#she always forgets to put hand cream on so her cuticles are dry and its like...

[possamble]

Can't help but notice that Falin's got shorter nails than Marcille in that picture in that post you reblogged. Wonder what they get up into...

i hope you know you're just feeding my 'pillow princess marcille' agenda

[somekindofseizure]

When the Ink Dries Part VIII

<Thank you @icedteainthebag for giving me the tough love on the first draft of this.  And to all of you for waiting.  Rated Explicit.>

Chapter 19

Scully waited in the parlor room armchair wearing borrowed clothes, winding a chunk of overgrown split ends around her finger like late autumn weeds, the fur hem of Stella’s wool pencil skirt prickling her thighs.  She picked at her nails until one cuticle bed split open and bled.  Stella was still getting ready - had spent almost the entire day getting ready - for the fallen officers’ memorial event, but Scully’s impatience was levelled squarely at herself.

First thing this morning, Scully had promised herself she would get it over with.  In retrospect, she could see that her plans were doomed the moment she sunk against the bathroom door jamb and set her eyes on Stella.  Stella had been studying herself in the mirror, squinting, shoulder blades knitted together under her t-shirt, weight back on her heels.  Holding herself as she held everyone - at a distance.  Scully crossed her arms over her chest and cleared her throat in an effort to be acknowledged.  Her secret was an accidental one, born as a simple piece of information, an unshaped piece of wet clay.  Using nothing but time and cowardice, Scully had shaped that harmless blob into a weapon with a shortening fuse.  She had never considered herself an artist, except in the field of avoidance.

“My first work event since I’ve been out of commission,” Stella said with a self-mocking smile.  She looked down at a jar of cream and she swiped a glob across her forehead.  Scully hesitated - she’d get to the secret in just a minute - and reached for Stella’s hand, caught two of her fingers.  Stella’s shoulders swiveled and her hand swung with Scully’s like a trapeze act without a net, eyes flickering and then meeting her partner’s in the mirror.  Traveling forty feet in an instant of eye contact.

“Will they find me… as I was before?” Stella asked, a forced comedic lilt to her voice that reminded Scully of when she had to resort to asking Mulder how some skirt made her butt look.  She was embarrassed that she cared.  

“A couple months older, maybe,” Scully teased, then re-capitulated.  “Yes, they will.  Better, even.”

The secret began to smolder the minute Scully decided to put it off until later, foolishly leaving it to eat the silence like a fire eats oxygen.  Now it was hours-stronger, solid as cement, an extra story of the flat inserted between the two existing levels that they occupied.

Scully looked up from the armchair and felt her chin drop when she heard the typewriter click of Stella’s shoes on the staircase.  Stella descended slowly, dangling pauses like pronouncements, each patent leather heel hovering over its next step like she expected it to rise up and meet her rather than the other way around.  Blouse nipped at the sides pinned by seams to her body like a cloud to the sky.  Blacks so deep the gold seemed to swim in it, whites so new they shaded her face pink.  On her, a police uniform was a fantasy of authority and sex so pure that it seemed more like a costume than a mandate.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Scully said, forgetting both her secret and sucking of her bleeding nail a moment.

“Bring that finger over here and let me do that for you.”

If they’d had more time, it would have been a good idea, actually, a way of getting through it...  Run her fingers over Stella’s body between sentences, feel her out like a bit of Braille on smooth, sure stone, fingers placed here and there along her pulse, her spine, her hips, and yes one in her mouth.  Stella had an aptitude for nuance in physical contact that she lacked in conversation.  Would it have been exploitative to talk to her that way?  Or an act of kindness?

“That’s your real uniform?”

“I can’t tell if you’re judging or leering,” Stella said.  “If it’s the latter, please make that clear and let’s skip the party.”

“You keep calling it that. Party.”

“Because it is a party, darling.  We’re having alcohol and we put on high heels.”

“You partake of both those things every day.”

“You don’t.”

Scully smiled despite herself.  Stella was square-shouldered in the foyer mirror now, one lazy eye on Scully in the reflection as she fastened the little black tie around her neck and tossed her hair. As she did so, the blonde picked up the shine of the embroidery on her collar, a crystal casting the sun for a rainbow.

“Are they all going to look like this?  Your colleagues?  Underlings?”

“Why?” Stella teased.  “Looking for a replacement?”

“No, of course not.”  

Had that come off as overly serious? Defensive?  Later, in a childish game of what-if, woulda-coulda-shoulda, Scully would wonder how much sooner Stella would have read her, caught her out, had she not been in an unusual state of self-surveillance, so vigilant of her own vulnerability with the “party” that she could miss something to obvious.

“I have them tailored,” Stella said with a sheepish so-what of a smile.  

