Work Text:
In the end, I only make it halfway through the King and Queen announcements before it all becomes too much. The murmurs and whispers that claw across my ears, the shuffling feet squeaking on the stupid polished wood gymnasium floor. Every one of them slams into my skull, throwing me out of the experience. I can’t freaking stand it.
It’s only the gentle grip on my arm and the reassuring rub across my shoulder - bare, though I wouldn’t have worn this dress if Jess hadn’t insisted with that crooked grin of hers - that kept me here. It pulls me back into the moment, tells me that I could leave at any time and she’d come with me.
That last bit is the most important part of her reassurances, if I’m being quite honest.
The swell of turmoil in my chest bubbles and flares and bursts. My fingers rake across my arm and pain flares: I don’t like pain, not in the slightest, but I hate the noise more. There’s a release with the pain, and I can’t focus on the world for a moment, only the sensation of nails on skin.
The pain.
The recrimination.
The knowledge that I’ve failed, that I can’t even get through one simple fucking event that everybody else could you stupid fuckup they’re all right abou-
“Come.” A hand tugs me backwards; a voice pulls me gently. I can’t stand the sound of people talking sometimes. There’s just a note in it that makes my mind feel like it’s tearing apart. Or a wet smacking sound from the lips, or that fucking click people do when they’re thinking. Seriously can people not just drink water so their mouth isn’t fucking begging them for fluids and fuckin-
“I’ve got you, babe.” This voice is nice though. Every word is perfectly enunciated, no agonizing clicks or smacking sounds. She drinks water regularly, just for me.
Who even does that?
Jess.
I can’t help the surge of affection, and I’m pulled immediately back to my own body. I realize I’m being led away, and my body stumbles as I go from automatic movement to manual control.
“Thanks.” There’s more I want to add, so much more, but I’m just too raw now. My hands are shaking and it feels like there’s something painfully hot sizzling under my skin.
My breaths come easier the further we get, the slight strain of climbing the steps to the roof chipping away at my swirling anxieties.
Soon enough, we run out of stairs and step onto the roof.
Jess is ahead of me; her hold on my arm moved to my hand at some point along the way. My eyes trace the weave of straps running along her back, forming a five pointed star. Her back is bare besides, nothing but smooth pale skin with the odd freckle dotting the surface. I know every single one of them by heart.
She turns her head to smile at me, all black lipstick and dark eyeliner, yet warmer than even the preppiest girl at Durmond High. Her shoulders follow, and she puts her free hand out, palm up; inviting me.
I put my hand in hers and she squeezes just tight enough to let me know she’s there. The awful pressure in my chest shifts to the left. From something bad to something… not bad. Good. Maybe even great. I’ve been trying to not think about how it’s great for months, but it’s gotten very difficult recently.
She pulls me along, walking backwards, until we get to ‘our spot’ on the roof. The one where we first met. I’d hidden up here almost every day in freshman year; whenever it had been too much inside. It had been my spot, my place to recenter myself, with only the distant sound of the world to bother me. Then one day I’d come up and some random goth girl was just there. I almost cried then; raged silently at the loss.
Defying my expectations, she’d not said a word, just patted the ground next to her and bobbed her head to her music.
We didn’t speak for a whole week, despite meeting in the same spot on the roof. Instead we just sat next to each other in silence. I’d cracked first, asked her what she was listening to. Asked her what she was doing there.
“Same as you,” she’d said with that crooked smile I’ve since grown to love. Mouth quirked lopsided, wonky teeth on full display. “Avoiding all the bullshit.”
Our friendship was slow at first. It took a lot of time and careful attention to get us going. We only met on the rooftop for the first few months, only sharing a few words and maybe a band or two. Once or twice I’d put one of her earphone speakers in my ear and listen to her Walkman with her.
Then something clicked, and things snowballed. We met at lunch too. I'd been worried about that, terrified to admit that “having lunch together” involved sitting the maximum distance away from each other because I couldn’t stand the sound of chewing. I’d thought it would all be over then; it usually was. Everybody always took the news - that every little sound they made hurt me - personally.
