Work Text:
Raquel just came home from work, it wasn’t a particularly busy day at the beginning, but then near the end there were suddenly so many things that needed to be finished, that needed to be finished that day. That caused her to need to stay a little longer. Alicia fortunately didn’t have it so busy, so she was the one to pick Paula up today.
The moment she opened the door she heard the music of Cri Cri blasting through the speakers – the favourite music of her six year old daughter. Raquel had grown tired of the music since Paula insisted on playing it almost all day every day, so Raquel tried to let her play it as little as possible, to protect her own well being, to not have to fight off the songs that would inevitably get stuck in your head while trying to fall asleep. But Alicia let Paula play it a lot of the time. Even though Alicia claimed she did not enjoy that music a lot, she always happily sang along with the music.
The smiles on her daughter’s and girlfriend’s faces always made up for all of the trouble falling asleep because of the music.
But this time she only heard one happy voice singing the lyrics, her daughter’s. The sound coming out of the living room.
Then Raquel heard a irritated voice coming out of their bedroom, “Where is it? I can’t find it.” Words in a lower volume followed, barely coming out above the music. “Shit, shit, shit”
The lower volume of the last words were to keep Paula from hearing those words. Alicia had a bad habit of cursing in the past, which she tried to get rid off the last years, so Paula wouldn't start to use that vocabulary. But sometimes it was hard to fight the urge to curse, so she would simply keep the volume down.
Raquel slid her coat of her body and hung it on the coat rack, and kicked her shoes off, not bothering to put them straight in the shoe closet.
The moment she entered the bedroom, she saw Alicia sitting on her knees in front of their closet, all of the drawers were pulled out by Alicia, and half of the contents scattered on the floor. Alicia hadn’t noticed that Raquel was home yet. So took Raquel took the chance to watch her for a moment, not because she didn’t want to help her, but because she couldn’t resist looking a bit longer how beautiful she looked. Her long orange locks tied up in a half fallen out ponytail, her bangs perfectly framing her face, some hairs of them sticking up. The green sweater that was originally Raquel’s but that Alicia had stolen hanging partly off one of her shoulders, revealing Alicia’s collarbone with the constellation of freckles.
After seconds of looking Raquel said, “Dear, what are you looking for?”
That was when Alicia head quickly turned in Raquel’s direction, and pushed in reflex the drawer shut that she was searching through. Her pupils taking over her whole iris, her fair skin turned red.
“Nothing” the word said in the shortest way possible. An unconscious decision too sound less like she was hiding something, only the effect on Raquel was the quite opposite. It was quite obvious Alicia was hiding something, and hadn’t realised Raquel had come home already.
Raquel looked at Alicia with suspicious eyes, squeezing her lids a bit together.
The moment she wanted to ask her girlfriend what she is hiding, Raquel heard Paula asking, “Alicia, did you find it? I can’t find it.” while hopping towards the bedroom.
The moment she could look through the door opening she saw her mom standing there. And fastened her pace from hopping to running, so she could hug Raquel faster. “Mom, I missed you”
It was almost immediately that Raquel caught Paula in her arms and lifted her into a tight embrace, Paula’s body wrapped as a monkey baby around her torso. She whispered in her hair, “I missed you too, sunshine.”
Then after a while Raquel straightened her neck so she could see Alicia sitting on the ground again. “What important thing is lost, that is so important to turn the whole house upside down?” She said with a smile.
Paula lifted her head from Raquel’s neck to look her in her eyes. She answered in a mischievous way with a big smile on her face, “We can’t say. It is Alicia’s secret.”
The smile on her daughter’s face was way too cute. The smile was one that she only got when she felt proud, proud that she was the one that was let on the secret, but that she got to keep it from her mother together with Alicia.
She teased her daughter; “Oh, big girl, you’re keeping secrets from me now?” Shifting Paula’s weight on one arm, so she could prick Paula with one finger on her chest.
Paula nodded her head proudly.
