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It's the Saturday before classes start. Ellie has been driving all day, but it's worth it for an entire three months out of the house. And she even drew a single in the dorm lottery, so there's that. It's tiny, but she doesn't have to share.
Suitcases on the bed, she starts unpacking into the dresser that lives underneath. Tops here, pants there, hanging things in the closet. Computer can go on the desk, and then notebooks into the drawers.
Ruby's frustration with having to muffle all her noises seems to translate into additional wiggles.
He mostly wants to know what they want for lunch, though he does give Ruby a fondly exasperated look.
"Ruby was under the impression that you might only have stale macaroni and cheese."
He raises a finger, opens his mouth, closes his mouth, lowers his finger. "Okay, technically..."
"Nowhere exactly here. The bar Cap likes doesn't count as food, and there's a pizza place that's only arguably edible. But there's an English food place a town over that's good."
"-I think this is the first time I've heard 'English food' and 'good' in the same sentence."
The next few days go also actually pretty good. Captain Mal gets gradually a bit less suspicious of Ellie, and Ruby manages to split her attention fairly between her girlfriend and family-ish. Some of Cap's friends come by, including the woman who apparently taught Ruby to knife fight ("The first I heard of her was the Captain calling me in the middle of the night asking how to teach a seven year old knife safety. I felt compelled to step in."), but they're mostly fairly normal folk. Ruby likes them, and they like her, but they don't really gel with Ellie.
Eventually, of course, the end of their planned stay rolls around.
Ellie says her goodbyes cordially enough (more so with Ruby). And then she's off on her own.
She has a few candidate places in mind to look at. Her budget is as big as her search radius, so she can afford to be choosy. The apartment she settles on is a few towns over from Ruby's, on the top of three floors, and has large, airy room with windows that open all the way. For paint, she settles on a mostly neutral color scheme, with green accents. For furniture and appliances, she goes for sleek and dark.
There are plenty of bookshelves and lots of open wall space. She expects those to fill up over time.
Decorating takes a couple weeks. Only once everything's in place does she invite Ruby over.
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