Jess had just given a lazy thumbs up and asked “how far is far enough?”
I’d nearly cried.
Then we were meeting outside of school, hanging around at each other’s house, or the park or… really anywhere we could be alone. I met her mom, and her kid brother that she teased relentlessly, but would kill for if given the reason. She met my parents next. They disapproved, but when didn’t they?
Jess was too rough around the edges for a lot of people, my parents among them; they were so “upper middle class” it hurt. To them, Jess may as well have been a tattoo-filled ex-convict picking me up from the house on a Harley, and not just another girl with a beat down sedan.
I didn’t voice that particular thought to her; no sense giving her ideas. Even if the idea of her roaring up to the house with a bike and some dangerous tattoos filled me with an electric sort of excitement.
We’d become inseparable, two magnets stuck together, pulling towards each other even when apart.
I’d told her everything. I told her how some noises made me want to take a hammer to my own face. How nobody would even try to accommodate without giving me snide remarks or implying I was somehow the one at fault for being this way. As if I was choosing to be like this.
How sometimes every step I took was like moving through molasses, and how I was terrified that one day I’d just... stop.
I hadn’t expected Jess to have anything bothering her. She always seemed so strong; like a rock weathering crushing waves. Immovable, implacable.
Yet she’d taken my own hand in hers and told me how she sometimes felt broken. How some days she felt nothing and then others felt everything. How she was waiting for the day that that bubbling thing inside her would break free, and not even the weed would be enough to keep it back anymore. She told me how she felt powerless, how it felt like the world was falling apart and there was nothing she could do about it but watch.
She’d told me about having sex with her boyfriend and how she’d been more interested in the patterns on the drapes than anything else. How she was scared that she was missing something important in her, how she was terrified that she’d never be able to love the way that the world told her she should.
I cried then. We both did. Me with my racking sobs, and her with her quiet tears.
It was ok though.
It was alright because we could hold each other, and it didn’t matter if we were both missing pieces. Because what one didn’t have the other could share.
Because together we didn’t feel so lost or alone.
She squeezes my hand, pulling me out of my thoughts and down to the picnic blanket she’d set up.
I have to let go of her hands so she can grab us drinks. There’s an all-too familiar ache at their absence. Sometimes, when I’m feeling whimsical, I think about duct taping our hands together so that we never let go.
I hear the opening notes of Bad Girls manage to pierce the countless layers of concrete between it and us; they’ve commenced homecoming proper then.
“Thanks Jess.” Sincerity comes easy with her. “This… It means a lot.”
She smiles as I grab the can off her, ignoring the sharp spike of something as our fingers brush. I always notice the smiles first, her smiles. The way her lips quirk or the angles of her teeth when she was smiling toothily. I love how her eyes crinkle; she rarely holds back when she smiles for me.
I prefer to pretend that the touches simply don’t happen. It’s easier that way, for everybody.
“No prob. I know you’d do the same for me anyways.” She pops open her can, I look down at my own; pre-mixed vodka cherry.
I open it before I can even start questioning the wisdom. We’ve drunk before, but only one or two, just enough to get the tiniest bit spinny.
Jess had brought two six-packs up here.
“To blowing off all the cunts and squares.” She raises her drink. I tap mine to hers.
“Yea, to that. And um, friendship.” I say.
Jess cackles even as she takes her ‘sip.’ I don’t think downing half a can of mixer counts as a sip.
She leans in close while I take a more conservative sip, grabbing my arm as she comes close, “Kate, you’re the biggest fucking dork in the world but I love you for that.”
I lower the can from my lips and open my mouth to speak.
“Though that was so not a friendship sip, that’s like a passing acquaintances sip,” she cuts me off before I can speak; there’s a light in her eyes as she says it that lets me know it’s just teasing.
I know, with the most absolute certainty in the world, that if I didn’t take a single more sip tonight she wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t be hurt.
