MORE yuletide.
I also wrote something(s) for yuletide!
Le meilleur de tous les mondes (AO3 link)
Pan Am
Colette Valois, Kate Cameron, Laura Cameron, Maggie Ryan (Colette/Kate if you squint)
Rating: Gen
Words: 3010
Assignment written for a 'what happens post-canon' request.
New Year’s Day, 1964, New York
Colette leans on the balcony railing, watching the straggling groups stumble out of Times Square and the few remaining couples sway together under the still-bright lights.
She hears the pop of yet another cork over the music still blasting inside and a round of cheers. Colette begins to wonder just how Maggie came into that money she spoke of, and decides with smile that she would probably rather not know.
The door opens and the volume of the music jumps She feels a scarf wrapped around her shoulders as Kate steps in beside her.
“You might not feel it, but you’re definitely cold,” Kate says as she presses one of the two champagne glasses she is carrying into Colette’s hand.
As she takes a sip, Colette muses that the tradition of starting the new year right nearly always results in a most unpleasant January first. But Kate’s smile is far too bright for Colette to share that thought, so she raises her glass to toast her friend.
“1964,” Kate says. Their glasses nearly miss one another, but they eventually manage an overly loud clink through their laughter.
“Puissions-nous être meilleurs et plus sages que nous l'étions en 1963”
“Always,” Kate returns.
They peer over the balcony for a while, watching the scene below with shoulders pressed together. Colette realizes she must have been cold before. She blames her failure to notice it before on Maggie and her two cases of champagne.
Kate nudges Colette’s shoulder. “So how do you plan to top being courted by royalty?”
“I promise you, I have no plans for dating in 1964,” she says, shaking her head, one hand half-covering her face.
“Maybe you’ll find yourself an emperor in the East.”
“Well in that case, perhaps I could be persuaded.” Colette smirks against the rim of her glass as she takes another sip.
“So, you’re still leaving us for life in the Orient?”
One corner of Colette’s mouth quirks into a half smile but she keeps her eyes down, focused on a point well above the people milling below.
“I put in my request for a transfer a few weeks ago, but I haven’t heard back yet. And now,” she pauses. “Knowing that I have a brother, out there somewhere.” She looks at Kate and her smiles spreads. It’s cautious, but it looks true. “I don’t know what I will do if they find a place for me in Hong Kong. A few days ago I was starting to feel like the end of 1963 had… run away with me, and it still feels like too many decisions to make. But,” she nods to the glass doors and Kate spots what looks like Ted and Maggie both making resolution proclamations; glasses held high and good intentions on their faces, despite the sway in their postures giving away that these resolutions may well be forgotten or regretted in the morning. “it has conveniently created too many complications for me to make any resolutions. So tonight I just want to enjoy all the possibilities. Making decisions can begin in the morning."
Someone’s resolution must have proven too provocative, because they see Maggie and Ted begin yet another one of the bickering matches Kate swears are reserved for brothers and sisters. Kate sees Dean, laughing, look past Maggie’s gesticulations and, spotting the two on the balcony, raise his glass.
Kate loops and arm through Colette’s and they return to the railing; there’s only one couple left in the square below now. “All the possibilities, huh?”
When Colette turns to her with a questioning glance, Kate puts on a look innocent curiosity. “You know, I think I just may have seen one of those possibilities when the ball dropped.”
The light is dim on the balcony, but even so Kate can see the blush rise on Colette’s cheeks. She laughs and snakes a hand around the smaller woman’s waist for a one-armed hug.
“I’m happy for you,” she says, smiling as she watches the blush deepen.
“Like I said, tonight I would just like to enjoy the possibilities,” Colette returns.
Kate restricts her comment to a raised eyebrow.
“I’m considering a transfer myself”
Colette lets out one of those little gasps Kate had thought were so affected the first few weeks they flew together.
A look passes across Kate’s face, like she feels as though she ought not have said it, and she finishes off her glass of champagne with something bordering on abandon.
“Are you, really?”
“Just,” Kate looks half abashed, trying to pretend that it was an off-hand comment; the smile she can’t suppress betrays her, “just a thought. Something I’m… considering.”
“Where will you transfer to? Have we opened a hub in Yugoslavia I’m not aware of?” Colette nudges her friend gently as she finishes her own glass.