“Okay, now you go back on the ground.” Setting Paula down. She was getting quite big now, not too heavy to lift up yet, but when having to hold her for longer periods, you definitely started to feel it in your arms. “Now I will interrogate Alicia.” Paula immediately ran back to the living room, probably to play with her Playmobil dolls making them dance on the Cri Cri music that was still playing. According to Paula the Playmobil dolls are the biggest fans on the whole world of that music.
The slight shock on Alicia’s face had disappeared now, now her face had her signature smile on it, knowing full well that Raquel didn’t like it when things were kept from her, especially when knowing that a secret was being kept from her.
Raquel sat down on the floor next to Alicia. Raquel’s arm immediately sliding around her, “What were you–“
The words got cut off by Alicia who quickly pressed her lips on Raquel’s, keeping her deep in the kiss by also sliding on hand on her cheek and the other at the back of her head, like a safety belt – to make sure she wouldn’t go anywhere.
It did not take long before Raquel completely melted in the kiss. All the tension from work completely disappeared. God, she loved Alicia so much, being always there for her. The kiss made her totally forget about whatever Alicia was hiding just seconds ago.
The kiss naturally ended, but they both kept leaning with their foreheads again eachother, arms still wrapped around eachother. Then Alicia whispered, while both of them still had their eyes closed, “You weren’t even going to give me a proper hello.”
That was when Raquel was reminded what had just occurred, the first second she had seen that reaction of Alicia she thought it was a bad thing was happening. In her last relationship whenever Alberto hid stuff from her it was because he didn’t respect her enough, and when she had to hide stuff from him it was because she was scared, scared of him. Both of those she doesn’t ever want in a relationship again, not for herself and not for her Alicia.
But after seeing Alicia teaming up with her daughter, she knew this was not a bad thing, far from it, it was a fun surprise. Not that that wouldn’t stop her from overthinking it. Raquel knew that all the lies that were told in her last relationship were still deeply ingrained in her, and knew that she would have to keep telling herself that when Alicia had surprises for her, they weren’t bad. They were a sign of love.
“I was going to, but first I want to know what you’re hiding–.”
Alicia pushed herself again in a kiss with Raquel, but this time Raquel pulled back just after the moment Alicia’s lipstick stained lips crashed on hers. Raquel said while laughing, “What are you doing, Alici–”
Again Alicia did the same, crashed her lips on Raquel’s cutting off the words that came from those very same lips. This time let Alicia longer, allowing herself to enjoy the kiss this time. Then Raquel pulled back again, again asking what Alicia was doing.
Alicia’s eyes were filled with a familiar mischief, “I just didn’t get a proper hello.” Putting on a pretend sad face, her lips pouting. It was not convincing at all, because she had to hold her laugh in, which got in the way of the pouting face.
It made Raquel laugh out loud. The way Alicia failed so bad at making a proper sad face. It was funny.
“Then you tell me your secret?”
“I might.” The pout turned into a smile again.
“You might?”
“Yes, I might.” The smile widening even more.
Raquel shook her head, “No, that is not good enough. I need to hear that secret. Promise me”
“Okay, okay, then I’ll tell you my secret.” Alicia wrapped her hands around Raquel’s waist so she could shift her closer to her over the ground. “But after a proper hello.”
Raquel laughed again. She loved stubborn Alicia who put her mind on a kiss. She did not care that they already shared a mind-overtaking kiss.
Raquel straightened her posture, while Alicia still had her hands resting on her waist, Raquel tried to put a more serious look on her face. Then she moved her hands over to Alicia’s cheeks, gently framing her face, one of her thumbs caressing over her cheek.
“Hello, the love of my life, I missed you so, so much at work while there were only a few walls in between us. I can’t explain how much I missed you.” Raquel was struggling to keep up the straight face she tried so hard to maintain, while looking Alicia deeply in her eyes. “It was so hard to see you leave work earlier than me while I had to work overtime and had to miss your silence presence at the police station.”
She moved her lips slowly to Alicia’s lips. At first she moved her lips while barely touching Alicia’s. It felt ticklish on the lips, so much so that a shiver went through Alicia’s body. Right after the shiver Alicia pressed herself deeper in the kiss, needing to feel Raquel deeply.