That, more than anything, makes me lock eyes with her as I down the entire can. Makes me ignore the burn of carbonated alcohol as it goes down. I crush the can in a way that I thought would be impressive but really only manages to nick my finger and toss it away.
I smug at her over the plink-plink-plonk of it bouncing away. “How’s that for friendship?” I say, injecting challenge into my voice.
I can see every tooth in her return smile.
We move closer and lock arms to chug our second. There’s something about the soft feel of her skin on my own that just feels right. Right in a way that I’m terrified to acknowledge or explain.
It’s not just our arms, our legs are touching and when Jess holds me back from taking a third, “pace yourself nerd,” our bodies are touching too.
I feel the world tilt around me a little and I realize that the alcohol is already setting in. My face darkens as well, probably the alcohol too. The happy squirming in my gut is also the alcohol, definitely.
I grab her shoulder and we tumble to the ground, I giggle relentlessly.
“You’ve only had like two drinks, you can’t be wasted already,” she exclaims with a fond exasperation.
“Not the drinks,” I disagree. “I’m just happy.”
“Oh,” she pokes my cheek. “Carry on then.”
I want to kiss you.
Alcohol always makes me feel weird around Jess, well, weirder than normal.
I always do.
I feel floaty and happy and another round of giggles burbles out. I whine when Jess gets up, but she just pulls out a speaker and starts playing one of the songs we both like.
It was at the perfect volume, not so soft that I have to strain to hear - that sets me off for some reason I can’t be bothered to find out - and not so loud that I’m overwhelmed.
We grab another drink, I have to sit up to drink it.
“Little sips this time,” she warns.
We move the blanket over to the vent box to have something to lean against.
When we sit back down we’re flush against each other. My bare shoulder presses against her. Jess’ dress is unsurprisingly black, like just about every other piece of clothing she wore. It suits her though.
Jess looks like some kind of rock princess. Or a vampire. Or a rock vampire. Deathly pale skin with pointed bones, all hard edges and lithe muscle. I thought of her as ‘darkly beautiful’ when I was feeling poetic and ‘pretty as all hell’ when I was feeling even more poetic. She was the sort of girl you expected to have short hair, which was likely the only reason she grew it out. Long blonde hair that she dyed, never sticking with a color for longer than a month or so. It’s a deep purple today. Freshly dyed just for the occasion.
I look boring in comparison. Brown hair, brown eyes, a nice tan, sure, but a fashion sense that can best be described as top of the laundry pile chic. I was in a yellow dress today, Jess insisted that it went well with my tanned skin and I was powerless to resist an argument like that.
The third drink goes down in sips and quiet conversations. Speculation about what the people below us were getting up to. Jokes so old and recycled that at this stage we’re just laughing for its own sake.
The world stops feeling like it’s tilting and instead I feel like my body has been submerged. All floaty and far away. Like I need to send a fax to my limbs to get them to move.
Jess reaches into a pocket - because of course she’d be able to find a dress with a pocket in it - and pulls out a small square tin with demonic engravings.
She quirks an eyebrow and I nod quietly.
The tin pops open to reveal a bunch of twisted bits of thin paper and a lighter.
Joints, or blunts? She’s explained the difference to me but I can never quite remember.
Feeling… something, bold? Maybe that, maybe something else. I’m too scared to check. I pull out one and stick the end into my mouth and turn to Jess.
“Light me?” I ask around the joint in my mouth.
“You’ve got hands,” she retorts playfully.
“You’ve got better hands,” I reply, but with the joint in the way, the ‘you’ve’ comes out as youth and the ‘better’ sounds like bedder.
Jess rolls her eyes playfully and picks up the lighter. She holds my jaw steady with one hand as she lights the end and all of a sudden I can’t breathe.
Something clings to my chest at the touch. Hooks digging into my heart, and I don’t want them to stop. I want them to pull me under and never let me go.
The joint is lit and her fingers leave. I breathe in, though I almost don’t want to. I want to grab her hands and pull her back, but it’s a weird impulse. I ignore it. I’m used to ignoring it.
