Chapter Text
She thought the weekend had been hard, but going back to school proved to be even harder, because now she actually had to deal with the reality of her actions. Seeing Leah in the cafeteria made a wave of nausea come over her, and suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore. She turns around and walks out again, not even having met the blue eyes that she could feel burning in her back.
Wednesday, while she’s miserable in her room, laying on her bed with the conversation playing in her head like a broken record player (despite all the distractions she has tried) Dot’s name shows up on the caller ID.
Fatin just stares at it.
She knows that Dorothy would get into her truck and drive to the Bay herself if she doesn’t answer, but still, she dreads to press the answer call button. The sting of the blade in her chest feels stronger, and she knows that Dot will force her to do something about it.
But, her loyalty to their friendship wins out and she picks up the phone.
Immediately she’s met with her rough voice.
“What the fuck did you do?”
She pinches the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes tightly, hoping that it will somehow make the harshness of Dot’s voice go away, “Hello to you too, Dorothy.”
“This isn’t a fucking joke.”
Fatin sighs and Dot continues, “Normally I don’t pry, you know that, but Shelby called me, telling me that Leah isn’t okay, and that she thinks you have something to with it, however, Leah refuses to say anything about it.”
Leah isn’t okay.
It twists and turns the knife, an unbearable ache spreads out across her body. It feels like that day on the island again, when Leah went dark on her and ran into the ocean. Memories flash through her head rapidly, and she represses the urge to scream by curling her hands into fists, her nails digging into her palm.
She swallows roughly, trying to calm her breathing.
“Listen, I did it because-” She starts, in the hopes of convincing Dot (and maybe herself) that this was the right thing to do, but Dot doesn’t wait for her to finish and cuts it off.
“You are such a fucking idiot.”
“Seriously? Dorothy, come on.”
“Do you know why you are so scared to be close to her? Do you know why you push her away?”
She stays silent, staring at the wall and hearing Leah’s words echo again.
Because you’re scared.
No, you’re scared, because you think you’ll be like your dad.
If you’re not scared, then why are you walking away, Fatin!
“Because I hurt people?”
It is the first time she has said it out loud, but she just hears Dot sigh on the other side of the line.
“Then why do you think you’ll hurt Leah, but you don’t think you’ll hurt me?”
There isn’t jealousy or spite in the question, it’s just an honest question, asked without judgement.
“I don’t know.”
She does know, somewhere deep down in one of those dark dungeons her mind has created. The answer is behind lock and key, but she refuses to go there.
Dot sighs again, and now it’s getting on Fatin’s nerves, “I do .”
“How the fuck would you know?” Fatin snaps, getting up from the make-up stained bed and choosing to pace around instead, needing to get rid of the nervous energy this conversation is giving her.
“You love her.”
Fatin’s breath hitches and she freezes, no more restless pacing. Dot is taking down her walls and digging into her locked away feelings, and she doesn’t like the vulnerability.
Dot said it out loud, and now she has to process it, the emotions bubbling up to the surface.
She does love Leah. The unspoken pull that brought them together is love.
And she knows that this is the exact reason she’s scared to be close, yet needs her close. A fear to be known, and a fear to be forgotten. She aches to be with her, but she knows she can’t. This whole situation is already proof of her incapability, she is destined for only heartbreak and loneliness.
But Dot’s voice cuts through the dark clouds of thought floating in her mind.
“Fatin, you have to give this a chance.”
“Dot, I’ll hurt her.”
The nickname sounds strange when she says it, a foreign syllable not quite rolling off her tongue, similar to when you learn a new language and try speaking it for the first time. Calling her by her full name was a wall, a way to keep things light and playful, but the nickname now carried a weight of honesty and emotion. On top of that, Fatin’s voice comes out broken and small, like a child asking their parents for reassurance.
She mentally kicks herself for the weakness she’s showing.
