Chapter Text
“Don’t say it,” Barbara warned. “In fact, don’t even think it.”
“Say what?”
Melissa’s tone was the picture of innocence, but she was biting her lip against a smirk.
“You know what.”
It all started a few weeks ago. Another teacher at Abbott had taught them the expression “work wife,” and Melissa had taken to it immediately.
“Tony, get outta my wife’s seat,” she’d say to the new fourth grade teacher who chose the wrong chair in the Abbott lounge.
“Hey wifey, mind if I borrow the projector?” she’d ask as she poked her head into Barbara’s classroom.
“Dunno, I better check with the wife first,” she’d joke when one of their coworkers invited her to an after school function.
And - Barbara’s personal favorite, though she’d never say so - “How is my lovely wife doing this morning?” as she passed Barbara a coffee prepared just the way she liked it, their fingers brushing just the slightest bit on the exchange.
Barbara indulged her - she very nearly always indulged Melissa - even if she didn’t latch on to the expression quite how the other woman did. (No matter the flutter of delight she felt in her stomach hearing Melissa call her wife, she could never seem to allow herself to say it back, the word sticking uncomfortably somewhere in her throat.)
All that was to say, after weeks of Melissa’s antics - and years of friendship - Barbara Howard believed she had a good grasp on the inner workings of Melissa Schemmenti’s mind.
So when the pair rolled up to PECSA weekend and swung open the door to their shared hotel room to find only one bed waiting for them, Barbara knew how badly Melissa was itching to make a joke.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Melissa continued to deflect, sliding past Barbara to sit on the edge of the bed.
The one bed. For the two of them.
Melissa ran one hand across the comforter slowly and then looked up at Barbara from under hooded lashes. The corners of her lips twisted upwards, but when she opened her mouth to speak, Barbara cut her off.
“Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” Barbara said, eyes narrowed at the other woman. “Well, Barb, we don’t wanna be one a those couples that sleeps in separate beds now do we?” she continued in her best approximation of Melissa’s low, South Philly drawl. “Or maybe something like, Oh look, our first marital bed. It only took seven years, but we got there in the end! Whaddya say Barb, wanna make that honeymoon video now?”
Barbara put her hands on her hips and leveled Melissa with a stare and raised eyebrow, as if daring the woman to contradict her.
Melissa’s cheeks flushed a bit pink, but she grinned up at Barbara, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly.
“I was just gonna suggest we head down to the front desk to get a new room. But I like how I’m rubbin’ off on you.”
Barbara rolled her eyes and tugged her suitcase back out into the hall, not dignifying that with a response nor waiting to see if Melissa followed. (She did, of course.)
Downstairs in the lobby, Barbara blazed a purposeful trail to the front desk. Following a few steps behind, Melissa watched in amusement as at least three other people stopped dead in their tracks to leave her a clear path. Barbara Howard on a mission had that effect.
Barbara herself paid them no mind. She just sidled right up to the front desk, where a tall, balding middle-aged man was handling check-ins.
“Hello again, Martin,” she said, quickly checking his name tag.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. Is everything alright with your room?” Martin the Concierge asked politely, having just checked the women in moments earlier.
“Actually, I believe there’s been a bit of a mixup,” Barbara responded, polite smile in place as she slid their room keys across the counter towards him. “We reserved a room for two.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Martin the Concierge’s brow furrowed, consulting the papers in front of him. “We have your reservation for two under Howard. Room 210. Was there a problem accessing your room?”
“It’s not an issue of access, but an issue of amenities.”
Martin the Concierge frowned in confusion as Melissa walked up to join Barbara at the desk.
“There’s only one bed in our room,” she clarified.
“Yes…?” Martin the Concierge drew out cautiously. He clearly didn’t understand the problem, but didn’t want to further upset the women in front of him. “Are you expecting additional guests? We only have you marked in our system as a reservation for one couple.”
“I mean she is my wife, just not usually in the bed-sharing sense,” Melissa joked, slinging one arm over Barbara’s shoulders and pulling her close enough to jab playfully at her side with the other.
Barbara rolled her eyes.
“We are not married,” Barbara said definitively to Martin the Concierge, who was still waiting for clarification on the room situation.
He didn’t say anything. But his gaze flickered from Melissa’s left hand, still dangling over Barbara’s shoulder, and then to Barbara’s own hands clasped politely on the counter between them.