The smoke burns slightly going down but it feels so far away. I open my eyes when I exhale to see Jess with a joint in her mouth waving the lighter in my face.
“Your turn,” she says.
I snatch the lighter from her fingers. I move my other hand up, stopping halfway, indecisive. I go the rest of the way quickly, before I can stop myself.
Why is this so hard?
I’ve touched her plenty, we’ve hugged, bumped, tousled, poked and prodded. Every little bit of contact friends made. So I wasn’t sure why now of all times I was so….. something, about it.
It must be the alcohol.
It’s definitely not.
Or maybe the weed.
I only just smoked it.
The hooks dig in again as I hold her face. I light the joint but leave my hand where it is. Leave my fingers on her face, her jaw. Where I can feel her skin.
Jess doesn’t push me away.
I desperately want that to mean something.
She’s just drunk.
We take a few drags of the joints and Jess puts her hand on my wrist, to pull my hand off.
She pulls me closer, I put an arm around her waist automatically.
I need… I need the contact, I need everything. We always get so cuddly when we smoke, it was my favorite part of it. I’m not even sure I like weed that much by itself. I’ve never smoked without Jess even though she gave me my own personally decorated tin.
The music starts blending together, I start to imagine I can feel her heart beating. I picture them synchronizing, beating in tandem.
Dork.
I giggle, I try to stop. It only makes me giggle harder.
Jess joins in.
Just two girls giggling on the roof. It’d only be better if…
The thought makes me giggle a bit harder.
“Jess?” I need three tries to actually draw the breaths in to say the words. If I wasn’t floating on a cloud right now I’d probably be worried about dying of asphyxiation. “Wouldn’t-“ I can’t get the next words through my mouth on the first try because I’m anx- because the weed is making me giggle, because the alcohol is impairing my speech.
“Wouldn’t what?” Jess says. Amusement less coloring her voice as it is her voice.
“Wouldn’t I’ve funny if we-“ something pushes into my chest, something tries to stop me from saying the words. A weight that’s been there for longer than I care to admit. “If we kissed.”
Jess is silent for a moment and I am cast from my cloud, I sink. I sink I fall I descend I plummet.
I fucked up.
She makes a noise, a laugh or a snort. A ‘snrrk’ is the only word that maybe fits.
“Fuck it, we’re drunk, we’re getting high. Let’s kiss,” she says, as though this is the most sensible thing in the world.
If I was plummeting before I’m crashing now, I’m dashed upon the rocks. Somehow the feeling is good. Somehow the knot in my stomach tightens and I like it.
She turns to me and deep blue eyes bore through me in a way that shouldn’t be possible. My eyes flit down to her lips. Pitch black.
I wonder how that’ll look on me.
I want to find that out more than I want to have my next breath of air.
The world swims around me, my body moves through a sky that feels liquid, a floor that tilts oddly. Like a ship that was swaying but the swaying is all me.
My lips touch hers.
The school falls away.
The music disappears from my awareness at the odd sensation of her lipstick staying on my face.
There’s a whole world around me, full of sounds and sensations that I hate, but right now all I feel is her hand wrapping around the back of my neck and pulling me closer. All I feel is my hand grabbing her own, our fingers entwining. Our hearts find the same beat. I’m sure of it.
We kiss.
The music changes and we kiss.
Cars come to pick up our classmates and we kiss.
I’ve kissed a boy before, and Jess has kissed plenty. We both know what comes next; the wandering tongue, then the wandering hand, then the sex. I’ve always jumped ship before the last part, something always felt off.
And yet…
We just kiss.
This feels new, different, better.
The feel of our breaths mixing, heady with alcohol and weed. The feeling of closeness, safety, comfort. It is one or more or all of it.
Maybe it’s that for the first time, I’m kissing a girl. Maybe it’s that this girl is my friend. Maybe it’s just the drugs.
I hope not.
We break the kiss, I could have gone forever.
I snort when I see what a mess I’d made of her face. Jess does the same. I must look even worse.
Usually I care about that a lot. I do everything to look right, make sure I’m in order, and don't stick out badly. My parents make sure of it.
