#AND FOR WHAT REASON MAGGIE?!

[cdyssey]

One Bed

Summary: When Barbara and Melissa get to their conference hotel room, they're unduly shocked that there is only one bed. [Post-2.16]

CW: Alcohol, Drunkenness, Emotional Infidelity/Infidelity, Sexual Innuendo/References

AO3

—

It’s a mistake, of course.

A clerical error most likely.

Perfectly reasonable given all the administrative duress that the hotel must be under since it’s hosting PECSA.

When Barbara and Melissa get to their shared room, huffing and puffing and ready to park their tired asses down—having lugged their suitcases all the way down a long hallway that looks like it could have come straight from The Shining—they quickly realize that instead of two queens, there’s only one king-sized bed that’s clearly made for two. 

Barbara reacts as she’s supposed to, as is to be expected of her, a zealous woman of God—scandalized and righteously bewildered, stopping dead in the middle of the doorway, clenching the handle of her makeup bag far too tightly…

(… battling unsolicited images of Melissa’s beautiful hair splayed across a white pillow.)

(And she isn’t wearing a shirt in this vision for some inexplicable reason either, the contours of a black lace bra doing absolutely nothing to contain those creamy, voluptuous—)

“Oh, almighty God in Heaven,” she exhales with shuttered breath, blinking rapidly. Melissa nearly runs into her, the tip of her shoe clipping her heel as she also tries to teeter to an abrupt standstill with all her luggage.

It’s almost funny.

The way that Barbara barely feels the ensuing sting.

“What?” The younger woman grunts as she peers over her shoulder. “Is the room not clean yet or somethin’ because I swear to God, I ain’t carrying all this crap down aga—“

But she stops short, clearly sees the dilemma.

That one bed.

“Ah,” she only says, temporarily rendered speechless, which is a damn near feat for Melissa Schemmenti, who has strong opinions on pretty much everything, from the starting lineup of the Flyers to which Wawa hoagie is the best.

(The Gobbler obviously.)

“We should call downstairs,” Barbara suggests weakly, her throat strangely dry. Maybe it’s just the Allentown weather, and her sinuses are acting up, as they’re wont to do in strange environments.

Because surely, it’s not the prospect of sharing the same bed with her dearest friend in the entire world.

That would be ludicrous to be bothered about. 

Absurd even.

It’s merely a bed, and she’s a grown-ass woman who is perfectly capable of cohabiting a bed with another grown-ass woman.

If it has to come to that.

(She doesn’t think it would be a particularly good idea for it to come to that.)

“See if we can get it changed,” she continues, attempting a smile that stretches across her lips like rusted wire.

“What?” Melissa teases, having regained her composure far more quickly than Barbara. Her chin is nearly touching her shoulder, and that makes the kindergarten teacher feel some kind of way too, as though there’s a tightness coiled just behind her navel. She also blames this on her incredibly sensitive allergies, inwardly lamenting that she forgot to pack her Sudafed. 

“You scared to sleep in the same bed with me? ‘Fraid I have cooties?”

She receives an accompanying smirk and an elbow nudge at this, pinned down by twinkling eyes that remind her of both hearth and home, and Barbara can’t help it; she laughs in spite of herself. 

Because it never really matters in the end. 

Not with Melissa Schemmenti.

Whether she’s irritated about paperwork, stressed after a long few weeks of fearing that her husband has prostate cancer, or experiencing inconvenient sinus symptoms, the younger woman always knows how to tease a smile out of her. She’s a menace and one hell of a saint; she absolutely delights in doing so. 

Barbara used to hate that when she was a younger woman, loathed that there was apparently one person who could sneak past her well-constructed defenses and disarm them all with a sly wink and a shit-eating grin. She used to nag at Melissa all the time for being facetious.

It was utterly inappropriate.

All the jokes and games and innuendos that would make a preacher blush.

They were supposed to be adults. 

But now, nearly three decades down the line, she’s forever grateful to Melissa for continually reminding her of how to play.

“No, of course not,” she insists vigorously. “I just know that you and I would both be more comfortable if we had our own beds. Our backs are more twisted than those kids who won at the end of Footloose.”

“Pssh, that’s the moral you took at the end of Footloose, Barb?” Melissa snorts incredulously, shaking her fiery head. 

“Yes!”

No, it absolutely was not, but she isn’t going to admit to spending an inordinate amount of time admiring Lori Singer’s toned arms. 

As inspiration for her own exercise regiment, naturally. 

“God bless ya,” her friend chortles fondly, “but hell yeah, sure. We can grab our swag bags from the ballroom and swing by the front desk afterwards. And then it’s—“

“—pool time, baby,” Barbara finishes with delicious zeal, unable to contain herself, affecting a theatrical, little shoulder shimmy. 

She’s been looking forward to PECSA for at least a month now, anticipating all the best parts in advance: the long car ride with Melissa and the inevitable hours in the pool with her too, luxuriating in the sauna with Melissa, boozing it up with Melissa, staggering back to the room gloriously drunk at 2AM with Melissa, (wondering why life isn’t always as lovely as this in a tequila-soaked daze).

Waking up to Melissa as the first sight she sees in the morning.

Nursing a nasty hangover.

Thinking it’s an appropriate and welcome punishment for ever daring to be so perfectly happy.

(With Melissa.)

These are the traditions that they’ve threaded for themselves in all these years upon years—their rituals of unbecoming, of leaving school and family chaos and the consummate professionals that they always have to be behind. And, of course, what happens at the conference stays at the conference. That’s their maxim anyway—maybe even their chosen excuse—for the ways they tend to act when they’re alone.

“Well, I was gonna say booze time,” the younger woman grins, “but I guess the two aren’t mutually exclusive the way we do it.”

