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1.
Up until third grade, Freddie had hated the bus. The seats were too cramped to do homework in and always had butt imprints, and the boys shouted so loud for seven o’ clock in the morning. And Luke Bennerman always got assigned the seat behind her—stupid alphabet—which meant Freddie spent most of the bus ride getting kicked in the back. She’d complained to the bus driver about it once. Luke had only kicked the seat harder after that.
But then—Grace. Grace, who sat next to her at lunch one day and kept sitting next to her. Who had stepped onto the bus and lit up when she saw Freddie, who had slid in all cool next to her and nudged her shoulder like they were—busmates? Seatmates? Who’d grinned with all of her teeth, the brightest, prettiest thing Freddie had ever seen, when Freddie said dumbly, “I...don’t think that’s your assigned seat?”
“I don’t have one,” Grace had shrugged. “I’m new. The bus driver said to sit wherever.”
“And you’re sitting with...me?”
That smile again. “Yeah. You’re cool.”
No one had ever, ever said you’re cool about Farishta Bandi, and Freddie was still kind of waiting for Grace to figure it out—that Freddie was the weird kid of the class, the one who curled up like a bug against the bookshelves during playtime. But Grace never seemed to notice. She still kept sitting next to her on the bus, even when Freddie was paying more attention to the book in her lap. She yelled at Luke once, and he quit kicking their seat instantly.
Sometimes, Freddie would peek up at her, just to check if she was—still there, or annoyed, or actually real—and Grace would smile. It always felt like that first time: a sunrise beaming through the grungy windows.
When it got cold, sneakers were traded for boots, shirts for an assortment of jackets and gloves. Some days, Freddie’s mother wouldn’t let her go the bus stop without at least three layers—which was ridiculous, because it never got below forty degrees. And it made Freddie look like a big, brightly-colored chicken. (Grace dutifully said it didn’t, but Freddie could tell she was holding back a laugh the whole time.)
Grace’s parents never stuffed her into three different coats before the weather turned slightly chilly. Grace’s parents never ran out of the house to shove a pair of gloves onto her hands. Grace stayed exactly the same, with her cool army jacket and faded jeans. Her sneakers, scratched-up and solid, looked like they belonged in one of Freddie’s adventure books. Would the cold even touch Grace? Freddie sometimes wondered.
Would anything?
And then came the morning after the first frost—cold enough that Freddie was actually glad for her layers, and her breath misted out in a fine silver that reminded her of the dragons from her stories.
She’d brought a new book to read; her mother had gotten it for her as a prize for passing the multiplication test last week. Apparently, it was about a girl who disguised herself as a boy to become a knight, and there were a lot of cool magic swords and stuff. (Okay, so maybe Freddie had spent most of her computer time researching the book, because—well. Grace didn’t read a lot, but she seemed like she’d like cool female characters and magic swords, and maybe Freddie kind of wanted to do everything with Grace.)
So of course, as soon as Grace sat down, Freddie started rambling.
“I got a new book and Grace, it’s so cool, it’s about knights and swords and magic and—well, I don’t really know if you like that but maybe you do? Because I was reading the back and the main character kind of sounds like you—she’s strong and she knows what she wants and there’s, like—bad guys and swordfights and—I already said swordfights, didn’t I? But I thought you’d like it, and I know I’m reading on the bus all the time, so I thought we could—Grace?”
The feeling of something cold and heavy slumping against her made her yelp, and she looked over to see Grace, mostly asleep on her shoulder. Her hair was almost too stiff to fall, her cheeks flushed red with cold. She felt like she’d been standing outside without a coat for an hour.
“Grace?” Freddie said again, half a whisper.
“Mmm...?” Grace mumbled wordlessly.
“Um—” Freddie’s hand tightened on the spine of the book, “--never mind.”
It was fine. Plenty of people had told Freddie that her rambling bored them to death; of course even Grace would have a limit. Maybe by the time she woke up, Freddie could figure out how to hold back a little, not sound so weird and all when she asked Grace to read with her. Maybe Grace would even forget about it, and maybe Freddie wouldn’t bring it up again, and Grace would still smile at her, and—
“S’rry,” Grace murmured into her shoulder, and the weight started to lift. Freddie was so surprised she looked at her, their bodies knocking together as the bus went over a crack in the road.
Grace blinked hard and coughed. “Sorry,” she said again, “um, I’m just tired. Really tired, I—didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. You were talking about your book?”
