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Celeste.
She hears a voice in the dark say. The voice calls for her, softly. It’s Jane, she knows it is. She wants to go to her, desperately, but she’s trapped as strong familiar hands holds her down and down and down. She feels like she can’t breathe and all she wants to do is scream, and she tries to but it’s like her voice is stuck inside of her.
Celeste
Jane calls for her again and she feels herself joint awake, sweating, with soft kind eyes staring at her.
“Hey” Jane says, and it’s barely a whisper “you fell asleep while I was cleaning up” she chuckles, covering Celeste with the comfort of the sound of her sweet laughter.
“I’m sorry”
“Nah, it’s okay. You seemed tired” and she was, she has been feeling so so tired. She can barely sleep with so many nightmares. Nightmares like the one she just had, like the one she knows Jane heard her scream from but doesn’t comment on it. “I’m gonna head home, ok?”
She doesn’t want her to go. She’s alone at her house after so long, her children staying with their grandmother. And she feels alone. So so alone and afraid. It’s all she’s been feeling as long as she can remember. She doesn’t want Jane to go but she, hesitantly, nods her head yes anyways.
“Do you want me to go?” Jane asks, as if reading her mind, her left eyebrow lifted like she’s daring her to lie yet her body language still so light, posing no signs of threat.
She nods no and Jane smiles, starts to take off her shoes and gets comfortable under her covers as if she’s done this a billion times before. Celeste lays her head back on her pillow and sighs in relief. Her muscles moving at their own accord, and she smiles too. It might be impossible not to when Jane smiles, she thinks.
“Do you think it’s going to take how many more days until Madeline finally breaks and tells me she hates my bangs?”
They laugh together then it gets really silent when Jane closes her eyes and Celeste watches her fall asleep. And it’s all surprisingly not awkward. It’s just silence. Comfortable, peaceful, silence.
“It’s okay, you know” Jane whispers so gently after a moment, her eyes still closed “I have them too”
And life sometimes is full of gifts, Celeste thinks. Her children, Jane’s son, her friends, Jane. They are all gifts life has given her. But most of the time, life is completely and infuriatingly unfair. Haunted and hurt by the same man, by similar violence that cut so deep, sometimes Celeste think these wounds will never heal. Maybe, in another time like this, Celeste will seek answers from her. She will ask Jane if her pain got any better over the years. If she is able to breath like she did before, if she even remembers how and if she maybe can remind her how to.
But in this time, Celeste holds Jane’s hand tight under the covers, sighs with content that she has someone like Jane here and doesn’t hold back her tears as she listens to Jane breathing close to her, enjoying the comfort of Jane’s fingers brushing against hers (Her thoughts somewhere in the middle of everything takes her back to her nightmare, as she feels Jane’s hands wrap around hers in her sleep and Celeste is just sure Jane would pull her back from those hands holding her down).
Her simple presence soothes all of Celeste’s fears. And she feels so much lighter. Safer, even. Most definitely not alone.
—
Their first kiss happens when they are sitting on the sand by the beach, just the two of them like they’ve started doing every now and then, little dates that they haven’t dared to officially label as dates yet.
They are laughing at something Jane said. She doesn’t really remember what it is after, all she knows is feeling this uncountable amount of joy as she laughs so hard, she feels tears on her eyes. She’s laughing like she’s never done before, it’s a genuinely happy laughter that grows deep on her belly and hurts her entire face for stretching her skin so much. Maybe what she said didn’t ask for this reaction but it’s just that Jane is so incredibly, most genuinely funny. She’s always got the best jokes that comes out of nowhere, and tells them to Celeste with a serious face and smile on her eyes.
Those kinda eyes that carries so much in them...Celeste gets lost in them sometimes, just as she did the first time they talked and Jane seemed to already know all of her secrets, like her eyes could read her whole as if with powers of X-ray vision that saw it all inside her mind. Like she saw her, no expectations, no second intentions, no pedestal to put her in. She saw Celeste . Just Celeste . All of Celeste, even, and maybe someone of herself too.
“You taste like apple champagne” Jane whispers, and Celeste let’s out a chuckle “I like it”
It’s cute, Jane is cute. Celeste hums, softly brushes (non existent) hair away from Jane’s face. “do you want some?”
“No” she answers, mouth close to hers again “I think I just like it on you”