“No,” Barbara easily returns the smile, affectionately knocking her hip against Melissa’s own. “Not at all.”

—

An hour later, they’re stretched out side-by-side on lounge chairs by the pool—pre-gaming for PECSA-geddon with piña coladas—when Melissa gets a call from the concierge; they’d stopped by the lobby before heading upstairs to change into their swimsuits and made the manager aware of the error, leaving with a promise that he’d look for another room and get back to them as soon as check-in rush was over.

But to no avail.

There are no doubles left in the inn.

“He said they’ll send us a complimentary bottle of champagne for the trouble, though,” the second-grade teacher shrugs as she tosses her phone into her beach bag again. “So that’s a plus. I’mma need copious amounts of alcohol to cope with seein’ my sister’s ugly mug.”

Barbara, who had been stuck on the fact that she is in fact going to have to share a bed with Melissa tonight—(again, not that it discomfits her at all! she’s a grown-ass woman!)—is a little late registering what she just said, but when it hits her, when she remembers that they’d run into Kristin Marie before leaving the vendor ballroom, she sharply recalls the way the two sisters had so viscerally sparred.

As they always do when they encounter each other in the wild—claws out, hackles raised, their words like sharp teeth at the edge of the other’s exposed throat.

Barbara frankly thinks that their estrangement has gone on for too damn long. She’s seen enough of their fights to know that beneath all the name calling and cooking-based insults, they clearly love and miss each other, even if they’re both too stubborn to ever admit it. But all the same, she hadn’t appreciated Kristin Marie’s remarkably low blow about Joseph.

Hell, she may have even said something herself had Melissa not gotten there first.

“About that…” She begins, biting her plump lower lip. It tastes like pineapple. She briefly prays—perhaps inappropriately—that the rum will give her liquid courage. 

Barbara is well-aware that they have an implicit but long-established rule not to bring their personal lives with them to conferences. Last year, for instance, they did an exceptionally fine job of not talking about the fact that the Howards had been in unhappy straits, their marriage strained by Gerald’s recent promotion. His long hours exacted a toll from them; his frequent out-of-town trips caused an abyss that neither of them knew how to functionally bridge.

They didn’t argue necessarily—they just constantly disagreed with each other in their normal tones of voice—but that was somehow the exact same thing and possibly even worse.

(Maybe they were too apathetic to even muster themselves to fight.)

They persevered and made it through that dark time, though.

(Mostly.)

They tentatively reconciled.

(They never directly spoke about the thousands of tensions between them, steamrolling over and through them instead, affecting a normality that neither of them looked like they could wholly feel.)

Of course they did. There was no other option. Divorce was synonymous with quitting, and quitting was in neither of their vocabularies. 

But things had been complicated there for a while.

Life had been.

And this time last year, Melissa didn’t have to ask if something was wrong. Attentive to every microgesture, she just capably knew and didn’t press Barbara about any of it. 

Just kept plying drinks into her open hand.

And Barbara Howard had loved her for that—for her discretion, for her clear sensitivity to the delicate situation, for all her innumerable and wordless acts of care—the drinks, her purposefully inane chatter, the way she would sometimes rub circles into the side of the kindergarten teacher’s wrist when they sat at the bar, and every tall man with a sad smile unfailingly reminded her of Gerald.

She’s too something or another—(Involved? Hypocritical? Christian?)—to ever extend her the same courtesy.

“Don’t,” Melissa warns, sucking on the straw of her drink rather petulantly. “I don’t wanna hear it. I ain’t makin’ up with her.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” she replies patiently. (Well, she is. Eventually. If the two of them keep it up this weekend. Both for Melissa’s sake and her own. She’s not willing to play referee to the Schemmenti sisters’ knock-down-drag-out fights again. She’s been there, done that, and every attempt has unfailingly ended with her needing to imbibe copious amounts of wine for doing so.) “I was just going to ensure that you’re okay—see if you wanted to talk about it.”

It isn’t entirely lost on her that Melissa had said the exact same thing to her just two weeks ago when she’d nearly set the school on fire, distracted and undone by the stress of Gerald’s health scare. It isn’t beyond her grasp of irony that they’d concluded that same conversation on a laughing agreement that neither of them believe in the necessity of advertising their stressors.

But still.

It’s them, and they talk through these things when they’re ready or just on the verge of being so. It’s them, and they both implicitly know when the other needs a little push off the terrifying ledge. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be them if they didn’t—push each other and need to occasionally be pushed, that is—always challenging each other in their relationship in some way or another, more than willing to be what the other lacks. 

Melissa immediately averts her eyes, staring at the water mere feet away from them, how it rhythmically laps against the side of the pool, and Barbara stares at her, intransigent and yet so gentle, knowing it is a form of love to not let the moment go.

“What’s there to talk about?” She eventually shrugs. Her green cover-up slips at the gesture and the magenta strap of her swimsuit briefly becomes visible, her slightly freckled shoulder exposed.

Barbara blinks rapidly, forcing herself to concentrate, briefly unspooled by a sudden desire to kiss the creamy skin there, to sample the anatomy of her all the way down…

She coughs into her free hand, briefly choked.

Damn sinuses.

“Kristin Marie’s a little shit,” Melissa goes on, oblivious, still looking away, now idly swirling the colorful umbrella in her cocktail glass. “End of the story. Same old, same old.”

“A little shit who is also your sister,” Barbara parries back with a knowing smile as her friend just as deliberately scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Which is what makes it so complicated, sweetheart—the people we love know how to wound us far more effectively than any knife.”

“Did ya get that off a Snapple lid, Barb?” Melissa retorts. Melissa jokes. Melissa capably deflects. Always, always, always. It’s one of her less aggressive defenses against unwanted vulnerability, the one she tends to wield most in conversations with Barbara. 