“Oh,” said Martin the Concierge, who had clearly just clocked two wedding bands. “Oh. I see.”
He gave Barbara a sly grin and winked.
She frowned back at him in confusion.
Behind her, Melissa raised an amused eyebrow.
“Well, we are, most unfortunately, fully booked due to the Educational Conference I’m afraid,” Martin the Concierge said, with just a tiny bit of exaggerated theatricality as a knowing smile continued to stretch across his face.
“No more room at the inn,” Barbara muttered with a sigh.
“Precisely. I do hope that it won’t be too much of a discomfort for two charming, unmarried ladies like yourselves to share accommodations this evening?”
“We’re not unmarried women,” Barbara replied, a little indignantly.
The smile slipped from Martin the Concierge’s face as his brow wrinkled in confusion once again. He cast a glance over at Melissa, as if hoping she would jump in and provide some helpful direction. But Melissa now had one hand clasped tight over her mouth in an effort to stifle her laughter. Instead, she just made an encouraging “keep going” motion at him from behind Barbara’s shoulder, where the other woman couldn’t see.
“My mistake, I must have…misunderstood.”
“We’re both married, actually,” Barbara continued.
Martin the Concierge nodded slowly. “I see. Well in that case…” he lowered his voice, “Don’t worry. Discretion is part of my job.”
He winked again.
Barbara looked more lost than ever.
Melissa managed to turn her laugh into a sort of cough, before hip checking Barbara away from the counter and taking her place.
“Right, so, you definitely don’t have anything else then?” Melissa said brightly, more of a statement than a question.
“As I said, we’re fully booked, so -”
Melissa waved the man off, re-pocketing their room keys.
“S’okay. I think we’ll manage just fine,” she said, tossing a wink at Martin the Concierge, who grinned back at her approvingly.
Melissa wrapped her arm around Barbara’s shoulders to steer them away from the desk and back upstairs.
“Melissa, I don’t know what in the high heaven was going on with that man!” Barbara said incredulously as they stepped into the elevator.
Melissa grinned as she felt the laughter bubbling up inside her all over again.
“I’ll explain it to ya later Barb. I think you’re gonna wanna wait until you have a drink in your hand first.”
/ /
They made the trek back upstairs with their luggage to room 210, but there wasn’t even time for Melissa to make a suggestive joke about their shared bed. The back-and-forth at the front desk left them running late for their first lecture of the weekend, so they scrambled to store their belongings, freshen up, and snag seats at “Integrated Arts for Under 10s.”
From there, Barbara and Melissa entered full PECSA-mode. Old hands at the conference by now, they knew how to pick and choose the best lectures, when to time their bathroom breaks, and how to score the most freebies on the exhibition floor. Still, the demands of the conference left them with very little free time to spare, and Barbara soon forgot all about their strange encounter with the hotel concierge.
Until it was time for the afterparty, anyway.
As they passed by the front desk on their way to the PECSA-geddon ballroom, Martin the Concierge looked to be finishing up his shift. When he caught sight of Barbara and Melissa crossing the lobby, he mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key before tossing a wink in the pair’s direction.
Melissa wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and gave him finger guns in response. Martin the Concierge grinned widely and did a little shoulder shimmy that made Melissa chuckle.
Barbara, meanwhile, looked back and forth between the two incredulously.
“What in the Earth, Wind, and Fire is going on here?”
Melissa just shook her head, linked their arms together, and pulled Barbara towards the party.
“Drinks first, Barb.”
Barbara bit her tongue and allowed Melissa to sweep her into the ballroom and straight to the bar to collect their cocktails, but as soon as they scrounged up a table for two in a far corner of the room, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“Seriously, what is going on with that man?”
“Oh, nothing,” came Melissa’s nonchalant reply, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t hide the smirk flickering at the corners of her lips.
Barbara narrowed her eyes. Melissa reached for her drink.
“Melissa, are you… do you have… a thing for the concierge?” she hissed in an almost-whisper.
Melissa’s eyes went comically wide as she did an actual, literal spit take, spewing math-a-rita all over the table.
“Am I - do I have - for Martin the hotel concierge?!” She was laughing so hard, she could hardly choke out the words to respond. “THAT’S what you think is happening?!”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” Barbara responded, flustered. “He’s all inscrutable grins and comments about discretion and, and -” she did her own approximation of Martin the Concierge’s shoulder shimmy, “and then you’re over there giggling and -” she imitated one of Melissa’s lascivious winks, “and refusing to talk about it with me, and what I am supposed to think?”
