With Time Things Can Change (RENT (movieverse), Maureen/Joanne).
Title: With Time Things Can Change.
Fandom: RENT (movieverse)
Pairing: Maureen/Joanne.
Author Note: Post-movie. 2,117 words.
As Amy closes the door behind her the music softens to near nothingness, no match for the sounds of New York at night. She looks up to where the stars twinkle against a backdrop of not-quite darkness, the sky cloudless and the moon full, and then lowers her gaze, glancing back and forth until she locates her friend.
Despite the chill in the air Joanne isn’t wearing a coat, which makes Amy shake her head in faint dismay.
"Joanne," she says, as she joins her friend in the shadows, "Are you okay? You've been crying."
"I'm fine," Joanne says as she brushes the lingering tears from her cheeks and shrugs to dislodge the hand her friend has placed on her shoulder. She can't stand casual touches any more.
"Are you sure?" Amy pushes gently. "Because in all the time we've known each other, I can probably count on one hand the times I've seen you cry."
Joanne sighs to herself and repeats the words she's already said at least fifteen times today, wondering how it is that none of her friends seem to remember this fact about her.
"I always cry at weddings."
Amy frowns in thought, which makes Joanne suspect she's mentally running through their shared history for another memory that might confirm this to be true. If she thinks about it long enough then Joanne knows she'll find one because it's a silly, sentimental little quirk she's never been able to shake off; she doesn't cry very often but weddings get her going every time.
"You just don't seem yourself," Amy says, apparently giving up on her mental index, crossing her arms as she leans against the wall next to her. "You haven't for a while now."
"It's nothing," Joanne lies. "I'm fine. Really. I just needed some air and a few minutes to myself."
Whether she believes her or not, Amy accepts her excuse with a nod and returns to the party, leaving Joanne to her solitude without probing further. It's one of the things Joanne has always liked about Amy, she doesn't push if you don't want her to. And Joanne definitely doesn't want her to.
She closes her eyes and takes a ragged breath, cursing herself for her own stupidity -- for letting today's ceremony get to her, for letting it remind her of the ceremony she never got to have.
It's been months since she woke up alone with her returned engagement ring on her bedside table and I'm sorry scrawled across a piece of paper in Maureen's distinctive handwriting. Months and yet Maureen's still in her head, still imprinted on her mind and lodged inside her heart. She can't get rid of her and, if she's honest with herself, she's not sure she wants to.
She doesn't bother opening her eyes when she senses someone else in front of her, just assumes it's another of her friends until she feels hands cup her cheeks and gentle fingers brush away the tears, and then she knows, with an instinctive kind of half-horror, half-joy, exactly who's just joined her.
"Joanne."
Maureen's voice is softer than she remembers and it makes her tremble to hear her name fall from those lips. It's something she never thought she'd hear again; she can barely bring herself to acknowledge that it's more than a figment of her imagination.
"Joanne, Joey, baby-- c'mon, open your eyes."
She closes them tighter in response and her silent refusal prompts a gentle sigh from her former fiancee, who seems to take it as a sign to move closer. Joanne finds herself suddenly surrounded by warmth she doesn't have the strength to turn away from and that she is, in fact, reaching towards against her will, filled with an aching need to drown herself in the only woman who still haunts her.
"What are you doing here? You left," she accuses without planning to say the words, mumbling them into the shoulder her head now rests on. "Fuck you, Maureen, you left me."
"I know," Maureen's voice shakes as the words ghost across Joanne's skin. "I know I did, baby."
Anger surges through her at the straightforward admission and now Joanne does open her eyes, wrenching herself out of Maureen's arms to step back and look at her, shivering without the warmth of Maureen's body against her own.
The woman standing in front of her is definitely the same one who left her with a note and without a word, but she's both familiar and unfamiliar all at once; a somehow softened version of the wild woman she remembers.
"What are you doing here?" she repeats, trying to make her voice as cold as she can. She won't give Maureen the satisfaction of knowing how much seeing her again is affecting her. "This is a private party and I know you weren't invited."
