Chapter Text
Marcy had always dreamt about her eighteenth birthday, she really had. Since she was a kid she waited for the day she would become an adult and leave her house. Now though, as she sat on a picnic bench, a cupcake decorated with a set of candles in front of her, she didn’t know if this was what she wanted.
And it wasn’t because out of all the places she could’ve expected to spend her birthday, she ended up in that same old park. Their park.
But because she was with Anne and Sasha.
And for some reason she wasn’t as happy as she thought she was going to be. Frog , after everything they’ve been through it still icked her. Guilt completely filled her to the point her lungs ran out of air. It didn’t matter if both her friends constantly reminded her that everything was alright. It wasn’t her fault. Not entirely. She couldn’t seem to understand why she was being accompanied by them. After all she had put them through, they were still there. She knew how much of a pain it was to need to be reassured by them constantly; she needed them to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that they still wanted her in their lives. And yes, she knew that Sasha had been playing with them as if they were mere flipward’s pieces. But she also had been there, fighting alongside Anne to prove how much she had changed. Maybe she could understand why she forgave her for stranding them in another dimension.
But Anne . Why was Anne still there?
She can’t even begin to explain how happy she was when Anne decided to stay with them after everything. But she couldn’t lie and pretend she didn’t fear what Anne might have been truly thinking. There was no way that she had forgiven her completely. Not even the oh-so-kind Anne should accept an apology that easily, right? So she must have been thinking about ways of breaking all kinds of links between them and finally starting brand new, right?
Yet again it might all just be in her head. She was the one who ripped them apart in the first place. Even if she didn’t mean to. So it might all just be in her head.
Because she had undeniably changed after everything experienced in Amphibia, growing less bubbly and loud and becoming more aware of her surroundings almost in a paranoiac way. And even if it had been years from their battles and adventures back in Amphibia, Marcy still woke up almost twice a week feeling like she was still controlled by The Core. Fearing that all the routines she got back from what used to be her life were being taken from her, again.
Routines as simple as sitting on a picnic bench in front of her two best friends. Celebrating her birthday. Because Anne and Sasha loved Marcy and knew how much it meant for her being finally able to leave her house. And they were going to get her out of that house, just like they promised when they were twelve and Marcy asked them to meet her at the same park they were now. Back then, once they arrived at the park, they had found their friend crying in one of the swings. They never needed many words to begin with. They had held Marcy until she stopped crying.
Well.
Sasha held her while Anne did the talking. Because Sasha had never been the type to talk things out, relying more on what she could express rather than what she could say. So while the blonde girl hugged her and drew invisible circles on her back, Anne spoiled her ears with reassuring words and half empty promises about growing and leaving and moving in together and always being happy. After that, Anne had looked at Sasha with a demanding gaze, asking for some feedback from her as well, even though she was glad she was comforting the jet black haired girl in her own Sasha way .
And so Sasha began rumbling about how her parents would fight a lot over the smallest things and it would all end up with a kiss, affirming that it was the way adults resolved their problems. Then, she asked her friends to kiss, because it was the only way it would make Marcy stop crying. And mainly because Sasha wanted to be an adult almost as much as she wanted to just kiss her friends . And then they kissed, simply because they didn’t think much of it. Marcy remembered how she had giggled against Sasha’s lips, making the other girl mad because “you can’t laugh while you kiss!” and then Sasha asked Anne to kiss her because her first kiss was apparently ruined. And obviously Anne gave in and kissed Sasha. And then she kissed Marcy, frog knows why.
Silly promises made by silly kids , Marcy thought. She wouldn’t mind getting kissed by both her friends again, remembering how many times they kissed as a joke after that and how many of them had made Marcy all bubbly on the inside.
Anne scoffed at a comment that Marcy missed due to her zoning out, something that Sasha had said and Marcy assumed was meaningless small talk. She gave herself the chance of admiring her two best friends once again before focusing on the small present box that laid on her lap. As she began to unwrap it she saw from the corner of her eye how Anne hit Sasha with her elbow in order to catch the blonde’s attention. Marcy’s fingers worked fast and soon enough the small lid of the box was being lifted by her. She could feel the air leaving her lungs and she gasped due to the containing of the box.
