Accidentally started rereading Northanger Abbey, and was sudden reminded all over again that Jane Austen is, in fact, fucking hilarious.
NA is her parody/satire of Gothic novels at the time, and she starts the book by choosing violence-- she describes the "tragedy" of the main character, Catherine Morland, a girl Determined to be a Heroine even though ALL ODDS are against her: she has a sane father who doesn't lock up his daughters, a healthy mother who didn't die in childbirth, no preternatural talent for music or drawing through which to reveal her Deepest Soul, and-- most shockingly of all-- absolutely zero love interests for whom she can wander the hills mourning their starcrossed fates until she wastes away from the sheer Sentimentality of it all.
But don't worry! She's got this FIGURED OUT. She KNOWS why she has not yet found her TRUE LOVE:
There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no—not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door—not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
(SPOILER: She is introduced to a mysterious young man who lives in an ABBEY, which everyone knows means he has a DEEPLY MYSTERIOUS SECRET PAST and is maybe a TRAGIC HERO or even a ROMANTIC MONSTER and either way this is IT this is Catherine's TIME TO SHINE she is going to get a good grade in DOOMED LOVE, a thing that is normal to want and--)
(...meanwhile Henry Tilney-- an ordinary guy who never expected "get cast as the Hero in some Grand Gothic Romance" to show up on his bingo card-- starts wondering when exactly he started finding Catherine's attempts to locate bloody daggers in his linen closet charming.)
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(post-3x05 kacy scene)
Warm fingertips press down against the thin skin on the inside of her wrist, a melody she knows that she knows but can’t quite place in the early grey of the morning, the sun rising, muted, through the low clouds outside the window. She was asleep a minute ago and there’s a dream quickly fading away as her eyes open slowly and the room shifts into focus.
“Morning,” Kate whispers, still sunken in her pillow.
“G’morning.” Lucy pulls the words from the back of her throat like she’s pulling cotton from a cattail. “Time s’it?”
Kate doesn’t roll over to check her phone. “Early,” she guesses. “Too early for our day off.”
A day off. A present for her jungle excursion, courtesy of Tennant. A whole day to let her body come down from the high of being chased through thick vegetation with a life hanging delicately in her hands.
Lucy lets her eyes close again and sinks back into her pillow. She goes back to focusing on Kate’s fingers looped carefully around the wrist between them. Tap, tap, taptap. Tap, tap. A song, then. One that she knows but can’t quite place.
“Is that Boot Scootin Boogie?”
Kate exhales a short laugh. “Taylor Swift.”
“Who else would it be?” Lucy feels the bed shift as Kate slides a little closer. She can feel the soft heat coming off Kate’s bare arms and wants to reach for it, pull it back over her, close her eyes and slip back into sleep for just a little bit longer.
It was a long day yesterday, her nerves pulled to their breaking point. When she stepped over the threshold to their apartment, the weight she had been working so hard to push off came crashing down on her. She doesn’t remember tasting the pizza Kate ordered, doesn’t remember picking Love is Blind on the TV or queuing up where they left off. She doesn’t remember brushing her teeth or turning out the light.
She does remember Kate’s body warm behind her on the couch, her own body pressed to Kate’s front as they sat wrapped up in each other. She remembers Kate’s arms and how they wrapped low around her waist in bed and held her tightly. She remembers soft lips to her bare shoulder and I love you against her skin as she let the exhaustion take over.
She remembers the Kate of it all, the steady and warm and loving presence she’s come to need like oxygen in her lungs. She remembers the overwhelming feeling of love—one she thought she’d never find in a million years.
“I could sleep another hundred hours,” she admits, eyes still closed.
She feels Kate’s smile against the back of her hand. “You can. We have nothing planned today.”
The thought is so tempting. She could pull Kate’s arms around her, drape them over her like the light comforter they’re sharing, and let herself sink back into sleep. It’s not too far off; she could reach for it and be asleep in moments.
