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Barbara wakes up, groggy and disoriented, in her own bed. It tastes like something died in her mouth. She throws an arm across her eyes and groans. Although light is coming in through the bedroom window, she has no idea what time it is.
She'd had the strangest dream: her magic rock wish had come true; the guy from TV had flirted with her, like, a lot; she'd given an incredibly satisfying beatdown to a catcaller; she'd fought a bunch of Secret Service agents, in the White House; and she'd been turned into some kind of horrifying cat-human hybrid and nearly gotten electrocuted by Diana from work? As far as dreams go, that had been one of her crazier ones. Usually in her weird nightmares, she misplaces an important specimen right before the museum director shows up to see it, or there's an important class she hasn't attended all semester. This one is...new.
She groans again. She's not sure if it's helping, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Managing to get herself vertical, she stumbles out of the bedroom towards the kitchen. Her plan, such as it is, is to get a pot of coffee started before she heads back in for as long and hot a shower as she can coax out of the building's hot water heater. She'll worry about how she can't find her glasses once she's caffeinated.
Barbara doesn't make it to the kitchen, because Diana is sitting on her sofa. Diana from work, Diana, who'd featured prominently in her bad dream--that Diana is here, in her living room. What is she doing in Barbara's living room? How does she even know where Barbara lives? What is going on?
She tries to articulate all of these questions, any of these questions, but the only thing she manages to get out is: "Uh?"
Okay, that could've gone better. She stops and tries again. This time, what comes out is: "Do you want some coffee?"
Diana looks at her watch, half-hiding a smile, and agrees that yes, some coffee would be nice.
Barbara's halfway through making the coffee when she stops and looks back into the living room. Diana is still sitting there, preposterously elegant amongst Barbara's kitschy decor. She turns back to the coffee and says aloud, "I'm still dreaming, aren't I."
"What?"
"The bad dream, with the wishing stone and the fighting and all the thermonuclear war. I'm still dreaming. That's why you're here."
Diana laughs, but it sounds unconvincing. "Barbara, this isn't a dream. That all really happened." She stands up from the couch, setting aside a book whose cover Barbara can only just make out the color of, and joins Barbara in the kitchen. "You really think that I'm a bad dream?"
Barbara starts to demur--of course Diana's not a bad dream, have you seen her--but stops before she can actually say anything apologetic. "I don't know if you remember, but the last time we saw each other wasn't exactly a dream. More of a nightmare, honestly."
Diana's brows draw together, and she gives Barbara a quizzical look. "Do you not remember--?"
Of course, that's when the memory comes back. After everything, Diana had made sure that Barbara got home okay. She remembers now, feeling exhausted, bone-tired, heartsick, watching Diana sort through her keys to find the one that opened the front door. Diana had ushered her into the bedroom, encouraged her into her pajamas, spoken softly, turned out the lights. Barbara, overwhelmed with grief to the point of numbness, hadn't wanted to be awake--hadn't wanted to be much of anything, honestly, but especially not awake. She remembers hearing Diana leave, and doesn't remember much after that.
"You brought me here, even after everything," Barbara says, embarrassed and more than a little surprised. Diana smiles, but the smile falters when Barbara squints at her suspiciously. "And then you left. Why are you here?"
"I wanted to make sure that you were..." Diana trails off. She seems to admonish herself, and then she speaks again. "I found myself needing a friend. And I thought that perhaps you might need one too."
"...you took my keys with you when you left last night, didn't you."
"I took your keys with me when I left last night," Diana confirms. The face she makes is so sheepish that Barbara can't help but laugh. "I did want to come back to check on you. I felt...responsible."
Again, Barbara starts to protest, and again, Barbara stops herself. Instead, she says, "Well, thanks. Pretty sure I wouldn't have made it home by myself."
Diana looks like she's going to say something, leaning in closer to Barbara--but then the coffee maker starts to hiss and gurgle and the moment is gone. Diana steps back, back towards the sofa, clearing her throat. "Are you hungry? I'm sure you are hungry. While you get cleaned up, let me go find us something to eat." She steers Barbara towards the bedroom, presumably towards the shower.
