Work Text:
The sleeves of her coat flailing as she pulled it on, Janine burst out of the firehouse trying to put as much distance as possible between us. I am well over six feet tall and in possession of a much longer stride so I quickly defeated her efforts.
I caught her by the arm and both of us almost went sprawling on the icy sidewalk when she slapped my hands away. "Egon! You! YOU! I'm..." Incoherent with anger, she pointed her finger down the street, indicating clearly that she intended to leave. Oh, no. Not now. Not again.
"Janine, please." I reached up. She slapped my hands away. I slowly reached up again and hesitantly adjusted her skewed coat collar. She stepped back but I followed, twining my hands around the ends of her woolen Christmas scarf. It was a way of keeping contact without physically touching, and annoying, her. She continued to lean away from me and almost succeeded in asphyxiating herself. I loosened my hold somewhat. I'd waited years for this and she wasn't going to escape easily. "Please."
Glaring, she adjusted her glasses against the bandage on her temple and finally became still. She did not look me in the eyes, she fixated on the SPENGLER breast patch on my jumpsuit instead. Her confusion and anger made Janine seem very small and fragile but, having observed and been the participant in the Apocalyptic struggles that are wont to happen around the firehouse, I knew better. Still, I should be more gentle. The latest in a long string of volatile lab accidents had thrown her against the basement wall and she was still recovering.
It was so ironic that her more recent accident reversed the effects of the head injury she received from her FIRST lab explosion, years ago, a scant month after she first arrived at Ghostbuster's HQ. She had lost a week's worth of memory that time. Now she had gotten it back, and I...I was in deep shit, to use the vernacular.
I put my hands, comfortingly I hoped, on her shoulders. "It must be ...disorienting and...painful to finally regain a portion of your life you thought was long gone. I'm so sorry you're in pain."
She met my eyes at last and her recovered knowledge of me, the RECOGNITION of what we had had together and stupidly lost three years ago made me impervious to the wind and the cold of a New York Christmas. If it weren't for the shock, anger and confusion of her expression I could have sang.
"Why didn't you tell me, Egon?"
Ah. A loaded question. I recaptured the ends of her scarf and picked my words very carefully. "Janine, you were going to leave...us. You'd only been with Ghostbusters a little over a month and you didn't care for it at all. Non-stop work, low pay, slime and smoke and grunge everywhere. Dangerous entities attempting to destroy the world...you disliked Peter."
She was nodding her head, confirming my account and her own recovered memories. She became fascinated with my name-patch again. I continued, quietly, "You told me, then, that the only reason you were staying was because of me." I was unsure if she recalled everything fully. I, at least, remembered that day with crystal clarity. It was our first day together. Janine was unsure of the wisdom of entering into a physical relationship on such short acquaintance but I logically shot down her arguments. Why wait? It had felt so good, almost pre-ordained. Unfortunately, her misgivings were confirmed when I introduced her to my visiting father as 'Peter's secretary' less than a week later. I did not want to subject her to my shrewish father's involvement in our personal life but she saw it as snobbery. I explained and apologized but there was no interrupting her momentum. Janine was fed up and she informed me so as she packed up the personal items from her desk.
"When I made my stupid mistake you were out so quickly you didn't even stop to tell the others you were going. Then the explosion occurred."
"Egon," she interrupted, practically clenching her teeth with exasperation at me, or perhaps it was the cold, "please answer my question. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was on the rebound?" My joke fell very, very flat but it was better than wrapping my arms around her knees and crying. "Janine, I said nothing because...I simply didn't want you to go. Our week together had been wiped from your mind and we were, at least, friends again. You were staying. If I had given you the whole sordid story I would have lost you completely and I didn't have the strength."
She adjusted her cats-eye glasses against her bandage once more. Her head was throbbing with pain, I was sure, but she seemed calmer. She was listening anyway. "Whyyyy..." her voice broke. She swallowed and continued. "Why didn't you try again? All this time I've been chasing you."
Like a patient python I had ever-so-slowly hugged her closer to me and I answered as well as I could. "You were injured. I would never take advantage of you when you…you didn’t remember all the facts. I decided to maintain the status quo and hope for the best. I couldn’t love you again."
"Love me? Again?!" If I held her any closer she'd be behind me but Janine had yet to return any of my comfort or affection.
"Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. I can hardly say 'love you again' when I never stopped loving you in the first place."
Her breath left her in a ragged exhale and she shook her head against my chest. I could not imagine the difficulty she was having making sense of the sudden re-organization of one of her closest inter-personal relationships. I had said all I could. I felt as if I were wrapped around a parking meter she was so unyielding and I was beginning to despair.
She breathed in again and very slowly brought her arms up to pat me awkwardly, almost timidly, on the back. "Janine, I AM sorry I didn't introduce you properly to my father." I cautiously held her tighter then relaxed instantly.
She waited a moment and then returned my hug, briefly. "I know you're sorry, Egon, and, well, knowing what I know about you now…and about your dad…I understand."
"He truly didn't deserve to know you."
She hesitated, then flipped her hair back from her eyes in a queenly superior motion. “I know it. But don't you ever deny me again."
I fully realized the extent of the hurt I had inflicted. "I won't. I promise. We're still friends?"
She mulled my question over a moment before relaxing completely into my arms, laughing. "Yes. Oh God, Egon, after all we've been through together, of course we're still friends!"
I grinned like a maniac. Her hair smelled like cinnamon and pine, like Christmas. We were only friends now but someday...someday very soon, perhaps, at last, we’d be so much more...suddenly she laughed again. "After all we’ve done together, been there and done that, I can't believe how embarrassed I was when you walked in on me in the bathroom last month."
It was my turn to laugh. A little reckless with relief I jabbed her at the base of her spine, where I knew she was horribly, terribly ticklish. Surprised, Janine shrieked and retaliated, jabbing her long fingernails into my ribs, something she finally remembered I could never stand.
We laughed ourselves out, even though it pained her. She seemed tired, too. I took her hands. "You'll come home, now?" I indicated the firehouse behind us and we both looked up just in time to see three spying degenerates duck away from the second story window. Their breath left three foggy patches on the glass and Janine and I cracked up again.
She gave my hands a squeeze. I was overjoyed. All those years of waiting, waiting, waiting. Done. "Yeah, Egon. Let's go home."
Suddenly, I laughed again. When she looked up at me curiously I made the observation that would earn me a fistful of snow down my collar and the delight of being chased back inside.
"I knew you'd come crawling back to me."
End