#i'm in a new time zone and as always adjusting somewhat poorly

[jennycalendar]

regarding honor and honesty in the workplace (32/43)

read it on ao3!

THIS SHAMEFULLY LATE UPDATE BROUGHT TO YOU BY INTERNATIONAL TIME ZONES, PAINFUL LONG FLIGHTS, AND CELIA’S COMPLETE INABILITY TO CORRECTLY ESTIMATE WHEN SHE’LL HAVE ACCESS TO WIFI. THANKS

from the personal files of Jenny Calendar:

I feel like I’m supposed to be angrier than I am at Rupert for kissing me and then trying to sweep it under the rug, but the anger is dissipating faster than I’d expected. Honestly, I just feel kind of tired, and I understand where he’s coming from; this is completely new for both of us. Personally, I don’t know how either of us can possibly broach the subject of him kissing me without—I don’t know. Having some sort of terrifying, uncomfortable conversation where he finds out I’m crazy about him and I find out he was maybe only just starting to have feelings for me.

And on the subject of Rupert possibly having feelings for me? That might be the only genuinely good thing that came out of this whole Lilah mess. I seriously cannot believe that he wanted to kiss me—and maybe that’s helping take the bitter edge off my anger. He kissed me. I didn’t kiss him—he kissed me. I like that.

Still, I do wish I wasn’t going to be sleeping on the couch tonight. Neither of us really discussed it, but I think it might be the best move for both of us.

Jenny hadn’t been having nightmares since she’d unofficially started sleeping in Rupert’s bed, and as such, when she moved back to the couch, the first night where she dreamed about Rupert getting shot came as a terrifying surprise. She hadn’t realized how careful she’d been to always keep herself close to him, always making sure she could at least hear him moving around, and her moving back to the couch after their unexpected kiss brought her unresolved issues to the forefront. Sitting up on the couch, she buried her face in her hands, trying to regulate her breathing. It felt like the darkness was swallowing her up—she needed to see for herself that Rupert was okay.

“Fuck,” she muttered, then pulled herself back up off the couch, stumbling out of the living room and up the stairs.

Rupert’s light wasn’t on, this time, but when she opened the door, he was sitting up in bed. Jenny hesitated, then flipped on the light, and he looked at her with a half-guilty expression that felt like someone had physically clenched a fist around her heart. It was oppressive, the distance between them.

Neither of them said anything, but Jenny couldn’t bring herself to turn around and go back down to the couch. She couldn’t sleep right if she wasn’t near him.

“What is it?” said Rupert finally, tentatively.

“I had another nightmare,” said Jenny, who felt that he deserved at least some honesty. “About Lilah shooting you.”

“Oh,” said Rupert, and his face relaxed. “Well—I’m here, and I’m alive, so—”

“Yeah,” said Jenny, and didn’t move.

“Jenny?”

An image, vivid and visceral, flashed in front of her eyes: blood spreading across Rupert’s best dress shirt. “I don’t know where we’re supposed to go from here,” said Jenny helplessly. “There are too many things changing, and I just—I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

Rupert looked like Jenny had punched him very hard in the chest without warning. “Oh,” he said.

“I don’t—”

“I’m sorry,” said Rupert. “Kissing you—if it affected you this drastically, it was—very clearly a mistake.”

This was exactly the last thing Jenny needed to hear. “A mistake,” she echoed, and for the first time in a long while, felt pinpricks of tears in her eyes. “Yeah, okay. I can—um, I understand that completely.”

“I just want you to be happy—” There was a strange desperation to the way Rupert said it, this time.

“Stop fucking saying that,” said Jenny a little more loudly than she’d intended. A few doors down, Buffy’s bedroom light turned on. Composing herself, Jenny tried to smile. “Prioritize yourself over me for a hot second, Rupert,” she said. “Maybe then we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.” Without waiting for a response, she shut off the light, stepping out of the room and shutting Rupert’s door behind her. Heading downstairs, she was at first considering curling up and crying on the couch, and then came up with a better alternative, walking down the hallway to the guest bedroom and opening the door.

Faith was asleep on the double bed and cuddled under a quilt that Jenny was pretty sure one of Rupert’s first clients had made for him. Tentatively, Jenny wavered at the doorway.

“Mom?” Faith’s voice was bleary.

“Yeah,” said Jenny.

“You sleepin’ in here?”

“Yeah,” said Jenny again. Jenny Calendar had nightmares, but Faith’s mom definitely didn’t. She stepped around the end table to squeeze in next to Faith, pulling the covers up and around them both. Faith rolled over and snuggled comfortably into Jenny’s side. “Sorry to wake you.”

“S’okay,” mumbled Faith, who was already falling asleep again. Jenny carded her fingers through Faith’s hair, focusing on the soft fluttery sound of her daughter’s breathing and thinking about the first time Faith had let her this close. It had been after a nightmare, five months after the adoption had been officially finalized, and Faith had clambered into Jenny’s bed and hidden under the blankets like a child much smaller than she was. Faith had always needed more attention than most in those early years.

Thinking about Faith felt comfortable and comforting in its simplicity: here was someone Jenny could love without reservations or complexities, and someone who loved Jenny without hesitation. Here was Jenny’s daughter. Here was Jenny’s darling. Jenny tried to keep those thoughts in her head as she fell asleep.

She slept dreamlessly, if poorly, and woke up to find that Faith had already left. Jenny lay in bed for a few more minutes, came to the conclusion that she couldn’t spend the entire day in bed when she’d spent most of the day before doing much the same thing, and pulled herself ungracefully up and out of bed, heading down the stairs to make the girls a late breakfast.