(With other people—outsiders—she’d just bark and perhaps even bite.)

But Barbara solemnly shakes her head, unwilling to let her get away with it, thinking of her best friend’s kindness in these last few weeks—how, ever since the fire, not a day has gone by that she hasn’t made sure that she’s okay. Gerald even told her the other night—as they laid in their sheets after yet another round of celebratory relief sex—that he was glad that she’d finally told Mel. 

Mel.

He called her that because he loves her too.

Not in the same way Barbara does, of course…

… whatever way that happens to be.

That’s too complicated for her to ever fully—or at least, audibly—define.

Messy even.

And she despises mess, especially within the immaculate temple of herself; she scrubs it clean at the altar every Sunday, asking God’s forgiveness for a sin that she can’t even name.

She thrilled at her husband bringing Melissa’s pervasive specter into their shared bed, relieved that she didn’t have to be the one to do so; and yet, her hand splayed against his bare chest, she could not bring herself to interrogate the root cause of her own pleasure.

“I was worried about you,” he went on gently, his warm knuckles skimming her forearm as he held her in the dark, “keeping it all on the inside.”

“It was the only thing I could do,” Barbara returned, perhaps a little too quickly, echoing the same sentiment that she had said to Melissa. She could only pray and not talk about it; she had desperately wanted to talk about it, had almost dared to—several times, in fact—as she and Melissa sat at the same table that she’d later burned, as was their habit, as was their decades long norm. But the words remained lacquered on her tongue; the weight of them rendered her incapable of speech; she was convinced that speaking her fears to Melissa would make them all real.

I’m afraid my husband is sick, she could not bring herself to say.

And if he is—if this is our lived reality—then I am devastated, Melissa.

I am so, so guilty.

Our marriage is not what it once was.

She loves Gerald Howard; she always will—he has been her best friend for thirty-seven beautiful years—but she secretly wonders if their renewed closeness in these last few weeks is just mutual and desperate apology, a last-ditch attempt to mend what has certainly been disrupted between them.

They’ve been distant from each other for a long time now.

And it hasn’t been anyone’s fault, really.

All their polite disagreements aside, Barbara is more than aware that Gerald’s promotion was not the fundamental breaking point in their marriage; it was just the easiest grievance to turn into an excuse, the tangible obstacle that they could both offload their hundreds of insecurities into without delving further into any single one of them. They could blame the promotion because it was there. It kept them from having to confront each other, which was far more complicated than having an impartial something to unite against. This lack of introspection allowed their middling reconciliation to be easier to swallow than it probably should have been, and yet, conversely, it made Gerald’s irregular prostate exam results all that much harder to bear three weeks ago. After the fact, they both became alive to the reality that their marriage has long been broken, and they’ve done everything since then to try and bandage the festering wounds.

The sex has been passionate.

Has been sensational even—(they’re both overachievers)—and yet, strangely controlled, as though both of them are seeking atonement from the other’s satisfaction. Barbara appreciates the intimacy; she deeply fears that it is compensating for something that they can never, ever get back. 

“You’re happier now that you’ve told her, though,” Gerald continued, and his voice was so kind as it wound its way down to her in the quietness of their room, and yet, she could distinguish that his eyes were shrewd… and perhaps even a little sad.

That had scared her a little.

And maybe a whole lot.

What was there to be shrewd (and perhaps a little sad) about when it came to her relationship with Melissa?

What did he know?

Was it something that she didn’t? Was it the unspoken thing that she could not force herself to articulate—the twinges in her gut that she sometimes experienced when she looked at Melissa, the recurring visions of the woman in her underwear, the thrill that she just experienced when he had only said her name? Was Melissa the unnamable sin that she kept committing—over and over again—without ever fully acknowledging that she was doing so?

“Gerald—” She started, the slightest plea in her voice. She curled her manicured fingers into the dividing line of his sternum and wished that he had said something that she could truthfully deny.

But he cut across her; he enveloped her hand with his own and lightly squeezed.

“—I like it when you’re happy, Barb.”

And somehow, in their nearly four decades long marriage, that was the cruelest thing he had ever said to her because of what it indirectly and yet so clearly implied.

She was not happy with him.

She found, even in the rawness and the immediacy of that moment, that she could not wipe her hands free of blood and cleanly refute this assertion either, and so, only one ruinous fact remained.

She and Gerald love each other deeply and so much.

They’re hurting each other all the same.

“Be serious, girlfriend,” she tells Melissa, frowning firmly, her mind full of her husband, her chest aching because of her best friend. “I’m not talking about Snapple lids and you know it. I’m talking about lived experience.”

I’m talking about your sister.

I’m talking about Gerald Howard.

I’m talking about us.

(She always is in some way or another.)

We both know what it’s like to be hurt by loved ones.

And equally, what it means to hurt them back.

Maybe she and Melissa—without ever really realizing it—hurt each other every blessed day, just by inhabiting the same spaces and fooling themselves into believing that they are careful about never crossing any of its dutifully articulated lines.

“And I don’t wanna be serious, Barb,” Melissa huffs, the playful smile slipping sideways from her mouth. “I want to drink my piña colada and inhale so much chlorinated water that I accidentally get high. Is that so much to ask for PECSA weekend?”

The answer, of course, is no—it’s not a demanding request at all, and if Barbara is any sort of friend, she’d drop the conversation right here and right now, and allow them to return to their various attempts at self-medication… but she can't entirely help herself, a little reckless under the influence, freer here in Allentown from the facade which circumscribes her in every other given context.

PECSA Barbara has a lot in common with Sea Barbara.

