Work Text:
May 1997
Mac isn’t expecting a present when one drops in her hands. Her heart plummets to her gut. Is it an anniversary? A holiday? She sorts through the calendar in her head. No dots connect, nor should they. It’s just a Tuesday in the middle of May, so what gives?
“What’s this?” Mac throws the weight of the object in her hand. It feels a lot like a VHS tape, and a quick shake only confirms the theory.
KJ rolls her eyes as she settles down beside her on the couch, “Why do you always ask that instead of, I don’t know, opening it?”
Mac snorts. KJ is tired; a tough semester and final projects have dominated almost all of her as of late. The circles that have made a home under her eyes are still there, but her features are the most relaxed she’s seen them in months. With her last assignment turned in a few hours prior, Mac is more than happy to finally get her back, even if her tongue is sharper than usual.
One can never be too sure, “It’s not, like, the anniversary of something, is it?”
“Oh yeah, because I would definitely be this civil right now if it was, ” KJ laughs as she rolls her eyes, “This is just something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.”
She surveys KJ for a green light before pulling at the wrapper quickly, revealing a tape as suspected. What’s unexpected is that it's not a copy of one of her favorite movies but a home video. She flips it to look at the label on its side. It’s KJ’s handwriting in black marker:
‘90 –
Her brain powers up.
In 1990, the dam broke. All signs it was coming had been there for two whole years before that. Mac noticed more cracks in her walls with every dream, each one splitting and splintering at any occurrence where KJ made her smile or laugh or held her stare a little too long. Her best efforts to patch them are fruitless, and boy, does she try. She’s terror-struck when it shatters, all her feelings set free, coursing through her body and soul with reckless abandon. It isn't easy; placing her heart in someone’s hands and giving them the power to crush it. The fear dies out quickly, though. KJ maintains Mac leans in first, and Mac swears the opposite. It doesn’t make a single difference. Either way, the waters calm on impact. KJ was not going to hurt her, not then, not ever.
1990 was a great fucking year.
She lifts an eyebrow, “What’s on here?”
“Um,” KJ’s eyes are on the ceiling, and Mac can’t help finding it a little funny she still gets shy after this time, “it’s kind of a project? A personal one. For both of us? I think it’s easier if you just play it.” She brings her gaze back as her cheeks tinge pink.
Mac isn’t entirely sure what to make of that, but it’s enough to capture all of her interest, “Can I play it right now?”
KJ nods slowly, tucking her lips between her teeth.
She pops the tape into the VCR. When she turns around, KJ’s nerves are practically emitting from her body. Mac chuckles to herself, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her closer as she sits back down.
The screen lights up.
“Will you get that fucking thing out of my face?” A much younger Mac shakes her head.
“It’s hardly in your face, and is that the way to talk to the camera when it loves you so much?” KJ’s voice comes from off-screen. The memory floods back to her. It’s a few days after KJ’s fifteenth birthday. She’d discovered Barry Lyndon a couple of weeks before. She learns everything about the movie in a couple of days, and the Brandmans don’t hesitate to gift their daughter the newest Panasonic on the market.
“Sorry, you’re right. Will you get that fucking thing out of my face, please?”
“Hm, how about no?”
The camera pushes closer to Mac’s face, and she realizes it’s not zooming, KJ is steadily moving in.
“Cut it out!”
“Make me.”
The frame is almost filled with Mac’s mug, “Alright, since you asked for it. Even got the video evidence to prove it.”
Mac’s hand reaches for the lens, coating it in black. There’s scuffling before the camera tumbles to the floor, lands sideways, and points at one of the corners of KJ’s room. Their laughter meshes before the next scene cuts in.
They’re looking at the floor now. Mac recognizes the carpet instantly. It's the Brandman basement. A quick date check says they’ve been transported to February 1991.
She doesn’t remember this one at all.
“How do you –” A voice undeniably Tiff’s breaks through the silence with a hurried whisper, “Oh shit, okay. It’s recording! It’s recording!”
Pan to Erin, crouching behind the couch, a hairbrush in one hand with a conspiratory smirk. She clears her throat and brings the brush to her mouth, “Hello, I’m Erin Attenborough. I’m about to take you on a journey to see some of the universe’s most fantastic creatures.”
Her Attenborough impression is fucking terrible. Judging by the quieted laughter, Tiff and Erin know as much, too. Erin waves Tiff to follow as she stands, still slightly hunched, and rounds the corner of the sectional.
“There they are!”
