Once
"Every life, Transtromer writes, 'has a sister ship,' one that follows 'quite another route' than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live in a different, phantom life than the people we are. ... I'll never know and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. IT was the ghost ship that didn't carry us." -Sugar; Dear Sugar, the Rumpus Advice Column
They’d kissed once.
It had happened after a particularly brutal case, which was saying something considering that they’d had quite a few bad ones throughout their FBI careers. They had gone to Moriah’s house to watch a few movies. (Moriah couldn’t stand to stay at Reina’s who was practically OCD when it came to be cleaning; the older woman was always scared of messing something up). They were both dangerously sleep-deprived but neither had been comfortable with the idea of falling asleep, at least not just yet. Not until the images of the last case ceased to appear behind their eyes every time they closed their eyes. Not until they could forget that sometimes even doing the best work of their entire careers, things just didn’t come together, and people still died. Not until they could stop forgetting the screams and the family members’ frantic sobbing. No, not just yet.
Moriah had had a few beers. Not a good idea, considering how tired she was, but she had thought that it might fog her mind enough to make sleep amendable. Reina, she knew, would be crashing on the couch for the night, as she often did after such cases. Both were half asleep.
Moriah had slowly gotten up from her armchair, shuffling half-dead on her feet to Reina, intending to tell the younger woman good night and pat her shoulder as she passed. Just a small touch, since Reina wasn’t a very tactile person, to let the other woman know that she wasn’t alone. As she did so, Reina looked up. There wasn’t anything different in how she looked up, at least not that Moriah could remember; granted the memory was hazy at best, so maybe there had been… she didn’t know. Reina’s eyes were half-lidded from sleepiness and she’d had a small smile on her face, the one she wore to show that she was grateful for the physical contact, especially considering how hard a time she had initiating it herself.
And Moriah had leaned down and kissed her.
Just once and just gently on the lips. Barely a brush and yet it had the strength of a sledgehammer. Moriah no longer felt so weary. And, from the widening of Reina’s eyes and the shocked look on her face, neither was Reina.
“I-I-I... Wha?” Reina managed to stammer out, even as her face turned an alarming shade of red.
Despite the adrenaline running through her system at the moment, Moriah had no response. She just stared at Reina as though she was some foreign creature that older woman had never seen before. A mystery. Something that needed to be solved. The problem was, Moriah was too tired to solve it.
“Moriah?” Reina said hesitantly, obviously seeing the glazed look reappearing in Moriah’s eyes as the adrenaline lost its battle with the pure fatigue of her body and mind.
Giving her head a little shake, and wishing that she could sit down but figuring that sitting next to Reina at the moment was a bad idea, Moriah opted for letting herself basically fall into a sitting position on the floor. “Reina… I’m so sorry, girl, I have no idea what came over me. I didn’t plan…” She shook her head again, as though that would clear the fog away, before rubbing despairingly at her eyes.
“Moriah…” Reina said slowly, drawing the name out so that it would give her more time to think of how to respond to the question. “Did you… do you think of me… like that?”
“I dunno,” came the honest answer, as Moriah lowered her forehead to her knees, thinking on how to explain herself. “I mean, I know that I like you a lot, possibly as more than a friend, but I don’t know if it’s enough to call you a lover.” Reina blushed lightly at the word. “To be honest, I never really let myself think about it. I try really hard not to think about it. ‘Cause I think the possibility is there, that we could be a lot, but it’s just… not possible.” She looked up.
Reina nodded understandingly, but there was a distant, sad look in her eyes that mirrored Moriah’s. “Because of the fraternization policy at work. How it’s not allowed under any circumstances.”
With a sigh, Moriah agreed, “Yeah… and while our boss might let it slide, his boss definitely won’t. It would mean both our jobs and possibly anyone else who knew about it. You know they’re always looking for an excuse…” And their fellow agents were their family. To be ripped away from that family, to take that sense of belonging away from either themselves or a loved one, would destroy them.
Reina nodded again. “And, although we’re not supposed to analyze each other, there’s no way we could hide it from our friends. And, as much as they would try to protect us, all it would take is one slip, one thing said in front of the wrong person…” Reina ran her hand up the back of her head, grabbing her hair lightly and tugging, as though the sensation would fix everything or make the world make sense.
Moriah looked down at her hands, as though she couldn’t face Reina as she admitted, “And my job is my life. It’s the most important thing to me. I can’t give it up. I can’t have it taken away. I just… I would be…”
“Lost,” Reina finished the thought. “Completely and unreservedly lost.” A pause before she continues, “I understand, Moriah, I feel the same way.”
For a few minutes they just sat there, Moriah looking down at her hands, Reina looking at Moriah. Moriah looked up. “So…” she said, a tense and ironic looking smile on her face, “Never happened?”
Reina’s jaw was clenched tightly behind her reassuring smile and her eyes looked a tad too bright. “Never happened.”
Moriah got up from the floor, leaning over slightly and patting Reina’s shoulder as she had originally planned to, before heading to her bedroom. At the doorway, she stopped, turning back around to see Reina watching her with a look on her face that was full of so many different emotions Moriah didn’t try to identify even one, not in her own worn out state. And she knew she shouldn’t, but had to ask, “I just… I know that I shouldn’t. That it might be better if I didn’t know. But I have to. So… just so I know… if I had asked you… if there were any way to… be together… without us losing our jobs, would you… y’know?”
Moriah’s stuttering question brought a true, if dampened, smile to Reina’s face. “I’m supposed to the one that doesn’t know how to talk to people.” Moriah cracked a smile that felt as though it would shatter any minute. Reina stared at her as she did so, obviously trying to judge whether or not an honest response was best. Eventually, she shrugged, a physical “what the hell”, before she said, “Yes… I would have said yes.”
Moriah let out a shaky breath, although it was hard to tell if it was because it was a relief or if it was because she felt choked. She nodded once, whispered, “Goodnight”, and then closed the door gently behind her, heading to bed.
They went on as though that night had never happened. They didn’t talk about it. They tried very hard not to think about it and, in general, were successful. They continued their lives as though they had never kissed, never admitted that they could love one another in an unabashed and free way that neither had ever known. Sometimes their eyes would catch for a second too long, but they would both turn away and carry on as though nothing had happened. Cases came and went and slowly time passed, dimming the memory even further than their bone-deep exhaustion had. Until, finally, it turned into a fluttery, insubstantial thing more like a dream of a dream than something that had actually happened.
They had made their choice and went on with their lives, only once in a while dreaming about a kiss, and a life, that never happened.
Created: April 2011
Last Edited: 25 April 2011
Notes: Written originally as a fanfic, so let me know if it doesn't flow quite right (considering that it was supposed to have a huge back-story that the reader would have been privy to).
Here's the thing: the majority of the time I like happy endings. But sometimes I want people to acknowledge that there are some things more important than the love between a couple. There's family love and love of a job and all sorts of other things that, for some people, are more important than romantic love. And, I dunno, I'm a sucker for bittersweet endings, as you'll probably notice from a lot of my short fiction and poems.