They’re both almost truthful.

“Perhaps not,” she admits grudgingly, watching as Melissa places her drink down on the table between them and starts to take her cover-up off, clearly about to make a run from her feelings by diving into the pool. This is yet another one of her friend’s go-to diversionary tactics, the one she commonly resorts to when joking about her pain doesn’t work.

(It never really works on Barbara.)

“But you miss her, Melissa, and she’s here,” she continues, now dry-mouthed and overwhelmed at the sight of the younger woman in just her bathing suit: the ample exposure of her cleavage, the powerful silhouette of her thighs, the thin pink fabric that stretches tightly over her belly. “Perhaps God is trying to tell you something.”

Her chest bruises even as she utters the words.

She probably shouldn’t be invoking God when she can’t keep her eyes off of Melissa Schemmenti’s ass.

“And maybe it’s just a coincidence,” her friend says bluntly, suddenly standing up and kicking her sandals off. One nearly flies into the water.

Barbara winces at the tone, knows that she provoked it and hates that she did—(why can’t she ever leave well enough alone?)—which Melissa immediately catches, her green eyes softening, her entire expression, a conciliatory smile rising to her lips. It’s as crooked as the necklace of saints nigh perpetually strung around her neck.

“But, uh, enough chit-chat,” she says, jerking her head towards the pool, her messy ponytail violently swinging from side-to-side. “You comin’, hon?”

Barbara quickly decides that she’s pushed her luck far enough in this conversation and nods emphatically, slowly tugging her own cover up above her head, revealing her sky blue bathing suit underneath. It doesn’t escape her notice that Melissa’s cheeks have slightly reddened at the sight, that her pupils have dilated, that she’s rubbing at the hollow of her throat with three fingers. Indeed, thoroughly aware of all these reactions, she swallows thickly, suddenly self-conscious. She makes a meal out of neatly folding the garment and placing it in her bag, giving both of them time to recompose themselves.

“After you,” she eventually says in a voice that’s not her own.

And so, when Melissa wades into the water, Barbara dutifully follows, drawn siren-like by the fiery undulations of the other’s hair. 

—

Barbara showers first, and Melissa follows. 

Afterwards, of course.

Separately.

That’s probably the one thing that they’ve never shared—well, besides a bed, but even that’s about to change in the course of a few hours.

The entire time that she’s getting dressed, blow-drying her hair, smartening up in a green dress and turquoise blazer, meticulously applying her mascara, she’s thinking about that damn bed. She can’t escape it no matter where she moves in the room. It’s too big. It invades the entire space and all her rational senses. Even as she was showering, rinsing off the sharp stench of the pool, she could not escape the inexorable pull it had on her, the sensual thoughts that it engendered…

Red hair on a pillow.

Lace bras that don’t do their one and only job.

Hands touching hands.

Verdant eyes peering out of the darkness, pulling her inwards into the jungle of the night, a beautiful kaleidoscope of revolving bodies… scarlet curls, plum-colored lips, thighs like creamy taffy, skin like smoky quartz.

She can’t remotely blame any of this on her sinuses, so she rationally concludes that she should stop drinking for the evening—

—a resolution she almost immediately gives up on when a bellhop knocks on the door and delivers the hotel’s apology champagne. 

She pours herself a glass in one of the red solo cups she and Melissa had brought with them for the trip and unslowly drinks it, sitting on the edge of the bed that she and Melissa will eventually share. Some paint-by-the-numbers procedural show is playing on the television. She stares at it without really comprehending it and idly wonders if Melissa is the big spoon or the little spoon.

But then that particular line of thought makes her remember that her best friend has a boyfriend, and her stomach unpleasantly lurches at the thought of Gary the Vending Machine putting his hairy arms around her waist, pulling her in to his chest, working his undeserving fingers beneath the elastic band of her undergarments…

She’s never entirely liked the man.

(Yes, she absolutely pushed Melissa to date him in the first place.)

He’s good, he’s fine, he’s perfectly okay—but those are the same sorts of adjectives that one might apply to a functional kitchen appliance, not a romantic partner. 

She takes another distracted swill of her drink and doesn’t clock the precise moment when Melissa apparently steps out of the en-suite bathroom in a white robe, her vivid hair wrapped in a towel. But when she looks over and apprehends this dizzying sight, Barbara can only stare.

“Forgot my bra in here,” she chuckles, which is precisely the worst thing she can possibly say because Barbara’s eyes immediately roam upwards to the v-shaped divot of the robe, where little is visible except for curving shadows, the tantalizing suggestion of something more. “Kinda need that.”

“Yes,” she hears herself agree in a pathetically small voice, squeezing her plastic cup as Melissa saunters past to her suitcase, which is resting on top of the armchair in the corner of the room. It’s all very hypnotic, the pendulum-like swing of her hips, the graceful coordination of all her white-clothed limbs.

Barbara wonders if this effect is intentional, if Melissa knows exactly what she’s doing to her.

But she doesn’t give the thought too much air lest she accidentally name the animal of an emotion prowling around her gut for what she thinks it might be.

(It’s certainly nothing her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ would sanction, that’s for sure.)

(Happiness, her own husband might call it in the dead of night, in the sanctum of their shared bed.)

Melissa bends down to rummage through her suitcase, which doesn’t help matters much either, and Barbara tugs at her layered necklace, thinks she may have clasped it on a little too tightly.

“Listen, Barb, I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said earlier,”' Melissa starts falteringly, clear reluctance in her low voice. “About Kristin Marie. Y’know, at the pool.”

