Me too."

They finally drifted off around 3 AM, wrapped around each other. When Emi's alarm went off at seven, they were still tangled together, and it took fifteen minutes of kissing and laughing and stealing the blankets before they actually got up.

The show opened at two. They arrived at the Arts Collective at noon to set up, both of them running on coffee, adrenaline, and nervous energy. 

The space was beautiful, a converted warehouse with exposed brick and perfect natural light. Their work would be displayed in adjacent sections, a conversation between past and present, process and product.

Emi set up her demonstration area with practiced efficiency. Enlarger, chemistry trays, the most interesting negatives from the grandmother's collection. 

She'd walk people through the process and show them the magic of development in real time.

Bonnie mounted her journal pages on the wall, each spread telling part of the story. The first photos were pure recovery - just the grandmother's images, beautiful and sad. 

But as the journal progressed, Bonnie's Polaroids appeared, documenting the process of grief and healing. 

And then Emi started showing up in the frames. Not explicitly, not at first, but in details- her hands working in the darkroom, her smile over coffee, the way they'd started looking at each other.

The final spread was the most honest: the photo of the grandmother with Ashley, young and in love, next to a photo Bonnie had taken of Emi and herself, reflected in the shop window, holding hands. The caption read: Then and now. Hidden and revealed. Love in its own time.

"It's perfect," Emi said, seeing the complete thing for the first time. "Bonnie, it's so perfect."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

At 1:45, people started trickling in. At first, just a few, some other artists, friends of the Collective, Sing in his security guard uniform because he'd come straight from his shift. 

But then more. Art students curious about analog photography. Older folks who remembered shooting film. People who'd seen the write-up in the local arts paper.

By 2:30, the space was packed.

Emi demonstrated the development process three times, each time drawing a crowd. People asked questions about chemicals and exposure times and where they could learn more. Several asked if she taught classes.

"I could," Emi found herself saying. "I could teach darkroom technique. If there's interest."

"There's interest," said at least five people simultaneously.

Bonnie stood by her journal, answering questions about her grandmother, about grief, about the choice to document recovery so intimately. 

More than once, Emi saw her wiping tears, but happy tears, cathartic tears. 

The kind that meant healing was happening.

Around four, during a brief lull, they found each other in the crowd.

"This is incredible," Bonnie said, grabbing Emi's hands with barely contained excitement, her eyes bright and almost disbelieving. 

"People are actually interested. They care." Her voice rose slightly at the end, like she still couldn't quite believe it.

"Of course they care. You created something beautiful. Something true." Emi squeezed back, her expression warm and proud, looking at Bonnie like she was the only person in the crowded room.

"We created something beautiful. This wouldn't exist without you." Bonnie's face was earnest, urgent, needing Emi to understand this.

"It wouldn't exist without both of us," Emi corrected gently, her thumb brushing over Bonnie's knuckles. "That's the point, isn't it? We're better together."

"Together," Bonnie agreed, her smile breaking wide and radiant, and kissed her right there in the middle of the gallery, in front of everyone. Her hands came up to frame Emi's face, tender and sure.

Someone started clapping. Then someone else. 

Then the whole room erupted in applause, and Emi felt her face burning, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment, but when she opened them and saw Bonnie's delighted expression, she felt like her heart might burst from happiness. A helpless laugh escaped her.

"Show-offs," Sing called out from across the room, grinning widely, shaking his head with amused affection.

"You love it," Bonnie called back, not taking her eyes off Emi, still beaming.

"I really do." Sing's expression was fond, genuine.

The show ran until eight, and even then, people lingered. 

Emi gave out her contact information to at least twenty people interested in classes, her face flushed with pleased surprise each time someone approached. Three galleries asked about purchasing prints. 

A documentary filmmaker wanted to interview them about the project.

When everyone finally left, just Emi and Bonnie remained, sitting on the floor of the empty gallery, surrounded by their work. They leaned against each other, exhausted but exhilarated.

"We did it," Bonnie said wonderingly, staring up at the photographs on the walls, her voice soft with awe.

 "We actually did it." She turned to look at Emi, eyes shining.

"We did." Emi's smile was tired but deeply content.

"What now?" Bonnie's expression turned curious, hopeful, like she was looking at an open door.

Emi thought about it, her gaze drifting across the gallery before settling back on Bonnie's face. 

The shop would definitely stay open; there was renewed interest, new students, a reason to keep going. The memories would continue being preserved, both old and new. 

