Work Text:
The bed is empty.
Nearly every morning, when she wakes up, the bed is empty. After a while of staying there, trying to go back to bed despite the horrors that face her in her sleep, she is forced out of her slumber by the absence and beckoned to return to work.
All she knows how to do is work, how to lie, how to perform. And now, in recent years, she knows how to survive, though the knowledge of how came to her not out of her own volition.
She remembers when she was just "Gale Weathers, that cheesy talkshow host," and not "Gale Weathers (Riley now, she would correct, and they'd purse their lips like the fact she's married is taboo before continuing), author of The Woodsborough Murders, survivor of three Ghostface attacks." She wishes she could be proud of the person she's become- she wishes she could hate how shallow she was before- but now, even with all the scars and the night terrors, she feels as shallow as ever.
She remembers, when she was little, she wanted to be famous. Now, though she has that fame, she realizes she hates it. She never liked paparazzi, or people of all ages telling her that they want to be like her. They didn't want to be like Gale Weathers. They didn't know Gale Weathers- they simply wanted her success.
Now that she's famous, she finds she doesn't care for fame- but rather relevance. She claws, grasping for something else, for another reason to stay important to faces she's never seen, despite the aging feeling that comes with being a hot topic. Now that she's famous, she finds that all she wants is a domestic life.
It's not that her life isn't domestic at all. When Dewey comes home in the afternoon it's like her solace. He announces his presence with the jingle of his keys in the door and the sound his work shoes make against their floor. He'll call out to her, and she'll hum a response, and before she can fully turn to the door, hands are on her shoulders and lips are on hers- an odd angle, but one her husband has perfected over years of practice. She'll tease him about missing her, or about the fact he hasn't shaved in a while, and he'll laugh, rub the back of his neck, agree.
It's not her marriage she's unhappy with, though they're both aware they could improve it. She knows she'll never have a perfect marriage. Though, Dewey is the only one who understands her, who makes her feel like she's something more than the persona she's acquired over the years, so they try to make it work, they really do, and so far it's been working. They have been proving each other wrong, against everyone's better judgement. She knows she'll never have the "white pickett fence, two story house, stay-at-home mother, three children and a goldendoodle" life that quote-on-quote "put together" women her age have. It was impossible in Woodsborough, and would remain impossible if she moved anywhere else because she was Gale Weathers. And it's not that that makes her particularly unhappy- she would never have been fit to have that life in the first place- it's simply that she hates the judgement that comes with the life she does have.
As if she shouldn't be used to judgement by now. As if they should judge her at all. They can say all they want about codependency, but they can't possibly understand it, understand needing someone who's been through the same things you have, understand them needing you despite how they close themselves off and act like everything is fine and they have it covered...
Gale wishes Dewey would be more open with her, but she has no shooting stars or dandelions or ladybugs to wish on, so what's unspoken in the moment is left unsaid forever.
Her fingers press against keyboard keys, churning out a paragraph before she looks it over, calculating, deleting. How is she supposed to write, now? What is she supposed to write about, without the reason for her success? It's not that she anticipates another serial killer- it's the last thing she wants to deal with, right now- but it's what sells well for her. She can't write fiction, she's better at analyzing and reporting.
The same process continues over and over as she writes down whatever comes to her mind, though none of it is good enough for her. Nothing is ever good enough for her. She craves more and more and she gets it and then still, she remains unsatisfied.
Hours pass.
Keys jingle at the door.
Hands hold her in place at the shoulders as lips meet her own.
Dewey.
The tension that had been building up in her releases through her lips in an exhale, a breathy, quiet laugh, one the man in front of her is used to hearing in their private. His smile comes to him naturally, it lights up his face and makes him look younger. Gale wishes she had a smile like Dewey's, unaging and unforgettable, despite the fact her own will be immortal on TV screens. She knows smiling doesn't come easy to either of them anymore. She's, almost unreasonably, proud that she's the one that harnesses the ability to make Dewey Riley really, genuinely, smile.
And really, some days, that's enough for her.