She slow-stalked the kitchen like a jungle cat, stroked the cylinder of a water glass and placed long, inexplicable glances on various inanimate objects in the room, as though deciding whether to consume or spare each thing.  Then she sipped her water, made tiger stripes on the rim with her lipstick.   There was silence to fill here, but Scully’s mouth had gone dry.

Finally, Stella reached for her jacket and slipped into it as though she’d been recently painted and was trying not to smudge herself.  

“How should I introduce you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“People are likely to assume we’re fucking no matter what I say.”

“Only you assume that about everyone.”

Stella grinned into her last gulp of water and murmured, letting it echo and bubble as she slurped, pausing to swallow in the middle of her phrase.

“This is for your benefit.  I’m making sure you’re prepared.  People will whisper.”

“I’ve been whispered about that way at work my whole life.”

“There are worse things to have whispered by colleagues.”

“I know.  I’ve had those whispered too.”

Stella was unsatisfied.  She didn’t want jokes, she wanted confirmation that this evening would come off without a hitch.  It was not for Scully’s benefit, not really, and that was okay.  Scully spoke as though by rote, repeating her lessons.

“I am prepared for them to assume we’re a couple.”

Stella circled her and collected a small clutch purse she’d left open on the barstool, nudged Scully’s jeweled earlobe with her nose.  She tucked her phone into the bag, a bed of tissues and lip gloss, and then held it under her armpit as she put both arms around Scully’s waist.  Her face now rested on Scully’s shoulder, the carefully-applied layer of cosmetics wafting like spring flowers sealed in wax, a semi-edible decoration atop a birthday cake.  For a moment it seemed unlikely that anything else scheduled for this evening could hold as much weight as that shoulder did.

“I didn’t say couple.  I said fucking.”  Her jaw had dug itself a permanent residence in the posterior delta of Scully’s clavicle.  Scully worried for a moment that the makeup would come off on the sweater, but it was Stella’s sweater after all.  “Be a lamb and say it for me.”

“Fucking,” Scully murmured.

“Mm.”

Scully turned to face her.  Her neck spasmed where Stella’s chin had left a dent.

“You look nice in my things,” Stella said.  

Scully nodded, the guilt traveling like a heart attack up her arm from where Stella held her wrist.  She’d always been shit at accepting compliments, so Stella didn’t notice.

“You look perfect,” she countered.

“Thank you,” Stella said with the quiet, simple grace Scully could never seem to muster.

Scully braced herself.  She had Stella’s attention, the intimacy of a couple’s last moment alone before a party.  She battled the sickening rush of temptation as she considered what to do with it, whether to speak or keep Stella close, to stay here on the safe side of things a little bit longer.

“Come, darling.”

She took Stella’s arm and followed her out.

*

It had been a long time since Scully had observed Stella in a professional setting and she was mesmerized during the ceremony by her focus.  Hands and limbs kept to herself throughout the ceremony, occasionally lifting her chin, a sort of reverse nod of approval at something a speaker said or did.  Scully wondered if Stella’s mind was wandering, if she let herself think of the fact that she could have been one of these names, if she felt guilty or lucky or strange for having narrowly escaped a place among these unfortunate honorees.  

At the end, everyone was directed to the back of the room where tea lights sprouted on pale blue cloths tossed over coin-sized tables.  The room let out a collective sigh of relief, moving en masse toward the promise of small talk and wine.  Cocktail waiters emerged from swinging doors like crumple-vested spiders, drawing invisible webs around arbitrary clusters of people.  The mourners took part at once, moving easily between grief and relief.  Everyone knew their ghosts would be holding their coats for them at the door.  It was a party, like Stella said.

And for Stella, it was turning out to be a pretty good one.  Her posture was already soft with victory.  She’d appeared here in one piece, as herself, had reclaimed her reputation as reliable and invincible.  Scully’s ankles wobbled in her shoes as she thought of the car ride home, the living room where they’d step out of their shoes and wiggle sore toes, of how she’d begin to spoil a perfect night.  She wondered how many drinks Stella would have in her by the time Scully finally said what she needed to say.  One or two and it wouldn’t make a difference, three-plus meant a sloppier tongue and quicker wrists, the sum-total effect of which was generally more auspicious at the end of a night together.

Stella took two glasses of white from one of the passing trays and handed one to her date.

“Chardonnay,” she grumbled with the pout of an adult equally well-versed in self-abuse and self-care. “I spoke to them about this last year.”

Scully laughed.  

“People are grieving for Christ’s sake,” Stella went on.