This kiss went on longer than the first kiss that they had shared after Raquel had come home, and while the first kiss was more to ground eachother, this one was exploratory, their hands roaming freely over eachother’s bodies. Alicia shifting her body from sitting kneeling on the ground to straddling Raquel. Making something in Raquel heat up, which got even worse the moment Alicia slid her hands over her shoulders, under her blazer and into her shirt, making random patterns on her bare back.
Raquel’s hands instinctively went to Alicia’s butt and pulled her even closer to her own body, the pressure between their two bodies increasing.
But then, reality came back into Raquel’s mind. They were sitting on the bedroom floor, door open with a seven year old girl singing along with songs in the living room, late in the day without having had dinner yet. And even though she wanted this to continue, even though her body and heart screamed her to continue, they couldn’t continue this further right now, they had to save this for later tonight.
Raquel slowly moved her head out of the kiss, head still completely taken over with the kiss, pupils wide, and the room felt different than it normally did. Bigger somehow, maybe it was the fact that they made out in front of the closet, a place they somehow never tried before, or maybe it was just the kiss, taking over both of their worlds.
Raquel started in a raspy voice, “Maybe, we should continue this after dinner?” By that also meaning after Paula was asleep, so the chance of them being disrupted was as small as possible. Even then it happened sometimes, but fortunately Paula knew that should’t just walk in, that she should either knock or call their names before coming in, if that wasn’t the case that would have made some embarrassing situations, probably traumatic for Paula.
Alicia moved one hand to the back of Raquel’s head to make sure she said close, close enough that she could still feel her breath, her goosebump inducing breaths. “Just a little bit longer?” she quietly begged.
“We’ll continue later” she said softly matching Alicia’s volume, but with a firm certainty.
There they stayed for a long second. This silence was more fragile than a kiss could ever be, a special kind of intimacy, fragile, knowing that wasn’t a given thing for everybody, that it is something that had to be earned together.
Raquel was the one to break the silence, “You promised me something. You’d tell me that secret.”
“I don’t have active memories of that.”
“You’ve had a proper hello, with a quite mind-blowing kiss, if I said so myself, so now I get to hear that secret.”
“I kind of hoped you would forget.” She admitted, then a moment came where she had to search for the right words, or it seemed like that, because she wasn’t planning on telling Raquel the truth, it was supposed to be a surprise and stay that way. She was thinking of something else to tell her, another secret to try and make her forget about this one.
“Do you remember Julián Garcia?”
A tint of confusion came onto Raquel’s face, “You mean the hot exchange student who was doing a criminology minor, that Julián?”
“Yes, that Julián. You remember how obsessed you were with him?”
“What has this to do with our closet?”
This was exactly what Alicia was hoping Raquel would forget, by trying to tell her a story she vowed back then to never tell Raquel, back then she would have murdered Alicia for what she had done. Now things were different, now she was the one that was straddling her on the ground on their bedroom floor, and Raquel wasn’t the one that was trying to do that to Julián.
“I’m telling you my secret, you wanted to hear that, right?”
“Yes, I remember how obsessed I was with him, and telling you all about him.” Her eyes teasingly lit up at the last part. Alicia told her about how she felt in college about Raquel, at the time they used to hook up regularly. And while Alicia was the one that insisted that everything that happened between them was casual, she always felt jealous when Raquel did things with other people, especially when they were men, because she felt like she could never live up to them, could never give her the same as them. She didn’t have words for it back then, but looking back at it, that was what she felt.
Now Alicia knows better, she knows now that she loves Raquel, more than anyone in this world, back then she had never considered that she could love Raquel. Alicia knew she liked men, like she was supposed to, and could be happy with them, very happy, like with Germán for more than 8 years, of those 5 married. But it was only somewhat more than 3 years ago that she realised that she also could love women, and how much of a fool she was for not figuring that out before, and only because she was afraid, afraid of accepting that she was different from the version she had of herself in her head, and with that hurting Raquel in the process.