Barbara huffed, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched Melissa try to rein in her laughter across from her.
“Aw, don’t be jealous, baby. You know I only have eyes for you,” Melissa said with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.
“Melissa.”
Melissa finally took pity on the other woman, leaning across the table to place a calming hand on her arm. With her other hand, she gestured for Barbara to take a sip of her drink. Barbara did so, looking a bit wary.
“First of all, Martin the concierge is almost certainly gay,” she said nonchalantly, steamrolling ahead when Barbara’s brow furrowed, clearly about to ask how she knew that, “And second of all, I ain’t the type of gal to forget who I came here with.”
She squeezed Barbara’s arm comfortingly and tossed the woman one of her signature winks - more dramatic than usual, so Barbara would know that she was teasing.
“Look, he just thinks the two of us are here together. That’s all,” she continued with a shrug, sliding back in her seat.
“We are here together,” Barbara said, still not connecting the dots.
It was Melissa’s turn to let out an exasperated, “Barbara.”
Barbara stared blankly at her.
Melissa stared back at her, trying to convey some significance with her eyes alone. When Barbara’s expression didn’t change, she blew out a breath between her teeth.
“Geez, okay. Guess we’re doin’ the ‘spell it out’ method,” she muttered, more to herself than to the other woman. “Barb, Martin the Concierge is not interested in me. All those things he was doing... he was trying to be supportive of our relationship.”
Barbara’s expression didn’t change.
“Our… sexual relationship,” Melissa clarified further.
It was Barbara’s turn for a spit take.
“Our WHAT?!”
“You know, ya started throwin’ these lines at him, about being married or not, and talkin’ about the uh, one bed situation. And he thought you were like… making him a part of some sexy role playin’ scenario for the two of us.”
Barbara’s mouth dropped open, utterly scandalized.
“He thought - ! What - how - but that’s -” she spluttered. “We were there to ask for separate beds! How could that have possibly been misconstrued as - as -”
“An invitation to participate in our semi-public display of horniness?”
“Melissa!”
“Oh, I’ve met this beautiful stranger at a hotel, where we have no choice but to share a bed for the evening, whatever will I do?” Melissa whined in a high falsetto, throwing a hand back across her forehead in mock distress. “Mr. Hotel Concierge, are you absolutely certain this is our only option? It is? Well, then I guess we simply have no choice but to spend the entire night fuc- OW!”
Melissa glared at Barbara, who had kicked her hard beneath the table.
“Just painting you a picture,” she grumbled, rubbing her shin. “Anyway, the point is, you got him all confused with the ‘wife’ stuff.”
Barbara raised an accusatory eyebrow.
“Okay, okay, so the wife stuff is on me. But then you couldn’t get your story straight about being married or not, and the poor man got all his wires crossed. Honestly, he was bein’ a really good sport about it, all things considered.”
Barbara sank low in her chair and covered her hands with her face.
“This is mortifying. How am I supposed to look that man in the eyes during checkout tomorrow?”
Melissa snorted.
“He works the front desk at a cheap hotel. He’s seen worse, I guarantee it. Probably won’t even remember us by next week.”
When Barbara remained slumped in her chair, avoiding eye contact, Melissa slid to the very edge of her seat until their knees knocked together comfortingly under the table.
“Tell ya what. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll do checkout by myself tomorrow,” she offered. “You handle the bags, I’ll handle Martin. No uncomfortable eye contact necessary. Promise.”
Barbara lifted her head from her hands to see Melissa smiling softly at her.
“Alright,” she said, offering her own tentative but genuine smile back.
“Now as for what will make ya feel better right now… I think another drink is in order. Seeing as you spit the last one all over the table, I mean.”
Barbara kicked Melissa again, playfully this time.
“Make it a double or the next one will end up in your lap.”
/ /
Things brightened considerably for Barbara after her double math-a-rita, though she outright refused to participate in any sort of drinking contest, no matter how much cajoling Melissa did. When they finally stumbled back to their room, warm and giggly and more than a bit tipsy, it was nearly midnight.
Barbara let them in… and then stopped abruptly in the doorway, leading Melissa to walk right into her.
“Oof. Barb, what the -”
See, Barbara had been so preoccupied by the all-encompassing embarrassment that the hotel concierge thought she and Melissa were engaging in some sort of audacious wanton behavior, that she completely forgot the reason they had ended up in the mixed-up scenario in the first place.