Scully sucked her stomach in on a deep breath and Stella noticed, misread it as self-consciousness.  Scully let her, sins of omission multiplying like the empty plastic cups on the tables.   Stella leaned in, put her lips against Scully’s ear and Scully wondered if there would be marks on her skin like the water glass, little bands of metallic pink across the cartilage.

“Do you want to go?  We can go,” Stella prompted.  She fiddled with the knot of the bow on Scully’s wrap sweater and freshened it in a shorter amount of time than it had taken Scully to do in the first place.

“No, no.  I just… think I should have worn my own clothes,” Scully said because she needed something true to complain about.  “Or borrowed a uniform.”

“No one would have known the difference, two thirds of these people are idiots.”

“They seem nice.”

“That’s the third I’m willing to talk to.  You could have had mine.  Uniform, I mean.  I hate wearing it,” Stella said, righting herself beside Scully.

“You do?  Even after all that nipping and tucking?”

Stella’s face darkened as it often did when her memory retraced certain steps.  Scully felt obtuse for needing time to understand the tailoring – it was an act of control, not vanity.  

“It reminds me of school.”

This was always how getting to know Stella had been, like picking up items on a scavenger hunt: school names here, siblings there.  There had been times she was tempted to sit Stella down and ask questions for three hours, take notes and turn on a journalist’s tape recorder to get it all down.  It had never much bothered her much; she’d told herself she knew all she needed to know.  How to read Stella’s temperature from across the room, hear the switch flip from silent-at-peace to silent-in-turmoil with music blaring and a bar full of people.  That Stella likes to be touched, but only by people she trusts, that she likes innocent-faced men and women with purpose, that she brushes her teeth in the shower and leaves cabinet doors slightly ajar, that she likes to dance but only when she asks, that she washes her face wearing a red polka dotted headband sometimes.  She knew she could call her for any reason, at any time, and not be judged or turned away, and that when Stella didn’t answer a question, it meant Scully would find it out eventually, out of nowhere, in some other empty space between two moments, when Stella was finally ready to share it, and then Scully might wish she’d never asked it at all.  But she didn’t know how Stella was going to react to what she had to tell her tonight, and that made her feel like all that knowledge was for nought.

They were moving now, Stella in front and Scully in tow, sailing the crowd shoulder to shoulder, Stella billowing in and out of conversations with impressive ease.  Her fingers trailed behind when she walked, or at her side when she stopped, left an infrared wake for Scully to follow.  Scully felt freer than she was used to feeling as someone’s date.  And feeling good while she deceived Stella was unsettling.  Stella’s trust was a limited fund, one she was using up with every moment she held her tongue.

Stella had stopped now, but the crowd continued to move, and Scully had the sensation of standing still on a boat.  She felt her temperature rise and pushed up the sleeves of the sweater.  Her forearms turned pink from the friction.   She couldn’t do it anymore.

“Stella, I have to-”

Stella turned, pinched a crepey pastry off on hors d’oeuvre tray and supported it with a cocktail napkin on its way to Scully’s mouth. Scully lowered her eyes but obediently nibbled, licked the flakes off her lips.

“Stella-”

But she needed time to swallow and in that time...

“Oh.  You remember Ferrington?”

Of course.  The girl who had “door-stepped” Stella with the soup.  She’d had to twist Stella’s arm into a thank-you phone call, but Dani hadn’t picked up anyway and the voicemail got it.  Dani had a date tonight, presumably a girlfriend and Scully wondered whether Dani had assumed the same about her - presumably girlfriend.

“Hello again,” Dani said with a gracious first nod to Scully.  “Dana, right?”

“Hi there.  How are you?” Scully said, trying not to sound angry.  None of her worries was Dani’s fault.  “I don’t know if Stella told you but I loved your soup.”

Dani beamed and the conversation split, Stella taking on small-talk with the girlfriend and Scully entertaining Dani.

“Still here in town?” Dani asked.

“Yes, still here,” Scully said and tucked her hair behind her ear.  

A warm hand on her lower back, one of Stella’s fingers segregating two lines of cashmere ribbon around her waist, a gesture of concern, of care, of – Scully put her hands to her cheeks to cool them - possession.

“Warm in here, is it?” Dani said to Scully, head cocked in empathy.  Her face must be the color of an apple.  “So, how long before you go back?”

“May only be a few more days,” Scully said under her breath, wiping her brow.  She didn’t think Stella would hear and she didn’t want to lie - had not actively lied yet about it.

But of course, the room went silent the minute she mumbled it and her voice seemed so loud it was as though someone had inadvertently passed a microphone under her lips.  Stella dropped her hand from Scully’s back, turned with such eerie cool that for a second Scully wondered if Stella had known all along, had eavesdropped on the phone call last week.  She searched Stella’s face for some emotion - forgiveness or fury, anything other than the punishing granite wall of indifference suddenly being erected inches from her nose, limiting her view of all else.

