Work Text:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
- Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”
The first time she kisses a girl, hours later she still can’t stop blushing.
It’s dark in her bedroom; the only light is what filters in from the hallway when her mom comes to say goodnight. She notices Beth’s smile anyway.
“You’ve been silly happy all like this all day, missy,” she says, coming in to sit at the foot of the bed.
Beth giggles. She’s wanted to tell someone, anyone, but the person she would normally gush to about a kiss like this is the one she kissed. So instead she pulls the sheet up to her chin, tries to get her smile under control, and says, “I got kissed today.”
She can’t quite see her mom’s facial expression with the way she’s backlit, but she can tell she’s smiling.
“A nice boy, I hope.”
“Actually…”
“Beth Dennis, you’re not going around kissing bad boys, are you?”
It’s light, teasing, fun, feels like the kiss did, really, and yes, this is why she wanted to tell someone.
“No,” she giggles, drawing out the word. “It was a nice girl.”
It takes her a minute to realize her mom’s not smiling anymore. She’s stock still, back straight. She stands, every movement stiff.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. And you should pretend you never did that.”
She closes the door, hard, on her way out, and leaves Beth in the dark.
-
The next time she kisses a girl, she doesn’t tell anyone.
-
After she runs, it’s a long time before she can think about God again.
At 19, she finds an enclave. They talk about Jesus and they talk about sex and they tell her she’s okay, she’s perfect, she’s exactly what God intended, is doing His work.
She believes them.
They pair her up with a girl just a little older, this really nice girl, Sarah, who is sweet and gentle and makes Bo feel safe.
Others watch, which is weird at first, but they heap on the praise; they tell her God wants this, and when Sarah smiles, Bo believes.
They keep telling her she’s perfect right up until she kills Sarah.
It’s the first time she’s killed a girl.
-
The world would be better off without her.
Of this, she is certain.
The only reason she survives is she figures out a way to help before she figures out a way to kill herself.
If she has to kill people—and she does, she does, she knows that much—she can do her best to be sure it’s people who deserve it.
She hangs out in the worst parts of town, alone, at night, waiting. She scours newspapers, looking for crime sprees. It’s the ones who prey on people who aren’t as strong—women, children, the elderly, the poor. A thief steals a Monet from the city’s richest man, Bo couldn’t care less. Executives of a charity embezzle, they disappear. Corrupt police officers are the easiest choice—hurting those they’ve sworn to protect.
She waits, as long as she can in each city, waits until the hunger builds, spends all that time making sure she’s found the right target, then she strikes, then she’s gone, and the world is a little bit of a better place.
-
She gives up the idea of going home, of falling in love, of ever staying in one place.
Growing up she always wanted to travel the world; she pretends like that’s what she’s doing. Never mind the fact that she can’t leave the country for fear they’ll arrest her at customs. Never mind the fact that every time she discovers her favorite part of a city she has to move to the next one and never go back.
-
Instead of friends, she talks too much to cashiers, waitresses. Finds a coffee house in each new city and goes there the same time every day, orders the same thing. She gets a thrill every time she becomes a regular, gets rung up before she orders.
She tips more than she can afford and wonders if they miss her when she runs.
-
Bartending is her favorite gig. People will tell the bartender anything. She gets to be a confidant, a best friend. She gets to give advice, gets to flirt without fear of it going too far.
And she gets to catch assfaces like this guy following the little blonde to the elevator.
It’s too soon, she’s not even a regular at the coffee shop yet, but the girl is collapsing against the wall of the elevator, and this guy is grinning, and Bo is done with him.
-
Everything out of Kenzi’s mouth is a bad idea. Bo finds herself agreeing anyway.
It’s just that it’s been so long since anyone has wanted to be a part of her life, for her to be a part of their life, and Kenzi is so earnest about the whole thing. It’s easy to forget all the ways this could go wrong.
Bo remembers them when she gets thrown into a van.
-
The doctor is gentle, calm, reassuring. Bo trusts her. She has no reason to, but she does.
Everyone else is demanding and scary—if Bo were the type to be scared. The doctor is polite. And she is fascinated by Bo, in a way Bo’s not actually used to. Most people want something from Bo, but Lauren is just interested, like she just wants to observe. It makes Bo want to let her.
Lauren tells Bo what she is, tells her she is a perfect biological specimen. Bo’s heard that one before, and fool me once and all that, but—
She doesn’t realize until later how much trouble she’s in. Sure, she had to kill two underfae and only survived because of Kenzi, and now it’s quite possible both sides of the Fae want to kill her, but she figures out the real problem when she stands silently in Lauren’s lab, watching her work.
She’s got a crush.
She hasn’t had a crush on anyone in years, has closed herself off well enough to avoid that and everything that comes with it. But when she met Lauren she wasn’t worried about having a crush because she was worried about being abducted by people who weren’t actually people. And now she’s just looking at her, all blonde hair and focus, murmuring to herself, and Bo remembers her embarrassed eye roll and her stammering and she wants to kiss her. It’s only days since she drained that guy; she’s not hungry. She just wants to kiss her.
She swallows hard.
-
There’s a voice inside her telling her she’s wrong, immoral, disgusting, going to burn in hell. It sounds a lot like her mother.
Bo reminds herself that she stopped believing in God almost a decade ago.
The only thing is that Lauren makes her think about benevolence.