The one king-sized reason staring back at her now.
Melissa elbowed Barbara in the back, pushing her further into the room so she could shut the door behind her.
“Move it or lose it Barb, come on, I know you’re not that drunk -”
Melissa trailed off as Barbara stepped forward and to the side a bit, leaving her with a clear view of the bed.
“Oh right. Forgot we’re sharin’ tonight.”
Melissa’s voice was softer than before, but to Barbara’s ears it seemed to fill the room, echoing loudly in her head. She suddenly felt very aware of the heat of Melissa leaning in close behind her.
Barbara took a hasty step forward - and then, with nowhere else to really go - she sat down on the foot of the bed. That left her looking right at Melissa though, so she quickly flopped back onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling instead. She stretched her arms above her head, moaning a bit as she felt the rest of the long day’s tension leave her.
Feeling calmer, she turned her head towards Melissa once more, only to find the other woman staring at her, mouth slightly agape. (And were her cheeks more flushed than the alcohol had made them before?)
“What?” Barbara asked, amusement creeping into her voice.
“Huh?” Melissa seemed to snap out of a trance. “Uh. Nothin’,” she mumbled, and quickly turned to rummage through her suitcase for her pajamas and toiletries.
“I was just thinking,” she began again as she stepped towards the bathroom, tone teasing, “that if you really want that honeymoon video, you’ll have to remind me to bring my camera next year.”
Barbara threw a pillow in her direction, but Melissa deflected it by shutting the bathroom door just in time.
“Keep it up, Schemmenti, and you’ll be sleeping on the floor!”
Barbara could hear Melissa’s bark of laughter through the door.
“We can make the magic happen anywhere you want, hun,” she called back.
Barbara groaned loudly - Melissa laughed again - and decided that was as good a time as any to distract herself with starting her own nighttime routine.
Melissa emerged a few minutes later, and they swapped places. (And if Barbara felt the need to wash her face twice with cold water, it was only due to the lingering heat the night’s drinks brought to her cheeks. Nothing to do with Melissa’s bare legs when she stepped out of the bathroom in just an oversized Phillies T-shirt.)
When Barbara finally left the bathroom, she found Melissa already tucked into bed, a line of extra pillows down the center separating it into clear sides.
“That, I suppose, makes everything quite alright,” Barbara quipped dryly, rolling her eyes at the plush pseudo-barrier.
“The Walls of Jericho will protect you from the Big Bad Wolf,” Melissa quoted right back to her, and flashed her most wolfish grin at Barbara as she climbed into the bed.
“Aren’t you a little more Red Riding Hood?” Barbara teased, reaching out over the makeshift divide to curl a strand of red hair around her finger.
Melissa leaned into her touch for a brief moment before swatting her hand away.
“Hey, you’re already breaching containment,” she accused.
Barbara withdrew her hand, making a big show of tucking it underneath her head as she settled into her pillow. The extra glint in her eye and barest hint of a smile on her lips were Melissa’s only warnings before a cold foot slid itself against her bare shins.
Melissa jolted and swore, nudging Barbara’s cold toes back to her side of the bed.
“Since when are you such a rulebreaker?”
Barbara yawned, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Maybe you really are rubbing off on me,” she hummed sleepily.
“Mmmm,” Melissa hummed back, and Barbara cracked open one eye to see a telltale smirk stretching across the other woman’s face.
“Nuh-uh. Don’t even think about it. There’s no room for innuendos in this bed.”
“Seems unfair if you’re gonna set me up like that.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well I could certainly show you -”
Melissa’s suggestive tone disappeared in another yelp of surprise as Barbara’s cold toes brushed against her leg again.
“Goodnight, Melissa,” Barbara said, amused but with a tone of finality.
“G’nite, Barb,” Melissa answered sleepily, and this time she didn’t bother to nudge Barbara’s leg away from her own.
/ /
Barbara woke the next morning feeling warm, relaxed, and well-rested. She stretched her limbs slowly, not quite ready to open her eyes just yet… until she realized the surface supporting one of her arms and legs certainly wasn’t the mattress.
Barbara’s eyes flew open to see she was wrapped around Melissa quite intimately - an arm tight across her waist, a leg tucked between her knees, their heads both resting on what had started as Barbara’s pillow.
(In fairness, Barbara wasn’t entirely to blame. It was Melissa, after all ,who had tumbled the Walls of Jericho, rolling onto her stomach and tucking the pillow barrier beneath her sometime in the night.)