Scully glanced at Dani, swallowed, squeezed her lips together before she spoke.

“I - I got a call from my work and I can’t extend the leave any longer so--”

“Always… hard to see a... friend go after a long visit,” Dani said, turning to Stella, unsure what exactly was going on but perceptive enough to know she should take Stella’s side.

“Mm.  Excuse me, this wine is abominable,” Stella said.  “I’m going to talk them into coughing up some liquor.  Anyone?”

And Scully had no choice but to let her go.

*

Scully found Stella ten minutes later in a screen-porch-faded bathroom with chipping yellow paint.  Familiar in the manner of a fever dream, more unwanted and disorienting for each recognizable reference point - a pallid iteration of the psych ward restroom in which Stella’s consolation had begun their friendship.  Stella leaned on the sink with fighters’ fists, blister red with white spots at the bones, staring with chilling remove into the ceramic basin.  Scully’s instinctive relief at not finding Stella in hysterics quickly transformed into the panic of finding this instead.  She glanced uneasily at the walls, as though to make sure they wouldn’t close in on her.

“Stella -”

How many times had she said her name like that tonight, trying to get to more?  So many it was starting to seem detached from Stella the person.  A word became meaningless and foreign if you said it enough.

Stella held a hand up and caught her eye in the mirror a moment and then a toilet flushed.  A waitress emerged from one of the stalls and embarrassed, fumbled through the hand-washing process.  Stella’s stare was unforgiving and lasted the duration, and Scully waited, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, trying to absorb the awkwardness with micro movements.  

“Lock the door,” Stella said when they were finally alone.

“What if someone has to --”

“I said lock it.”

“I’m sorry,” Scully said as she flipped the bolt.  It was heavy and hard to push, left a line in the middle of the pad of her finger.  The irritation she was beginning to feel in reaction to Stella’s behavior was something of a relief.  Anything to avoid the self-reproach she’d been bearing up under all day.  “It’s not like I want to leave you.  But I have to unless I’m going to, I don’t know, move here.”

Stella’s glare set into her like a machete, cleaved her right between the eyes.

“You think I care if you go?  I care that you just made me look like an idiot.”

“You don’t care if I go?”

“Don’t be a cliché.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t want to stay but you don’t want me to let you go either.”

“I just… I didn’t know where this was going… and my life…”

“It’s not going anywhere,” Stella snapped.  

Scully licked her lower lip and swallowed, trying not to cry.

“Well, that’s what I assumed.”

“I sound angry but I don’t mean to.  I don’t like surprises.”

Observing Stella’s process of calming herself was one of the more disconcerting experiences Scully could summon to mind, on par with the mid-ride plateau of a rollercoaster, helpless between two loops, listening to the engine click and collect the momentum it needed to throw you off the next drop.

“I don’t want anything to go anywhere,” Stella said, gaze softening but not warming, falling like sleet into the sink.  Scully followed it, gripped the drain with her eyes before it could swallow her.

“You haven’t been happy having me here?”

“That’s the present.  You’re talking about the future.”

“You know, this is a version of the same conversation we had fifteen years ago after the first night we spent alone together,” Scully said.

“Maybe we’re fools for needing to have it again.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have had it in the first place.”

Stella scoffed.

“Come on, Dana.  What?  And just been together?”  She looked at Scully.  “You wouldn’t have had any of your life with Mulder, your child.”

“I lost them anyway.”

One of Stella’s eyes flinched and she licked her bottom lip, swallowed whatever bit of gloss she’d picked up there.  She turned back to the sink.

“Well, I guess I make for a decent consolation prize.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Scully said, “and you know it.”  She hated the way her voice sounded, wounded and will-less.

“You speak to Mulder recently?” Stella asked and ran her tongue in front of her teeth.

“Yes.  Why?”

Stella tossed off a look that landed like a punch in the chest.

“Don’t you dare,” Stella said and her voice rattled like a stick.

“Dare what?” Scully finally asked.  But Stella didn’t answer because she knew Scully knew.  Don’t you dare pretend he’s beside the point.

Cold air suddenly puffed from the vent overhead.  Scully crossed her arms and shivered with the recognition that she was taking part in an overreaction.  She had made many fights in her life worse this way, by trying to manufacture the end before it had lived its natural course, diminishing a drama before it had played out its denouement.

“Listen.  I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.  “What was my alternative here?”

“Bring it up sooner.”

“And then what?  You would’ve said stay, quit your job, move to England, and we’ll go to a party next week?  You’ve had this thing on your mind for days.  It would’ve ruined it.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

Scully took a step closer and Stella stepped back.

