Work Text:
As much as Melissa hates to admit it, she’s fallen into the role of Janine’s work mom. She can’t help but have a soft spot for the girl who clearly doesn’t know how to cook and, well, Melissa has always stored her love in the kitchen.
Which is why one Sunday morning, when Barbara was supposed to be off at church, she walks into the house, dressed in her best Sunday outfit, and finds flour in places flour should not be found.
“Melissa Ann Schemmenti what in the world is going on in here? I haven’t seen this much flour on the floor since we stopped pretending Santa was real for the girls!” Barbara exclaims.
“Oh my gosh! That’s so sweet! My mom never let me believe in Santa because she wanted me to know that she bought my gift from her own paycheck so that I would always be grateful-” Janine starts from somewhere in the kitchen, surely knee-deep into one of her rambles when Barbara cut her off with a confused voice. “Janine? What are you doing here?”
“It’s Sunday cooking lessons time?” Janine responds meekly with a confused look.
Suddenly, Janine’s heart drops low in her stomach as she rethinks her presence in her favourite teacher’s home, the unwelcome feeling already gnawing in her gut as she stumbles out apologies, excuses, whatever it takes to diffuse the situation.
“Janine, calm down, dear. You being here is certainly not a problem,” Barbara punctuates her sentence with a shake of her head, her deep soothing voice, washing away any of the girl’s concerns.
She walks across the kitchen and presses a quick kiss into the side of Melissa’s head whose face is still sporting a sheepish look, and says, “Melissa just didn’t want anyone to know what a softie she is, I’m guessing. But she should know by now that she cannot hide anything from her wife.”
Melissa rolls her eyes and sputters a refutation but Barbara cuts her off with a knowing glance and continues, “I’m going to change out of these clothes and when I come back, I’m going to teach you a Howard Family Recipe. Melissa cooks of course, but in this house, I bake.”
She raises an eyebrow haughtily with a grin and spins out of the kitchen just as quickly as she enters and it's all Janine could do not to vibrate with excitement. Janine turns to Melissa and the unrestrained, maniacal glee in her eyes is equal parts adorable and without a doubt, Melissa knows she is seriously, irrevocably fucked. Guess she really has a new daughter, huh?
-
It’s two hours later and Barbara is seriously reconsidering her decision. Cooking is a form of art, with creativity and imagination, but baking is a precise science, and well, Janine has proven her knowledge of science.
Actually, Janine has proven that she absolutely does not respect science.
Which is why they’re elbows deep in dough and for the fifth time, Barbara has to explain why exactly they have to keep the dough chilled.
“But if the butter is melted then it could get into the dough more evenly and wouldn’t that make the dough better actually?” Janine starts with a hand raised in the air as if she’s making a great point and Barbara concedes that sometimes the kids don’t always have to know why.
“Janine, we just have to put it in the freezer for five minutes because that’s what the recipe says, okay?” Barbara is patient, sending sneaky glares to Melissa in the corner, wine glass in hand, taking it all in with a mischievous grin. Barbara hasn’t had a lively kitchen like this in some years, the days of baking with their children long gone, the novelty and fun having lost its touch.
She’s actually having a wonderful time, if she ignores the remnants of fruit she’s sure she can feel sliding down her neck, the result of an all too eager first attempt at mixing by the girl in question. It’s hard work, but Barbara has always felt peace when her hands were elbows deep in some confection, ready to be plated up for her family. On hard days, Melissa would come down and find her with a wooden spoon in her hand, a new recipe taped to the counter, some easy music floating through the kitchen.
It’s a similar scene now, even if it is a little panicked with their eyes often shifting to Janine, as if she was their former seven-year-old, just dying to know if vanilla essence tasted as good as it smelled. It didn't, as she soon found out.
And was Janine a sight to behold, with her hair tied back, flour tinged at the ends, butter on her nose, but the most beautiful smile on her face, the one where you could tell she was genuinely pleased with herself, when one of her little plans did not end in disaster.