And the two of them-

"First, we go to the ocean," Emi said, her voice soft but certain. "Like we planned. We take time to just be together, without projects, deadlines, or grief. We see what happens next."

"And after that?" Bonnie asked, leaning her head on Emi's shoulder, looking up at her with quiet trust.

"After that, we keep choosing each other. Every day. We keep being patient when we need to be and passionate when we can be. We keep paying attention. We keep- "

Bonnie kissed her, cutting off the explanation, her hand cupping Emi's jaw. When she pulled back, she was smiling, that soft, knowing smile that made Emi's chest ache.

"We keep being us," she finished gently. "That's what you were going to say."

"Yeah. We keep being us." Emi's expression was tender, vulnerable, like Bonnie had just read her heart perfectly.

"I can do that. I can definitely do that." Bonnie's eyes crinkled at the corners, her smile turning playful but warm, absolutely certain.

They sat in the quiet gallery for another hour, just existing together in the space they'd created. 

Through the windows, Bangkok's evening unfolded in its usual chaos, tuk-tuks weaving through traffic, street vendors calling out their offerings, the city's perpetual motion that never quite stopped even when it slowed. 

Everything simultaneous, everything layered. 

But inside, surrounded by photographs that spanned decades, that bridged past and present, that documented love in all its patient, persistent forms, inside, they existed in their own temporal pocket. 

Bonnie's grandmother, young and in love, forever laughing at the camera.

Bonnie and Emi, present tense, ongoing, with a knowing smile in the same composition. 

Then and now. Hidden and revealed.

Love in its own time.

—

One year later

—

The shop had changed. Not dramatically - it was still Klinnium Photography, still smelled like fixer and old paper, still had the same humming light table. 

But it was alive now in a way it hadn't been for years.

Three nights a week, Emi taught darkroom classes to small groups. The converted storage room had become a classroom, equipped with three enlargers and enough chemistry trays for six students. 

People came from all over, college students and retirees and everyone in between, united by curiosity about the old ways, about patience and process and the particular magic of watching an image emerge in a developer bath.

Bonnie had started a second project, documenting the students as they discovered analog photography for the first time. Her walls were covered with Polaroids of people holding their first successful prints, faces lit with the exact same wonder Emi felt every single time, no matter how many thousands of photos she'd developed.

They'd taken their ocean trip - two weeks in Eastern Thailand, living out of a small beach bungalow in Koh Kood, shooting film and making love and eating too much fresh seafood. 

Bonnie had photographed Emi in every light: dawn on the limestone cliffs, noon among the mangroves, golden hour on longtail boats, midnight under stars so bright they rivalled the bioluminescent plankton. 

The resulting series being shown at a gallery in Bangkok next month.

Emi had photographed Bonnie too, though less systematically. She couldn't help it, every time she looked at Bonnie, she saw something worth preserving. The way she bit her lip when she was concentrating. The way she sang beautifully while washing dishes. The way she looked at Emi like she was something miraculous.

They'd moved in together officially six months ago. Bonnie's apartment had better light, so they'd made that home base, but they still spent most evenings at the shop. 

It was their place, the location of their origin story. 

Some things were too important to leave behind.

The grandmother's photos, all of them that could be recovered,  lived in archival boxes now, properly stored, preserved for another generation. 

Love came by once a month to look through them, sometimes bringing stories, sometimes just sitting quietly with her mother's memories. She and Bonnie had grown closer through the process, both of them learning to talk about things that mattered, to be honest about love and loss and everything in between.

Sing had started bringing his old photos to be digitized, he trusted no one else with his memories. He paid in coffee and brotherly advice and the occasional batch of his wife's famous cookies.

The mall was still dying, but slower now. A few new tenants had moved in, drawn by cheaper rent and the unexpected foot traffic from Emi's classes. 

There was talk of revitalization, of historic preservation. Nothing concrete yet, but possibility where there'd once been only entropy.

And Emi- 

Emi was happy.

It was a Wednesday evening, class night. Six students hunched over their trays in the red light, watching their first prints develop. 

Emi moved between them, offering guidance, encouragement, the occasional technical correction. This was her father's legacy continuing, not just the shop, but the teaching, the passing down of knowledge and care.

"It's not working," one student said, frustrated. "The image isn't appearing."

Emi looked at the tray. "Give it time. You can't rush development. It happens at its own pace."

She'd said it a thousand times. 

Would say it a thousand more. 

