Work Text:
This love has rules.
More accurately, this love needs rules. It is akin to a lawless Old West town, a wasteland, hot and barren and not big enough for the two of you. Neither of you has pulled a gun yet, demanded that the other get out, but you exist in a perpetual state of unease. You won’t be the one to ruin it, and you won’t let it ruin you.
Love with Cheryl Tunt never works out. Doesn’t matter if you love her or she loves you, she’s a spark with a tendency to set anything she’s close to ablaze, flames so sweet you’ll be half-charred before you feel the burn.
When the love goes both ways? There won’t be any survivors.
Of course, there’s always that nagging voice in the back of your head. The little whispers of hope. Sure, Carol burned them, the voice says, but you’re different. Nobody else knows her like you do.
And nobody knows you like she does.
RULE 1: THERE ARE NO WINNERS, ONLY LOSERS
When you were little, curled up in your farm bed, you had grand ideas about love.
Your future spread in front of you, limitless. You were going to grow so much bigger than that farm, that town, that family. So much better than your sister. You were going to move to the big city, work in an office, somewhere big and clean, somewhere where your intellect was valued. You were going to try everything, every drink and every sport and every sex position you heard whispered about after abstinence group. You were going to sleep with more strangers than the the perv-virgins here could imagine. Then, once you’d had your fun, and your lust for adventure had been satiated, you were going to fall in love. A mad, dizzying, beautiful sort of love, with someone who loved you back. You’d move in, get married. Maybe even pump out a couple of kids.
Life has a funny way of working out.
You’re not valued. You’re not satisfied. But it’s not until you meet Cheryl that the last of your dreams shatters -- glass not diamonds. This love is so far from beautiful. It’s an undignified game of chicken. You feel like Cinderella, but not in the way you always wanted. You feel as though the moment you get caught up, step a little too close, the clock will strike twelve -- high noon.
RULE 2: YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT IT
It’s not love at first sight. Cheryl, frankly, annoys the shit out of you. She slides into the position of best friend because you don’t exactly have an anyone else vying for the position. Sometimes you think you’re only friends at all because the two of you are so often shunted off to the side.
Then, she’ll say something fucking Archer on a balcony or flip off Mallory, and you’ll remember why you like her.
There’s no moment when you fall in love. It just happens. The only surprising thing about the realization is that there’s a realization at all. You feel like you’ve always felt this way.
There’s no flashing neon sign, but you recognize it, in your heart, in your bones. You know it’s love because of the way your heart feels heavy and weightless by turns. You know because after you fuck her you feel happy and light and delicate. You want to hold her and cook her breakfast in the morning, not high-five her and kick her out.
You feel the same about her love for you. You know because of the way you catch her staring, and because she, without fail, asks the Old Gypsy Woman about you. You know because she has to be, nothing else could explain the electricity.
It goes unspoken. Most things do.
You don’t talk about the quiet moments, in the elevator or tangled in her silk sheets, the moments when she finally runs out of things to say and you stand there together, strangely calm. Sometimes she’ll grab your hand or rest her head on your chest, and you will feel more special in that moment than you ever have, because Cheryl is special, and Cheryl doesn’t love anything else.
You don’t talk about the gifts she buys you.
You don’t talk about the way she giggles when you brush her hand.
You don’t talk about the time she sent you a love note in vole’s blood.
Your love is a precarious thing -- it’s like silence. Name it, and you’ll break it.
RULE 3: EXPECT HER TO BREAK YOUR HEART. DO THE SAME RIGHT BACK.
Carol will ruin you. You know and accept that. She breaks your heart over and over, knowingly or not.
Sometimes she seems to forget. She forgets so much, it makes sense that sometimes she forgets loving you. It just flits out of her head for a little while, and you’re left aching and grasping for some proof that what you had was real.
And of course, there are the things she does. Crazy, crazy things that should send you running. You’re never quite sure if she means them to hurt.
You’re not better. You hurt her because she hurts you, and because at your core you’re not so different. You do and say terrible things.
She’s always pleased when you do.
No matter what happens, you keep coming back. Cheryl will never be the kind of girl you can bring home or brag about, but you always find yourself back with her, tracing constellations on her arm or grabbing her in the dark as you’re leaving, kissing against the ISIS building, the moon bright overhead.
RULE 4: DON’T SAY “I LOVE YOU”
It feels like the words will spill out sometimes, moments when she’s so amazingly herself that you can’t imagine not letting everyone know how you feel. But you swallow the words, thick like molasses down your throat.
Your daddy didn’t raise a loser.
RULE 5: STILL, YOU HAVE TO LOVE HER
You’re in the ISIS building after closing. The lights are shut off, and you’re reclining in your co-workers’ office chairs, taking shots by the light of a desk lamp. You feel dizzy in the best way, a mix of butterflies and watching Carol spin circles in Cyril’s chair. The whole world is pleasant, filtered through a haze of dim lighting and intoxication -- from the absinthe or the girl, you’re not sure.
You’re giggling at something meaningless when Cheryl leans in, like she’s going to kiss your cheek. Instead, she whispers in your ear, “Let’s get married.”
You throw her head back in a loud, hartie laugh, slap Carol on the back, then quickly grab her hand. “I didn’t say no.”
An hour later you’re getting married in Cheryl’s mansion with a preacher, witness, and Baboo, and you’ve never felt more full. Cheryl is dwarfed by her dead mother’s ancient gown, and you’re wearing the veil half-on and half-off your face. The preacher says to kiss, and she hands you the bottle before being swept up.
It’s everything you thought it would be.
RULE 6: SHE LOVES YOU, TOO
You sort of assume she forgets.
You don’t have it annulled or anything, but you’re not exactly jumping to tell people.
Still, one day, Cheryl slips a beautiful ring out of her pocket and presses it into your palm. “It was my grandmother’s or whatever. She loved ugly-ass haunted jewelry.”
You give her a championship ring you won bum fighting.
RULE 7: GO ALONG WITH THE CRAZY
You have been arrested her with her so many times.
RULE 8: KNOW WHERE MALLORY HIDES HER BOOZE
Pretty self-explanatory. You’re a girl on a budget, Carol is always easier to deal with when you’re drunk, and Mallory’s got, like, gallons of vodka stashed away in her office.
RULE 9: STICK TO THE RULES
“I love you, shithead.”
It’s late, early morning, really. You’re tangled with Cheryl in her bed, and it hits you all at once, like it’s the first time you’re noticing. Everything feels strangely holy, her mansion silent, the two of you calm. You feel raw. You want to start over. You want to reacquaint yourself with every inch of her.
More than anything, you want to tell her. You want to say the words because they’re light, because they could float out into the world, soft and honest, not because they’re burning a hole in your throat.
You don’t care about winning anymore.
“Pam, I think I, like, love you, too. Like, I really, really love you.”
You smile and kiss her, and it occurs to you, as she drags a hand down your bare shoulder, that maybe it was a never game at all, and maybe this how Carol destroyed you: loving you so genuinely you didn’t believe.
RULE 10: FORGET THE RULES
Things aren’t easy. You work at ISIS, after all.
Still, you kiss at her desk and yours, and she has a garish ring around her finger at all times. Your colleagues have given up being surprised and settled for regularly disgusted.
It’s better than you ever dreamed.