“Let’s talk about this later when we’re calm,” Scully said, reaching for her.  Stella swatted her arms back out of reach.

“Let me be,” she said.  

Scully looked at her feet as Stella edged past her, avoiding her like the pit of a natural disaster.  The thought of staying in this bathroom one second longer than necessary was unbearable.  The thought of not following Stella out made her feel lost and scared and alone in a foreign country in a way she had not felt switching trains on complicated tube lines, not felt getting lost on runs around ungridded alleyways of gory murderers.  

She spent the hour rationalizing and emerged hungry and thirsty and calm, her tailbone sore from the plastic toilet bowl cover seat.  This would blow over quickly.  She and Stella had been through too much.  There were advantages to spending most of your life arguing every day with someone you loved.  You knew what to do with an hour alone in the bathroom.  (Not that Mulder had ever given her an hour alone in her life.)

The lights had gone darker, the crowd had grown louder and there was music she didn’t recall noticing before.  She searched the room for Stella’s golden head, eager to make things right.  The bar came into view as the crowd parted and Scully stopped short, felt a few bodies stiffen and pile behind her.  A couple drops of something cold splashed her calves.  People doled apologies or sought them but she didn’t care.  

There was Stella on a high stool with an arched back and a strategically crossed leg, talking to, or rather, listening to, or rather, pretending to listen to a male officer in his thirties.  Bored and sloping as the moon, leaning on one elbow over the bar, forearm waving its half empty glass of Scotch like a loose clock hand.  The shoe on her crossed foot clucked on and off her heel and she was absent behind the eyes, already living in an event to come within hours, the furthest future she was capable of embracing.

Scully threw a sharp glance down at the floor, then moved forward, thinking of the courage of crime scenes past.  She tried to imagine the comfort of a flashlight in hand, a gun in its holster, a walkie promising backup.  

Stella looked at her as though she were one of the cocktail waitresses carrying substandard table wine and she might as well have murdered her.

“Hi there,” the idiot man said, chipper, swingy, a lucky guy having a lucky night, and Scully allowed herself to hate him deeply and irrationally as she waited for Stella to introduce her.  Nothing.

“I’m going to head back to the flat,” Scully said at last.

“I’ll be there eventually.  Few more things I want to do here.”

He beamed with pride, the man did, in the periphery of Scully’s view; he was that thing she meant to do!  But Stella ignored him for the time being, fixed Scully with a hunter’s stare, eyes empty as the viewfinder of a rifle, Scully filling in the space between the crosshairs, fur up on the back of her neck under a string of pearls.  She felt Stella’s focus sharpen, watched her trigger finger wiggle around her glass.  And Scully turned while she could still get out alive, bolted through the human foliage of widows and revelers toward the exit.

*

There was comfort in the predictability of it: Stella going home with some random man to escape reality.  Scully managed mostly to put the details of it out of her mind and wondered instead what her role here was, what Stella would be expecting of her.   This, she thought, was as apt a description of love as any – wanting to give another person exactly what they expected of you, even when they weren’t looking, even when you were furious with them.

She’d left her shoes in two different spots on the staircase, clothes in three distinct heaps.  She’d hidden her phone from herself, hoped she’d had enough to drink on an empty stomach to fall for it, then cried and taken a shower and sipped wine from an open bottle.  Not knowing what else to do, she’d resorted to tackling the contents of two junk drawers and a spice rack on the kitchen floor.  She’d done this with Mulder sometimes too, reorganized his (overbearing, overwhelming) spaces in their home and office.  It made her feel closer to him then, and to Stella now, trying to safe-crack her logic from the inside out, determine why one thing was on the same shelf as the next, or why condoms were in the kitchen at all (though not wonder too hard).  It took a great deal of energy she would have otherwise used on self-pity to frame things the way Stella would, distinguish complex system from misplaced item; everything with Stella fell into one or the other of those categories.  

It wasn’t until she heard the thick poplin-gabardine swish of uniform sleeves in the foyer that she realized that Stella might view the innards of cabinets splayed across the hard grey floor as a provocation.  But it was too late to undo what she’d already undone, so she kept her eyes on the bottle of cardamom, weeded out a yellow potato chip clip, thought of Stella wiping her hands on a pair of overpriced sweatpants while closing a bag of kettle chips she’d stash in a corner behind the red wine.  

She slumped a little deeper, expecting any minute to hear strident stilettos making their way to the fridge, to feel Stella’s triumphant glare on the back of her head.  She braced herself for the smells, the sights, the evidence of spite-sex.  It was Stella’s right to go home with whomever she wanted, with or without the impetus of a fight.  Scully had never asked her for any sort of exclusivity.  She was good at not asking people for what they couldn’t give, but bad at accepting the fact that they didn’t offer it up.  