After Melissa had so firmly put a stop to that conversation, Barbara hadn’t brought it up again, and within minutes, they had returned to their jovial selves again—or, perhaps more specifically, the selves who they were at PECSA—hedonists, only thinking about the next physical pleasure. They laughed. They played. They were both experts at compartmentalizing, well-versed in the art of drowning out the noise with a facsimile of a smile. They dried off, finished their piña coladas, and enthused about the party tonight like it was the only pressing matter in their two-person world.

“Oh, do allow me to apologize for that, Melissa,” she frowns deeply as the other teacher finally straightens up with something in her hands. “I know your sister is a sensitive subject for you, and I… I shouldn’t have brought her up… we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

But Melissa vehemently shakes her head, a few damp curls falling from her towel, and finally turns to face Barbara again, a sad smile crooked at the corner of her mouth, a silky black bra dangling from her fingertips.

One hand still gripping her solo cup, Barbara buries the fingers of the other into her right thigh.

“Good, yeah,” her friend laughs, though the gesture doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She shifts uncomfortably, rolling her weight from foot to foot. “That works for me… but, uh, I also just wanted to say thanks, Barb.”

Barbara can’t pry her gaze away from that damn brassiere; Melissa’s own is darting anywhere but her: the ceiling, the carpeted floor, the empty space just over her shoulder. What a pair the two of them make.

“For what?” She asks in a constricted voice, and the oddness of it must draw the other’s attention because suddenly, they're finally looking at each other in the face again. They’re staring, mutually constituting each other in the wordless interaction.

Seeing and being seen.

It is all that they have ever done.

It is all that they seem to want to do.

“For bein’ there for me,” comes an equally charged reply, freighted by that which neither of them can openly name. “I know you were just trying to help out, and I appreciate that.”

“Always,” Barbara breathes immediately, so glad that there is space between them—some six feet and something even more intangible than that. The elaborate ring on her fourth finger digs into her thigh too. “You’d do the same for me.”

A slight beat; she smiles so widely that it almost hurts.

“You have done the same for me,” she adds passionately. “I don’t know who or where or what I’d ever be without you, Melissa Schemmenti.”

But she does in fact know—maybe they both do. Maybe even her sweet husband does too. Maybe it's the most horribly kept secret in the whole wide world.

“God, you’re such a sap,” Melissa laughs because it's easier than actually engaging, and Barbara allows her the indiscretion this time, even joining along.

“Girl, you’re one to talk!”

“Hey!”

She is more than dimly aware that it’s probably better for them both if they continue to treat their relationship like it’s some huge joke.

Because isn't it, though?

They love each other, and they can never actually say it aloud.

Isn’t that the funniest punchline in God’s almighty world?

They love each other, and they can never act upon this reality in any meaningful way.

They live with this crucial fact every single day and spend so many of their waking hours dangerously straddling the borders that they've so carefully articulated to keep themselves apart.

But, of course, that's only when they're sober.

—

With each math-a-rita that they guzzle at PECSA-geddon, the more liberal with their affection that they get, all of their studious inhibitions subsumed beneath the ministrations of tequila. 

One drink in, they start with little gestures.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Innocuous even.

Forgivable.

Barbara places a guiding hand on the small of Melissa’s back as they weave their way through the throng of nicely dressed people, looking for a table with room enough for two. The younger woman is wearing a leopard-print dress.

And she never wears a dress.

And she thinks about this, much longer and more sinfully than she probably should.

Melissa curls her fingers into Barbara’s wrist when they realize that they’re sitting with the Dawn Nichols, whose school supplies are legendary amongst educators. The second grade teacher gives her a knowing look, the kind that clearly says, Holy shit, there’s an opportunity here. 

We can make something happen.

And Barbara shivers with quiet delight as their ankles accidentally glance beneath the table, as the expression in those green eyes does something to her, unloosing her at her tightly knotted core.

Two drinks into the night, they’ve run into Kristin Marie by this point, and Melissa’s entire body is wound so tightly that Barbara thinks that to touch her is to break her.

But she does it anyway—touches her, that is—a little reckless with her head buzzing so pleasantly, the sermonizing voice who often tells her no locked outside her personal church for the night. She interlinks their arms together as they revolve around the ballroom, and Melissa vents about her younger sister being a total puttana—whatever that means—and a shithead—which is perfectly comprehensible.

She gets a little tired of this after a couple of revelations, though, her feet aching in her heels, and she doubles back on her initial resolve to not interfere with the Schemmenti sisters, suggesting the impossible in the same breath—that they try to make up with each other. 

And she touches Melissa’s arm when she says as much.

She presses her thumb into the crook of her soft elbow.

And when they look at each other—really look at each other—less than two feet between them, an island unto themselves in the middle of this crowded room, Barbara somehow knows that they’re both thinking about their conversation in the hotel room earlier—about the fact that they’re always there for each other, and it's not just a trite thing that either of them have unthinkingly said.

It's the truth.

Trust me, Barbara tries to say with just her eyes. I’m here for you.

If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be there to catch you if you fall.

Fuck you, Melissa all but communicates with her own, though with the deep sigh that comes shortly afterward, she just as immediately intimates, Okay.

Yeah.

Sure.

I believe you.

Trust has been hard won between them in over twenty years of companionship.

(It is a part of the love that they can never fully say.)

Two plus one math-a-ritas in, they’re back at the round table with Dawn Nichols and Kristin Marie—the Schemmenti sisters have finally made up!—and they’re all tipsily laughing about a story that Melissa is telling. Something inappropriate, of course. Something crass. Something about a wild escapade that she’d had when she went to France with a few of her friends for her college graduation trip, where she somehow became very close friends with a young Parisian couple she met at a bar.

“So we go back to their place and I’m thinkin’ that we’re just gonna throw back some shitty European wine,” Melissa carries on, simply exuberant, her cheeks suffused with a rosy glow, “and the guy, God bless him, he was flippin’ hot, but he didn’t have a thought in his head.” 