“I might have to stay with my parents for a while,” Anne spoke rapidly, fearing that Marcy was going to react in a bad way about their present, “But Sash and I thought that you could move in together in her apartment since you’re both eighteen. And I’d join you as soon as I turn eighteen myself,” Anne finished, giving Sasha a look so the blonde would add some more words to their unplanned speech.
“Yeah, the apartment is not so far away from our school actually,” the blonde began talking, “Considering you’ll be starting uni soon. My mom helped me find it, can you believe it? I guess she wanted me to leave the house as much as I wanted to myself” She said with a laugh, making Anne shift in her place a bit uncomfortable about how casually Sasha managed to talk about her shitty relationship with her parents.
“I really don’t know what to say” Marcy explained, fighting some tears that began to form on her eyes. She was really grateful for her friends. She loved them to the Moon and to Saturn, “Thank you guys so much” She said, letting the tears fall. Not because she was overwhelmed by love she knew she shouldn’t expect. But because she realized that maybe she should start believing that she deserved it. That her friends loved her as much as she loved them. Her mind was now filled with three consistent thoughts.
She was leaving her house.
To move in with her best friends.
The ones she might or might not be completely in love with.
And as Marcy looked at how Anne was hitting and scoffing at Sasha for another of her comments, she knew she shouldn’t have started her birthday in the sad numb-ish mood that woke her in the morning.
—
The day went on. They had left the park to go to the mall. Anne suggested they should go to the arcade, Marcy quickly agreed, mentioning something about her latest new game obsession. Sasha seemed to be a little bit reluctant about it, but she gave in shortly after being convinced both by Marcy’s pleading smile and Anne’s comment: “ You can play against kids and make fun of them for losing ”. Sasha’s competitive side had been summoned now, there was no turning back.
A few hours had passed since the blonde girl drove them to the shopping mall. By now, the flashing lights from the arcade had started to hurt their eyes, so Anne thought of another activity to do.
A bookshop.
“Marbles, you’re lucky it’s your birthday because you’d never catch me going to an arcade and a bookshop in the same day if it wasn’t for you” Sasha whined, holding on Marcy’s arm and letting part of her weight fall on the asian girl.
“I thought you liked reading, deep, deep down,” Anne added, spinning on her heels to turn to her friends. Marcy laughed and watched how Sasha’s expression changed from exhausted to offended. Anne and Sasha kept arguing in a friendly manner, rapidly becoming another background sound as Marcy dived on the shelf in front of her. Fantasy novels. A genre she now felt odd about.
“Uh, yeah, I enjoy reading Anne, but I like whining more you know” She shot back, Anne let out a small nose laugh, grabbing Sasha’s hand and taking her to some other part of the bookshop. Marcy laughed it all off, focusing on the idea of buying a fantasy book or not. She thought about how much she used to love reading those kinds of stories. But then, Amphibia .
Goosebumps ran down her spine. She gave in to her fears today. She put the book she grabbed back on its shelf, quickly admiring the woman drawn on the cover; a beautiful woman dressed in a puffy light blue dress. She thought about Lady Olivia, about how she must have been ruling Amphibia now. As much as Marcy felt bad about going to the frog land in the first place, she sometimes wished she could go there and visit Olivia and Yunan again.
Maybe she could ask her friends about it. Since they now had full custody of the calamity box, she was confident over the fact that she would be able to make it work. She bet both Anne and Sasha would like going back. Maybe . Probably . Just a small trip, meeting the Plantars and Grime again. She knew Anne missed her frog family and even if Sasha tried to act all cool and careless, she was also convinced she missed Grime just as much.
Time flew and they left the shop. There was a weird aura surrounding Anne and Sasha. Marcy guessed that something happened while they were walking on their own around the shop. She would ask but decided she didn't want to. She was tired and wanted to go home, plus, whatever happened couldn’t be that bad, since Sasha made a move and tried grabbing Anne’s hand. The Thai girl seemed to think about letting the blonde girl hold her hand, giving in and showing Sasha a small smile. There was a message behind that smile, Marcy didn’t understand a single bit of it. But again, she was tired and wanted to go home.
They could take care of each other.
—
The night arrived sooner than what Sasha and Anne would’ve wanted. Marcy had stated that she didn’t want a sleepover, even though she considered how stupid that sounded now since Sasha and her would be sharing a home from now on. So even if she regretted her decision, she still held on to what she said.