For Kate’s face falls a bit. “No, no they haven’t.”
She looks at the skyline around them for a while, “I guess I don’t know where I’d end up. It was just a thought, anyway.”
They sit together. Colette has learned Kate’s rhythms over the last two years, especially after Laura started rooming with Maggie, so she knows when the silence has lasted long enough that she can be sure Kate won’t say anything further.
“Did Maggie ever say how she came into this little bit of money?”
Kate laughs, “That is probably a secret best left in 1963, don’t you think?”
“Come, you’ve hardly done debriefings with us since the summer and I miss your dancing.”
Kate takes Colette’s offered hand and stands with an exaggeratedly mistrustful look. “I will choose to take that as a compliment… for now”
January 3rd, 1964, New York
During the elevator ride up to Richard’s floor of the hospital Kate thinks with chagrin that she has the combination of Pan Am’s lessons in poise and a defected British spy’s training in deception to thank for the fact that she isn’t letting the anxiety she feels make itself known with some nervous tick or a strained facial expression.
She still hasn’t made up her mind about taking Richard’s- the CIA’s- offer to be trained as a full agent, but with the class starting at the end of the month she knows she’ll be asked to decide soon. Given their history, she also knows she may be asked to decide suddenly, and not on her own terms.
The last thing she knows, that she is afraid of, is that she will probably come out of Richard’s room later that day having made her decision.
She reaches Richard’s closed door, hands still, face calm; but when she opens it she finds the room empty.
That day Kate gets an offer to take a spot on the crew of a round-the-world flight leaving the next week. She says yes.
January 29th, 1964, New York
Kate places her bags on the floor as she turns to close her door.
“You missed this round of recruits at Langley,” the voice startles her and she spins on a heel.
“Richard!” He’s sitting, one leg over the other, on her couch. “I know being in the CIA gives you certain privileges, but this is ridiculous.”
“You missed this round of recruits,” he repeats, “but there’s another class starting in May. We’ll need you decision by the end of next month. And don’t think just getting on a plane to avoid giving us an answer will work this time." Kate knows there’s no point in arguing, so she takes a seat facing him.
“So, if I become an agent,” her voice is steady despite the hammering behind her ribs, and she realizes this disjoint is becoming habit, “do I still have to take my orders from people who disappear without warning and break into my apartment whenever they feel like it?”
He doesn’t respond, doesn't even change his facial expression.
“Honestly though, Richard, are you going to answer any of my questions before you demand that I decide?”
“Of course, Kate, we’re not unreasonable.” She needs to work on that, being able to blithely say something so false it sounds true, “But there are going to be limits on what I can tell you.”
“Ok. If I go through this training, what will the assignments be like?”
“They will be longer, but there will be fewer of them. We can’t risk you being recognized once you no longer have an excuse to pop up all around the globe.”
“So I’ll have to leave my job completely?”
“Yes,” No hesitation. That part was clearly non-negotiable.
“And what about my family? What do I tell them?”
“We can arrange for them believe that you have been given a position as a secretary,” Kate kept her grimace inward, “in Pan Am’s administrative branch. Something that requires that you travel extensively, possibly spend months in other countries during development negotiations.”
“Even Laura?”
“Especially Laura. With her travelling around the world, if she let something slip to the wrong person, someone might think she was working as an asset as well. It would only put her in danger.”
For a moment, Kate feels guilty that she’s surprised he even considered the risk to Laura. But that only lasts until she realizes the potential for Laura to let something slip is the only part of that contingency he is concerned about. It’s the guilt that she never considered the risk to her sister that lingers.
He pauses a while. “Anything else?”
“No.”
“Alright,” he stands and moves toward the door, “I’ll be seeing you soon for your answer.”
May 17, 1964, Stockholm
It had been nearly a year since Colette had seen John and more than a year since she’d seen him without the wife and son he conveniently forgot to mention when they met; so it came as something of a shock when he had appeared on their flight.
Colette had been even less ready for how he pestered her throughout the flight, alternating between apologizing and trying to flirt. He even made an excuse to walk through coach when she switched positions with Laura to get away from him. By the time they landed he’d had a few drinks and the flirting had gotten aggressive. Seeing him off the plane felt like exhaling a breath she’d been choking on for hours.
That night, after a very short debriefing, she headed up to her room, where Kate appeared a few minutes later with an entire bottle of very nice red.