“Just your type,” Kristin Marie snorts, but the quip doesn’t have any real bite to it anymore. She grins at her older sister lopsidedly, with a reluctant tenderness that makes the striking resemblance between them all the more apparent.

“Yeah,” Melissa acknowledges cheerfully, nodding once, and Barbara is just happy to see her friend so happy, even though she’s not exactly sure where this adventurous story is going. “So his girlfriend’s in the bathroom, and he starts jabberin’ away at me, askin’ if I wanted to take my jacket off." Her eyes twinkling with mischief, she affects a spectacularly bad French accent. “Do you need to use ze restroom? Would you like some… lotion, mon chéri?”

She switches back to her normal voice, snickering at herself.

“Only he didn’t say lotion, y'know."

Dawn Nichols and Kristin Marie must arrive at similar conclusions at the exact same time because the former claps an amused hand over her mouth, while the younger Schemmenti sibling goes, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."

“What?” Barbara purses her lips, pouting a little, feeling left out, as she stares between the three women. She’d gotten sidetracked by the leg brushed up against hers beneath the table and perhaps lost the nuance in the conversation as her companions laugh raucously. “What am I missing?”

“It was lube,” Melissa proffers without the slightest modicum of reserve, shrugging her nearest shoulder. “They wanted to fuck me, Barb.”

Barbara can't recover her face fast enough; her mouth falls open where she sits, and she can only blush and suddenly be assaulted with a thousand new images pirouetting through her head—all of which have to do with Melissa and none of which are remotely acceptable to God.

“And did they?” Dawn asks in a hushed voice, her own features delicately feathered with pink, as she leans forward in anticipation of an answer.

“Oh, hell yeah,” her best friend smirks as Kristin Marie guffaws at Barbara, who is now currently choking on air.

Melissa, unshaken and unfazed, takes it in stride, though, rhythmically patting her on the back.

“Oh, shit, ya’ve broken a woman of God,” Kristin Marie snorts, wiping at her eyes.

“Nothing new,” Melissa says charmingly and she leans over to press a kiss against Barbara’s cheek as though to prove a point. 

Barbara cradles her burning face in her hands.

“Lord,” she exhales into her palms, fully incapable of looking at the woman next to her, “I don’t know why I’m even still friends with you.”

Melissa just laughs and laughs, and she continues to massage the spot between her shoulder blades, and she laughs.

Four drinks in, and they’re having a math-a-rita drinking contest with Derek, a bellhop whom they’ve become friendly with over the years. 

Well, Melissa has a drinking contest with him, while Barbara uses the barest sliver of common sense and sobriety that she has left to cajole Dawn Nichols into working with Abbott for at least a year.

“Thank you,” she enthuses, briefly squeezing the other woman’s arm where it rests on the table. “You don’t know how much this will mean for our students.”

“Of course,” Dawn says, warmly observing the drinking game happening a few feet away. Melissa has nearly polished off another glass to Derek’s growing chagrin and Kristin Marie’s violently loud delight. “It’s clear to me that you and your partner are excellent educators; I know you’ll put the resources to good use…”

In her unadulterated surprise at the word used to describe hers and Melissa’s relationship, she nearly forgets to be gracious.  

“Oh, we aren’t—“ She suddenly starts and then stops herself, reevaluating mid-sentence. 

Partner isn’t necessarily a romantic term. Partner simply implies companionship and association with another, inseparability and togetherness. And they have absolutely been those things.

Inseparable.

Together.

A united front.

Partners.

Yes, of course they are and have always been.

“I mean, thank you,” she amends herself politely. “Melissa is truly one of a kind.”

The second grade teacher’s ears must be burning because she apparently hears this and turns back to face them with a radiant smile on her lips, as red as the blush that enlivens her soft cheeks.

“Damn straight I am,” she jests, comfortably resting her chin on Barbara’s shoulder. “What are we talkin’ about again?”

Barbara naturally leans into the touch as Dawn briefly turns away, now engaged by Kristin Marie asking a question about supply packages.

“Oh, nothing, sweetheart,” she muses in a low voice, suddenly feeling herself pulled into the other’s mischief, even wanting to play along; she's simultaneously breathless, intoxicated, by her intimate proximity and the scent of her orange blossom perfume. “Just about how you and I are partners. It’s a rather lofty descriptor for the shenanigans we get up to, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it’d be far easier to just say gay.”

“Melissa Schemmenti!” She nearly chokes. 

Again.

“I kid, I kid! Jesus, Barb! Get a sip of water!”

But there’s not one ounce of water to be found on their table, and so Barbara has to compromise with another hearty swill of margarita.

Tragic.

But she'll cope.

An ungodly amount of alcohol later—(Barbara has lost track of how much either of them have consumed)—they finally stumble into their room around 2AM, supporting one another as best as they can with their altered equilibriums, giggly and utterly euphoric, triumphant in their respective conquests. 

Melissa has outdrunk Derek for the fifth year in a row, and Barbara has secured a contract with Dawn Nichols.

And they are both so drunk and so exhilarated and so unbelievably alive in the moment, that they don’t entirely know how to extricate themselves from each other in the come down from such an exquisite high; they fall into bed—that one, singular bed—in a tangle of loving limbs, still in their dresses, only just capable of kicking their shoes off into the semi-darkness of the room. They didn’t close the curtains all the way before they left for PECSA-geddon, so moonlight intrudes upon the moment, silver and stunningly bright, catching both of them in the simple act of being happy.

Frankly, though, at this current junction of time, as compromised as they are, it’s beyond either of them to fully care. 