Not wanting to wake the other woman and alert her to their position, Barbara forced herself to relax once more, taking a deep, calming breath. She then studiously ignored how her exhale made the red hair just inches from her face flutter across the pillow.
When it seemed like Melissa was still deeply asleep, Barbara quickly and quietly untangled their limbs and started to climb out of bed. She tried to jostle the mattress as little as possible, but no sooner had Barbara’s feet hit the floor did Melissa begin to stir.
“Barb?” she mumbled sleepily, reaching one hand out towards Barbara’s side of the bed. Her brow furrowed when she grasped only empty sheets. She opened her eyes slowly, her little frown and the unhappy crinkle between her eyebrows disappearing once she saw Barbara sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Barbara said, as if she had been awake much longer, just waiting for Melissa to finally get up.
“Mornin’,” Melissa hummed in response, turning over onto her back to stretch fully.
(She let out a long groan when she did so, and Barbara suddenly had the feeling she understood why Melissa had stared when she did the same the night before.)
Clearing her throat - and averting her eyes - Barbara stood and walked over to her suitcase. After a moment, Melissa got out of bed and joined her.
“How did you sleep?” Melissa asked as the two stood side by side, pulling out new clothes for the day.
“Just fine… when your mouth wasn’t keeping me awake.”
Melissa’s head whipped up from her suitcase.
“Well, sorry if it was doin’ anything it shouldn’t’ve,” she said hesitantly, eyes flicking to Barbara and then away quickly.
“You mumble in your sleep,” Barbara clarified, confused by her reaction. “It seems you never stop running that mouth of yours. Such a chatterbox.”
Melissa’s hesitance resolved itself into a smile, and she half-heartedly pushed Barbara’s shoulder.
“You love it. And anyway, you think you’re easy to sleep with?” Melissa asked, eyebrow raised. “You’re handsy.”
Barbara gasped, denials springing to her lips at once. But after opening and closing her mouth a few times, what she landed on instead was -
“You love it.”
She took advantage of Melissa’s stunned silence to double down, pinching her rear end as she passed by on the way to the bathroom.
“Hurry up, dear. You promised to handle check out.”
She was inside with the door shut by the time Melissa seemed to recover enough to respond.
“I’ll check you out any time!” Barbara heard Melissa’s voice echo through the room, and she watched her own smile grow in the mirror.
/ /
When the women made it downstairs, true to her word, Melissa approached the front desk alone to return their room keys.
Barbara waited across the lobby with their bags, studiously not looking in their direction. After waking up next to - and heaven help her, around - Melissa that morning, the idea of having to meet Martin the Concierge’s morning after innuendos seemed too much to bear.
After a few minutes, Barbara felt a familiar hand press into her lower back.
“Okay, now don’t be mad,” Melissa said quietly into her ear.
Barbara turned to face her, offering a look equal parts unamused and resigned.
(Melissa’s answering grin told her she expected that precise reaction.)
“Our buddy Martin wants a quick word with you. I’ll just take my bag and let you two do your thing.”
Before Barbara could protest, Melissa had grabbed her suitcase and Martin the Concierge had left the desk and crossed the lobby to stand in front of her.
“Martin,” she says with a polite nod, because Barbara Howard always minds her manners, even in situations where strangers think she’s engaging in promiscuous behavior with her best friend and coworker during a professional educational event.
“Mrs. Howard, I’m terribly sorry about my… faux pas, during your check-in,” Martin the Concierge said immediately, wringing his hands and looking appropriately contrite. “Your friend has since explained the situation to me, and I now realize the position I put you in by assuming you were married to one another. I’ve seen you attend a few of these conferences together now, and the two of you have an obvious rapport and clearly care deeply for one another.”
“We do,” Barbara concedes with a small but genuine smile.
“That said, it was not my place to… insert myself into your dynamic. Especially since I read the situation incorrectly, and made you uncomfortable in the process. I do hope that your stay was pleasant enough despite the… restrictions of your accommodations. Rest assured I will make note of your relationship status in our records, so that this incident never happens again.”
“It’s quite alright, Martin,” Barbara said warmly, appreciating the earnestness of his apology. “Really, it was no trouble at all.”
She grabbed the handle of her suitcase and stepped towards the door, tossing a wink over her shoulder at the concierge as she went.
“She is my wife, after all.”