Because it was true in the darkroom and true in life and true in love. Some things couldn't be rushed. Some things required patience.

The image started appearing- slowly, like all good things, and the student gasped with delight.

"There it is! I see it!"

"Beautiful work," Emi said, meaning it. "Now you just have to wait for it to fully develop before you move it to the stop bath."

After class ended and the students left, chattering excitedly, Emi started the cleanup process. 

Bonnie appeared in the doorway, holding two mugs of tea.

"Good class?"

"Great class. Fond got her first successful portrait. I think she's hooked." Emi's face was animated, proud, as she carefully organized the developing trays.

"Another one converted to the cult of analog photography." Bonnie's eyes crinkled with amusement.

"We prefer 'enthusiastically devoted,' thank you." Emi shot her a playful look over her shoulder.

Bonnie laughed, the sound warm and familiar, and set down the mugs to wrap her arms around Emi from behind, pressing a kiss to her temple. 

"I love watching you teach. You get this look, like you're sharing the most important secret in the world." Her voice soft against Emi's ear.

"It feels important. Keeping these skills alive. Making sure the knowledge doesn't disappear." Emi's expression turned thoughtful, serious, as she leaned back into Bonnie's embrace.

"Your dad would be proud." Bonnie's arms tightened gently.

"I think he would be." Emi turned in Bonnie's arms, her face tender, a little vulnerable. "I think he'd be proud of all of it. The classes. The show. You."

"Me?" Bonnie's eyebrows lifted in surprise, her expression soft and uncertain.

"You. For making me remember that preservation isn't the same as living. For helping me honor the past while being present in the now." Emi's eyes were bright with emotion as she kissed Bonnie softly. 

"For loving me enough to be patient with my process."

"Always," Bonnie promised, her voice thick with feeling, cupping Emi's face with both hands. "I'll always be patient with you."

They stood in the darkroom together, red light washing over them, and Emi thought about exposure and development and the way some images took time to reveal themselves fully. 

She thought about her father's hands loading film, about Bonnie's grandmother laughing in 1973, about the long chain of love and attention that had led to this moment.

"I have something for you," Bonnie said, pulling back slightly, suddenly nervous, her hands fidgeting. "A one-year anniversary gift."

"Our anniversary isn't for another two weeks." Emi tilted her head, curious, a small smile playing at her lips.

"I know, but I couldn't wait." Bonnie produced a small wrapped box from her pocket, her movements quick, almost shy. "Open it."

Inside was a ring, not an engagement ring exactly, but something clearly significant. White gold, with a small inscription on the inside that read: E ∞ B. 

"Bonnie- " Emi's breath caught, her hand trembling as she held the box, eyes already glistening.

"It's a promise," Bonnie said quickly, words tumbling out in a rush, her expression anxious and hopeful all at once. 

"Not marriage, not yet, but a promise that I'm in this. That I want to keep choosing you, keep building this with you, keep being patient and passionate and present. If you want that too." Her eyes searched Emi's face desperately, vulnerable.

Emi's vision was blurring, tears spilling over as a smile broke across her face. "I want that. God, I want that so much." Her voice trembling with emotion.

"Yeah?" Bonnie's expression flooded with relief, her own eyes going wet, a tentative smile forming.

"Yeah. Put it on for me?" Emi held out her hand, fingers trembling slightly.

Bonnie slid the ring onto Emi's finger with shaking hands, biting her lip in concentration, blinking back tears. It fit perfectly, catching the crimson lights, becoming part of Emi's landscape.

"I love you," Emi said, her voice breaking, looking down at the ring, then back up at Bonnie's face. "I love you, and I want to keep saying it for as long as you'll let me."

"How about forever?" Bonnie suggested, her smile radiant through her tears, thumb brushing away the wetness on Emi's cheek. "We could try for forever."

"Forever sounds perfect." Emi's expression was luminous, certain, completely unguarded.

They kissed in the red light, both crying and laughing at the same time, surrounded by the chemical smell, the weight of history, and the promise of tomorrow. 

Outside, the mall's night sounds formed their familiar symphony: Sing's footsteps on his rounds, the whoosh of the climate control, distant sirens from the street beyond. 

The ordinary architecture of evenings, reliable and unchanging. The world continuing its patient evolution toward whatever came next.

But in the darkroom, they had already transcended all that. 

They were preserved. Present tense. Ongoing.

Developed with patience. Fixed with love. Archived for posterity.