“Oh,” said Freddie. “I mean, yeah, I—” She cut herself off, studying Grace’s paler-than-usual skin, the way her smile sat crooked and wrong. Grace still felt freezing, too, and Freddie was struck by the thought that her mother would have dragged her back inside by her ear before it ever got that bad. Freddie wouldn’t even have made it past the doorstep.
For the first time, Freddie thought about Grace’s cool army jacket and adventurer’s sneakers, and wondered if she wore them because no one would run out to bring her anything else. Because no one would drag her inside, away from the cold.
“Are you okay?” Freddie asked timidly.
Grace’s smile brightened—a flash of something almost right. “Yeah. I wanna hear about my best friend’s cool book.”
For a moment, the worry fell away, drowned out by a burst of dazed warmth. “I’m your best friend?”
“Of course you’re my best friend. I mean, who else would it be? Luke?”
“Grace, come on, if you’re joking—”
The look on Grace’s face softened. Ice melted in her dark hair and stuck it to her forehead, and when Freddie met her eyes, there was something so truthful in them it made her heart squeeze. “Fred, you’re my best friend in the whole world. I promise.”
2.
“Ugh, he sucks,” Grace declared, draping herself over the couch.
“You’re right,” Freddie agreed, even though she had no idea who they were talking about—of course Grace was right. Then, remembering the date Grace was supposed to be leaving for in an hour, she redoubled fiercely, “Yeah, you’re right.”
Despite Grace being right most of the time, the universe had to balance things out by making her incredibly wrong when it came to dating. This wasn’t Freddie’s jealous pining, either (well, not totally); the people Grace dated tended to be, on the whole, objectively terrible. There’d been Shana, who’d played sweet until she found a boyfriend and broke off her “experiment” with Grace. There’d been Xavier, a massive player who’d cheated on Grace multiple times; and now Nick, a scruffy guy from one of the other local bands who was shaping up to be scarily possessive.
“He kept insisting that he needed to pick me up. And that I should wear this outfit he picked out for me—it’s weird that he’s paid that much attention to my clothes, right?”
“Totally,” Freddie said, turning to face her best friend. She shoved the small part of herself that remembered, in excruciating detail, every one of Grace’s date outfits to the back of her mind. “And may I remind you that I told you he was a dud?”
Grace smiled ruefully. “Yeah, yeah. You were right. As always.”
Her face fell then, and even though so many things had changed—they were in college, they were looking for internships, they were sharing a room —Freddie still felt the same spike of desperation to see Grace smile again. Kind of pathetic, maybe. But then, anyone would understand if they saw it; Grace’s smile had only brightened over the years, bold and daring and sunlit, especially after she’d finally left her parents’ house. Whose heart wouldn’t hurt at the thought of losing that?
“Hey, you know you’ll find someone,” Freddie said softly, through the tightness in her throat.
Grace hummed, letting her head come to rest on Freddie’s shoulder. She’d been doing things like that more often lately—probably because they shared a living space, which was its own sweet hell—and Freddie considered it one of her greatest accomplishments that she didn’t freeze up, or scream, or cry. Sometimes that was all she wanted to do—wanted, wanted, wanted—sometimes she would see Grace furrowing her brow over chopping vegetables, or hear Grace squeak at a jump scare in The Cabin in the Woods, or walk out of her bedroom to find Grace humming over the coffeepot, and she’d just—
Sometimes Freddie thought she’d break in half with how much she wanted.
“You think so?” Grace whispered, looking up at her. The light from their laptop washed over her eyes, blue over amber. Netflix was asking, are you still watching?
“Uh, yeah. I know so.” Freddie huffed out a laugh. “You’re, like—the best person I know, Grace. You deserve someone as kind and funny and badass as you.” Grace laughed, too, almost disbelieving, and Freddie tried not to let it ache as the rumble of it spread warm through her own body. “And until then, beating the jerks off with my mace is always an option.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Grace said wryly. Then she yawned and pressed closer, closing her eyes. “Mind if I sleep through this episode? Sorry, I’ve been pretty stressed lately.”
“Sure, but do you just wanna move Buffy night? I’m here all week, you know.”
Grace grinned; Freddie could feel her lips curve through her shirt, which was the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. “Nah. You go ahead. I know recapping the last episode before we start watching is secretly your favorite part.”
“My favorite part is watching it with you,” Freddie murmured before she could stop it. The tenderness made the meaning unmistakable: My favorite part is you. It always has been.
But Grace had already fallen asleep.
Yeah. Good.
Good.
Freddie reached over to the spacebar, careful not to jostle her, and pressed play. Dimly, she realized that Grace had picked a bad episode to skip— “Becoming, Pt. II” of all things—but she couldn’t really bring herself to care. What was one of the best episodes of a seminal TV show compared to the warmth of Grace against her, the softness of her face, gone lax with absolute trust?