“Shit, fuck,” Melissa laughs so hard that she shakes the mattress beneath them. “Your ring’s caught in my hair, Barb.”

“Oh, sorry, girlfriend,” Barbara apologizes and attempts to unravel her fingers from that mass of scarlet waves, but her ring is caught in the wilderness of it, snarled and apprehended. Somehow, in the incredible dysfunction of her mind, she thinks that raising herself above Melissa as she lies vulnerable on the mattress is the best way to set herself free, but all this does is give her a proper aerial view of her prone best friend.

All this does is nearly place her on top of her, their heaving chests inches apart, threatening to collide every so often by the force and desperation of their breathing. Barbara’s slender hands are splayed on either side of Melissa’s head. 

Her face.

She can see every pronounced lineament in the younger woman’s face. Its dramatic height and angular proportions. The complicated expression in her eyes: the profound tenderness of them and something else too. Hunger. Reverence. Melancholy. She can trace the crow’s feet that gather beneath them and at the very edges of them. The redness of her slightly parted lips and the parentheses which enclose them. The slope and the playful upturn of her sharp nose. 

She is beautiful, so unspeakably gorgeous.

Melissa Schemmenti.

Her very best friend.

Her partner.

Maybe even the love of her life, the opportunity who has always eluded her, the what if? just beyond her reach. But, at long last, there is no barrier between them, no insurmountable wall. There is only them and their bodies and the chemistry that electrifies them both whenever they so much as look each other. There is this feeling in her stomach that has been building all day, a tension that she cannot swallow, a queerness that she cannot properly digest. It erects itself in her like a monument, scaffolding its way up the column of her spine.

It will reach her tongue finally.

Those three glorious words.

Fuck me, Melissa. 

(Because I love you is something she still won't be able to say.)

(I love you would make all of this so very real.)

(And precisely none of it can be real; these are the fantasies; these are the fairy tales.)

(The delusions.)

“Ouch,” Melissa murmurs as her hair is pulled. 

By Barbara Howard’s diamond encrusted wedding ring.

It shines in the irradiated light of the moon, glinting harshly, in clear and damning reprimand, and Barbara flinches viscerally, as though stricken. The ring becomes a token again, symbolizing something else besides its own beauty.

Gerald is a good man.

She loves him so much.

She isn’t in love with him, though.

But even still, what gives her the right to ever hurt him?

She straightens up into the air so fast that her head spins, that her stomach lurches, that all the booze she has consumed in the past few hours nearly crests within her and outside of her. She frees her hand; she undoubtedly tugs some more of Melissa's hair. She almost reels backwards into the TV, unable to recapture her balance. She covers her mouth with the hand that always reminds her that she is a married woman, a taken one; the silver band firmly scolds her lips.

“Shit, Barb,” Melissa breathes, abruptly sitting up in the bed, concern in her eyes, such tender and evocative care. “You okay?”

She nods mutely, incapable of trusting herself to speak without expelling all of the accumulated pollution inside of her. Tears form in her eyes and leak over her lower lashes anyway. 

“No, you’re flippin’ not,” her friend readily supplies, standing up herself on rather wobbly feet, but she takes a step towards Barbara anyway, as though to bridge the gap between them, the untenable, omnipresent distance.

And Barbara equally takes a step back, her lower hip hitting the wardrobe that the TV sits upon. 

“Don’t,” she hisses painfully, finally uncovering her mouth.

“Why not?” Melissa challenges, at once defiant and wounded, her brow furrowed over her eyes. The recognition of this makes the kindergarten teacher want to scream. In not hurting Gerald, she’s surely plunging a knife into Melissa. She’s proving her own point from earlier.

Love is a weapon.

It maims and occasionally destroys.

“Because I would kiss you,” she admits, and it feels good to finally say it aloud, to give shape and dimension to these feelings that have seethed inside of her for so long, for so many of the years upon aching years that they've taught at Abbott Elementary side-by-side.

“… and that would make a monster out of me,” she quickly adds because this is also true, and it needs to be said aloud.  

It needs to injure, push away, and deter; she doesn't want to do it; necessity drives her on.

“Oh, yeah?” Comes a reply gentler than it has any right to be. Kind. It Is far less than what she deserves. “And what would that make me then, huh?”

One too.

Complicit. 

Just like me. 

She could say any of these three things but doesn’t; it was clearly a rhetorical question; she can see in Melissa’s darkly lashed eyes that she is willing to accept every wayward epithet if this is the price, if this is the blood sacrifice of their communion.

They can be monsters with each other; they can be so totally in love.

Barbara swallows; thoroughly inebriated though she is, she is not insensible to the magnitude of this offer, the knowledge that all she has to do is say the word and down they’ll descend into hell, hand in monstrous hand.

Alone.

Together.

“I can’t,” she rasps anyway. She swipes angrily at the tears still slipping down her face. She sniffs noisily and loathes herself for it.

“I know,” Melissa returns, her own eyes suddenly overbright. 

But then Barbara Howard leans down and almost does it anyway, gathering the silky hair at the back of Melissa’s neck in her fist, her knuckles softly scraping the skin there. And their noses brush. Their boozy breaths gather in hot pockets in the barest space between them. 

Their lips never touch, though.

Sacrilege remains uncommitted.

“You can’t,” Melissa echoes as a singular tear spirals from the corner of her eye and down the tall plane of her cheek. It collects calmly on the vertex of her chin and remains there.

Barbara brushes it away with her thumb before completely letting go.

“No,” she agrees hoarsely, stepping back for good, and there is a finality to the act that saves and devastates them both.

—

They take turns showering, rinsing the night off them, the copious amounts of booze. Melissa goes first this time, and Barbara follows. 

Afterwards, of course.

Separately.

