Chapter Text
As anyone who’s ever moved would know, moving is a hassle. Jackie and Shauna may be absolutely elated to move in together, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a hassle. In fact, their desperation to get settled might be making it more of a hassle, between them moving in and Jeff moving out, and Callie finding any excuse not to help.
Despite the hassle that is moving, Jackie always finds a way to make it enjoyable, which Shauna loves . The rest of her life will be joyful, because Jackie is there, and she always finds a way to be happy. When it comes to unpacking her things and finding a place amongst Shauna’s for it, she plays music loudly, dancing and singing, and she laughs at everything she can, dragging Shauna into more than one fit of nostalgia through stupid items in their shared home.
It’s all fun and games until Jackie’s rooting around in their bedroom closet trying to find space for all their clothes, and finds something Shauna isn’t so sure she wants to reminisce over. The sickly sweet smirk on Jackie’s face when she reveals her find, Shauna’s high school journals, practically terrifies her. There’s absolutely no way this will end well for her.
“Can we read these?” Jackie says, her fingers brushing the cover of the first one, “I think it might be funny, all things considered.”
Shauna knows if she says no, Jackie will respect her wishes, put the journals away, and move on to the next thing. She’s certainly tempted, but the smirk on Jackie’s face kind of makes her want to say she can read them. Plus, it’ll probably be funny to make fun of how fucking stupid she was when she was eighteen. “Yeah, crack them open,” Shauna says, settling on the bed.
Jackie sits down beside her, curling into her side immediately, grabbing Shauna’s arm to wrap around her shoulders as she flips to a random page. It’s comfortable, their closeness, the way Jackie desires to be close to her always. It’s everything , and Shauna’s known it’s always felt this way, ever since they were young. She wonders how she ever missed what it all meant. But she supposes, she’ll find out her thought process right now.
“May 6th, 1996,” Jackie reads, “ Jackie got back together with Jeff. Oh, this is going to be good.”
Jackie giggles a little, and Shauna has to resist the urge to cringe. “ What does she see in him? That’s ironic,” Jackie says.
“What I saw in him was he was dating you , what did you see in him?” Shauna challenges, meeting Jackie’s eyes.
“He was… a man, a suitable one I guess,” Jackie says, “I wouldn’t know, I was gay.”
“Was?” Shauna teases.
“Still am, thankfully… anyways,” she says, turning her eyes back to the page, “ I’ll never fucking understand. She’s the most perfect girl alive, kind and sweet and smart and funny and gorgeous and he’s Jeff.”
“Oh my god,” Shauna says, tucking her warming face into Jackie’s shoulder.
“How did you not realize?” Jackie asks, laughing as she rubs a hand up and down Shauna’s back.
“I don’t know,” she whines, wishing her high school self had had any common sense. She must’ve been dumb .
“There’s more,” Jackie says, Shauna resists the urge to groan.
“ Every time I see them together it makes me nearly sick ,” she reads, trying to suppress laughter, “ I mean, it’s unreal, how they just don’t work. Why doesn’t she see it? Why does she stay with him? I wish more than anything she’d leave him. I don’t know how I am going to make it through two more months of high school with the two of them, I don’t think I’ll survive. God, you were so dramatic.”
“Yeah, that much is fucking clear,” Shauna says, rolling her eyes at her stupid younger self.
It’s amazing how horribly she’d fucked up in high school, all because she was so stupid and dramatic. How she hadn’t realized her feelings is astounding. Had she really thought she was jealous? Had she really thought she’d wanted Jeff? How the fuck did she end up married to him?
“It’s not even done yet,” Jackie says, “ Seeing them kiss makes me ill, and it doesn’t even seem like either of them like it. What the fuck is their problems? Why does Jackie keep getting back with him? Why does she keep ignoring me for him? Am I not enough? I miss when I was the most important person to her .”
As Jackie finishes the words, she turns to Shauna, a sad little smile on her face. “Poor eighteen year old Shauna,” Jackie says, reaching for Shauna’s hand, “you know you’ve always been the most important person to me right?”
“Yeah,” Shauna says, squeezing their joined hands, “I know that now.”
“Good, because you were stupid to think you ever compared to Jeff, even then, before we had all this.”
Shauna leans in close, presses a kiss to Jackie’s forehead. In the time that she’s gotten to have Jackie back, she’s thought pretty poorly of her eighteen year old self. She’s called her stupid, she’s threatened violence against her, but reading this journal entry now, Shauna sees a side of herself she could’ve related to not that long ago. She connects with her, really connects, for the first time in god knows how long. Across the boundaries of time, there’s one thing that connects every Shauna to the other. Jackie. Every single Shauna longs for every single Jackie. Forty-two year old Shauna is just lucky enough to have what she wants more than anything. She wishes she could go back in time, reach for eighteen year old Shauna, and give her a hug. She wishes for the first time in a long time, that she could go back to that stupid teenaged girl and let her know that she’s always the most important person to Jackie. She wants to let her know that she doesn’t have to do any of the things she did to drive Jackie away, because they were meant to be together.
Most of all, she wishes she could tell eighteen year old Shauna how good it feels to be by Jackie’s side, to be the one she loves, the one she always comes back to. Maybe things would be different then, maybe they wouldn’t have wasted twenty-five years pining incessantly over each other with no communication, but there’s no point in lamenting over wasted time. She just has to learn to sympathize with the Shauna she once was, and cherish what she will have for the rest of her life. That part is not hard at all.