"I don't think the street actually counts as private property, Jo," Maureen says wearily as she runs a hand through her hair, pushing wayward dark curls away from her face. "I know you're probably not exactly happy to see me--"
"Damn right I'm not," Joanne snaps. "We're done, remember? I asked you to marry me, despite what happened the first time, and you said yes. And then you left my fucking ring and you left me."
Maureen looks genuinely pained at the reminder and Joanne has to force herself not to reach out and touch her. She wants Maureen to disappear again so she can hate her memory in peace and she wants her to stay forever because she doesn't want to let her go. She wants to grab her and shake her and demand the fucking truth for once and still the smallest part of her wants Maureen to lie, to promise-- to say or do anything that'll make things okay again.
Because Joanne still misses her and she still wants her; still needs her, no matter how often she tells herself she doesn't. Even the sight of her makes her skin tingle and her heart clench painfully.
"Why?" she says, hating herself as soon as the words pass her lips. "Why did you leave me?"
"I had to," Maureen whispers, wrapping her arms around herself and closing her eyes as if she can't bear the truth of her own words. "I knew I'd fuck it all up again. I was scared, I freaked out and I'm sorry. I wanted to take it back, but..."
She shakes her head and takes a deep breath, opening her eyes to meet Joanne's gaze. "I wanted to but I knew by then you'd already be cursing me to hell and back and there again and. I just-- I didn't know how to fix it this time. I didn't think you'd want me to."
"What?"
Maureen bites her lip and shifts uncomfortably, her eyes darting to the sky as if she might find the words she's looking for scattered among the stars.
"I was scared, okay," she says finally, so quietly that Joanne barely hears her, each word sounding as if it's being forcibly torn from her throat.
"I was fucking terrified, Jo. You act like you think I've forgotten what happened the first time-- as if your mother would ever let me forget! Every time we visited I could see her thinking about it and judging me, 'cause I'm never going to be good enough for you to them. And every time I talked to someone I'd have to wonder if it was going to set you off on one of your jealous rages--"
"Don't even start--"
"--because I couldn't ever convince you that you were the only one I wanted," Maureen continues as if she'd never been interrupted, the words flowing out of her in an unstoppable flood of repressed pain and hurt, "Even our friends were waiting for us to fall apart! We'd go to your stuffy work things and we'd turn up and your snobby, super-smart lawyer friends'd look at me like I didn't belong there, like they couldn't believe you hadn't gotten bored with slumming it yet, and... they were right," she says, her voice cracking.
"I didn't belong there. I didn't fit in. I was never going to fit in and you'd have gotten bored of that, bored of me, and then you'd have left me and I'd have had nothing. You'd have hated me by the time you gave up trying, and there would have been nothing left of me then, and who I am is all I have!"
She pauses to take a breath, gasps in air through the tears that are falling, and Joanne kisses her before she can say anything else, needing to shut her up long enough to absorb what she's just said.
For a moment Maureen doesn't react at all and then she slams them both back against the wall, their lips crashing together in a bruising kiss. The wall scrapes Joanne's skin, stinging and burning, and Maureen's fingers dig painfully into her hips as hers tangle in Maureen's hair, but none of that matters because this is the most alive she's felt since she opened her eyes that fateful morning.
It's Maureen who breaks the kiss first, pulling away with a whimper and a gasp, burying her head into Joanne's neck when Joanne refuses to let go. She's afraid that if she does Maureen will run again and this time she'll never catch her.
"I love you," Maureen whispers, "I love you, but I don't think it's enough."
"It's enough," Joanne whispers back fiercely, "It's enough, it's always been enough."
She angles her body to trap Maureen against the wall, threads her hands into her hair and forces Maureen to look at her.
"Nothing in my life is better without you," she says vehemently. "Nothing! I miss you. I've missed you every minute since you left and I've never been able to let you go."
She chokes out a bitter laugh and thinks back to the nights she's spent trying to drink Maureen out of her head without success. No relationship she's ever had has affected her like this one, that's how she knows it's more with Maureen.