What more could Freddie want?
On the screen, Buffy cupped Angel’s face, both of them crying in the light of the portal. “Close your eyes,” Buffy said.
Freddie laid a kiss on Grace’s head, closed her eyes, and thought about a love like inviting a knife into your stomach.
3.
They went out drinking after the trial, a sort of “we’re all still alive!” type deal. It wound down with Persephone crooning (Muse-unassisted) into the microphone, Hermes gamely doing body shots off of...someone, and Apollo moping in a corner while Venus tried to convince him to change his ringtone. In other words, a normal Idol gathering.
Grace stayed quiet most of the night, hanging back at the bar and only making conversation when the others walked up to her. Not normally how Grace operated, but then, what had been normal this past week? Grace had changed, her easy gravity solidifying into a steel core—and, Freddie reminded herself, fingers ghosting over the smooth skin of her stomach, she had changed, too.
Grace had changed her.
The club clapped and whooped as Persephone’s song came to a close, and Freddie turned back to her drink. At every college party, she’d hated alcohol, but hey, she was a god now, right? And at least the burn chased the swirling questions away: what have I turned into, what am I supposed to say to her, is she going to change her mind, how long until I don’t feel like myself?
“It gets old fast,” Persephone’s low, smooth voice came in next to her. The goddess reached out and tapped a nail on the glass, the ting reverberating in Freddie’s ears as delicate as frost. “Using that to dull your senses.”
“I think I deserve one night of dullness,” Freddie said. “It’s been pretty exciting lately.”
“That it has.” Persephone’s eyes flicked across the bar. Her gaze felt so sharp that it seemed foolish that Freddie had ever believed the stories. Sweet, virginal nature goddess? More like hunter. More like the goddess of dread and death. “But you’re running from something, aren’t you?”
Freddie stiffened, and Persephone chuckled, backing off a little. “I can hardly judge,” she said. “I’ve been stubborn about...mmm, a great many things. Something your Grace has made very clear to me.”
“She’s not mine,” Freddie muttered, although she felt the lie of it in her bones. The warmth of the alcohol scorched her cheeks; the memory of Grace’s soft well, that’s ironic played back like a skipping record in her mind. “Not like that, I mean.”
“Fine,” said Persephone, “but she’s still yours. She’s given herself to you, whatever you choose to do with that.”
“You care about Grace,” Freddie said slyly, unsure how to feel about that. The bitter resignation threatened to well up—the kind that had burned through her before the Reliquary, when Persephone leaned over Grace and promised to come for her if anything happened. But underneath, she was grateful. Persephone had sided with Grace, had helped her, and for that she and Freddie would always have common ground.
Persephone hummed. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she demurred, “but she has helped me, more than anyone has in centuries. She’s taught me that sometimes the best thing to do is— talk.”
She said “talk” like someone would say “remove your wisdom teeth” or “do your taxes,” full of so much indignation that Freddie had to snort.
But somehow it meant, at the end of the night, Freddie was walking up to the bar with a fragile sense of nervousness, forcing herself not to duck her head when Grace’s open face swiveled toward her. “Oh—hey, Fred,” she said. Her voice was low but remarkably clear, as though she was trying with every word to be as easy to be around as she could. Trying for Freddie. “I didn’t think—I was just gonna crash at Hermes’?”
“Why?” Freddie blurted.
Grace blinked. “Because...you need time? To think about us, I mean. I didn’t think you’d want me—uh, intruding. While you did that.”
“I always want you.”
Fuck.
Freddie wouldn’t have been surprised if her body combusted right there—apparently her tongue was already set on betraying her—but Grace only loosened against the bar, her face flushing an even deeper pink. Adorably, she started to fidget, her fingers starting to pluck old guitar rhythms against her leg. “U-uh, I—” her voice cracked, died, valiantly started up again, “...thanks?”
“I meant—I—” dimly, the sensible part of Freddie’s brain snarked so this is why it took you both two decades to confess, “let’s just go home. Okay? We’ll...figure it out tomorrow.”
Grace pushed off the bar but hesitated, careful not to brush against Freddie until she touched her hand, knocked their shoulders together like they were still nine and on the bus. Then Grace folded into her, all familiar weight and warmth, and when she whispered, okay, let’s go home it was filled with such tender trust the sensible part of Freddie’s brain breathed, how could it have taken this long?
“Yeah,” Freddie murmured back, “let’s go home.”