She uncorked it with a flourish, “On Pan Am, as an apology for the bad flight.”
Kate let her vent out her frustrations (in French, which felt even better) and didn’t comment when they went from being about John, to men, to Dean and back to men in general.
By the end of the bottle, they’d roundly abused the other sex and had moved on to laughing about them.
Colette turned on the bed to face Kate. “I’m glad you didn’t leave," she said, placing a hand on Kate’s shoulder “Today especially.”
“Don’t be silly, Maggie would have been only too happy to help you with that idiot.
Colette stood, only a bit unsteadily. “Maggie is good for spiking someone’s drink or embarrassing them at a bar for you, but sometimes that isn’t the best solution.”
She leaned down and kissed Kate on each cheek.
“I’m glad you stayed.”
January 1, 1965, Istanbul
Colette takes a deep draw from the narguile on the low table and lets it out in such a long, slow stream that it draws a laugh from her exhausted friends.
“Ugh, ringing in the 1965 on board a flight was a terrible idea,” Laura groaned. “I blame Maggie for signing us up for this.”
“Hey, I was just trying to figure out a way to provide champagne like last year,” Maggie retorts.
“Yes, except we didn’t actually get to have any,” counters Colette.
“That wasn’t my fault,” says Maggie, indignant.
“Honestly, the only part of the trip worse than when the passengers were downing champagne like water was when they found out we’d run out,” Kate says, covering her face with her hands.
“Ok, enough of this feel sorry for ourselves crap,” Maggie stands up. “The man in 6C said he was having a party on his yacht at ten, which,” she glances at her watch, “should give us just enough time to get ready and head down to the marina.”
Kate laughs, “Oh no. No, I don’t think I can deal with another enclosed space full of drunk people today.”
“I’m with you,” Colette says as she settles deeper into the cushions.
“I’m sorry, did you not hear? A party on his yacht,” she lays a hand on one hip as she cocks it to the side, “his yacht on the Bosphorus. Which probably has plenty of champagne to make up for last night.”
Maggie stares at them contemptuously for a few moments before giving up and leaving.
Laura give Kate once last glance, “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
“Yes,” Kate waves her off, “Just takes pictures for me; you’ll make it look better than it really was anyway.”
Laura rolls her eyes as she walks away, but she was still smiling.
Kate and Colette wander back down the street, picking over the stalls that were still open, and find a table at their hotel bar.
Kate watches the people around them and thinks how nice it is to not be working on this trip; to not have to be on the look-out for a person who’s picture she has in her pocket; to not have to make excuses to leave her friends; to not think about guarding herself from anyone other than the same pickpockets they have in New York.
“Kate?” Colette’s voice breaks her train of thought.
“Hmm?”
“You looked worried, are you alright?”
“Yes, yes I’m fine. I’m good, actually; I was just thinking how nice it is to relax for a change.”
Colette makes a soft sound of assent as she takes another sip.
A few minutes later, Kate ventures a question she hopes will be vague enough.
“Collette, have you ever had something… someone that made you feel like someone else? Someone you liked better than who you are?"
Kate can tell Colette’s wondering if she’s talking about Niko, but she doesn’t ask.
“Of course, yes,” To her surprise, Colette smiles. “But those kinds of people rarely stay around for long.”
“So what do you do about it?”
Colette relaxes back in her chair and glances slowly around the room before focusing back on Kate.
“When you meet someone like that, you should become the person that they make you feel like; the person you’d rather be.”
Kate twirls the stem of her wine glass, eyes not meeting Colette’s.
“And if that person you feel like is dangerous, or just… if that person is trouble?
Colette’s eyes narrow, “That’s your choice, I suppose.”
September 26, 1968, Paris
Colette sits beside her with her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed blankly on the intricate mural on the opposite wall of the waiting area. Almost four years of searching for her brother had led her here.
The secretary calls ‘Valois’ and they are escorted down a long hallway and into an office where a small man sits behind a desk covered in stacks of paper.
Colette drifts through fifteen minutes of bureaucratic paperwork, face impassive, before she says anything beyond ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
“You said he died in Portuguese Guinea?”
“Yes, in July. He was caught in the crossfire during a Portuguese raid on the town he lived in.”
“I,” Colette’s voice cracks, “I didn’t know he was living there.”
