Work Text:
"So how long have you two been together?"
Amy nearly choked on air. Just plain air. She was glad her gym buddy had gotten around to a different area to workout. "Hehheh, we're not-"
"I mean it doesn't look like you two are really that invested so if need you some real muscles to hold you..."
A sapphic harasser... no less repulsive...
"We're not really looking to open our relationship is what I wanted to say before you interrupted. Because that's what you meant to say right? What else would you be trying to imply?" she glared.
She had been one of them and her father had been, but like most cheaters, Amy liked to do things on her own terms, a illusionary taking back of whatever BS she used to convince herself that something had been torn out of her that made betrayal alright, just alright; never justified but that was alright.
"Is there a problem here?" a deep voice emanated two aisles behind.
Fuck no, I'd know that voice anywhere after that second time at the house...
Shoes shuffled to get closer and check on her. "You alright miss-" Her tattoo. Her goddamn tattoo showing through the one revealing shirt she'd chosen to wear today of ALL fucking days.
Her sapphic harasser must have fled like she wanted to do now. Her impromptu protector must have taken a few steps back down the aisle of ellipticals. Steps only three times the saucers she'd made of his eyes.
A warm breezy voice she’d grown fond of (but not as much in this case…) interjected,"Amy, you good to- holy- Pau- shit, we CAN LEAVE. Separately, I mean, because we'renotheretogether,Iswear," her gym buddy chose the most inopportune moment to return and she briefly mused how maybe he did truly have such dumb luck.
"Danny," she stopped him. "You're a shitty liar- excuse me, the way you're lying right now is shit." See! She could learn from therapy even if her ex-husband, she'd cheated on existentially with Danny and sexually with Paul, had made the same therapy room feel suffocating. Why did the Cho brothers have to rub their dumb luck off on her? Oh wait, that was probably the daddy-cheated-on-mom-and-she-knew-and-just-moved-on wound.
Amy wished this starsforsaken standoff could one day be a comical story she'd tell her grandchildren, but after how these two men had accidentally kidnapped Junie, her baby... because of their vicious gang-involved cousin and she, rightfully, lost custody as a result... she was back to, children? Me? I'm going to cackle like a half-hearted maniac to show you how much this topic of conversation sucks my soul and spits it back out in the form of countless piles of coal we all don't need.
Danny's Amy-might-be-thinking-of-Junie-and-spiraling sense went off. "We'll get out of your way, sorry..." he zipped Amy and himself to the front of the gym’s storage area and grabbed their keys from the incriminating shared locker while he left the bags for another day. He had the wherewithal to keep his hands away from her upper arm even if they had gotten comfortable that way in a platonic manner.
Amy heard a screech, got blurry trees seared into her eyes, and shook her head and blinked dizzily as Danny parked a few cars down from hers, helped her plop onto her living room loveseat saying, "Berightback, gonnagrabtakeout..."
That was the blur she could make sense of before waking up on her couch with a blanket. The sun started to go down so it wasn't the afternoon light streaming through the blinds that had woken her up. In her wobbly wakening hazy, her eyes caught on Danny studying with the flashcards he'd finally made on his own for his dental hygienist courses. He looked towards her, eye saucers he shared with his brother sending gentle waves of concern, "Hey, you okay?"
Amy sat up and cradled her legs in front of her... "... I don't fucking know," before tears erupted. Danny let her let it out. Back in the days of their road-rage-fueled, back-and-forth quests (after his scared-at-all-the-newness new cat had pissed on the carpet, he'd really felt for Amy cleaning up the piss stain that had started it all), they had had a way of letting each others' anger out (albeit with massively destructive results, i.e.: divorced husband, lost custody, said divorced husband unknowingly now an ex-soul-friend of Danny, and estranged brother who she cheated on her divorced husband with).
A few minutes later, after Danny had plopped a packet of tissues by her, he said, "Want me to call for an earlier session?" A session with the relationship therapist who had been seeing her and her currently divorced husband... who had the grace to set boundaries the one time she'd lost it and sworn at her...
"Everything's wrong and I don't know how to fix it..."
"A reminder, you told me when things like this happen to first name this is your inner teen part coming out-"
"FUCK, fuck Danny! What are we doing?"
"We grew to understand each other at our lowest and we-"
"I know you're just trying to do what we had prepared in therapy, but can you please just pause?"
A tiny smile emerged. "Kinda like you probably could use right now?"
She breathed a breath so deep, it felt like her lungs had tripled. "You're not wrong, but you don't need to delight in it so... though perhaps that's a sign you rarely get to be right," she smirked.
He half-faux-pouted and swiveled his neck like a toddler learning to dance to Clair De Lune for the first time, "You sure know how to wound me." Amy hadn't had this type of surge of energy in awhile. She crept across the coffee table, tissues only half used as much as she needed, and knelt to meet Danny's eyes with a wild look in her eyes and placed her hand on the top of his thigh. He gestured his stop motion, they'd each crafted in therapy. The moment shattered. Her hand fell like she'd been stung.
"Sex won't bring back Junie... I need to focus on college, you know that Amy," Danny stated so plainly. Why did the man who finally understood her and was successfully going to therapy with her have to be the man she had such a twisted past with? What did her ancestors do that fucked up her karma so? "Secret handshake?" his smile edged with pain and empathy for her. They did it... a little more mutedly than usual. But it matched the energy of the moment and she appreciated him evermore.
So when he finally collected his study materials into his messenger bag to go to his apartment across the hall after encouraging her to do her journaling practices and watching a few episodes of "I Think You Should Leave," and "A Black Lady Sketch Show," all she could feel was deep gratitude that he was in her life and how much she wanted to grow so she could be that for him.
And so she started to finish a past unsent letter, she had kept wanting to crumple and throw away, but had settled for multiple crossing-outs. Years from now, they would eventually have to part ways because healing meant the codependency that had catapulted them forward extinguished ease of best being, and they really, really wanted that for each other despite the first few years of road-rage revenge they'd put each other through.
A few months later, they tried gathering with a group of mutual friends and their respective partners. Their partners knew of their history and there was enough love that they didn't need to poke in hopes of bursting truths that they were clearly not apart of, of which they respected that they didn't need to be.
Time spent together alone grew rare. The meaning of which was: "I choose you but not before the sacred inner peace we both fought for each other to have in a time of great need... there may not be enough of this life or others for us to ever be okay... and... that's all... "
It hurt somewhere on the level of a teen Junie not remembering her when they happened on each other by complete coincidence at floral store and Paul finally blocked Danny on all social media after the fitness club standoff. And that's why it had to be the way it was...
That's all there was to it.
... at least, for the time being?
The question continued to remain the answer.
That's all...
That's all...
That’s all.