Right now though? I couldn’t care less.
“That was fun,” Jess says, as soon as she’s caught her breath from laughing.
“You really think so?” I ask, breathy.
“Yes,” she responds.
I bite my lip, I know her lipstick would be on my teeth now. “Do you want to do it again?” I ask quietly.
Jess grins, “Abso-fucking-lutely, lemme get some more alcohol and beer. If they can make kissing feel this good then more can only make it feel even more better.”
I can’t fault her logic. Though, something about her words make me shift uncomfortably.
I accept the next drink hoping the alcohol will wash away this new sorrow.
When Jess puts the joint in her mouth I put my hand over the lighter before she could take it.
“Let me,” I say.
“Go for it,” she responds, sticking out the joint for easier access.
The first time I’d just put the tips of my fingers on her face. This time I cup her cheek, and rub my thumb where it lays.
She does the same for me, I lean into the touch, closing my eyes and just existing.
I’m less aware of it all when we drop the smoked joints and kiss.
Less aware while we loop down the road, clinging to each other for support. Giggling all the way.
I don’t remember getting to Jess’ house. Only the warmth of her lips against mine. I remember putting my head to her chest to see if I could hear her heart while she called me a ‘complete dweeb.’ I remember her crying but I can’t remember why. Only that it’s the last memory of the night.
We wake up the next morning, feeling sick, heads sore, still in our homecoming dresses. We had to extract ourselves from each other, we were so entangled.
I don’t remember it all, everything after the fourth can is a blur filled with kissing and silly things that I’m not fully sure even happened.
It’s enough to mortify, enough to fill my face with heat when I look at her and steal the words - I think they’re apologies - from my throat.
She comes out of the shower while I’m still trying to formulate the apology. I’ve almost never seen Jess look scared, but she is frowning with clear worry and grabbing and releasing her towel in regular intervals.
She sits next to me on the bed, facing the wall. I do the same. All I see of her is dark purple in my peripheral vision.
“We kissed,” she states, “Last night, during homecoming.”
“We were very high. And drunk,” I offer her the out. It would be easy to just take it, never bring it up again. Except maybe when I was in my room alone at night. My breath quickens with a dark shame at the idea even as my chest thumps to a new beat.
“We were,” she agrees.
“Right,” I say.
“I remember enjoying it. Do you?” She asks.
“Um,” I vacillate. “Yes,” I say. “Because of the alcohol, and weed, and stuff,” I finish lamely.
Jess puts her hand on my own. I turn my head. She’s quietly contemplating me, her eyes on my lips.
“ Just the drugs?” Is all that she says.
My breath catches in my throat, something presses at my chest, pushes through me.
This isn’t how I thought this would go. I’d given her the easy out. She would take it, we’d be awkward for a bit, then things would just be normal again.
“Yes,” I lie.
“We could check,” she presses. Jess doesn’t look like herself, there is a manic light to her I’d almost never seen. “Only if you want to,” She hastily adds.
I must take too long to respond because she talks again. “It just… Kate I felt something last night. I’ve never felt that kissing anybody before. It’s not-“ she stops to find the words. “I don’t think it’s the thing I’m meant to feel, but it was good. I’ve never had that before.”
I swallow.
Oh.
“Okay,” I say, then I lean in, then we kiss again.
Somehow it’s even better than it was last night.
It’s softer, quicker. There isn’t the same charged energy. This is just comfort. Like a thousand hugs had been collected together and put between our lips. Something incredible that goes beyond pure feeling. Just pressing against each other and letting the feeling come through. I put my arm around her towel and she grabs my jaw with a featherlight touch and I die and go to a heaven that will never want me for doing this.
Jess is smiling slightly when we pull away. I’m almost too stunned to join, too drunk on the swell of feeling, the emotions pulling me far far away like I’d been caught in a riptide.
“How do you feel?” She asks. “I want to know exactly. Every detail.”
How do I feel?
“Um.” I could lie. The thought is like a stab to my chest. This could ruin everything, could dash our friendship upon the rocks.