Barbara let the feeling of love flow through her as she felt Melissa’s arm sneak its way around her waist, and caught a glimpse as the other landed on Janine’s shoulder.
Janine gave a shy grin, as she looked up quickly through her eyelashes while putting the final strips of dough onto the pie.
“Oh my gosh, it’s so pretty!” Janine squealed as they all stepped back to observe the final product.
“That it is,” Barbara responded with a soft smile, “Well done, Janine, sweetheart.”
Janine felt her eyes well up with tears against her will, and she blinked furiously to push them back as she heard Melissa chime in with an agreement.
“It’ll go perfectly with that pasta we made earlier, kiddo. And I got just the perfect wine to pair it with.”
Melissa leaned over to the counter and tossed Janine a pair of oven mitts, “Why don’t you do us the honours, huh, don’t burn yourself, it’s been preheating.”
Janine slips on the too-big mitts and eagerly slides her hands on each side of the pan, and that’s when it all seems to move in slow motion as she turns towards the oven, and the pie goes hurtling towards the floor.
For a moment, it feels like the whole world goes silent, but Melissa has no time to take notice of anything else as Janine follows after the pie as quickly as it fell, hand grappling through the glass as if to somehow put it all back together.
It takes a moment for her brain to catch up until she can hear the murmurs Janine seems to be sending out uncontrollably, filled with nos, I’m sorrys, and pleases, though Melissa has no idea exactly what it is she’s pleading for.
She crouches next to her, trying to pull her hands away from the glass as Barbara runs for the broom to get the debris out of the way. “Don’t! You’ll cut yourself!” Melissa tries to warn her, but Janine just lets Melissa move her hands away limply, as if the weight of the world came crashing down on her, and her hands were simply now too much to bear.
Janine just stares at the ruined pie as if it held all the answers to her life and now she would never get them. For a moment, Melissa worries that they somehow broke her.
“Janine, it’s fine!” Melissa’s confusion rings throughout the kitchen as she tries to understand the situation before her.
“But the pie! It’s ruined, I can’t even do one thing right! I always ruin things, I have to fix it! I can fix it, please just let me,” Janine’s voice peters out in the end as her tears override her ability to speak.
Silence falls over the scene as Janine remains crouched on the floor, hands smothered in fruit remnants, now pressed into her face as if to stop the flow of tears. Unsuccessful.
“Hey, kiddo, how about when peach season comes around, we go to one of them farms and get ourselves some fresh ones, huh? Then we can make a real authentic pie, right?” Melissa is getting a bit desperate now, unsure of how to comfort adults (Barbara aside) and decides what Janine needs right now is to be treated like a kid. She’s always good at that.
“Sweetie, how bout we leave this here and we go over to the couch, huh?” Melissa’s voice finally breaks through to Janine and she finds herself nodding along, somewhat absently as she lets herself be moved to the living room.
Barbara hovers on Janine’s other side, arms wrapped around her shoulders whispering sweet nothings, a few sweethearts and honeys finding their way over to Melissa’s ears.
Barbara produces some baby wipes and swiftly cleans Janine’s hands with the skills only a first-grade teacher possesses while Melissa smooths her hand over Janine’s hair, calming the flyaways. She seems relieved there are no cuts on the younger woman’s hands and Melissa mirrors that sentiment.
Janine seems to have resurfaced from whatever trigger she fell into and looks embarrassed as she refuses to make eye contact with either of them.
“Sweetheart, there is no need to be embarrassed, not at all. Everyone has their triggers. Hell, the minute someone tries to put me down I turn into a bit of a mess,” Melissa said in a comforting manner.
She heard vague murmurings from Barbara with the words Joe and ex-husband in a bitter tone but she just shook away those thoughts from her head and ignored it.
“But, you’re so strong,” Janine protested, pulling back to look Melissa in the eye, face screwing up in confusion.
“And so are you, honey,” Melissa countered, voice still calm and comforting, with a small smile on her face.
“I’ve always had to be,” Janine quietly lets out bitterly, voice dripping with the resentment of an entire childhood.