Tiffany swings the camera over the backrest. Mac gears up for what she knows is coming. She’d been sick for four months at that point. When the camera turns, her hair is thinning, she’s pale, and she looks as ill as she was then, but turns out none of that matters a single bit.
They’re fast asleep, her and KJ, on the long section of the couch. KJ’s head resting on Mac’s chest, tucked in the crook of her neck; one arm draped over her midsection, one leg snaked between Mac’s two. She’s a hundred and fifty percent sure that her arm is dead asleep from being wrapped under and around KJ.
They look perfect together.
A smile spreads across Mac’s face; KJ still falls asleep like that every single night. Almost everything has changed in the last eight years, yet, nothing’s changed at all - including their friends making fun of them.
“What you see here is a rare breed of lovebirds,” Erin’s shitty impersonation returns, “how sweet are they?”
“We observe them in their sleep. They clearly weren’t interested in Point Break. It’s important to note this might be the only state in which the bird on the top of your frame isn't running her big mouth,” Mac snorts in the present at the same time Tiffany does in the past. KJ lets out a laugh, and Mac swats her lightly on the arm.
“Nothing about this makes sense, by the way, but perhaps that’s why it works so well. And works well, it does. They might even be my favorite creatures in the land. Get a close-up, Tiff."
As Tiff zooms in, KJ stirs, bringing a hand up to rub her eye. She lifts her head slightly before grabbing a throw pillow on the other side of Mac and flinging it back towards the camera like a frisbee.
"You guys are freaks," she hisses. Never one to wake up with a grin, "Attenborough? Really?"
The girls start to bicker, and if Mac has to guess, she’s still sleeping like a rock somewhere in all that noise.
She turns to KJ once an idea of what she’s watching clicks, “Wait, is this a supercut? Of me and you?”
“Mhm.” KJ’s eyes shine, “And with appearances from our special guest stars, obviously.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. It’s not everything, only a few of my favorites.”
“And you made it?”
“Ben kept me company, so he helped here and there, but yeah, mostly me.”
A thousand thoughts rush through her head at once. The busiest semester of her life, and she still took the time to piece the tape together. Mac can’t even imagine how much work that took. Something her dad used to say all the time takes up most of the space. Coyles were cursed, he’d say. Maybe he’s right. Maybe other Coyles are, but not Mac. Mac Coyle is fucking blessed. The woman beside her on the couch is a living testament to it.
She opens her mouth to say something; The TV cuts her off, darkening as the video plays. It’s August ‘92. The only thing illuminating them is the street lamp directly above their heads. They’d spend hours in the park during the summer, pretending they were the only two people in the whole world. Mac sits on top of the jungle gym, feet dangling, chewing on a plastic straw - a habit she took up to replace smoking after cancer does everything but kill her.
“Give me that,” The straw is hanging out of her mouth as she stretches her hands out.
“Why?” KJ asks almost like she can't believe Mac wants the thing, but there’s shuffling as she passes it, anyway.
“Because,” Mac adjusts her grip, settling the focus on KJ, “you’re always the one recording. No one ever gets to see your face. And they should.”
“Oh, really? Why’s that?”
“‘Why’s that?’” Incredible how she genuinely doesn’t know, “Because you’re beautiful, KJ. You’re beautiful, that’s why.”
And she is. The yellow tint from the park lights rests on her face and intertwines with the blush that’s forming, and she thinks KJ would have given Diane Lane a run for her money if she had gotten a shot to play Cherry in that Outsiders movie. She’d give anyone a run for their money anywhere. There’s no way in hell she wasn’t destined to be seen.
“Stop,” KJ averts her gaze, but she’s still smiling.
There’s a slight sigh from behind the camera, and a brief reminder follows, “I love you, Kaje.”
KJ turns her head back, lips pressed into a grin, her eyes crinkling to match, “I love you.”
That one is Mac’s favorite by far.
Bits and pieces of their lives play out in bursts on screen. Of the next years KJ’s assembled, there are birthdays to watch, holidays, and late nights. It’s filled with plenty of smiling and laughing, and Jesus, there’s so much flirting. It’s incessant. Suddenly, she understands why Tiff and Erin have a hard time keeping quiet.
When 1993 rolls around, they’re in KJ’s car, which looks like it's parked by the lake. Mac is in the driver’s seat attempting to balance a pencil on her nose. KJ groans as she nearly slams the camera on the dash. With that kind of force, Mac isn’t even sure if KJ knew it was still recording, but fate catches one-half of each of them on opposite edges of the shot.
“Mac, you have to answer it seriously.”
