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Patience groaned and flopped back against Jody’s couch. She rubbed at her temples, tired and frustrated with her homework. The words and numbers were beginning to swim off of the page, which only made trigonometry way harder than it normally was. Her one solace was that her headache was just from that, and not from some oncoming vision.
She shivered a little at the thought, despite how warm Jody’s house was. Ever since finding out she had psychic powers, she decided to use them to try to help people. It just felt like every time she tried to help, she ended up making everything worse.
The worst part of it was how alone she felt as she tried to deal with all of it. She would never dream of complaining to Claire – she was suffering much more than Patience was, and entirely because of Patience’s inability to understand her visions. She knew that Jody and Donna did their best to be supportive, but both of them worked long hours for their day jobs and then hunted on top of that.
The only other person who was even around was Alex. She hadn’t spent very much time with her yet, mostly because of work and school and life being hectic. She hadn’t really gotten a read on her – she seemed relatively nice, at least, but she was also bitingly sarcastic at times that rubbed her the wrong way.
She was also totally blasé about the supernatural, just like everybody else in this family. It made her incredibly frustrated; she understood why all of them were so accustomed to monsters and magic and all that jazz, but every day she felt like she was drowning while everyone around her was swimming easily and asking her why she didn’t just do the same as them.
Her dad had always told her to put on a brave face when things got tough. Lately, she’d been wondering whether or not she’d gotten too good at that, if maybe no one else could see how much it was all weighing on her.
Patience startled at a soft sound close to her. She looked down to see a plate of peanut butter cookies, still warm from the oven, and a glass of almond milk in front of her on the coffee table. She looked upwards to see Alex looking down at her, an expression of commiseration on her face.
“Homework gettin’ you down?” she asked. Patience blinked dumbly up at her. For a brief, hysterical moment, she genuinely believed that her powers had somehow managed to summon Alex to her, due to how much she was thinking about her. Alex, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice. She craned her head around to read the textbook right-way-up. “Oof, yeah, I hated trig, too.”
“It’s not – I mean – It isn’t –” Patience groaned and rubbed her hands down her face. “It’s not that bad, I’m just… tired.”
She felt the couch dip beside her. That same side of her grew warm from Alex’s proximity; she blushed, also because of Alex’s proximity. Even as the butterflies squirmed in her stomach, she hoped it wasn’t blatantly obvious.
That was the other reason that talking about everything with Alex was difficult. Ever since she first met her, she thought that she was gorgeous, and while her blunt sarcasm was annoying at times, she appreciated that she was always honest about what she was thinking. If only she didn’t get tongue-tied every time she was around her!
“Tired, huh?” Alex asked, in the sort of voice that suggested that she didn’t believe her. She wrapped an arm around Patience’s shoulders. Patience’s brain quietly short-circuited, but thankfully Alex didn’t seem to notice. “How are you doing? I don’t really have the best frame of reference, but I’m pretty sure that finding out about the things that go bump in the night isn’t something that you deal with easily.”
Patience leaned into the embrace. She took a deep breath and was surprised that it came out as shaky as it did.
“I’m… I don’t know.” She clasped her hands together on her lap, her thumbs rubbing softly against each other. “The monsters and ghosts and psychic powers and alternate universes would be enough to deal with on their own, you know? But then there’s Kaia…”
Alex’s free hand covered both of hers, stopping her thumbs’ worried motions.
“That wasn’t your fault. Based on what you described, your vision didn’t give you a lot of details to work with.” Alex’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is Claire giving you shit for that?”
“No! No, not at all.” Patience grimaced. “Actually, she’s mostly just avoiding me. We’ve barely talked at all since that night.”
“Let me tell you right now, I’ve known Claire for several years now; we’re basically weird adopted sisters. She doesn’t blame you for what happened, okay? None of us do. You don’t need to beat yourself up for something that isn’t your fault.”
Patience hesitated. “If she doesn’t blame me, then why did you think she was giving me a hard time about it?”
Alex rolled her eyes and flopped back against the couch in much the same move that Patience herself had pulled earlier. It pulled her hand away from its resting place atop Patience’s and her arm from around her shoulders. She tried not to think about how much she wished it hadn’t.
“’Cause she can be a real jerk when she’s upset. She’ll lash out at whoever’s closest, even if she doesn’t really mean it. Trust me – I’ve been on the receiving end of that a few times.”
Patience turned her head towards Alex. Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes locked on hers. Alex studied her quietly, her expression melting into soft sympathy.
“I don’t know if I know how to explain how I’m feeling right now,” Patience admitted softly. “I don’t think I’m ready to try.”
“That’s fine,” Alex said, equally softly. Her hand returned to rest on Patience’s shoulder. “I wasn’t ready to talk about my baggage for a while, either. Just… don’t think that we won’t listen if you want to talk, alright? I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Patience’s heart did a funny little stutter in her chest; she certainly hadn’t missed how quickly Alex went from “we” to “I” in her pseudo-pep talk.
Tentatively, she brought her hand up to her shoulder to sit over top of Alex’s. She gave it a gentle squeeze and smiled at her. Her mind and heart were still an utter whirlwind of emotion and confusion and God only knew what else, but if nothing else, it was a relief to hear that someone was on her side.