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It takes a good deal of fumbling, some flailing of limbs, and copious amounts of giggling, but finally Myka manages to crawl under the sheet on Artie's bed. She keeps her back turned to Pete, not wanting to see any traumatic images—even if she will forget them in the morning, there are some things even the best of friends are never meant to see.
The room stops spinning—or at least slows down a little—as she settles on her side and closes her eyes. The light clicks off and the bed lurches behind her as Pete crawls in, pulling at the sheet Myka has wrapped securely around her nakedness. After a few moments of clumsy tug-of-war and an exasperated "Pete!", they manage to find a comfortable middle ground and settle back down with their backs to each other.
"Goodnight, Pete."
"G'night, Mykes," Pete says sleepily, with a goofiness that's only partially due to the inebriation. It makes Myka smile, despite the awkwardness inherent in their situation.
She's trying really hard not to think about the fact that Pete is naked, and she's naked, and they're naked in bed together, and it was her idea. It's necessary, she tells herself, brow furrowing and closed eyes squinting hard with the effort to focus on the words as they float through her mind. If they don't have some reason to try, they'll never remember what happened to Steve—what they did to Steve.
It was funny, she has to admit, a giggle bubbling up in her throat even now as she pictures the expression of shock and confusion now permanently cast into Steve's features. No, not permanently—they're going to get him out tomorrow, and everything will be fine.
Until then, though...what must Steve be going through? Helena never talked much about her time in bronze, but it was fairly obvious that she had retained some degree of consciousness. What is Steve thinking—of her, of Pete? Does he realize they were affected by an artifact? Does he even know what happened? Helena, at least, had some knowledge of what she was facing.
Helena. The smile on Myka's lips disappears as quickly as it came. It was so easy earlier to surrender to the giddy euphoria of total drunkenness, to just let her inhibitions slip away and be giggly and dumb and childish—well, to be Pete, really. It was all the fun parts of being drunk without the sick roiling in her gut.
Now it's not so easy; Helena's face and voice rush in to fill the dark and silence, and Myka is still too intoxicated to contain her reaction. Tears spring unbidden to her eyes, and she grits her teeth, clutches the sheet tightly in her fists in an effort to simultaneously hold back the tears and keep her breathing calm and steady. She doesn't want to explain this to Pete—wouldn't know where to start—and even though her thoughts are still fogged, and her limbs still don't feel quite like her own, she possesses enough clarity of mind to know that she wouldn't allow even Pete to see her this vulnerable under normal circumstances. More than that, she's terrified that if she loosens that restraint and lets herself feel even the tiniest amount of the anguish that has been tearing at her insides for months now, she'll lose herself in it and won't be able to find her way back.
It's a losing battle. She knows it even before the first tear leaks out of the corner of her eye, sliding over the bridge of her nose to drop onto the pillow beneath her head. One tear turns into two, and soon it's all she can do to keep her sniffles as quick and quiet as possible.
Pete shifts behind her, and Myka freezes, her heart pounding. Please let him be asleep.
No such luck. "Hey Mykes, you okay over there?"
Her heart clenches in her chest and she swallows, trying desperately to reclaim her composure. "I'm fine," she assures him, wincing at the thickness in her voice, the way it catches despite her best efforts.
The mattress dips again, and Myka doesn't need to look behind her to know that Pete has turned around. She can practically see the look of gentle concern on his face. "What's wrong?"
His hand is warm on her bare shoulder, and before Myka can even attempt to formulate a coherent response, a sob tears from her throat. She tries to muffle it with the sheet, but she knows it's too late.
"Hey, c'mere," Pete urges gently, tugging insistently at her shoulder.
Myka puts up a token amount of resistance, but allows herself to be rolled over and pulled into his arms. The sheet is thankfully still a solid—if thin—barrier between them, but it's the last thing on Myka's mind as she presses her forehead against his chest, tears flowing freely from her eyes as he rubs calming circles into her back.
For a long time, the only sounds in the room are Myka's sharp, wet intakes of breath and the quiet, soothing words Pete murmurs into her hair. Gradually his voice drops off, and his hand stills against her back, and she almost wonders if he's fallen asleep. Her tears have slowed to a sluggish trickle, and she thinks she might be able to get to sleep now, but before she can pull away, he speaks again.
"It's not Steve, is it?" Pete asks, in that creepy knowing tone that he gets sometimes.