But there was something other than gloating triumph going on.  Stella stood still under the arc that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house.  A truce had arrived, or at least, it was within Scully’s power to provide one.  Scully picked up a plastic container of rainbow nonpareils and shook them weakly.

“What are these for?”

“Ice cream.  Fairy bread.”

A smile ached across Scully’s teeth.

“Fairy bread?  How am I supposed to keep arguing with you when you say stuff like that?”

“I’m sorry.  It was rude to send you off that way,” Stella said.  What she didn’t say was for fucking somebody else.

Scully put one hand on the floor and pressed herself up to stand.  The eye makeup hadn’t budged, of course, and the lips were red from rubbing rather than taupe from painting, but the cheeks were splotchy, and the bottom rims of her eyes sagged until the red part showed, as though they’d been stretched beyond repair.  She wondered where Stella could have cried.  Surely not in the presence of that strange man.  In his bathroom?  The cab ride home?  On some street corner between here and there, hiding in a shadow with her palms pressed into a row of brick?  Her heart sizzled like an antacid dropped into a glass - sadness competing with jealousy and anger.  Mulder had never tried or tested her in this particular way.  The first time they’d had sex, or maybe sooner, she got his undying faithfulness in return.  She’d only ever lost him to ideas, thoughts, to himself, never to another person.

The uniform skirt was wrinkled at the hips and the blouse sagged so that it was almost unrecognizable from this afternoon.  Scully felt a twinge of sadness remembering how the day had started; stiff fabric and affectionate glances, innuendo in a foyer mirror.  

“I didn’t expect you to be sorry,” Scully said.

“That’s two of us then.”

Scully rolled a row of unsharpened pencils that were waiting to be organized on the counter.  They seemed so clean and useful absent the frustrated chewing marks she was accustomed to finding in her and Mulder’s office.   Stella found other things to sink her teeth into.

“It’s your prerogative,” Scully said.

“I know that.  But you’re standing there looking at me like that and it makes me want to die.”

Something in the phrase or in Stella’s voice resembled a distant generic concept of couplehood.  This was how most people behaved.  They belonged somewhere at a certain time of night, they were sorry when they weren’t in that place, other people who expected them in that place got jealous, everyone felt guilty.  That was what a relationship was… wasn’t it?  How could she have gotten to this point in her life and not known?

“Maybe we could go to therapy,” she said and almost laughed at herself.  Somewhere she’d heard people talk like this.  “You know, figure it out.”

Stella looked at her with something like gentle reproach.  Or sympathy.  Or pity.  Or apology.  Whatever it was, it was not cruelty.  

“But you’ve come so far,” Scully said, turning her face away, giving in, letting it fold like a pile of shirts on her shoulder.

“Please don’t ask me to come any further.”

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

[fishfingersandjellybabies]

Worn To The Bones - fic

Characters: Damian Wayne, Jon Kent Pairing: Jondami Summary: One thing was clear: Jonathan could not go out on patrol like this. So Damian would see to it that he didn’t. A/N: The lads are in their mid-twenties and live together. Obviously an established relationship. I miss Colin so he’s in there. The phone call is basically Colin reiterating that he too has seen that Jon needed a break, and knew that his burn out was coming, and also for Damian to remember that it’s to be all about Jon so he can’t be a pissy royal baby about anything especially food. After they stuff their faces and watch the movie, Jon spends hours talking about his day and his feelings and probably cries a few times. Damian just holds him and listens and continues to hold him even as he falls asleep. Damian also called them both off work the next day while Jon was in the shower so they basically lay in bed and stare romantically at each other all day. Alfred purrs the whole time because he loves his human dads. Inspired by: ‘Let’s Hurt Tonight’ by OneRepublic. 

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He was in the living room, doing some pre-patrol yoga with Alfred the cat, when the front door opened, and was roughly slammed shut.

He carefully lowered himself down onto his knees, even as Alfred mewed and trotted towards the foyer. Damian craned his neck to look over the back of the sofa, a greeting already on his lips. He held it though, when he saw Jon’s state.

Shoulders slumped, head bowed, leaned back against the door he’d just closed.

“Jonathan?” He called quietly, gracefully shifting up onto his feet. Jon didn’t move, even as Damian came towards him. Watched as Alfred meowed some more, rubbed against Jon’s ankles. Normally, that’d send Jon into a fit of smiles and cooing. Today, it appeared, not so much. “Are you alright?”

Jon shrugged when he felt Damian’s fingers skim his arm. “Long day, I guess.”

“You guess?” Damian questioned.

