Archive of Our Own

Bette

It was a beautiful Tuesday: bright, sunny, but slightly windy, so she could enjoy the sun without getting too warm. She had decided to walk from the gallery to the park instead of taking the car. It was a good 30 minutes, but it gave her time to admire the beautiful shades and colors of spring. 

It reminded her of Tina. 

Maybe it was silly, but she couldn't help but trace everything she saw back to art and back to Tina. Her two loves. Both halves of her heart. Tina Kennard had been the biggest surprise of her life. No one had ever made her stop in her tracks before, no one had ever made her forget her words, but there was something about the blonde, a kind of gravity that pulled at Bette's will, bending it and pulling it toward the magnetic force that was Tina's orbit.

She was helpless. She was always meant to fall.

The spring reminded her of Tina's smile: her rosy lips curving gently with a smile so warm it made flowers bloom as she passed. The little dimples in her chin, which made her fingers want to trace the little indentations so desperately, reminded her of Heliconia Stricta (1). 

Tina was like spring, bright and colorful, but she was also like fall: constantly changing, leaf by leaf, always evolving. She inspired Bette to be better, to be more, to discover something new about herself with every interaction.

She was the muse of Bette’s desires.

But Tina...Tina was also like winter: she had seen her mad, gelid, cold as the Antarctic weather. Never towards her, thank God, but towards some of her boyfriends and later the few women Bette knew she had had affairs with. She had seen how she stormed through their hearts like a hurricane, leaving nothing alive in her wake. And it scared her as much as it thrilled her. 

She remembered each of the women's names, branded in her heart as the most painful reminder that Tina had chosen other women instead of her. Anyone but her. Anyone but Bette. 

But then again, maybe the seasons were not meant to be caged by anyone. Maybe...Horae was always meant to be free, and Bette had always been a selfish woman, she wanted to own. To possess. She had always been like that, even as a child.

Maybe she was selfish by blood.

When they met, Bette never expected to make such a connection with this random blonde - the plus one of one of her inversionists - but she did. Oh, had she ever. That first meeting had led to hours of talking well into the night. And Tina had dropped Eric in the blink of an eye, dismissing him as if he had never meant anything at all. Forgotten him between whispers, like an afterthought. 

That was the first time she saw the coldness that could come from Tina. The first time she thought about loving the snow. But then, Tina had almost always been like summer with Bette: blinding and all-consuming. The heat of her being burned into Bette's soul, changing the basic strands of her DNA until there was not a single cell in her body that was not branded with her name.

And the changes went deep into the core of who she was: Bette had always been a collector, but she had never wanted to be a painter more than when she met Tina Kennard. The blonde's eyes were not something to keep in a museum for everyone to see and then forget, they were something to worship. Bette wanted to paint every strand of her being, to immortalize the awe-inspiring sweetness she embodied. Her chest used to tighten at the thought of never being able to portray such things. But then she realized that there was no normal medium that could truly portray her. 

And so Tina inspired her to innovate, to push the boundaries of what she knew about art. To find new ways to express her feelings in painting, in sculpture, in any way that art could give her. 

Tina had given her things she could never begin to thank her for.

She smiled to herself before sitting on a small park bench with a different coffee in each hand - black in one, half and half in the other - waiting for Tina to arrive. 

Tina, who was her friend. Only ever her friend. 

God, it hurt so much she could barely breathe. 

She was still lost in her thoughts when she felt a familiar shiver run down her spine before she noticed a gentle tap on her shoulder.

"Penny for your thoughts," Tina said, and Bette's breath caught in her lungs. Tina's head was tilted to the side and forward, looking down in a gesture so adorable that Bette struggled not to kiss her. The sun reflected off her hair, giving her an aura that made her look angelic.

She would burn down cities for this woman.

"Just daydreaming about your beauty, T." She replied cheekily, adding a wink at the end. 