She’s sure that Dorothy picked up on it, judging by the small intake of breath, but she doesn’t mention it (which Fatin is grateful for, this conversation is already emotional enough).
“You didn’t hurt her until you got scared, you are the only person who can reach her when she’s going dark.”
It is reassuring, Dot’s trust. The knife is still planted in her chest, begging to be pulled out, but somehow she has found comfort in the misery it brings. The sting of it is a punishment of sorts, something she deserves for everything she’s done. And maybe, in a fucked up way, with the truth stuck in her chest, she can still entertain the thought of Leah loving her.
If she pulled it out, however, and told her how she really feels, she could be faced with the stone-cold truth that Leah doesn’t love her, at least, not like that .
So, she starts walking circles in her room again, hoping that it will somehow release some of the stress, “But does she even feel the same way?”
“I don’t know.”
Fatin lets herself fall on the bed, her body tired from the emotional warfare in her mind.
Dot continues, “But I do know that you two have this inexplicable bond. Taking the chance is better than pushing her away.”
“Right,” She says, not convinced yet, her fingers tracing patterns over the blanket like she used to do with Leah’s shoulder blades on the island, “What if I get scared again?”
Dot stays quiet, and for a moment Fatin irrationally thinks that even she has given up on her, but then she speaks.
“You call me.”
It’s an unspoken promise, an ‘I’ll be here no matter what’ that is never said out loud between friends.
She takes a shaky breath, trying to cover up the emotion that washes over her, “Okay, I’ll talk to her.”
“You better get the girl, or I’ll come to the Bay myself to push your faces together.”
The mental image of Dot pushing them towards each other with her strong arms is so absurd that Fatin laughs for the first time in days.
“Sure thing Dorothy, thank fuck I got to practice my flirting on you.”
She also laughs, “Yeah, you owe me one.”
“I’ll buy you something the next time you visit.”
“I’ll take a pack of cigs.”
Fatin does a faux gasp, “I’m not helping you kill yourself, fuckface.”
She can hear Dot snort on the other end of the line, “Focus on Leah first, afterwards you can fuss over me again.”
“Why do none of my friends know how to take care of themselves?”
“Says the one who blew up an entire friendship because she’s scared of being loved in return.”
That one stings, but she knows it comes from a place of care and love, so she swallows the venom she would usually use, “Yeah, but I’m fixing that, Dorothy.”
Dot laughs loudly and Fatin is so fucking glad that she has her in her life.
They exchange goodbyes and promises of future calls, then she hangs up, the silence surrounding her again.
But now she knows what she has to do.
The next day she looks for Leah before school, but she can’t find her, and she really searches, and Fatin Jadmani doesn’t search for people, they usually come to her.
She texts her (a lot), she calls her a few times, and maybe she leaves a slightly desperate voicemail, but Leah isn’t responding anyway.
The day after that, she once again doesn’t see her anywhere. So, she stays around after her classes and wanders the school grounds, hoping that she’ll suddenly meet blue eyes again like at that party days ago (although it feels like a month, being without Leah makes time seem unreal).
There’s barely anyone around, only the annoying skater boys who are desperately trying to
impress the few girls who are watching.
Apparently, you never can find who you’re looking for, only who you don’t want to see.
Because she suddenly sees short blonde hair and hipster clothes.
He is leaning against the wall with his shoulder, his back turned to her, eyes focused on whatever he’s doing on his phone.
So, she swallows her pride and decides to ask Leah’s lapdog- no- Leah’s friend, Ian.
“Hey,” She says, tapping him on the shoulder.
He turns around with an incredulous look on his face, “What?”
Okay, he definitely heard about what happened, and she tries to ignore how the thought pulls at the blade in her chest.
“I need your help.”
Her urgent tone doesn’t seem to scare or annoy him, he just sighs and puts away his phone, as if he had already expected her to say it and had already resigned to whatever consequences it would have.
“Talk to Leah.”
She rolls her eyes, god this boy is insufferable, but her annoyance only seems to make him smirk.