Because their hook ups turned into something what from the outside looked like a relationship, dinner dates, never sleeping alone – always one staying over at the other’s place, public affection – the never ending arms wrapped around each other, and the occasional kiss in public, but they themselves never put a label on it. The moment Raquel asked, it all fell apart, because Alicia couldn’t accept her feeling, her feelings of love for Raquel, even when Raquel confessed her feelings of love to Alicia first.
She blamed it on Raquel, on her wanting more, on her developing feelings when it was supposed to be casual, easy. She started blaming society, for pushing on labels on every situation, every relationship, but for years she never blamed herself for losing Raquel. Losing the relationship that they could have kept right then, instead of having to restart all those years later.
Only after Germán’s death, and Raquel’s divorce with Alberto she started blaming herself for all of that. For all the years that they lost together, in which Raquel fell into an abusive relationship, which could have been prevented if Alicia just knew what her feelings were back then. She knows that she wouldn’t have had the beautiful years with Germán – the man who loved her till his death, and whom she will love for the rest of her live. But she could have saved her other love – the love that developed earlier – she could have saved her from a terrible man
Alicia continued her confession about Julián Garcia, “I told him that you were gay, and that he probably shouldn’t pursue you.”
Raquel remembers how hard it was to flirt with him, he just wouldn’t flirt back, and that while he was known to flirt with anybody and everybody, but at the same time he didn’t go to bed with people. She wasn’t trying to have anything serious with him, but he was hot, so she was up for the challenge to take him to bed, since the reputation was that he didn’t do that.
Only after a lot of effort, and really making it clear to him that she was into him, had they their first kiss in a bar, which was always crowded with a lot of students. It was weird to her at the time, because she would catch him staring at her in class a lot of the time. After a few more drunk bar kisses, drunk on her part, he usually sober, she finally managed him to take her home, home to his bed.
“But he slept with me anyways.”
That is where the real confession came, the first thing she told him was relatively harmless in comparison to the second one, “But he never slept with you a second time.”
Raquel got a confused look on her face, “Why didn’t he sleep with me a second time?” It was something that she wanted back then. She had enjoyed the first time, he was good, really good and he kept showing interest for a couple of days, but then suddenly after about 4 days, he completely stopped talking to her, started avoiding her all together. She didn’t think to much of it back then, but now Alicia brings it up, it was really strange.
“I told him you had crabs.” she spit out.
Raquel stared at Alicia for a second. It was a mix of confusion and something else. It was something no one would have come up with but Alicia. It was such an Alicia thing to do. She could already picture her walking up to him and telling him that, and knowing Alicia, she would have done it going straight to the point, no small talk, nothing to soften the fall, just; “Did you know Raquel had crabs.” Probably some context after it to make her claim believable, but nothing more than necessary. Pure directness.
“That’s not cool”
“I thought it was pretty funny. You should have seen his face after I told him.” Alicia let out a snort, finding herself hilarious.
Raquel didn’t know if she found this hilarious, or felt slightly disrespected by what Alicia did all those years ago. “Oh, I saw his face when he started avoiding me. I thought I just had said something wrong, but now I hear he was convinced I had crabs, because some lady was jealous of him.”
Alicia laughed, “I can’t imagine who that lady was. It was not me. I was never jealous of him.” Alicia put a strand of hair behind Raquel’s ear. “I think he should be jealous of me. I have been sleeping with the woman in question for almost 3 years now.” She grinned.
“Still the question is what has this to do with our closet.” Alicia should have known better to talk around it, because it never works with Raquel.
She decided to tell Raquel the truth, “Absolutely nothing. I just wanted a kiss from you.” She grinned and stood up from Raquel’s lap, but before Alicia was able to walk away Raquel also quickly stood up and stopped Alicia from walking away by grabbing Alicia’s sweater. Because Raquel grabbed the soft knit, the fabric got pulled even more from Alicia’s shoulder, revealing more skin.
“You’re not getting away that easily. That wasn't our agreement.”