Barbara, for her part, lets herself be steered that direction, because a hot shower sounds heavenly right now. Once Diana steps away, she starts to peel herself out of her pajamas, but she stops with the shirt part way over her head as a thought occurs to her. "Are you taking my keys again?" she shouts.
From the other room, Diana makes what Barbara can only assume is an affirmative noise.
"Okay, just--" Barbara pauses, trying to think of an appropriate admonishment and coming up short. "Just bring them back!"
She hears Diana laugh, and then the door opens and shuts. "She'll come back," Barbara says to herself, pulling her pajama top the rest of the way off. "Either that or I have to change my locks, which, well, it wouldn't be the worst thing that happened to me this week."
Barbara takes the longest, hottest shower that the building's hot water heater will allow. It's not enough, but it's something. Then she gets dressed, hesitating in her closet, looking back and forth between her old and new wardrobes. In the end, she picks pieces from both; there was a lot she hadn't liked about her wish self, but there were a few things she could stand to keep. After that, she spends some time looking for her glasses. They're not where she expects them to be on the side table, and after a short, fruitless search, she remembers what had happened: she'd thrown them out! Why would she do that! She goes back into the closet and digs around until she finds an old pair, with oversized plastic frames. They're not pretty, but neither is being unable to see. They'll have to do.
Once all that is settled, she goes back to the kitchen and pours two mugs of coffee. That's where she is when Diana returns: seated on a stool against the counter, a mug cradled in her hands. Diana looks--not frazzled, Barbara fully believes that Diana has never been frazzled in her entire life, but she's certainly not as calm and composed as Barbara remembers her. It doesn't help that she's got a stack of six pizza boxes in her arms; Barbara's not sure how she got the door open. However she managed it, it was almost certainly a hassle.
"You could've knocked," Barbara says, getting to her feet and relieving Diana of half the boxes. "What is all this?"
"I didn't know what we were hungry for, so I got several kinds," Diana says, like it's the most natural thing in the world to bring six pizzas to somebody's house. She pulls Barbara's keys out of her pocket and deposits them on the counter, grinning. "And I brought back your keys."
Barbara has a lot of questions, but Diana was right. She is hungry. Her stomach lets out an embarrassing growl, and Barbara hurries to the cabinets to get some plates. She nearly gets down the plastic Tupperware plates, but no, this is a special occasion. If there was ever a time to use the pretty glass plates with the geode patterns on them, it's when the world almost ended.
Barbara is hesitant about the pizza at first, setting out knives and forks along with the nice plates. She remembers the meal they'd shared before, how they'd each chosen something light and picked at it over the course of a good conversation. She shouldn't have worried, though; Diana plucks her first slice out of the box and inhales it before she even moves away from the counter, licking the grease off her fingers one at a time, with gusto. Barbara feels her mouth drop open, not in judgement so much as in awe, and Diana gives her a bright smile in return.
They sit at the table and eat a lot of pizza. It's...less awkward than Barbara had expected, for a meal between two people who had just yesterday been maybe trying to kill each other. Diana doesn't seem to harbor any ill-will towards her; she's being sweet, funny, perfectly lovely. In the face of this charm offensive, Barbara feels her grief start to twist and thaw--not gone, but something different. She's trying to work out what it is, what it means, when Diana puts down the slice of pizza she's holding and reaches across the table, putting her hand over Barbara's.
Barbara freezes.
"I wanted to apologize," Diana says, fixing Barbara with a serious, remorseful look. "I haven't been a very good friend to you. I've asked you for a lot and given you very little in return."
Well, Barbara can't disagree with that. Still, she shrugs, swallowing hard. "Most of my friendships have been like that. People really only gave me the time of day when--" I was like you, she doesn't say. She knows she doesn't have to say it.
"Oh, Barbara," Diana says, and Barbara, who's already had enough pity for one lifetime, bristles and starts to pull her hand away. Then, Diana continues, "You deserve so much more than that. So much better than that. You're amazing! People should love you, and they should love you because you're you."
Barbara huffs a cynical laugh. "I thought we were done wishing for impossible...things....." She trails off as she realizes that Diana's thumb is rubbing gently across the back of her hand. It feels gentle and intimate, in a way that very few things in Barbara's life have been.