This could be amazing.
“Good,” I say. “Very good. Like there’s lightning under my skin and an orchestra in my heart. My stomach feels sore, but, um, good sore? And-“ I don’t complete the sentence, but the redness of my face says the words for me.
Jess is quiet for the longest time. A dark weight settles on my chest the longer she’s quiet.
“I-'' she's quiet, almost too quiet to hear. “I’m happy, the same I feel always around you, but not like...” She makes a deliberate swallow. “Not like you are. There’s no butterflies in my stomach or electricity under my skin.”
My heart falls. Tears prickle at my eyes.
Fuck. Did I fuck it up?
She pulls her hand from mine and clasps her hands together in her lap.
“I thought… maybe it’d be different if it was you, you know?” She’s contemplative now, as though she’s just talking to herself. “I kiss all these guys and don’t feel shit, and maybe, if I’m just gay or something, I wouldn’t feel so…” she releases an explosive sigh. “Wouldn’t feel like I was quite as broken.”
I put my arms around her and pull Jess closer. Her head drops to my shoulder. Wet tears drop onto me.
“You’re not broken, darling,” I whisper.
“You just…” I flounder for a moment, looking for something to say. I run through the conversation in my head when something sticks out. “You said you liked the kiss right? It made you happy?”
“Not as happy as it made you. Sorry,” she apologizes. “I knew you had a crush on me.” What? “And I hoped that maybe I had a crush on you too and just didn’t realize.”
I open my mouth to argue but click it shut when I accept that she’s right. Sometime between last night and now I’ve realized that I’m desperately in love with Jess and have been for a long time.
“Don’t apologize,” I say. “What I meant was… when you kiss boys, do you feel the same?”
“No?”
“Ok, how did you feel when you kissed them?” I press on, gaining steam mentally. A tiny flicker of hope sprouts in my chest.
“Like. I don’t know, like nothing. Sometimes I’m grossed out if they have too many pimples or bad breath.” Jessica shifts to regard me with a teary eye.
“But this time you liked it, right? Was it more or less than say… hanging out or hugging?” I ask.
“More,” there’s a dangerous note of hope in her tone. “Not a lot more, but more.”
“So, would you want to do it again?” I breathe out. My hands are shaking with restrained excitement now.
“Yea,” she says simply. “But Kate, I don’t love you… like that. You’re saying we should date? I don’t know if I can do that. I’m sorry.” She ducks her head back down. I put a hand on her hair, I scratch her head in the spots I know she likes. “I don’t want to lead you on, or pretend, I don’t think I can love anybody.”
I bite my lip, pieces I’d never seen in my life were falling into place. I feel like some greater truth of life was assembling in front of me.
“You’re right,” I agree. “In a sense. You can’t love me romantically, but there’s other ways to love right?”
She nods.
“Then love me like that.” I demand.
“You should find somebody that loves you like you love them, babe. Not… whatever weird nerd love shit you’re constructing here,” Jess argues, but the heat is gone.
“Yea well, I don’t want ‘somebody,’ I want you,” I declare. “Whatever form that takes, it doesn’t matter.”
Jess lifts her head from my shoulder and stares at me.
“Sappy bitch,” she complains as her lips close on mine.
I’m too stunned to kiss her back. By the time I have my center she’s pulling back.
“Just friends?” She says, I can tell she’s juggling the idea in her head. I’m suggesting something completely crazy. What sort of person just kisses their friend? What sort of weird relationship alchemy are we doing here?
We’re going against everything we know, everything we see. Everything we have been told. It’s bad enough we’re both girls, this would be a step too far for anybody who found out.
“Friends,” I agree. “No just, I don’t care what anybody will say, friends is just as good as girlfriends,” I say it with enough steel I sort of start to believe it.
She pushes me down onto the bed and clamps her mouth on my own. Only sheer divine providence can explain how her towel stays on through the motion.
Evidently, she agrees.
Friends. I can do friends.
Friends that kiss?
Even better.