thatsamilkshake | Room 505, Sunday Night

Current Mood: really really dumb

Entry tags:

Room 505, Sunday Night

This was stupid and Francine shouldn't be here; she should hole up in Momoko's room until this weekend thing wore off and she woke up back where she was supposed to be. But here she was.

Francine hadn't been here since yesterday morning. Francine hadn't been to the version of here she used to call hers since the sun had come out in Greenland months ago and she'd walked out of that other Fandom without looking back. But here she was.

Knowing now that this wasn't a nightmare or some kind of last-ditch effort by the vampires to drag them all back... didn't make knocking on this door any easier, or any less tempting. Or any less stupid.

But here she was, doing it anyway.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was safe to unwrap one hand if she used it to facepalm, right? "Smooth, Peters. Smoooooth."

"Just like butter," Katchoo intoned, unable to avoid a tiny, shaky laugh. "You're still friends, though. It worked out."

Homecoming. They had dances here. With spiked punch and gropy guys and teachers hanging out and looking pervy in the corners, if it was anything like she remembered Puncture High.

"We were there too. Except our breakup happened before we ever dated and involved a wall, Merlin's nose nearly getting busted, and you kissing me and telling him he needed to go *&$% Arthur into the mattress."

Katchoo ducked her head and let out a gruff, rasping chuckle. "Gawd. I like that version way better than mine -- did he spend months thinking I was going to strangle him afterward?"

She kind of wanted to ask how accurate other-her's directive had been, but no.

Which was good, seeing as Francine had no idea.

"There weren't months to waste on that kind of thing," Francine pointed out, because it couldn't just stay light. Who the hell was she kidding; it couldn't ever get to light, not when every breath and every joke had the backbeat of Memorize this. Forget this. Pretend this never happened. Touch me don't touch me touch me don't kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me oh I missed you not fair not fair not fair...

Katchoo huffed briefly, running a hand through her hair, because it seemed the smarter option compared to reaching out to touch Francine's cheek. Fandom being the island she cursed out for its semi-regularly-scheduled weekends of insanity, it just seemed wrong to want to give her that, just for a moment, when it could damn well be ripped away in the morning.

But damn, it was tempting.

"Guess I was a little smarter in that world, 'steada being a pansy-ass wimp forever." Weird to think of it as something more than a might-have-been glimpse she hadn't been able to see in the mirror that night.

Francine darted a glance over Katchoo's shoulder to the bed. The one she'd woken up in yesterday morning, and wished like anything that she hadn't scrambled out of so soon, now.

"Obviously not forever."

"No." Katchoo's glance followed hers, accompanied by a slight smile. "Not forever, but . . ."

Did this Francine ever know about everything she'd done in those missing years? Katchoo wasn't sure, and didn't know if she should be the one to drop that bomb if not.

She shrugged. "Wasted enough time, and I should've known better."

A little. Enough to know it wouldn't have mattered if she'd known everything.

"Funny, 'cause on the way over here I was thinking of leaving myself a note that said 'Dear Francine, stop being a fucking dumbass. Love, you.'" She paused. "And then another one for Arthur. Only his would've mentioned never cooking scones again, ever."

And there were a lot of things Katchoo could have said to that.

What she did say, though, was --

". . . someone let Arthur make scones? HOLY #$&*@#."

"I don't think he's your Arthur right now. He didn't recognize me." Plus his eyebrows were kind of bushy, though honestly at the time she'd just thought she might need to have a talk with him about borrowing her tweezers. Heck, maybe she still did.

"But he's not yours either," Katchoo guessed. "I don't know if that makes it better or worse somehow."

"So much better. It means I won't come back to find the motel room burned down because he tried cooking while I was gone." If she came back. If, Francine corrected herself, she got back, because she had no right to try to stay.

"Motel room?" Katchoo thought she had a guess at where this might be leading -- with her and Merlin gone over there, it would make sense, but . . .

"We weren't gonna stay here." Francine closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, feeling both stupid as hell and like she shouldn't waste a second of that stupidity. "There. And I can't go back to Houston. So. Gotta sleep somewhere."

"And he couldn't get home," Katchoo surmised. God. It was late, and . . . this was still cruel, and she really shouldn't, but . . .

"Do you have a place to stay tonight?"

He hadn't tried yet. It seemed wrong to say that, though, a weird sort of betrayal, so Francine didn't.

And then there was the other thing and suddenly she didn't have the air to say anything anyway.

"I--"

And Katchoo wouldn't ask; nothing she could find out about that version of Fandom left her wanting to know more.

"We can pull the beds apart, if you want."

I don't want.

It wasn't cruel, it was... There weren't even words for it. There weren't words for any of it; who writes a traveler's phrasebook for I'm in another universe talking to my dead girlfriend? How often does that situation come up?

"I have a place."

And yet she wasn't leaving.

Katchoo sucked in a slow breath and nodded. "Good." Yes, it was. No, it wasn't. She should be telling Francine to go, but her mouth didn't even want to form those words. Pushing her away would be . . . how did she do that? Ever?

"Not really." No offense to Momoko. This was just... this. And that wasn't.

Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea . . .

"Offer's still open."

Clocky rolled through the room in the background with a low, mournful beep, visible over Katchoo's shoulder.

"What the hell is that?" Francine asked, moving in to look, and... touching distance. Breathing distance, and the baddest idea that ever came out of the Bad Idea Jeans Company, and she didn't care what the hell 'that' was. She just cared that there was breath. Warm, cigarette-scented breath.

Okay, second baddest idea. If you're Francine Peters, you can always come up with something worse. Like trying to kiss her.

Bad ideas compounded bad ideas, like responding to the kiss, because of course that was going to help, right? Not make things more complicated at all.

Not at the moment, anyway. At the moment it was just Francine needing comfort and Katchoo being constitutionally incapable of giving it to her and lips against lips being the best way she knew how. That, in its microcosm, was simple enough.

StupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidNOTYOURSstupid... Since when did Francine ever listen to the little voice in her head when it was telling her something sensible? Like back off, like go?

Like breathe. She had to do that, at least, and from there, backing away came. Slowly, with a wet, hot prickling in her eyes, but it came. "Don't let me do that again. Please?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject