Work Text:
Dee was pissed. Amy could tell.
She had no idea how she could tell. If you put a pen and paper in front of her and a gun to her head, and told her to list all the ways she was different now than how she usually was, Amy knew she’d be left with a blank list at the end.
Just for the sake of it, Amy tried writing out that list in her head anyway. Not like she had anything better to do while Dee patched her up.
Dee’s mannerisms seemed the same. She had still done her stupidly long red hair in a single braid, dangling down to the small of her back. Her sharp eyes weren’t narrowed or looking at her harshly, and she was wearing that soft little smile that was so classically her. Her hands were even moving with that same deftness and skill that Amy always saw Dee using whenever she was working on one of her little science projects, although now she was using them to bind Amy’s swollen knuckles.
From this distance, the difference between the two women’s sizes was so obvious. Amy was only 3 inches taller than Dee, but Dee had such a svelte body compared to Amy’s, it was like the blonde was twice the size of the redhead. Dee’s arms were skinny like a bird’s leg, her fingers long like a pianist’s. Amy’s hands were large and calloused, her tattooed arms corded with muscle.
Dee finished tying off the bandages on her knuckles, as gentle as ever. Amy almost wished that there was a bit of harshness to Dee’s treatment; any physical sign to show the anger the other woman was feeling. Any more restraint from Dee’s part, and Amy would start to feel guilty.
“You’re angry, aren’t you.” Amy didn’t say it as a question, but as a statement. There was no sign of the anger, but she knew it was there. She couldn’t take the silence anymore.
Dee made a thoughtful noise, an almost cheerful little ‘hmm.’ “Am I?”
Shit. She sounded exactly the same as normal Dee, but the animosity Amy was feeling practically dripped off those words like acid.
“Yeah. It seems-”
Dee cut her off. “And why, pray tell, might I be angry?”
Amy gulped. She’d really gone and done it now. She was expecting Dee to keep going, but the other woman had fallen silent, waiting it seemed for Amy to answer her rhetorical question.
“Because… I got beat up?” Amy said it with leading, almost placating tone, hoping her admission would be the end of things.
“Because you got beat up,” Dee mirrored. “Shirt off.”
Amy took her tanktop off, left sitting on Dee’s workbench in only her bandeau bra, revealing half a dozen nasty bruises on her torso. She winced with the movement, and Dee made a soft ‘tsk’ sound, the first thing she’d done so far that didn’t seem angry to Amy.
Dee ran her fingers gently over Amy’s ribs; a couple of them were almost assuredly cracked, and Dee was carefully checking which ones with one hand, while its twin held an icepack to the nastiest of the bruises.
“Because you got beat up,” Dee repeated. “Because you were being childish. Because this was almost so much worse. Because I accept that you’re going to go off to your stupid underground boxing matches, even though as I just said they’re stupid, but as your roommate - not to mention your fucking boss - I have only one rule about those fights. And that rule is…”
Dee was waiting for Amy to answer. “Don’t pick fights that I can lose.”
“Don’t pick fights that you can lose, bingo.” Dee held out another icepack. “Hold this to your black eye.”
Amy did as commanded, pressing the icepack to her eye. The coolness helped ease the throbbing pain encompassing the entire left side of her face.
“I won that fight though, Dee,” Amy replied.
“And it was close. And it could have gone either way. And you could have been so, so much worse off than you are now.”
There was silence between them for moment, Dee’s words hanging over their heads. If Amy was smart, she would leave it there; Dee seemed less angry than she was before, merely upset. And part of Amy desperately wanted to just mumble an apology and spare herself from Dee’s ire, not to mention spare Dee from her stubbornness. But there was more she had to say, she could feel it bubbling up from under her tongue like magma.
“I had to fight him,” Amy finally said, breaking the silence.
Dee made another thoughtful ‘hmm,’ sound, this one far less cheerful. “You HAD to fight him.”
“His tattoos,” Amy says as answer. When that isn’t enough, she continues. “Neo nazi tattoos. Like my dad, like all the bastards I grew up with. I couldn’t just sit there and watch that dickhead drink and laugh and feel like he was safe in this world with that poison on his body.”