“I am answering it seriously, Kaje.” Mac pushes the seat back and sets her feet on the steering wheel, “Where I see myself in ten years is with you. Twenty years? With you. Fifty, a hundred? With you. Really fucking simple.”
“That’s very sweet,” KJ rolls her eyes, “but that’s not what she’s asking.”
She knows exactly what her English teacher wanted. It was a stupid assignment, something to fill the space between spring break and graduation, but she also knows pushing KJ’s buttons is almost always far too irresistible.
“Explain it to me, then. Since you seem to know better, princess.”
“She’s looking for, like, what you want to be doing in ten years. Your goals and stuff.”
Mac throws her hands up, and the pencil ends up somewhere in the back row, "I told you this already!”
“Fine, you tell your teacher you want to be with me when you grow up. Have fun.”
“What? Are you mad?”
“I’m not mad!” Her set jaw says otherwise. So does her voice as it raises a few octaves, “You’re just going to get a bad grade.”
KJ wants the best for everyone even small things like trivial fourth-quarter, senior-year English projects. If it was anyone else bugging her over that shit, she might have gotten pissed. Except Mac fucking loves that about her.
Past her has more buttons to press, though.
“So what? I’m already graduating.” Mac smirks, “And I think you’re mad. Honestly, I think you’re so mad that I need to come over there so we can sort this out.”
The frown on KJ’s face molds itself into a smile exactly the way Mac intended, “That might be best. You know, to sort this out.”
“That thing’s not recording, is it?” Mac sits upright and eyes the camera on the dash. KJ shrugs in response, “Yeah, you might want to check.”
KJ throws her head back and laughs, “Hold on.”
Soon, they’re watching pieces of the short road trip they took before they were off to New York, their first night in their apartment, and whatever points in the last four years KJ handpicked. The tape ends on May 2, 1999, only a week before now.
They don’t speak at all. KJ trains the camera on Mac, humming as she moves about the kitchen making breakfast for the two of them. There’s nothing particularly special about it at first glance, but KJ thought it was important enough to film. Sometimes, Mac wonders why she chooses certain moments and what possesses her to grab the video camera. Now, she gets it.
There’s a texture to the love exchanged. She could almost reach out to touch it. Words traded without so much as a whisper in the way KJ takes extra care to frame Mac perfectly right, the way Mac cooks their meal, methodically pushing eggs around the pan because her other half won’t eat them if they’re dry.
The tape clicks in the machine. The TV screen turns blue; nine years condensed into a half hour. They change drastically in those thirty minutes. Transforming from kids to adults, somehow growing individually but never, ever, apart. Over time, their smiles get brighter, their eyes more tender as they shape their life together. How many people get to see themselves fall in love in replay? For once in her life, Mac is at a loss for words, and if tears pool in her eyes? Well, she’d never admit it.
“Why did –,” she stutters, “how did you do that? When did you do that?”
“Okay. So, you know the Thursday night movie group?” Mac nods. KJ’s bottom lip is between her teeth again, “It may not have ever existed.”
Mac feels her face scramble. KJ had been going to their meetings for weeks, “What are you talking about?”
“I lied. I was working on this.”
“You lied?!” She balks, “You never lie!”
She clicks her tongue, “Don’t make me feel bad! The media lab was open, and they have all the equipment I needed to copy all the different tapes and stuff, and I wanted it to be a surprise. It was for a good cause!”
“And now you’re justifying it? Who the hell are you?”
“Knock it off,” KJ gives her a playful shove.
“Alright, fine. I’ll be serious now,” Mac takes both of KJ’s hands in hers, and God, if it was up to her she’d never let them go, “I hope we get to make a thousand more of those. At least a thousand. Maybe a million.”
“Me too,” KJ chuckles as a grin plays on her mouth, “but that would require you not bitching at me every time I take the camera out.”
“I don’t bitch.” Mac furrows her eyebrows, “I speak my mind.”
“You bitch,” KJ teases back, “but it’s okay because I love you.”
Mac raises an eyebrow, “Only ‘cause you love me?”
“Eh,” she tips her head from side to side, “I guess you’re pretty cute, too.”
Mac pulls her in and KJ giggles as their lips touch. She revels in the sound, the feeling, both so unique to KJ that her insides feel like a pinball machine, all bouncing around and lit up. Mac knew they got it right the first time she felt KJ’s mouth on hers; the thousands of instances since have only etched it in the stars. This one is no different.
“Love you,” Mac catches her breath, “even if you’re a fucking liar now, apparently.”
"Well," KJ blows air through her lips, “we all have our faults."
Mac laughs as she nudges her head toward the TV, “You wanna watch it again?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”