The kitchen smelled like pancakes. Frowning, Jenny rounded the corner, stopping and peering through the crack in the half-open door to observe Rupert carefully flipping and plating a heart-shaped pancake before handing it off to Buffy. Faith was pouring orange juice into a champagne glass, Dawn was assembling fruit while trying to keep it away from an excitable Xena, and Buffy—was placing the pancake plate down on the dinner tray, then taking the champagne glass from Faith.

“This is kinda dramatic,” Faith was saying a little doubtfully. “You sure Mom’s gonna go for something like this?”

“Your mother,” said Rupert, “deserves something special. She’s been through a lot as of late, and I’m sure I haven’t made it easier on her—”

“Because you kissed her?” asked Dawn innocently.

Rupert turned pink and tried to smile. “Some of the worst timing I’ve managed, I’m afraid,” he said lightly.

“Did she look good?” Buffy teased, though her grin was slightly worried.

Rupert’s smile softened. “She always looks good,” he said. “Help me with the next pancake, will you, Buffy? We need to get this done before Jenny wakes up.”

Stunned, and almost smiling, Jenny hurriedly backed away from the kitchen door, tiptoeing back upstairs and into the guest room to sit carefully down on the bed. It was less than a minute later when she heard a knock on the door, and it took her another ten seconds to nervously compose herself enough to open it.

“Hey,” said Buffy, who was holding the tray. “You kinda slept through breakfast, so we all pitched in and made you—uh, pancakes, mostly, but Dawn helped with the fruit salad.”

Jenny looked first at the tray, then at Rupert, who looked first surprised and then a little nervous. She swallowed hard, then smiled at him, and it felt like something had snapped back into place. Being his friend, taking care of their girls—that she knew how to do. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” she said, smiling easily, “you’re the sweetest family any private eye could ask for.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Dawn, beaming.

“We’re practically angelic,” Faith agreed.

“Now that’s pushing it,” said Jenny, and stepped aside, moving to sit down on the bed. Buffy placed the tray neatly down in front of her, and then the girls clustered comfortably around her on the bed in the way they’d become quite accustomed to doing with Rupert.

Rupert wavered, then sat down opposite Jenny, the tray in between them. “I wanted to say—” he began.

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” said Rupert, and smiled a bit self-deprecatingly. “And you’re right. It isn’t fair to both of us if I’m prioritizing you over me, but it also isn’t fair if you’re prioritizing my own health and happiness over yours. I suppose what I’m saying is that I’ll stop if you will.”

Jenny smiled too, somewhat wryly, and reached across the tray to place a hand on Rupert’s good shoulder. Rupert’s eyes darted almost nervously down to it, and she remembered belatedly that this was the same gesture she’d made before he’d kissed her. Keeping her smile even and unfazed, she said, “I’ll—do my best.”

“Fair enough,” said Rupert, whose eyes were still on Jenny’s hand.

“SO HEY,” said Buffy very loudly, making Rupert and Jenny all but jump away from each other, “IS JENNY GOING TO EAT OR ARE YOU TWO GOING TO STARE AT EACH OTHER?”

Rupert managed a nervous grin in Jenny’s direction and moved back a little, giving her some space to start in on the pancakes. Jenny looked down at the perfectly-shaped heart-shaped pancake on her plate, drizzled with syrup and dotted artfully with blueberries, and had to hesitate a moment before cutting it carefully down the middle.

“Dad,” said Dawn suddenly, in a strangely furtive tone of voice, “isn’t there that thing you should start working on while Jenny eats?”

Rupert cast a worried look at Jenny, and then, oddly, at Faith, who was glaringat him. “I—suppose so,” he said uneasily. “Jenny, you don’t mind if I go downstairs for a bit, do you?”

“Go ahead,” said Jenny, spearing a large piece of syrup-soaked pancake. Rupert always made pancakes that were a perfect mixture of fluffy and filling—Rupert made everything perfect, actually, and the ridiculous romanticism of the statement made her almost want to laugh.

“You’re sure?” Rupert sounded almost as though he wanted her to argue.

“Do you want me to not be sure?” Jenny looked up at him, smiling tiredly. “Go ahead.”

Rupert looked at Jenny, and his gaze moved very visibly to her mouth, lingering on the curve of her lips. Jenny felt her smile flicker and wobble under his scrutiny, more from nerves than from a lack of happiness; she wanted him to kiss her, very badly, and she wanted him to tell her that kissing her hadn’t been a mistake. But with an obvious effort, he looked away, then said as though nothing had happened, “Thank you, then,” and got up off the bed, walking with careful deliberation out of the guest room. Dawn cast a tentative look over her shoulder as she followed.

“He’s such a goddamn idiot,” said Faith, her voice sharp.

“Faith,” said Buffy quietly, but she didn’t dispute the statement, which took Jenny by surprise; Buffy was always the first to jump to Rupert’s defense.

“He is.”

“I would like,” said Jenny, her eyes on the pancakes, “to eat, quietly, and to not have to think about whatever the hell Rupert is doing downstairs. Okay?”

There was a grudging silence, and then Jenny felt Faith snuggle into her side in the rebelliously-angry-teenage-daughter way Faith had somehow perfected. Buffy looked at them both with a half-sad sympathy, then said, “He’s figuring it out, you know. Just like you.”

Buffy, it seemed, had significantly more optimism than Jenny regarding her relationship with Rupert. Jenny focused back in on the pancakes.