To Amy’s surprise, this answer was not enough to avoid admonishment. “Let it never be said that I am a stumbling-block between you and whatever you need to do to deal with your past. But Amy, if you think your blood is equal trade for his, you’re wrong. I don’t care that some brownshirt wannabee I’ve never met and never will meet is eating through a straw.”
Amy replied as Dee finished checking her ribs. “Dee, respectfully, that’s bullshit. Who knows what some violent neo nazi would be out doing if I hadn’t taken him down a peg or two. Don’t pretend you don’t care, you’re literally Jewish.”
“And you’re literally bleeding all over my workbench,” she countered.
“And he’s probably bleeding all over some hospital bed, if he’s lucky.” Amy chuckled then regretted it, wincing as her cracked ribs screamed out in pain. “If it’s such a problem, I’ll clean the blood off the workbench for you.”
Amy immediately realized that this was the wrong choice of words. Dee looked so mad that Amy almost tried taking a step back on instinct, not that there was anywhere to go with her back against the workshop wall. “‘I’ll clean the blood from the workbench,’ she says. God almighty, it’s not about the blood dumbass! I’m so glad you don’t have a concussion, so I can safely put this through your thick skull.”
Dee took an icepack and gently slapped it against the uninjured right side of Amy’s face, repeating the gesture with each word. “I. Care. About. You. A. Lot. You. Fucking. Dumbass.” Dee’s rage was gone as soon as it appeared. She took the icepack and pressed it against Amy’s swollen cheek. “I’ve got a long list of things that you and your wellbeing is more important than, and some random nazi’s comeuppance, while high on that list, is still less important to me than you by a longshot.”
Amy wasn’t sure how to respond to such naked and guileless adoration. She knew that Dee cared about her, lord knows that she’d been a truer friend to Amy in these past months than anyone else she’d ever met, but knowing that was a very different thing than hearing it all declared so plainly.
Dee held her gaze through Amy’s silence. Her lips were pressed together with frustration, but her eyes were as soft and honest as her words. Eventually, Dee sighed, and let the tension drain away. “You really give me conniptions sometimes Amy, you know that? You’re so damn lucky that you’re hot.”
Dee’s hand was on back of her neck. Dee’s lips were pressed against hers. Dee’s tongue was in her mouth. And here Amy was, stiff as a dead fish.
God dammit, she was supposed to be better about this already. The whole ‘kissing Dee’ thing was a new and surprising activity for Amy, and very enjoyable. The only problem was such a new experience that she always tensed up like an idiot. Memories came back unbidden of her family spitting all kinds of poison about gay people, about how they were unnatural and an abomination – all things she knew were false and that she was fighting against, but couldn’t quite force out of her mind yet.
Dee tasted like that shitty cherry lip-balm that she always used, and Amy desperately wanted to melt into Dee’s kiss think of nothing but cherries, but she couldn’t avoid her stupid fucking memories. When Amy kissed Dee back, it was in defiance of these memories. She closed her eyes and wrapped an arm around Dee’s waist, and pulled her closer into the kiss. She kissed her back fiercely, and reveled in the knowledge that she was rebelling against her past with a kiss just as surely as she had with her fists.
When Dee finally pulled away from the kiss there was a twinkle in her eye, and the smile on her face matched the smile on Amy’s. She leaned forward to capture Dee’s mouth in another kiss, but winced as the action sent a shock of pain from one of her cracked ribs. Dee saved Amy the trouble and leaned forward to plant a quick peck on her lips, before pressing on of the icepacks against the rib in question.
“Nothing to do now but ice it and rest,” Dee said. “Hold that there for me. I’m gonna go warm up food. Do you want leftover pizza or leftover chinese food for dinner?”
“I think I want to kiss you again,” Amy said, only half joking.
Dee rolled her eyes. “So do I, but I’m still mad at you. How about you just chill while I set the table, and we’ll see if there more kisses in your future.” With a blown kiss and a wink, Dee stepped out of the workshop, leaving Amy sitting by her lonesome.
Amy held the icepack to her ribs as instructed, and rand the fingers of her free hand gently over her lips, the memory of Dee’s lightningbolt kiss still bouncing around in her mind.
Perhaps, she thought, it wasn’t always such a bad thing when Dee got mad, if it ended like this.