thatsamilkshake | Room 505, Sunday Night

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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.

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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?"

Since when did Katchoo ever listen to anything but her heart when it came to Francine? Which was every reason that she'd moved in for the kiss in the first place, and every reason, now that she saw the look in Francine's eyes, she was nodding in agreement now.

"No," she said, voice rough like it killed her to say, and that was a horrible turn of phrase, wasn't it? "Not again . . . but you've gotta stay somewhere tonight, at least."

Again, there was a wiser choice -- okay, a hundred thousand wiser choices -- but it was a choice Francine was past the ability to make.

"Do we have to move the beds apart?"

Or just too selfish to.

"Would it be easier for you if we did?" Because again, smart vs. Francine never ended well for smart when Katchoo was making the decisions, and asking a question for a question was easier than saying yes.

To fall asleep in the dark three feet away from Katchoo? Voluntarily close her eyes knowing she'd slip away sometime in the middle of the night, if this weekend thing was true, and never see her again?

"Maybe later. Not now."

"Just ignore Clocky when it bitches about the noise later, then." And she was stepping back from the doorway, not pulling away from Francine, really, just an unspoken and (she hoped) clear gesture of invitation.

Would it be better or worse to give her this, even for a few hours, knowing both of them were almost guaranteed to wake up in a completely different situation? Katchoo didn't know. Trying to puzzle it out took more effort than she could spare.

Room 505, Sunday Night

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