"I tried but it never worked because I didn't really want it to. I couldn't leave you, honeybear," she says softly, her fingertips brushing Maureen's cheek. "I love you too, and without you there's not much left of me."
Maureen's eyes are closed again, a tear trembling on her lashes. Joanne wipes it away and leans in to kiss her again. She knows that they have a lot to talk about, things they should probably have talked about months, if not years, ago, but tonight she just wants them to be together so she knows that there's still hope.
"Come home with me," she says.
"We're still the same people," Maureen says quietly. "Nothing's changed."
The irony of Maureen being the sensible one isn't lost on her but she knows that although Maureen's right, she's also wrong. Something has changed even if they, themselves, haven't. Although they can aggravate each other without meaning to, despite the fact that they often drive each other crazy, they're still absolutely right for each other.
"I know," Joanne says. "We're still the same and I still love you. Come home with me." Her fingers brush against Maureen's cheek, slide down her neck and twine into her curls as she silently pleads for her to say yes.
"I've never loved anyone as much as I love you," Maureen says finally, by way of an answer, opening her eyes to gift Joanne with a look of absolute honesty. "I really hated these last few months."
Joanne nods her agreement. Right now, standing here together, the loneliness of that time seems far away and unreal but she knows they've yet to work through the pain it caused them both.
"Let me get my jacket and we'll go, okay?" she says, belatedly remembering the party she hasn't thought about since Maureen appeared in front of her. "It'll only take a minute."
"What's it for anyway?" Maureen asks, ignoring the hand Joanne holds out to her in favour of wrapping an arm through Joanne's and hugging it tightly. She starting to bounce back with the same sort of resilience that Joanne always admired, even if it seems like a paler imitation of what it used to be.
"An old classmate of mine got married," Joanne says and Maureen nods, as though a puzzle piece has just slotted into place.
"So that's why you were crying," she says.
Joanne gives her a curious look and Maureen shrugs as she snuggles closer.
"You always cry at weddings."
Fandom: RENT (movieverse)
Pairing: Maureen/Joanne.
Author Note: Post-movie. 2,117 words.
As Amy closes the door behind her the music softens to near nothingness, no match for the sounds of New York at night. She looks up to where the stars twinkle against a backdrop of not-quite darkness, the sky cloudless and the moon full, and then lowers her gaze, glancing back and forth until she locates her friend.
Despite the chill in the air Joanne isn’t wearing a coat, which makes Amy shake her head in faint dismay.
"Joanne," she says, as she joins her friend in the shadows, "Are you okay? You've been crying."
"I'm fine," Joanne says as she brushes the lingering tears from her cheeks and shrugs to dislodge the hand her friend has placed on her shoulder. She can't stand casual touches any more.
"Are you sure?" Amy pushes gently. "Because in all the time we've known each other, I can probably count on one hand the times I've seen you cry."
Joanne sighs to herself and repeats the words she's already said at least fifteen times today, wondering how it is that none of her friends seem to remember this fact about her.
"I always cry at weddings."
Amy frowns in thought, which makes Joanne suspect she's mentally running through their shared history for another memory that might confirm this to be true. If she thinks about it long enough then Joanne knows she'll find one because it's a silly, sentimental little quirk she's never been able to shake off; she doesn't cry very often but weddings get her going every time.
"You just don't seem yourself," Amy says, apparently giving up on her mental index, crossing her arms as she leans against the wall next to her. "You haven't for a while now."
"It's nothing," Joanne lies. "I'm fine. Really. I just needed some air and a few minutes to myself."
Whether she believes her or not, Amy accepts her excuse with a nod and returns to the party, leaving Joanne to her solitude without probing further. It's one of the things Joanne has always liked about Amy, she doesn't push if you don't want her to. And Joanne definitely doesn't want her to.
She closes her eyes and takes a ragged breath, cursing herself for her own stupidity -- for letting today's ceremony get to her, for letting it remind her of the ceremony she never got to have.