“Work sucked. My boss was pissed all day. Nothing really got done. Not to mention I got in a fight with Dad over lunch. Mom is, of course, taking his side. When she’s not interrogating me about my own life anyway. Then I was going through some of the evidence on the case we’re working on right now – turns out we’re barking up the completely wrong tree. Oh, and did I mention a lady dropped her groceries so I went to help her, and she hit me with her cane? Broke my glasses. Then a cheerleader from the high school spit on me while I was waiting for a bus. I don’t know why. She appeared to be spitting on everyone she passed, including a pigeon eating a fry.” Jon sighed, ran a hand down his face. Damian only just now realized the glasses were absent. “So I’m just…tired, I guess.”

Jon finally looked up at him then, his typical soft smile already on his lips even though he clearly didn’t want it there. There were light circles under his eyes – Jon wasn’t just tired, he was exhausted. Worn out and hiding it, just like he always tried to do.

(He always failed, though. Damian always saw it. Just never knew what to say. Never knew how to help, so he just opted for the next best option – not helping at all. Ignored it and let Jon think he’d ‘pulled a fast one.’ Let him think he bested one of the world’s greatest detectives.)

“But enough about me. How was your day?” Jon tried, voice still tight, but iced with fake pleasantness. “Sorry I’m home late, by the way. But I can be ready for patrol in twenty minutes, if you can wait for me.”

Damian just looked him over. The light bruise on his head, his crumbled jacket. He could see the still-drying spit on the knee of his jeans. His nails were picked to the cuticle – a habit when Jon got nervous or stressed. Always present when the stress and nerves is caused by his parents.

Then Jon’s stomach growled.

(He said he’d fought with Clark over lunch. And the Kent boys’ arguments were legendary. Rivaled the fights between him and his own father. Could go hours. Or days. Regardless, over lunch – Jon hadn’t eaten all day.)

“Oh, you know what?” Jon suddenly waved his hand. “Forget I said that. It’s my fault I’m late, I’m not gonna force you to change your schedule just for me. Go on ahead, I’ll just catch-”

“…No.” Damian cut off, and Jon looked surprised, almost hurt. “Jonathan, we’re not going to do that.”

Jon cocked his head as Damian suddenly pulled at his jacket, tugging it off his shoulders. “Do what?”

But Damian didn’t answer. Tossed the jacket to the corner, and leaned down to pick up his cat before spinning away, back towards the family room.

“Damian?” Jon asked, remaining at the door. Damian gently deposited Alfred onto the nearby loveseat, swung around an end table to shut the open window – the one they always opened as they prepared for the night’s patrol.

“Chinese? Or Italian? Or would you like to just have ice cream and sweets for dinner?” Damian asked, pulling out his phone, dialing a number.

“Dinner…?” Jon mumbled as Damian disappeared into the kitchen. “But it’s late…? And patrol…”

“Wilkes?” Damian hummed into the phone. “Yes, we’re fine. But I’ve decided that we’re taking the night.” A pause and Jon felt his mouth drop open. “…Yes, he does, and I will see to it that he gets what he needs.” Another stop. “Yes, I’m aware. And I’ve asked him, but he has yet to answer. Please inform Grayson and whomever else you feel needs to know. Be honest if you wish to be. I’m indifferent to what you tell anyone. Mhm. Mhm. Thank you. Bye.”

Damian reappeared, hanging up the phone. Looked up at Jon expectantly. Jon could only stare at him as Damian glided back towards him. “You…We’re taking the night off?”

“Yes.” Damian said, matter-of-factly. “Have you decided what you wanted for dinner?”

“But…Damian.” Jon laughed incredulously. “The city needs us.”

“You need your rest more.” Damian countered. Reached around Jon’s shoulder and loudly locked the deadbolt behind him. Kept his hand there, his wrist brushing the hairs on Jon’s neck as he whispered: “…I need you to be okay, more.”

“But I’m fine, Damian.” Jon offered. “I told you, I’m just tired.”

“No, you’re worn out. You’re being beaten down, and pulled in too many different directions.” Damian put his other hand on Jon’s arm. Smiled softly. “It’s called burn-out, Jonathan. And believe it or not, even I get there sometimes too.”

“The great Damian Wayne gets burnt out?” Jon smirked. Damian chuckled and pushed off the door, took hold of Jon’s wrists and gently pulled him forward. “Where are we going?”

“The bedroom.”

“Damian,” Jon sighed, letting himself be led anyway. “I’m not…really in the mood for…”

“Don’t be obscene.” Damian snorted. “You’re going to shower and change into whatever you feel most comfortable in this evening. I’ll order dinner and wait for the delivery person. Then we will lie in bed and you can tell me about your day, or what you’re feeling, or nothing. We can just watch those terrible movies you enjoy, and – I swear – I will keep my commentary to a minimum.”