But Kate is awake and tapping out a Taylor Swift song against her pulse point and that usually means banana pancakes and a Golden Girls marathon and pressing Kate against the counter edge and kissing her until either their lungs start to burn or the pancakes start to smoke. Lucy loves those mornings and the way Kate tastes like the bites of bananas she snuck before mixing them into the batter.
“Did I dream yesterday?”
“Only if we were having the same nightmare.” Kate’s free hand pushes back some of Lucy’s hair. “Otherwise, it was real.”
Lucy slides her foot forward, curling her ankle around Kate’s calf. “I thought so.” She opens one eye, studying Kate’s profile. She’s committed it to memory by now. “I feel like a truck ran me over.”
“It did,” Kate murmurs. “That very much happened.”
Lucy sighs. Yesterday wasn’t a dream. She can see it vividly in her mind and she closes her eyes against it again, trying to fill it with Kate—Kate so close and so warm.
“I’m not ready to talk yet,” she admits. She isn’t. She can’t. She’s still working through her family in her own mind; she can’t possibly put into words what they’re like and what they’ve done to her and to each other.
“We don’t have to talk.” Kate’s voice is soft and genuine and Lucy thinks again—again and again—how lucky she is. “We can just lay here. We don’t have to do anything at all.”
Lucy knows Kate isn’t lying. She knows Kate won’t push and she won’t prod and she’ll let Lucy set the pace for when and where and how. And it sounds perfect—a whole day in bed with Kate and their bodies pressed close together, hidden away from the world.
But someone told her to live her life yesterday. Someone who had the courage to throw theirs to the wind and start over from scratch. Someone who proved that there are still good people in the world who want to do what’s right for the sake of doing the right thing. And even if she can’t talk about it yet, even if she’s not ready to unlock the ugly parts of her past and lay them out on the table, she’s not going to lay in bed all day and let the world just pass her by.
“No.” She opens both eyes, staring deeply into Kate’s brown ones. “Let’s get up. We can make pancakes.”
“Banana or blueberry?”
“Both,” she says, feeling greedy and not caring. “And bacon. And toast. And—“
Kate laughs. “Okay. Remember we can only eat so much.”
“I can eat so much. I’m from—“
“Texas, yes.” Kate laughs again and leans in, kissing Lucy softly and pulling away too soon.
Lucy thinks about chasing her, pressing her deep into the mattress and not stopping until she has to come up for air. But she settles on letting Kate pull away and slide out of bed, pulling her hair up into a ponytail that exposes the long line of her neck. In her thin tank top and her soft shorts, no one has ever looked more beautiful than Kate does right now.
Lucy may be holding some things back, may be keeping some things close to the vest, but this? This she wants to scream from the rooftops. This she wants everyone to know. This she wants to tell Kate.
“I love you.”
Kate looks back over her shoulder, a smile on her face that threatens to break through the grey clouds outside their window. “I love you too.”
Live your life, Lucy Tara.
Lucy smiles as she gets up and stretches her arms above her head, feeling the tension break in her shoulders. She is going to live her life. She’s going to take every moment and hold it tightly in her hands.
She’s going to love Kate with every part of her that’s capable of it and when she’s ready she’ll tell Kate everything she wants to know.
“Lucy?”
Lucy looks up. “Hmm?”
“I said, we can make toast too. If you want.”
She thinks about it for a moment before she smiles. “Life is too short to skip the toast.”
Kate rolls her eyes, pulling the sheet back up on the bed. “Where did you read that?”
“That’s a Lucy Tara quote, free of charge.” She winks when Kate laughs and scrubs her hair back off her neck into a bun. “There’s more where those came from, by the way.”
“Lucky me,” Kate grumbles, still smiling.
“Yeah,” Lucy says softly. “Lucky you.” She holds Kate’s eyes for a moment. “Lucky us.”
Kate’s smile slips into shy before she clears her throat and gives the neatly-made bed one last pat. “Lucky us,” she echoes. She slips out of the bedroom and heads towards the kitchen, humming something under her breath.
Lucy watches her walk away and thinks: this is a good life. This is a life worth living.
She follows Kate.
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