It's been months since she woke up alone with her returned engagement ring on her bedside table and I'm sorry scrawled across a piece of paper in Maureen's distinctive handwriting. Months and yet Maureen's still in her head, still imprinted on her mind and lodged inside her heart. She can't get rid of her and, if she's honest with herself, she's not sure she wants to.
She doesn't bother opening her eyes when she senses someone else in front of her, just assumes it's another of her friends until she feels hands cup her cheeks and gentle fingers brush away the tears, and then she knows, with an instinctive kind of half-horror, half-joy, exactly who's just joined her.
"Joanne."
Maureen's voice is softer than she remembers and it makes her tremble to hear her name fall from those lips. It's something she never thought she'd hear again; she can barely bring herself to acknowledge that it's more than a figment of her imagination.
"Joanne, Joey, baby-- c'mon, open your eyes."
She closes them tighter in response and her silent refusal prompts a gentle sigh from her former fiancee, who seems to take it as a sign to move closer. Joanne finds herself suddenly surrounded by warmth she doesn't have the strength to turn away from and that she is, in fact, reaching towards against her will, filled with an aching need to drown herself in the only woman who still haunts her.
"What are you doing here? You left," she accuses without planning to say the words, mumbling them into the shoulder her head now rests on. "Fuck you, Maureen, you left me."
"I know," Maureen's voice shakes as the words ghost across Joanne's skin. "I know I did, baby."
Anger surges through her at the straightforward admission and now Joanne does open her eyes, wrenching herself out of Maureen's arms to step back and look at her, shivering without the warmth of Maureen's body against her own.
The woman standing in front of her is definitely the same one who left her with a note and without a word, but she's both familiar and unfamiliar all at once; a somehow softened version of the wild woman she remembers.
"What are you doing here?" she repeats, trying to make her voice as cold as she can. She won't give Maureen the satisfaction of knowing how much seeing her again is affecting her. "This is a private party and I know you weren't invited."
"I don't think the street actually counts as private property, Jo," Maureen says wearily as she runs a hand through her hair, pushing wayward dark curls away from her face. "I know you're probably not exactly happy to see me--"
"Damn right I'm not," Joanne snaps. "We're done, remember? I asked you to marry me, despite what happened the first time, and you said yes. And then you left my fucking ring and you left me."
Maureen looks genuinely pained at the reminder and Joanne has to force herself not to reach out and touch her. She wants Maureen to disappear again so she can hate her memory in peace and she wants her to stay forever because she doesn't want to let her go. She wants to grab her and shake her and demand the fucking truth for once and still the smallest part of her wants Maureen to lie, to promise-- to say or do anything that'll make things okay again.
Because Joanne still misses her and she still wants her; still needs her, no matter how often she tells herself she doesn't. Even the sight of her makes her skin tingle and her heart clench painfully.
"Why?" she says, hating herself as soon as the words pass her lips. "Why did you leave me?"
"I had to," Maureen whispers, wrapping her arms around herself and closing her eyes as if she can't bear the truth of her own words. "I knew I'd fuck it all up again. I was scared, I freaked out and I'm sorry. I wanted to take it back, but..."
She shakes her head and takes a deep breath, opening her eyes to meet Joanne's gaze. "I wanted to but I knew by then you'd already be cursing me to hell and back and there again and. I just-- I didn't know how to fix it this time. I didn't think you'd want me to."
"What?"
Maureen bites her lip and shifts uncomfortably, her eyes darting to the sky as if she might find the words she's looking for scattered among the stars.
"I was scared, okay," she says finally, so quietly that Joanne barely hears her, each word sounding as if it's being forcibly torn from her throat.
