Chapter Text
Yor always had a feeling of performing when she was with other people. She tried to smile and disappear when they started talking about common things she didn't know. She was used to not knowing what they were talking about. She'd always been too busy and tired to keep up with news and current events. Her life hadn't led her to really have friends, as such. The closest she had were her coworkers.
She always felt like she was behind. It reminded her of showing up to class without having read the most recent assignments, or with days or weeks of absences, and the way she was shamefully singled out by teachers. She felt like film held in place until the light seared it through and it flicked apart under their searing social eyes.
Camilla was beautiful, blonde, and always poised. Sharon had dark hair and sharp eyes, glasses that she could perch on her nose and give the most condescending looks. Millie had short reddish-brown hair, and she was always the most cheerful. Yor felt that Millie liked her, and things with Millie were normally easier. Less stiff, at least.
Yor hadn't said or done anything that had embarrassed herself yet today, and that was nice. She had felt her social status change after Loid had mistakenly told them she was his husband at a work party. She had gone from a strange unwed woman who might have to worry about the police to a married woman who was almost contemptibly private.
They were talking about a dear friend of Camilla's, whom Yor thought exclusively had dear friends, whose husband had an affair.
"From what I heard, they were living with a dead bedroom," Camilla offered with the tone of a the poor dear.
Yor thought about the death of a bedroom... how would a bedroom even die? Perhaps a housefire? She'd heard water seeping into the flooring would ruin a home, but was it death if it could be fixed?
"Men are just like tricky door handles. You have to play with them a little to get them to work," Millie said, and the others giggled.
Yor thought about that, too. Loid had always gone to work on his own. Maybe games only had to be involved if there weren't children in the home? She didn't understand the correlation, so she tucked it away for later.
"I mean, I don't know what Eva was thinking... Men have needs, you know?" Camilla said assertively. She always sounded very knowledgeable about these things.
She said they had knees? Everyone usually had knees. It wasn't exactly common for her to have a woman target, but the occasion did arise, and the had certainly been able to generalize the anatomy between them.
"Doesn't everyone have knees?" Yor asked, and she started to redden when three pairs of eyes came to her.
"Why, Yor, is *that* how you landed a psychiatrist?" Camilla asked.
The others giggled, and Yor wished she'd just kept typing. Usually she did after she tried to involve herself.
"Yor is right, women have needs, too," Sharon said. Yor heard the '*d*' much more articulated when Sharon said it, and she was grateful they seemed to have misunderstood her. It didn't stop the blush creeping further into her face, though.
"You don't want to just lie there and starfish," Millie said. It felt important, like information to have, but Yor really didn't understand the nautical turn the conversation had taken.
"What does starfish mean?" She asked, and the three turned on her like the glaring light over a dentist's chair.
"It means just being lazy and not participating. No man wants to sleep with a pillow princess," Camilla said, and rolled her eyes.
Yor had unfortunate animations of something very tooth fairy-esque in her mind, but she followed her gut this time and kept typing. If they'd said either pillow or princess, she would have been on firmer ground. This wasn't the first time they had used words that she recognized in an order that made them alien to Yor.
Whatever that was, she would have to find out discretely. She didn't want to draw even more attention to herself.
She picked up the few things on their shopping list and walked home hugging the large paper bag. These were things that the household needed, and Loid was part of the household... did it need to be things that only Loid needed? Camilla had very specifically said men.
When she came home, Loid was already there, and that sharp look he got when he was lost in thought brightened into friendliness when she came in. He did his usually polite greeting, and she smiled, still feeling a nervous tension when she set the bag on the counter.
"You're home early," Yor said kindly, and then took a breath and waited. "Uhm, Loid... is there anything you need? ... Manly things, maybe, that I wouldn't think of?"
The look he got of trying to decode her made her start to redden slowly. If she'd been a tea kettle, she would have been working up a whistle. As it stood, she might end up squeaking.
"I just, uhm, I don't mean to be a starfish. I want to pull my weight," Yor said, and she couldn't look at the face he made about it.
She'd said something wrong or stupid, and she knew it. Why was it that people were always saying strange words and it was understood, but she always managed to choke on the same things?
She imagined Loid laughing at her incompetence. He never did, but the image usually helped her quiet down.
"You know, just, write it down if there's something you're missing and I will make sure to take care of it," she added, as if adding more to it would erase it or make her seem less behind.
Why did this never seem to get even a little easier?