"No," Myka admits, turning her eyes down away from his face even though it's too dark to see him anyway. She should feel guilty for what they did to Steve in their drunken recklessness, and somewhere inside she does, but not nearly enough to cause this reaction.
"And it's not about trying to adjust to being back at the Warehouse, either." It's not a question this time, and Myka has a creeping feeling that he already knows what's wrong, that he's just trying to get her to say it.
If there were anyone she could trust with this, it would be Pete. She's always felt safe with him, knows he would never judge her for it (at least, not too harshly), but she can't bring herself to form the words.
"It's HG," he sighs, when it becomes clear she's not going to do it.
The depth of understanding in his voice shocks Myka, and she pulls back, eyes seeking out what little she can see of his face. His eyes glint knowingly in the dim light of the alarm clock, and the words spill from her lips before she can even fully form them in her mind. "I love her, Pete."
She waits for the inevitable disappointment, for him to look at her differently, maybe even recoil a little, but she's forgetting who Pete is. He's her best friend, and he's never once given her reason to think that this would somehow change his opinion of her.
"And Claudia's a techie wiz, and Artie makes awesome cookies," Pete says, his teeth flashing white in the near-darkness as he grins. "You think you're being subtle, Mykes, but sometimes you're easier to read than the kids menu at Denny's."
Myka narrows her eyes at him, bangs lightly at his chest with the end of her fist. "Is everything about food to you?"
"Hey, don't change the subject," he replies, holding his hands up defensively. "We were talking about you and your tragic lesbian love affair—which I, for one, would love to hear more about."
She punches him again, harder this time. "Perv." The disapproval in her voice is softened by the melancholy that creeps up in her chest. "There's nothing to tell," she says, her eyes growing moist again. "I barely realized how I felt before—" Her throat catches. "—before everything happened. Then it was too late to do anything about it."
Pete is uncharacteristically quiet, then; he just pulls Myka back against him, and she can feel the tension in his arms, in the clenching of his jaw against her head. "Maybe that's better," he finally says, his voice tight with something he's trying hard to restrain. "I mean, it would probably have hurt a lot more if you'd been doing the nasty with her, am I right?"
Myka nods into his chest, grudgingly conceding his point. It doesn't make it easier to deal with, though, and it doesn't mean she doesn't wish she had something to cling to, more than the memory of heated glances and fleeting touches, always chaste but never failing to make her skin burn. She's been over those memories so many times over the past few months that they're like photographs, crinkled and worn around the edges, the images so distorted that she can't even tell which details are real and which ones her imagination has created to fill in the blank spaces. Could she have changed the way things turned out, if she'd realized sooner what was between them? Could she have pulled Helena from a crash course she'd been on for over a century?
A shaky sigh escapes her lips as she burrows deeper against him. She knows it does no good to wonder about these things, but she never can seem to help herself. Helena has always been her one exception to thinking logically. At least she has Pete, though, and Artie and Claudia and Leena. They're her family, more than her own parents and sister have ever been. If she never gets to see Helena again, she'll still have the support and love of the people who are most important to her—
Her train of thought is derailed by something...pressing against her stomach through the sheet. "Pete, is that..." She's afraid to finish the thought.
Pete snickers, his chest shaking against her forehead, and Myka is reminded that they are both still very drunk. "Sorry Mykes," he says, suppressing a giggle. "Little Pete has a mind of his own."
"Oh my god, Pete !" Myka smacks him hard on the chest, then scrambles as far as she can to the other side of the bed. For the first time tonight, she finds herself hoping desperately that they won't remember any of this.
"I'm sorry, Myka," Pete says again. He sounds more serious this time, almost dejected. "I didn't mean to."
Myka sighs. "It's okay, Pete, really," she assures him. It's really not his fault. Still, she'd really rather not think about it, or talk about it, or acknowledge it in any way. Ever. "Let's just...try to get some sleep."
"Okay." The mattress shifts as he rolls back to his other side. "You're not mad?" he asks in a small voice.
"No, I'm not mad." Myka rolls her eyes, carefully avoiding any physical contact as she turns her back to him again.
"Good," he says, sleep starting to creep into his voice. He yawns. "I love you, Mykes."
"Love you too, Pete," Myka says softly. Her own eyes are growing heavy, still sore and swollen from crying. If she remembers this tomorrow, she doesn't know what she'll be the most mortified about, but she's grateful that she'll at least have Pete right there beside her, sharing in her embarrassment.
If he tries to tell anyone about this, though, she won't hesitate to kill him.
end.