“I’m trying, she hasn’t answered my texts or calls, and I feel like she purposely avoids me at school, so where the hell is she?”
“Like you didn’t ignore her before,” he says, still a smirk on his face, but there’s a seriousness to his tone, “So, what do you want to say to her?”
“Okay, I am so not going to tell you that.”
He laughs and holds up his hands in defence, “Relax, I just need to know if you won’t hurt her.”
Oh, right.
Leah isn’t okay.
“I promise that I won’t.”
She’s proud of the confidence that seems to have found its way back into her voice, and he nods in response.
“Okay, but seriously, what will you tell her? I mean, you really got something to fix here, maybe you need my advice.”
There is a sincere teasing in his tone that makes the corners of her mouth turn upwards involuntarily.
Maybe she understands why Leah keeps him around.
“Oh shut up, I know what to say.”
“Well, what is it then? You can practice here you know, I won’t tell her.”
“That I,” She inhales, and realizes that it’s kind of a good idea to talk this through with the person who has known Leah for so long, “That I love her.”
It only comes out as a whisper, but Ian seems to understand it perfectly and he laughs again.
“It took you a while to figure that one out.”
She opens her mouth to say some witty comeback she hasn’t thought of yet, but the smile on his face is so kind and so friendly that she shuts it again, scratching the back of her neck.
“Yeah it did, but I’m here now. No more running away.”
He smiles that smile again, and it’s nowhere near as pretty as Leah’s smile, but it’s more comparable to how much Fatin likes Dot’s smile.
“I’m proud of you, you passed the test. She’s in the park nearby.”
For a moment she almost instinctively hugs him, but they are far from close enough for that, so she settles on patting his shoulder when she walks past him and says, “Thank you.”
“Go get ‘em, tiger! Good luck!” He yells after her.
She smiles to herself. God, what a dork.
But the anxious feeling comes over again rather quickly.
The park is only a five-minute walk, so it’s enough time to think about what she’ll say.
The knife seems to be a little looser in her chest, but it’s still there, reminding her of what she’s done, and what she could do.
How will she word this?
Every sentence she can possibly say feels foreign in her head, and she realizes how little she still knows about love, let alone confessing love, but she’s already getting ahead of herself because Leah first needs to even forgive her.
The walk feels way shorter than five minutes, but she can’t chicken out now, she’ll just say what comes up in her head.
Like that has worked so well for you in the past.
She shakes away the thought, and that’s when she sees her.
She’s sitting on a park bench by the duckpond, curled up with a book. She’s wearing an oversized men’s shirt with weird patterns and her hair is put up in a messy bun.
God, she’s adorable.
Okay, focus. Breathe in, breathe out. You can do this.
Her footsteps get no response, so she sits down on the bench, “Hey.”
No response, Leah doesn’t even blink, just flips the page, and it really twists the knife.
“Can we talk?”
That does get a response, but instead of words, Leah just puts away her book and gets up.
Fatin is still processing that she managed to fuck it up so much that Leah’s purposefully ignoring her when she already walks away.
“Wait! Leah!”
She scrambles to get off the bench and catch up with her.
“Leah! Please!”
Every word Leah ignores tugs at the blade, and she’s positive that she’ll bleed out right here if she doesn’t find a way to turn the situation around.
“Leah,” Fatin reaches her and tugs on her shoulder, making her turn around to face her, but when she meets the blue eyes she can’t tell what emotion is in them, “Just hear me out.”
Leah raises an eyebrow, “Well, Fatin, I don’t know if you will understand this, but when people avoid you, they don’t want to talk to you.”
The mocking tone reminds her of how she had said those words less than a week ago, spitting out venom to push her away.
That’s when it hits her how similar this is to that night, the night she messed everything up, but this time the roles are reversed, and Leah actually has a reason to ignore her.
“I’m sorry, I was a cunt.”