“…What if I like your commentary?” Jon asked. Unimportant, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Whatever you want, we’ll do.” Damian reworded. “Just so long as it involves lying in that bed and you resting.”

Jon laughed. “Damian, I’m fine.”

“And after a mandatory twenty-four hour observation, I will make that determination.” Damian declared royally, though they both knew it was a joke. When they reached the bedroom, Damian spun Jon around, in the direction of the bathroom. “Now, go clean yourself up. Take as long as you need.”

“…Okay.” Jon whispered. Then, before Damian could escape, tugged him forward with his own grip, and kissed his forehead. Lingered there, then looked down into those bright teal eyes. “Thank you.”

Damian just smiled, released Jon’s wrists, and went to dash back into the apartment. But Jon caught him at the doorframe.

“Damian?”

The other glanced over his shoulder.

“Chinese with ice cream dessert?”

Damian grinned, nodded, and turned away once more. Jon watched him go, before shaking his head and disappearing into their bathroom.

And…maybe Damian had been right. The second the hot water hit his skin, he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. The crap at work, the crap with his family. Just…the crap. Of everything.

He could feel tears in his eyes, as he leaned his face against the cool tile of the shower. Could have fallen asleep right there. Thought about doing it, honestly. But, you know, the drowning in only a few inches of water thing. And his bed was much more comfortable.

So after what felt like hours, he forced himself away from the warmth of the water, with the idea of the warmth of his bed – and of the man he’d by lying in it with – as his incentive. Dried himself, threw on boxers, took a deep inhale. (Something he felt he hadn’t done in months.)

He was ready to relax.

But when he emerged from the bathroom, he couldn’t help but stop immediately. Freeze, as he watched Damian set up a tray beside the bed. Full of all of Jon’s favorites from the restaurant down the street, beautifully displayed on plates. A 3-liter bottle of Jon’s favorite soda – that he didn’t drink often, due to its lack of health value – sat behind the plates, on the corner of the tray. In the other corner was a brown bucket, a gallon of gelato on ice within it.  

Alfred was flopped comfortably along the bottom of the mattress.

And Damian was a Bat. Damian was so focused on getting what Jon wanted and needed, that he hadn’t even turned the lights on. Just the TV, probably for background noise.

Otherwise, it was dark. And Jon realized – he kind of wanted it that way.

Still, it was a secondary thought, because his own focus was on Damian, and how kind he was being. How hard he was working to make sure Jon was okay. Turned his back on his city and his duty and the only thing he’d ever wanted to do with his life…for him.

“Why?” He whispered. Damian turned to look at him, his eyes glowing in the light of the television. Looked like stars, like the ocean. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you need it.” Damian returned gently.

“But you wouldn’t do this for…for Dick. Or for your dad or…for anyone.” Jon shook his head. “Not…not that it’s a bad thing, or it makes you a bad person, I just mean…”

But Damian smiled, and stepped towards him. Hooked his fingers around Jon’s.

“Beloved,” Damian murmured. “You are not just anyone.”

And he felt those tears in his eyes again, as he took in Damian’s words, stared at his gorgeous face. Then collapsed into his arms, clung to Damian’s shoulders, buried his face in his neck, as Damian silently rubbed his back.

“What do you need, Jonathan?” Damian asked tenderly. “Tell me and I’ll get it for you.”

“Lay with you.” Jon tried weakly, his emotions pulsing through his veins. How much he loved Damian. How defeated he felt by the world. How worn out he really was. Everything. “…I just want to lay with you. I’m so tired. Please.”

“Done.” Damian promised. Shifting in Jon’s grip only so he could lead him to their bed. Carefully, he untangled himself from Jon to pull the covers back. Let Jon crawl onto their mattress, then motioned to a plate. “Food?”

“You first.” Jon breathed, holding his arms out. Damian chuckled, and crawled into the blankets after him. Wrapped them both up in it as Jon clung to his waist, rested his head against his chest. Listened to his heartbeat and relished in the sound.

Damian wrapped an arm around Jon’s shoulders, kept him close as he grabbed a plate with his free hand. Rested it on Jon’s hip. Grabbed only one fork – a clear sign that he was going to hand-feed Jon if he so chose it.

As soon as the food was settled, Damian lifted the remote, and changed the television to one of Jon’s favorite movies. Softly began stroking his fingers through Jon’s hair as the credits began.

Jon just smiled, closed his eyes for a moment, and squeezed Damian’s hip in equal parts gratitude and adoration.

Damian just kissed his head and held him.

He was starting to feel better already.