“It was. I would tell you my secret. And this was something I vowed myself I would never tell you.” She said with that annoying smirk on her face.
That was when Raquel took a step in Alicia’s direction, wrapping her hands around her waist, pulling her close. Then she begged with the biggest puppy eyes, “Please, tell me.”
It was difficult not to fall for those eyes. She had the same eyes as her daughter. Alicia was never able to not give in when they used their puppy eyes. Paula was smart. She knew that Alicia would do virtually anything when she put those up, and tried the things she was not allowed from her mom by Alicia, hoping she would fall for those.
But knowing she really needed to keep this a secret for Raquel, she said, “Just trust me when I say it is more fun if I keep it a surprise.”
“You mean for you?” Raquel said with squinted eyes, slightly exaggerating the annoyance of her girlfriend keeping something from her.
“For you” she corrected. It really is more fun if Raquel doesn’t know what she is planning, although she also enjoyed keeping this from Raquel. It would only take two weeks before Raquel would see what the surprise was, when the two of them would go a long weekend away to Plage Port-Vieux de Biarritz. One of Raquel’s favourite places in the world. Really close to the place where Raquel had grown up and the place where they went on their first vacation together – back then they were a lot younger, still at the academy, years before got together, well officially. They kind of had a situation back then – a complicated one. “You will see it soon enough. I promise.”
“I don’t like surprises.” This time the tone honest. Raquel wasn’t acting this. This was Raquel being honest, needing comfort.
Alicia pulled Raquel’s right curtain bang behind her ear, it was too short to stay there, she knew that, but fidgeting with her bangs was one of Alicia’s favourite things to do. She repeated the motion a multiple times while saying, “I can say this, the surprise will happen when we go to the Basque country, and I promise you that you will love it.”
“You don’t know if I’ll love it.”
Alicia was planning to propose to Raquel. They had discussed getting married, Raquel was really enthusiastic about it, but also understood that it was heavier for Alicia to get married again. Her first marriage ended against her will, and that still felt raw at times. Alicia wanted to feel fully ready before tying the knot. Now it was half a year later, and Alicia felt ready to take that step with Raquel. So she decided to surprise Raquel at Plage Port-Vieux de Biarritz with asking her there. It felt like the perfect place to do it.
She had also considered to keep the trip a secret for her, and only tell her just before leaving that they were going somewhere, but knowing the difficulties Raquel still sometimes had with surprises, she decided to not keep that from her. There was only a slight problem; Alicia hid the ring she had bought somewhere, a place she knew Raquel wouldn't likely look, but she forgot where she had put it. Today when Alicia came home, it hit her that she didn't exactly know where the ring was. Although full panic hadn’t washed over her yet – she had still two weeks to find it – she did go on a search party for the ring, which she had also recruited Paula for.
“Yes, I do, because I know you. Just don’t overthink it.” Alicia placed a quick kiss on Raquel’s mouth who didn’t react immediately to it.
Then Alicia asked Raquel, “So then is the question, what are we going to eat? Pasta pesto, tortilla, or a surprise?”
She answered quickly, “Definitely tortilla”
“Not the surprise option?” Knowing Raquel had had enough surprises today.
Raquel shook her head, knowing that Alicia was just teasing her.
Alicia smiled, “Okay, then I’ll put this all back into our closet.” Pointing to the mess that she had made. “Then I’ll make tortilla, and you will sit down and do whatever you want. You deserve it for working so hard.”
“Can you do one thing more?”
“Anything”
“Can you make Paula turn of the awful Cri Cri music. If I ask her she will just think I am an old buzzkill.”
“Of course.” she answered with a reassuring smile. Sometimes it still felt weird that on some occasions her words held more power to Paula than Raquel’s, when Raquel was the one that had been wit her for her whole life, and she hasn't been there for half. But she had learned that being a parent figure meant you had to know your strengths and weaknesses, and balance those with your partner’s. Raquel and Alicia had found their balance over the past few years, not only in this, but every aspect of their relationship was in balance – a balance worth cherishing.