She sees Leah fight a smile, and Fatin's body relaxes a bit, but the knife is still there, pulling and twisting, reminding her of what she needs to say.
“Glad that you realize it,” Leah says teasingly, but her expression is still unreadable. Fatin isn’t used to that, normally she would know what Leah was thinking in a heartbeat.
“Can we sit somewhere, to talk?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They find a different bench, this time one under a big tree, and the silence between them is itching at Fatin. She tries to find the words, but everything in her head is jumbled and messy.
Leah is just staring at her, and Fatin wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans, hoping that her mouth will help her by spitting out what she so desperately wants to say in a relatively eloquent way.
Turns out the autopilot function of her voice only works with words laced with poison, and honesty is so much harder.
“You know, you wanted to talk.”
Leah’s words snap her out of it, and Fatin looks up, her tongue still tied by fear.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m just,” She inhales slowly, trying to steady herself, “I can’t find the words.”
“It’s okay, Fatin. I won’t run away.”
Fatin knows she has to do this herself, but Leah’s words are a promise, a promise that she’ll be there to stop the bleeding when she pulls the knife out.
So, she takes one more shaky breath, and luckily her brain starts to form coherent thoughts again, “I got scared.”
Leah just nods in response, staring at her with those big blue eyes full of concern.
“I, fuck, I was scared that I would hurt you, that I would just inevitably fuck this up because it’s just in my DNA. I really thought you wouldn’t miss me, but then you did and then I did hurt you while trying not to hurt you. And God I just fucked this up so much, I was just trying to protect you from me,” she rambles, hoping that it will be enough, hoping that Leah will understand.
Leah gives her a small smile, “I saw that you were scared, but I still don’t completely understand why. Why did you think you would hurt me, but not the others? I mean, you avoided them too, but not nearly as much as me.”
She knows the answer to the question, but actually saying it out loud is scary. God, she’s grateful for her talk with Dot, and her talk with Ian, because else she would have already run away for sure.
She takes one more deep breath, hands wrapped around the handle of the knife, ready to pull it out, “Because I love you.”
Her truth spills out, the ache spreading across her chest like that night, and Leah stares at her with wide eyes.
“What?”
She tries her hardest to push down the tears, to hide how much it stings.
“I love you.”
Looking right into those blue eyes, she can see the pure confusion and it doesn’t help.
“Hey, I love you too, but that doesn’t answer the question, because you love Dot too, right?”
That whole sentence makes Fatin want to be swallowed by the ground, just disappearing, never having to deal with this whole mess again. Maybe bleeding out is the prefered outcome, the abyss of feeling nothing more than welcome. It would certainly be less gut-wrenching than the rejection she’s facing right now.
“Leah, I love you, romantically.”
The surprise on her face makes Fatin want to put the knife back inside her, to just say she’s joking, to talk herself out of this somehow, to walk away.
“Oh, sorry-” The apologetic and awkward expression on Leah’s face while she says it is what makes Fatin try to shove the blade back in.
So she gets up, trying to suck in the tears, “It’s okay, I’ll go.”
With that, she tries to walk away, but Leah grabs her wrist before she can, turning her around to face her.
Their faces are mere inches apart, and her eyes can’t help but fall on Leah’s lips.
“Can you please let me finish what I’m trying to say for once?”
The words make her look into the blue again. Leah’s rough voice and the fact that she is taller definitely makes Fatin feel things, but she really doesn’t want to think about that while her heart is getting broken.
“Sorry,” She says, a little breathlessly.
“Fatin, I love you too.”
The words stop the bleeding, the pain healing slowly while she processes the implication.
“You do?”
She mentally kicks herself for how small she sounds, but the smile on Leah’s face makes her forget it.
“Yeah, I do.”
Leah’s eyes flicker to her lips and Fatin sucks in a breath, her heart beating out of her chest.
“Can I kiss you?” Leah asks, her voice rough and croaky.