It started as a genuine effort to charm the blonde, but now, after almost two years of friendship, she flirted without any kind of hidden agenda, just to try to compliment the blonde in all the ways she wanted to but couldn't. And Tina always flirted back, laughing happily, her cheeks flushed. 

But today something was... different. Tina wasn't laughing as usual and the alarms went off in Bette's brain. The blonde's cheeks blushed and a determined look settled on her eyes for a second before she spat out a forced laugh and a choked out "you flirt".

With shaking hands, Tina brushed a strand from her face.

Bette's heartbeat reached a new level and for a second she wondered if she was having a heart attack. Tina couldn't know about her feelings, right? She wasn't being so weird because she didn't know how to reject her, was she? Surely she was good at hiding her feelings. Everyone told her so. So Tina couldn't know. 

She couldn't. She couldn't. 

"Is... everything okay, T?" Bette asked carefully. 

Tina bit her lower lip before looking at her, something unreadable in her eyes. "I... it's nothing, is that coffee for me?"

Bette's hands were sweating. "Of course it's for you."

Tina's smile brightened at that, and Bette felt something loosen in her chest. Maybe it had nothing to do with her, maybe it had something to do with... "Is something wrong with you and Helena? Did you have a fight?"

Tina and Helena had been hooking up for months. They had all met at a party and Helena had taken an instant liking to Tina - which Bette really couldn't blame her for - and Tina had quickly and intensely fallen into a strange dynamic with her. They were friends, but they hooked up exclusively. And then they didn't, and then they did, and honestly, Bette couldn't keep up with their escapades - in truth, she didn't want to. 

Tina frowned, "Helena and I are just friends, Bette, you know that."

Bette cringed to hear her name come out of the blonde's mouth, she was used to always being addressed as "B". "Sure," she replied skeptically. 

Tina's frown deepened, "I'm serious, we haven't been together for two or three months. We're better off as friends, just friends."

She had heard the same from Tina hundreds of times. Not just about Helena, but about most of her relationships. Tina fell hard and fast, but she got over people just as fast. Which was weird, Tina didn't really like casual, she was a romantic at heart, and Bette knew she wanted stability above all else, but somehow she kept dropping relationship after relationship.

"Okay T, I believe you." She smiled, hoping to convey sincerity in her face, but Tina's trembling mouth betrayed her. She didn't believe her. 

"I mean it." Tina looked like an angry puppy when she was angry, and Bette tried hard not to laugh. She knew she should be grateful for that kind of anger, the blonde never really got mad at her, so she only ever saw that version of Tina, the cute anger instead of the frosty one.

"Okay." She repeated. 

"B...I mean it," Bette couldn't understand why the blonde was so upset. They had talked like this before, covering the same topics a hundred times. 

"Tina, I don't know what else to say, I believe you, really," and she did. But she didn't want to believe too much. Tina was stabbing knives into her still too tender heart that held out hope that there could be a them. But she didn't want to read too much into this vehemence about not being in a relationship and the overall strange attitude.

"I don't think you do, and I need you to believe it," Tina reached out with a trembling hand to grab her elbow, squeezing slightly, trying to convey something. 

"I do."

"No, you don't!" The blonde's hand let go of Bette's arm and shot up to grab the blonde's hair in desperation.

"Why are you getting mad at me? It's your business and you know I like Helena a lot more than your other exes." She did. Helena and she actually had a tentative friendship based on a reticent admiration and affection for Tina. 

"Helena is not my ex."  

It was the strangest conversation they'd had in months.

"You know what I mean." Bette took a step forward, and immediately Tina took a step back, huffing.  "No, I don't."

"Tina, why are you being so difficult today? I don't want to argue with you."

The blonde's hand clenched into a fist and she bit her lip.  "I... I'm not trying to be difficult, I don't want to fight either. I just..."

"You just what?" She took another step forward, this time Tina didn't move.

"I just want you to have a say."

