Work Text:
It’s gotten better. Crazy as the Unicorn shit is, Jess figures, you can get used to everything. Work is still work, and it’s easier with Paige there. Her pattern is reweaving itself around, well, being a unicorn. It’s - it’s not comfortable, it’s not normal, it’s still weird as fuck, but she’s managing.
Then Jess gets an email.
It’s a layover this time; no dates, no dinner, just a night spent together. She calls ahead and books a motel room near O’Hare. They can order Thai or something if she’s hungry. Her flight is late enough that Jess can leave the office at her usual time and just make it. (Yes, she’s well aware that most people leave at five. Most people also aren’t figuring out how to deal with a badly enchanted body pillow. Jess figures that merits a shot of whiskey before she goes.)
She ducks out and around Paige’s office, evading the possibility of questions. Most of the rush hour traffic has already cleared out, and it’s an easy ride to O’Hare. Pity. She would dearly like to swear at someone; a restlessness she can’t quite define is buzzing under her skin. Excitement, nervousness, irritation at having her fragile routine disrupted, who knows. Cussing someone out for not using their goddamn blinker doesn’t have anything to do with that, but it helps. Of all the times for Chicagoans to obey traffic laws.
She’s there waiting when Jess pulls up. She tosses her carryon into the backseat, and then climbs into the passenger side. Something shifts in her heart, something she’s learned to associate with her presence. The change is familiar, and comforting because of it.
“Hey,” she smiles.
“Hey,” Cora answers. “How was your flight?”
Later that night, they’re lying entangled in crappy motel sheets. “Are you okay?” she whispers, touching Cora’s face. “You’ve been… quiet.”
“I know,” she answers. “It’s just… I’ve been busy lately.”
“You’re always busy,” she points out. “What happened?”
She cannot possibly tell her. It doesn’t sound sane . Magic and fae and unicorns just don’t happen to people with kids and yards and normal, peaceful lives. So she translates.
“I’ve been… taking on some new responsibilities,” she tries. “I wasn’t really aware of the scope of things when I started. It’s been an adjustment.”
She knows Cora is understating things, because of course she knows. Cora’s never been particularly good at lying to her, and she doesn’t know if she wants to be. “Don’t worry about it tonight,” she begs, kissing Cora’s neck. “Everything will still be there tomorrow. It’ll be okay.”
She returns the kisses, but she can’t help but feel a phantom twinge in her forehead. Would she be able to ignore it, if the power of the Unicorn tugs at her now? (Would she be willing to?) Please , she begs it silently, don’t make me choose. Not tonight. She cradles Kate’s head in her hands and kisses her deeply, with the slightest trace of teeth.
Not tonight .
She tries to bury her worries and wrap herself in the warmth of their bodies. It’s somewhere between comforting and suffocating; maybe both. She’s trying not to think about everything outside this room, outside them. It mostly works. Not entirely.
“You don’t have to stay, if you don’t want. You could just come and visit,” she whispers to Cora, and her voice sounds like temptation. She could. Now that Paige is there, it’s not like an entire office rests on her alone. She could step out for a few days, or a week, or longer, and let it all be someone else’s problem. It was already getting cold; wouldn’t the dry desert heat be a nice change? She could .
Oh, but hadn’t that been why she’d turned down Superb’s offer to run away? She knows better than to trust herself. She’s a coward at heart and she knows it; if she lets herself run, she’s not sure she’ll ever come back. There are things here she can’t leave. Not just COSA, although she put twelve years of sometimes-literal blood, sweat, and tears into that office, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
She thinks about Conor, showing her that email with a knitted brow, and Darcy, throwing herself headlong into a portal to God-knows-where. Superb, hiding her fears under bravado and tequila, and Sybella, wading her way back from rock bottom. She remembers Yce’s face as xie tried to find the words to tell her that xie might have to kill her, and swapping flasks and eyerolls with Liam as they watched the antics of the Brighter Future Society. Paige, who’s slotted in to COSA like she was born to it. And Meg, so determined to solve anybody’s problems that she’ll dive in without looking first. When her thoughts touch the Warden, they skip like a record player, or maybe that’s just Kate’s breath against her temple.
So she smiles, a little sadly, and tells her what she’d told Superb: “I live here.” She means: it wouldn’t be just a visit, and we both know that. She means: it’s a risk I don’t want to ask you to take. (She means: I think I’ve finally found something that’s more important to me than you are.)
Cora’s elementary school had been closed and slated for demolition the year she turned sixteen. Of course, being teenagers, she and a few of her friends had decided to sneak into the school where they’d all met. It hadn’t been hard; they’d popped a lock on the back door and wandered through the hallways.
It hadn’t been how Cora had remembered it, but not because it was different. In fact, it had been almost eerily the same, right down to the three broken lockers next to room 163, the loose bolts on the desks, and the weird puke-green carpet in the library. She’d been the one who changed; the lockers fell below her eyeline, the desks were far too cramped for her longer legs, and she could reach the top bookshelves without any effort. She had vaguely hoped it would feel familiar and nostalgic, and it did, but it was also claustrophobic. She didn’t fit there anymore.
The same kind of feeling prickles along her skin where she had left love bites. Part of her is perfectly ready to chalk it up to a new Unicorn thing - her recent lack of green space, which was a need she’d never had before, or maybe sleeping with a married woman was against some kind of ethical code she didn’t know about. She was still settling in, still figuring things out; eventually they would go back to normal.
Part of her is afraid that they’d finally outgrown each other, that they’ve finally changed too much to make sense anymore. She doesn’t want that to be true, or maybe she does. The thought is pure, icy terror; she’s not sure what her life looks like without her, not after fifteen, sixteen years. These stolen weekends have been her refuge for so long. What happens to her when she no longer has a haven to run to?
Her flight is early, so thankfully, Cora doesn’t have much time to think about it. Her car pulls up to the curb and she parks. Unloading the suitcase is a good excuse for a few extra minutes together. Cora wants her to stay forever; Cora can’t wait for her to leave. She’s a terrible fucking actress, so God only knows what her face looks like as she hands over the carryon and tells her, “Travel safe.”
“I will,” she promises. “I always do.”
She stands there for a little while, watching her vanish into the early-morning crowd, and then Jess gets back into her car and drives away.