Fatin doesn’t let her ask twice, pulling her closer immediately. Their lips meet and sparks soar through her body, all of Fatin’s worries no longer important. Leah’s hands tangle in her hair, and her own hands are on Leah’s face and neck, the both of them wanting to be closer.
Eventually, she breaks away, pulling Leah into a hug, not ready for the touch to leave yet. It has this healing effect for her, a bandage on the wound that she had created that night.
“How the fuck did you not understand that my ‘I love you’ was meant romantically?” she murmurs into Leah’s neck.
“Sorry, I just couldn’t believe that you could love me like that.”
Leah says it jokingly, but there is honesty to it, causing Fatin to break the hug and grab Leah’s face in her hands, squeezing it lightly.
Fatin stares right into those blue eyes which she’s seen so much, and yet their beauty never fails to astonish her, “Leah, darling, I can, and I do, love you.”
Leah giggles while Fatin squeezes her face again, “Darling? Where did that come from?”
“Don’t change the subject, you need to believe that I love you.”
“Hmm, You might have to say it just a few more times, you know, for me to believe it.”
Fatin peppers her face with kisses while whispering I love you’s, and Leah laughs loudly.
“Okay, okay! I love you too, you idiot.”
“Darling is definitely a better pet name than idiot. I thought you were supposed to be the romantic one?”
“Oh shut up,” Leah says, lacing their fingers together, “We could go to my house, since we are still standing in a park.”
“Don’t like the outdoors?” She says, genuinely confused. It isn’t dark yet and it’s still pretty warm.
“I just would like some privacy,” then a teasing tone slips into her voice, “unless you like being watched?”
Her mouth goes dry and her eyes grow wide, “Leah!”
“What?” she says innocently, and Fatin’s jaw drops.
“Fuck, at least I’ve taught you well, but at what cost?” She mutters and Leah laughs again.
She would do anything to hear that laugh as often as possible.
Leah pulls her along by her hand, and Fatin falls in pace beside her.
She knew that she had missed it, but now it really sunk in how much she needed Leah. Not in a toxic, co-dependent way, but more in the way that the sun needs the moon. They balance each other out, and they make each other better.
She shakes her head at how cheesy it sounds.
“What is it?”
Leah’s staring at her, a smile on her face.
“I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“No snarky comment about me using my brain? Damn you must really love me.”
Leah laughs and rolls her eyes, “What were you thinking about?”
“This is going to sound cheesy as fuck, but I was thinking about us. About how much we need each other, but not in like, a weird way, but how we complete each other? God that sounds like a line from a movie,” she scratches the back of her head, embarrassed about the absolute awful way she just worded that.
Leah just smiles and plants a kiss on her lips, “Oh no it’s perfect baby.”
“Baby?”
“I think it’s a pretty accurate pet name.”
Fatin’s jaw drops and Leah bursts out laughing.
“Damn, I try to say something romantic and this is what I get in return,” she complains while pouting.
“Aww, poor baby, you’re only proving my point by pouting,” Leah kisses her forehead and it makes her stop pouting, “but about what you were trying to say, I feel that way too.”
A giddiness and warmth spreads through her, “Really?”
“I’ve always tried to find what love means, reading books about it, reading poems, but now, the definition I like best is: Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole. ”
“Darling, I’m not an English nerd and I can’t read minds either. What’s it from?”
“It’s from Plato’s The Symposium. The Greeks believed that humans once had two four arms, four legs and two faces, and that Zeus split them in two, condemning them to search for their other half their whole life,” Leah explains animatedly and Fatin stares at her, trying to etch this moment into her memory forever, “So they believed that love, both romantic and platonic, is in every person to call the halves of our original nature back together, to heal the pain of human nature.”
Fatin stares at her for a moment, really trying to understand what she was saying, to grasp what it all meant. Then, she gets it.
“So, it’s basically soulmates? Having a predestined half who completes you?”
“Yeah,” Leah says, squeezing her hand, “Soulmates.”