Bette's heart stuttered in her chest. "To have a say? In what?" 

"In... you know," she looked up at her, something beautiful shining in her eyes, and Bette failed to contain the hope that blossomed in her chest. 

"What, in who you hook up with? I mean, I guess I already did, I'm trying to offer you the best advice I could." She knew she was being dense on purpose, but if this conversation was going to go the way she thought - she hoped, she dreamed, she prayed - she needed to hear Tina say it. She had to take the lead. 

"You don't understand me! God, you can be so frustrating." 

"Tina..." She didn't think she'd ever seen Tina so angry. 

"You...you're so frustrating. Are you being deliberately obtuse?" 

"I...I don't know what's going on Tina, let's take a step back and talk about something else, shall we?" 

"I don't want to talk about anything else!" The blonde stomped her foot and Bette nearly automatically smiled. 

"But I do," she replied softly.

"But I don't! Damn it, Bette, if you want to reject me, just do it directly." 

She felt like a bomb had gone off in her chest. "If I want to...what?"

"You heard me! If you want to reject me, at least have the balls to do it directly, don't change the subject." Tina's words were angry, but her voice was all wrong, wavering and cracking, her eyes flushed with unshed tears.

"I... what's happening?" She muttered, mostly to herself, but Tina heard her.

"Bette, come on, I'm tired of this, I just... I want to know. I want to know how you feel about me."

This had to be a dream. Right? 

"I..."

"Am I just your friend? Have I been imagining this all along?"

"Tina, what are you saying?" The desperation in her voice seemed to ignite something inside the blonde, because as soon as the words left her mouth, Tina's eyes sparkled.

"I'm....I'm saying that I love you Bette, I'm saying that I've been in love with you for two years and I'm tired of pretending that I'm not. And if you... if you don't love me back, I need you to tell me so I can move on, I don't want to lose you, ever, but I need to know so I can at least start letting go of the part of me that's still hoping that you could ever..." She started strong, but trailed off shyly at the end. 

"Tina..." She began. 

"Just say it Bette"

"I love you."

Tina squeezed her eyes shut in pain, "Thanks, I just had to... what?"

The shock on the blonde's face was so obvious that she would have laughed if she hadn't wanted to cry. God, she wanted to cry with relief. 

"I love you, God, I love you, I love you."

She took one last step forward and cradled Tina's face with both hands. 

"What?"

"Were we really so blind? Tina...I love you so much, so much, I had...I had given up hope of ever..." 

Of ever having you. Of ever being with you. Of ever...having the life I've always dreamed of. Of ever being truly happy.

"Really?" Tina's hand settled on Bette's waist, squeezing lightly but desperately. They were always like that, an oximoron of emotions. Gentle but rough. Shy but desperate. 

"Tina...I can even begin to explain how I..." How I dreamed of this. "I've had a torturous love affair with you ever since I met you, I think I didn't understand love until I was in love with you. I thought... I believed that maybe... maybe we weren't meant to be, that you could never love me back, but I didn't care. You were it for me. You are it."

"Bette..." She whispered.

"I think maybe...maybe I have loved you all my life. Maybe the beginning of my existence began when my atoms interacted with yours, maybe our touch was the beginning of a lifetime of galactic successes that determined every single step I ever took. Perhaps it was always you, in some way, shape or form." Her voice trembled. She wanted to say so much. "Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just a pathetic, desperate romantic who's been in love with you since she first realized what love meant. Maybe we are not meant to be. Maybe it's not some grand design...but I don't care. For me it is. It is to me. And I believe in it so much that it has to be real, otherwise why would I ever feel this way?"

She wanted to cry. Or scream. Or something to let out the feelings that were swirling inside her. 

But Tina was looking at her like that and just…"Bette...I, we need to talk about this, I want to know how long..." She trailed off, "but first...first just kiss me."

She smiled and tightened the grip she had on Tina's face, gently bringing their lips together. 

Finally.