“According to my mom, I always mess things up. So it’s up to me to fix them, right?” She continues, her voice taking a fake enthusiastic turn at the end, “I’m good at that!”
“And now it seems like every problem in the world has found its weight on your shoulders?” Melissa asked gently, already knowing the answer.
“She’s wrong, you know? Now, I’ve never met your mom but everything I’ve heard so far sounds like she wasn’t much of one,” Melissa sits down fully on the couch now and grasps Janine’s cheek gently in one hand, “you have had to grow up too fast, cleaning up other people’s messes and being told that the fault was your own. But you don’t have to try so hard to fix everything, honey.”
“I know, I know, I guess I just overcompensate a lot for how I think about myself? That I really need to do better to prove to myself and maybe my mom that I’m worth everyone’s time?” Janine’s voice turns up at the end like she’s trying to understand her actions for the first time.
“Is that why you always get so defensive when anyone’s a little mad at you? Or just disagree with something?” Melissa asks, now finally uncovering a layer to Janine that makes a lot of sense.
“I’m always terrified that maybe this will be the time that everyone decides that I’m too much, or too annoying, or just not good enough. That, maybe, this is the last straw and everyone will finally realize that I’m not worth anything at all,” Janine deflates with that confession, perhaps it being a revelation to herself too.
Barbara interrupts the little moment as she presses a glass of water into Janine’s hands as she returns to her seat on the other side of her.
They all sit back and take a breath as Janine takes a drink and swipes a hand across her face, an attempt to brush away the tear stains.
“My mom was never really a mom. She was always out, forgetting to pay the bills, or spending all her money so we hardly had groceries. She was always taken care of though. I was just easy to forget about, I think. But I was good in school and I got a lot of help from the teachers who always took their time to take care of me, you know. It’s one of the reasons I became a teacher myself. A chance to do some good in the world,” Janine breaks off with a self-deprecating chuckle, “not sure if I’m making it worse though.”
“You’re allowed to make mistakes without feeling like the world is crumbling down on top of you because of it. That’s what life is, sweetheart,” Melissa interjects, “and you never got the chance to just be free because you’re always holding something else up.”
“Janine, you light up a room the minute you step into it without trying. You don’t need to do anything to belong, you already do. You always will,” Barbara jumps in now.
“Your mother was wrong,” Barbara states plainly, grasping Janine’s hands in her own.
“But I still love her,” Janine protests softly, voice breaking in its whisper.
“Oh honey, of course you do!” Melissa exclaims, “she’s your mother, she always will be. We usually always have a soft spot for family. But you get to put yourself first now. You need to put yourself first now. You can still love someone and acknowledge that how they treated you was wrong.”
“Janine you are one of the best teachers I’ve ever encountered. You take your time with the students and you’re always their number one supporter. You have their back always. In fact, you have everyone’s back at Abbott, no matter how they treat you. You’re special, I don’t care what your mom says. And I know it’s her voice in your head telling you to believe those things, but I’ll keep telling you over and over that it’s not true, until maybe one day it goes away.” Melissa continues.
“Until maybe one day you can hear all of our voices instead, telling you that you’re a great best teacher and a great friend, and if you allow Barb and I to prove it, that you’re a great daughter too,” Melissa swallows and reaches over to hold Barbara’s hand in hers, completing their little circle of love.
Janine loses the continuous battle she was having with her eyes, finally letting all the tears escape as she takes in that new piece of information, “Do you really mean it?”
It’s Barbara’s voice this time, offering the confirmation, “Of course we do.”
No sooner than the words were out of her mouth, Barbara and Melissa found themselves squeezed into a tight hug, love pouring out of every corner of the room.
It takes a moment for them to settle until Melissa tilts her head and turns around, “Wait Barb, I just realized, you were supposed to be in church?!”
Barbara breathes in a deep breath as she prepares to let out exactly what made her come back home at that opportune time, among Janine and Melissa’s laughter as they lean back into the couch and yeah, maybe Sundays might have a new tradition now.