"I was fucking terrified, Jo. You act like you think I've forgotten what happened the first time-- as if your mother would ever let me forget! Every time we visited I could see her thinking about it and judging me, 'cause I'm never going to be good enough for you to them. And every time I talked to someone I'd have to wonder if it was going to set you off on one of your jealous rages--"
"Don't even start--"
"--because I couldn't ever convince you that you were the only one I wanted," Maureen continues as if she'd never been interrupted, the words flowing out of her in an unstoppable flood of repressed pain and hurt, "Even our friends were waiting for us to fall apart! We'd go to your stuffy work things and we'd turn up and your snobby, super-smart lawyer friends'd look at me like I didn't belong there, like they couldn't believe you hadn't gotten bored with slumming it yet, and... they were right," she says, her voice cracking.
"I didn't belong there. I didn't fit in. I was never going to fit in and you'd have gotten bored of that, bored of me, and then you'd have left me and I'd have had nothing. You'd have hated me by the time you gave up trying, and there would have been nothing left of me then, and who I am is all I have!"
She pauses to take a breath, gasps in air through the tears that are falling, and Joanne kisses her before she can say anything else, needing to shut her up long enough to absorb what she's just said.
For a moment Maureen doesn't react at all and then she slams them both back against the wall, their lips crashing together in a bruising kiss. The wall scrapes Joanne's skin, stinging and burning, and Maureen's fingers dig painfully into her hips as hers tangle in Maureen's hair, but none of that matters because this is the most alive she's felt since she opened her eyes that fateful morning.
It's Maureen who breaks the kiss first, pulling away with a whimper and a gasp, burying her head into Joanne's neck when Joanne refuses to let go. She's afraid that if she does Maureen will run again and this time she'll never catch her.
"I love you," Maureen whispers, "I love you, but I don't think it's enough."
"It's enough," Joanne whispers back fiercely, "It's enough, it's always been enough."
She angles her body to trap Maureen against the wall, threads her hands into her hair and forces Maureen to look at her.
"Nothing in my life is better without you," she says vehemently. "Nothing! I miss you. I've missed you every minute since you left and I've never been able to let you go."
She chokes out a bitter laugh and thinks back to the nights she's spent trying to drink Maureen out of her head without success. No relationship she's ever had has affected her like this one, that's how she knows it's more with Maureen.
"I tried but it never worked because I didn't really want it to. I couldn't leave you, honeybear," she says softly, her fingertips brushing Maureen's cheek. "I love you too, and without you there's not much left of me."
Maureen's eyes are closed again, a tear trembling on her lashes. Joanne wipes it away and leans in to kiss her again. She knows that they have a lot to talk about, things they should probably have talked about months, if not years, ago, but tonight she just wants them to be together so she knows that there's still hope.
"Come home with me," she says.
"We're still the same people," Maureen says quietly. "Nothing's changed."
The irony of Maureen being the sensible one isn't lost on her but she knows that although Maureen's right, she's also wrong. Something has changed even if they, themselves, haven't. Although they can aggravate each other without meaning to, despite the fact that they often drive each other crazy, they're still absolutely right for each other.
"I know," Joanne says. "We're still the same and I still love you. Come home with me." Her fingers brush against Maureen's cheek, slide down her neck and twine into her curls as she silently pleads for her to say yes.
"I've never loved anyone as much as I love you," Maureen says finally, by way of an answer, opening her eyes to gift Joanne with a look of absolute honesty. "I really hated these last few months."
Joanne nods her agreement. Right now, standing here together, the loneliness of that time seems far away and unreal but she knows they've yet to work through the pain it caused them both.
"Let me get my jacket and we'll go, okay?" she says, belatedly remembering the party she hasn't thought about since Maureen appeared in front of her. "It'll only take a minute."
"What's it for anyway?" Maureen asks, ignoring the hand Joanne holds out to her in favour of wrapping an arm through Joanne's and hugging it tightly. She starting to bounce back with the same sort of resilience that Joanne always admired, even if it seems like a paler imitation of what it used to be.
"An old classmate of mine got married," Joanne says and Maureen nods, as though a puzzle piece has just slotted into place.
"So that's why you were crying," she says.
Joanne gives her a curious look and Maureen shrugs as she snuggles closer.
"You always cry at weddings."