And when Barbara eventually stumbles back into the bedroom, wearing pajamas that she’s pretty sure are inside out, she sees that Melissa is already in bed, covers pulled up to her face, clearly asleep, lightly snoring.

She’s erected a pillow wall between the two halves of the one bed. 

It’s a smart move.

And an incredibly isolating one.

But smart moves usually are.

Barbara accepts this for what it is and staggers to her side, slipping beneath the sheets as quietly as she can, briefly tossing and turning to get comfortable, which eventually means facing the two feet tall chastity belt, staring at it as her eyelids begin to droop.

Loving it.

Hating it.

Eternally grateful to it.

Disappointed at its necessity, disappointed with herself.

She is so weak in a thousand myriad ways; maybe that, too, is love…

… she doesn’t exactly know what compels her to in the end—(weakness, loneliness, monstrosity, love)—but before she entirely drifts away, she reaches underneath the pillows and is relieved to find a hand waiting for her there.

A concession.

A forgivable compromise.

And so, Barbara allows herself this one pittance too. She intertwines their fingers beneath this latest boundary that divides them, understanding that this—yes, this—is the sole degree of happiness that she can afford without too high of a moral cost.

She falls asleep haunted by the way that the striations of their fingers so perfectly align.

[carcasscounty]

Holy fuck, how do y'all make OCS

Dr. Petrov, a level 4 animal behavioral scientist for the foundation, and his genetically spliced 939 instance (Aka, "Maggie")

[acecroft]

But then, of course, when Negan turns around and he sees Maggie, we see on his face the possibility that maybe that didn't justify it. Maybe there is no rationalization for what he did to Glenn and that he is the murderer of her husband. And that's all there is to say about it. It's probably very hard for her to stomach, but she's seeing what it feels like to be protected by that show [Negan], and that perhaps that is what happened back in the day. So I think for both of them, that's a really crucial moment of their journey together. - Eli Jorné [EP and showrunner]

[lucy-moderatz]

[nero-neptune]

NORTHERN EXPOSURE 3.02 “Only You”

“Think about a woman who doesn’t know you’re thinking about her, doesn’t care you’re thinking about her…makes you think about her even more.”

[seefasters]

people making all those body-switching drink spiking memory altering theories when its so much easier to admit you felt like the writing wasn't that good this season. knowing a thing is mid and still enjoying it is so freeing try it sometime

[hopetorun]

Hi! Any 'hockey but Something's Different' recs that you have?

obviously as soon as i saw this question i forgot everything i've ever read in my life. anyway, jess @bropunzeling is really good at this imo, and i've really enjoyed all of her contributions to the genre (supernatural elements, omegaverse, women in the nhl, werewolves, soulbonds)

anyway having perused my bookmarks and crowdsourced with some friends, in no particular order:

jeff/mike where jeff is a demon

ovi + nicky + werewolves

leon + michael dal colle + vampires

pk + carey + daemons

pk + carey + fae

roman + shea + talking animals

usntdp mutants (the fic is jack/nico)

mason mct + connor b + women in the nhl

matthew + leon + animal transformation

there's tons more i'm sure but i reached a point in my bookmarks where i simply could not look at things i saved in 2014 and wonder why i was ever even compelled by those two people together any more. so i stopped. please feel free to share your own contributions!

[maggieknight]

I see all my friends (and people i admire) on artfight...

And yet my social anxiety still wins...

[valdrinors-writing]

Leia Gould in Dirty Little Secret

"I regret getting dragged into your heterosexual tomfoolery."

[omgafhsfanin2024]

Oh god is my fnafhs phase coming back. I have an AU Idea and it's very magical girl-y help (a Lil summary in the tags)

[simgerale]

CHAPTER NINETEEN ; 3/3

TRANSCRIPT:

olette: Sheri… Is it true? Has Prince Luca awoken?

sheridan: Yes, he has.

o: But was he not deemed… lost?

s: He was.

o: [purses her lips nervously]

s: Rosebud, if you have any more questions, you’re free to ask them.

o: Well, apologies for being cautious. I was locked in my room all night, so I was not sure what I was allowed to know.

s: Touché.

o: Still… I overheard a handmaid say that the Prince was poisoned by the substance used in the war. No one—well, I thought that no one ever recovered from it.

s: That is correct. But something belonged to his highness that no one else had.

o: What was it, Sheri?

s: The empress.

[releasing-my-insanity]

Tristan: What does he have that I don't have?

Maggie: I'd rather live on the street with someone I don't love than live in a mansion with someone I love.

Tristan: What?

(Inspiration)

[atopvisenyashill]

if i did a reread of the walking dead and wrote an essay on how aegon ii and carl are doomed to be the last man standing by their narratives, and what starts out as a sort of cool & nifty super power of always surviving turns into this horrific curse where everyone they know is dying around them & sometimes it’s their fault & sometimes it’s not but either way they can’t ever stop it until they’re sitting at the ending with nothing but their lone daughter to protect but so broken they can no longer connect to her and then their story abruptly ends-

would that be like the Most stupid, nerdy thing i have ever done in my life or

[bifairywife]

istg i don’t cry when couples finally have their first kiss/gets together in a series but by GOD did they change the chemistry in my brain this was insANE-

(more thoughts on reblog)

[magnetic-dogz]

I feel like I wouldn’t be as mixed on the decision to get rid of Sonic characters’ ages if it didn’t feel like the discussion of it mainly started and has continued because of shipping

[futuregws]

Now that I can actually talk about the dynamic between Isabelle and Daryl bc I actually saw it, obviously not a lot this is just the beginning but still, it's really good, so if they turn it into a romance I'm gonna be pissed like there's no need for that the way it is right now is good and actually makes sense.