Marcy’s boundaries had gotten more rigid over the years. Anne and Sasha knew and respected that, therefore neither of them insisted on a sleepover after their mutual best friend had made her opinions clear about how she wanted to celebrate her birthday.
Sasha drived Anne to her house, leaving her there after a set of hugs and ‘good nights’. The same weird feeling was still there, less prominent though. Marcy overthought again and again whether she wanted to follow her own rules and end the night there or ask Sasha to drive back and ask Anne to stay at their apartment. Lost in her own thoughts, she missed a question that Sasha shot at her.
“Excuse me, what did you say?” She asked as she noticed Sasha’s annoyed yet happy grin.
“I asked you if you had fun today” Sasha replied, letting go an over exaggerated sigh, “Gee Mar-Mar you spaced out so much I thought you passed away right there”.
Marcy just giggled at her friend’s remarks and went on and on about how much fun she’s had. She almost gave in again, almost asking Sasha to sleep together tonight, like when they were kids. She wished Sasha would simply bring the topic of the never-happening sleepover. Marcy was aware that thirteen year old Sasha wouldn’t have accepted finishing a birthday without a sleepover, and would’ve pushed all of Marcy’s buttons until she had given in. Eighteen year old Sasha smiled at her instead, reassuring her about how it didn’t matter whether they had a sleepover or not.
Marcy was really thankful about how much her blonde best friend had changed.
She also thought about how thirteen year old Sasha would have been all over the roof about her beloved friend turning eighteen. And yet, eighteen year old Sasha held her hand while they walked to the elevator of their new apartment, guiding her to their home.
The flat itself was already decorated, faintly so. Considering Sasha had been living there for a few months now, waiting for her friends to move in.
They both made their way to what would be Marcy’s new room. The walls were empty but some of Marcy’s stuff from her old room was already there. Marcy would have questioned how Anne and Sasha had managed to take it there but she was too tired to care. And it might have been because of how tired she truly was that she didn’t notice how Sasha’s presence went from sarcastic and loud to observant and quie t. Now that Marcy thought about it, her friend being that quiet was concerning so she turned to her. As soon as she tried to ask Sasha if there was something wrong, Sasha was already opening her mouth to speak.
“I know you said that everything was perfect but,” She began, fidgeting with the buttons on her jacket “Isn’t there really anything else you would like for your birthday?” She asked, finally staring right into Marcy’s eyes.
Marcy thought and thought again. Not knowing how Sasha's anxiousness reached her own body. And it must have been her own overthinking that was making her think that she just caught Sasha staring at her lips. It must be that.
But now she found herself staring at Sasha’s lips, the blonde’s perfume was embracing her and she couldn’t recall since when they were sitting so close on her bed. She thought about all the times Sasha and her kissed when they were kids, wondering about how Sasha's lips would taste now after all the strawberry lipgloss that she wears.
“Can I kiss you?” Sasha asked. Marcy couldn’t believe her ears and her eyes grew big, making the blonde girl think she had crossed a line she shouldn’t have crossed. Fast enough and driven by the fear of making Sasha regret her words, Marcy slowly nodded, pink all over her cheeks. She thought and thought and thought and waited and waited and waited for Sasha to do something. Literally anything .
Luckily enough, she didn’t need to wonder so much when she felt that Sasha started to lean towards her. And obviously she leant in as well because Sasha Waybright wanted to kiss her so why on earth would she pass on that opportunity.
The kiss was sweet and soft and Marcy was shocked. Because how come Sasha was extremely confident and controlling and yet she kissed her as if Marcy was made of glass.
Marcy thought about how much she had surprisingly missed kissing Sasha. And then her mind quickly traveled to Anne. And, still feeling somewhat sorry for not inviting her over, she was also glad she didn’t. Because Frog knows if she would have been kissing Sasha if Anne would’ve been there too.
Marcy couldn’t recall when they had drifted apart from each other. Or how did they end up cuddling on her new bed. But there was something she definitely could recall, and that was Sasha leaving her in the morning, kissing her forehead before disappearing into their flat. Marcy wondered why Sasha would decide to leave her there when she stayed in the first place. At the same time though, void filled Marcy, making her wonder why would she stay, to begin with.
Marcy once believed that things would never be the same. She still believed it. Now though, she also believed that things might change in a good-certain way, a way she might need courage to accept.