—
Hermes had offered a doorway, but they were so drunk that no one really knew where it would end up: their apartment, some volcano in Costa Rica, the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So Grace and Freddie elected to stumble home like regular mortals one last time.
And—well. Freddie still kind of liked it this way, at least with Grace—which, honestly, was how she felt about most things. Freddie could put any of it into the worst love song she’d ever written: the streetlights in Grace’s hair, the rush of night traffic that seemed to dim whenever Grace glanced up at her. They stopped outside a CVS to wait for the light, and Grace sagged against her so heavily that her lips brushed against Freddie’s cheek.
“Hey, c’mon, you can’t fall asleep on me now,” Freddie joked, hoping that her new god powers would stave off impending cardiac arrest.
“M’not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“Sorry.” Grace let out a breath against Freddie’s throat and tried to straighten up. It mostly worked—she stood there swaying, her eyes almost glassy. “‘M just—really tired, Fred. I’m so— ”
Her voice broke, and Freddie looked at her: the girl who’d stood in the cold in a ratty jacket and sneakers, the girl who’d had her heart broken by people who never deserved her, her best friend who’d had an eternity of trauma piled onto her for the last eight days. Who had come out of it just as kind and tender as she had been, who had reached into her chest and given Freddie some kind of life back, who had done it again and given Freddie her heart.
Freddie pulled her into a hug and let Grace’s sobs shudder through her.
“Hey, hey, Grace,” she murmured. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You can sleep if you want. You can rest.”
Grace drew in a halting breath, held onto Freddie tighter. “I don’t want to,” she said thickly. She let go, but only to draw back a few inches, her hand sliding up to rest reverently on Freddie’s stomach. As close as they were, she could see the agony in Grace’s face as it twisted, like the blade had gone through them both. “I don’t want—”
“Hey.” Freddie cupped her face, tilted Grace’s chin up to meet her eyes. They were darker than usual, heavy with pain, but wasn’t Freddie the muse now? She could be the sunlight, sometimes. “I’m here now. I promise.”
+1.
They still had movie nights, these days. Grace would make the popcorn, while Freddie would try to bully her laptop into submission; and since they’d taken Buffy off of Netflix, she’d also have to find a site to pirate it. Preferably one without too many viruses—Muse powers probably didn’t work on malware.
“Okay!” she said brightly, when they’d gotten it all set up. “To recap: in the last episode, Dawn snuck out with a boy, blah blah blah. The more important part is that this episode is one of the great episodes of Buffy, one that fundamentally shifted the way the media approached musicals, and led to a lot of—okay, honestly, really terrible knockoff episodes in other shows. Some could argue that ‘Once More with Feeling’ is actually indirectly responsible for all the horrible Riverdale musical episodes, which is just a sad, sad stain on Buffy’s legacy—”
“Wait,” Grace interrupted, raising her eyebrow, “this is a musical episode?”
The words lodged in Freddie’s throat at the incredulous look on her girlfriend’s face. She blushed. “Well, I didn’t know it was going to become so...relevant.”
“Let me guess,” Grace drawled, propping the popcorn bowl on her knees (it was honestly unfairly attractive), “some monster comes to town, they make the Scoobies sing their innermost truths, and then Buffy kills him, leaving them all to work out whatever they’ve just revealed.”
“Uh—” apparently it was also unfairly attractive when Grace showed off her cleverness, who knew? “--well, Buffy doesn’t kill him, but otherwise, uh. Maybe?”
“Gotcha.” Grace’s eyes bore into her, smirking, purposeful. Dark. “I think I have a better idea for tonight. If you’d like that.”
The laptop almost tumbled out of Freddie’s hands, the yes ripping out of her at least an octave above her normal range.
—
“Good?” Grace asked in the liquid stillness after. She traced Freddie’s collarbone, huffing out a quiet laugh when Freddie still shivered under the touch.
“Yeah,” Freddie whispered. She’d meant it to come out like duh —of course it had been good. Even it had been somehow terrible, it was Grace. Instead it came out hushed, reverent, true.
Grace’s lips turned up, soft and pleased. She answered in the same tone, “I love you, you know.”
I’ve loved you from the moment you sat next to me in third grade, sprung to Freddie’s lips, and then I think I’ve loved you my whole life. I think I’ll love you in all my lifetimes. I know. Why is it that even when I’m the Muse and you’re mortal, your eyes are the ones that glow to me?
The air quivered, and Freddie leaned over to seal the swell of an orchestra in a kiss. “I love you, too,” she said. “Let’s go to sleep.”
And they did, curled in each other’s arms, until the sunlight came beaming through the windows.