Diana had said that she needed a friend, but if the look she's giving Barbara is any indication, she wants something a little different.
The realization hits Barbara like a freight train. Her grief, the thing it's turned into, she knows what it is now. She puts a name to the feeling, the one that left her flustered when she met Diana, the one that drove her on despite herself. She'd felt like she'd lost something, but she sees it now, stretching out in front of her, bright and inviting and new.
"Uh," she says, staring at Diana's hand on hers. Inwardly, she curses her awkwardness, her lack of eloquence; outwardly, she winces.
The look of disappointment that crosses Diana's face is so brief that Barbara nearly misses it. She withdraws her hand before Barbara can react, and gives her a sweet, apologetic smile.
Barbara knows how this next part goes. It happened to her three separate times in college and once again in grad school, and--well, more times than she'd like to admit, okay? The next part is this: Diana apologizes, insisting that oh, no, she hadn't meant it like that. She'll laugh, an airy laugh, how silly, and Barbara will laugh along with her, agreeing that it was preposterous of her to even think so. She'll feel like a coward, too scared to advocate for what she wants. What if she is misreading the situation? She has to be. Who could possibly want her like that?
And she and Diana will stay friends. Or worse, Diana will feel so awkward about the whole thing that she'll slowly fade from Barbara's life entirely, always too busy for coffee, never returning her calls. That's how it always goes. The bright thing she'd seen stretching out in front of her, she sees it again, dissipating in front of her eyes.
"No," Barbara says aloud, with a forcefulness that surprises them both.
"I'm sorry, I didn't--" Diana starts to say, but Barbara reaches back across the table and takes Diana's hand.
The words rush out of Barbara's mouth before she has time to think about them. "Whatever you're doing, whatever you're offering me--I want it. God, Diana, I want it. I've wanted it since I met you." She pauses, to catch her breath, to get her feet back under her. Diana is looking at her, and suddenly this feels like a much worse idea than it had when she started. Why had she tried to be brave? Barbara isn't brave. Diana is brave. Who is she trying to fool?
"Barbara, I--"
The words keep coming. Barbara can't stop them. "I know, I know, maybe I'm misunderstanding. I'm probably misunderstanding! You're obviously--you're free to leave, I couldn't stop you if I wanted to and we both know it--"
Diana takes Barbara's hands in hers, pulling them both to their feet. "Please, slow down. You are not misunderstanding. Whatever you are offering--I want it too. You are wonderful, and I have loved wonderful women my whole life."
A surprised, nervous laugh escapes Barbara's throat. "What, really? You want it too? Me--you want me?"
Diana nods, her mouth pouting into a perfect and beautiful little half-smile. "Yes."
"Really? Because I did try to kill you, like, yesterday."
"Yes, really," Diana repeats. She smiles. "What happened yesterday and who nearly killed who is an argument that neither of us will win, I think."
Barbara nods in astonished agreement. "Okay. Okay!"
Diana steps in closer to her, raises a hand to her face. Barbara thinks she should probably lean into it, or something, but then Diana extends one long graceful finger and taps the plastic frames of her glasses. "I like the new look, by the way."
Barbara chuckles. "Thanks, it's--it's not new. I thought I didn't need my glasses anymore and I, uh, I threw my other pair away."
The nod Diana gives her is serious, like this makes perfect sense, but it's followed by a mischievous smile. "A bold choice."
"Yes, well, thanks, I was terrible when I made it," Barbara says, a smile creeping across her face too.
"Lucky for me you are back to your wonderful old self again," Diana says. Before Barbara can open her mouth to argue the finer points of that statement, Diana leans in and kisses her.
Like Diana, it's perfect. It leaves Barbara breathless.
Diana pulls back from the kiss just far enough for it to not technically be a kiss, her lips still ghosting against Barbara's as she speaks. "Well, you are not quite your old self. You are braver, I think."
"I'm glad," Barbara says. She feels Diana smile against her mouth.
"So am I," Diana agrees. Barbara kisses her again, and just like Barbara, it's wonderful.