Kate sees her chin quiver for a moment, then she sits up straighter. “Can you tell me, what was he doing there?”
The man behind the desk leafs through his papers.
“It appears that he was helping the relief effort for Guinean refugees. He had been there almost since he graduated from University.” He glances up at Colette over the glasses perched at the end of his nose. “Now, we only need your signature on these two last papers stating that your inquiry into your brother’s whereabouts was fulfilled.”
All her Pan Am and CIA training doesn’t keep the look of fury from flashing across Kate’s face. She’s about to object when Colette accepts the papers and signs without glancing at their contents.
“Yes, of course,” she hands them back without glancing up across the desk once.
Kate laces her fingers into Colette’s as they stand to leave the office. During the entire walk back to their hotel, Colette doesn’t say a word but she keeps Kate’s hand a vice-like grip.
Colette sits on the bed without taking off her coat.
“Colette? Are you alright?”
“No.”
Her voice is perfectly steady, and that’s what worries Kate.
She removes her own coat, then Colette’s, before moving to the bed. She pulls Colette up to rest against the headboard next to her, and wraps one arm around her.
“I’m so sorry, Colette.” she pauses, “But, it seems like he was a truly incredible man. He sounds a bit like you, actually.”
It starts as hitch in Colette’s breath that builds painfully into sobs. Kate holds her, smoothing one hand over her hair, placing a kiss on her temple, waiting until she sleeps.
December 31, 1972, Outside Kingstown, Jamaica
Kate holds up a hand to shade her eyes against the setting sun. After spending the day wandering the area around the school and visiting the classrooms, then spending the evening reading on the porch, she has to admit she’s a bit jealous of Colette.
The children, all orphaned refugees from Haiti, clearly adore Colette, and Kate isn’t surprised. Pan Am had trained them all to be warm and welcoming but Colette was the one who had always felt like that naturally.
That night, at midnight, they toast.
“Puissions-nous être meilleurs et plus sages que nous l'étions en 1963”
Kate smiles, “Always.”
Cease and Resist (Double Jeopardy Remix) (AO3 link)
Mean Girls
Janis Ian/Regina George
Rating: Explicit (Gen for the 8th grade parts of the fic)
Words: 4007
Pinch-hit written for a request for backstory on why Regina thought Janis was a lesbian.
Next year she is totally flying home for the holidays, Janis thinks as she makes yet another hopeless attempt at finding a less painful position in her seat. Nine hours into the drive she’d given up on getting comfortable and changed her goal to not letting her whole ass fall asleep.
Her phone buzzes for the millionth time since this marathon tour of middle America embarked from Penn Station.
A text from Damien, again. Making sure she was planning on going to Steve Topolewski’s party with him. Again.
“Yes, assuming my fellow passengers don’t stone me for excessive texting. See you in three hours”
Janis tucks her phone away and shoots a bright, shiny fuckyou smile at the woman scowling at her from across the aisle. She dropped the middle finger that used to complete the gesture that fall. She’d seen a middle schooler use it on a doorman and decied she was done with it. She thinks quieter, more insidious dissent suits her college-self better.
The woman, clearly getting the message even without the added appendage, turns to face forward with a huff.
So totally flying next year.
Around October, word had popped up in the Lincoln High rumor mill (which continued to function without a hitch despite their all, you know, leaving Lincoln High) that John Kubina had come out the minute he’d set foot on a college campus. And ever since he’d gotten a mass-invite on Facebook to this stupid party, he’d been begging Janis to come with him so he might get a chance to talk to him. Janis hadn’t gotten an invite. She was apparently an outlier for not accepting all the Friend Requests that came pouring in from people she’d known her whole life once they had graduated and, she thought, never had to see each other again. Janis had caved and said she’d go, but because it was Damien asking.
But this party was still the thing she was looking forward to least, even less than helping her crazy grandmother make the traditional 800 Christmas cookies. Because Cady might think she established peace last year, but Janis knows better. The social anomaly that happened their senior year was just a cease-fire. Sure, all sides stopped chucking bombs, but no one had gotten rid of their arsenals.
Regina sat behind Janis on the bed, twisting heavy, wavy locks of her hair into some complicated braid. Wrappers from the candy they’d snuck from the party downstairs were spread around them and MTV’s year end top-40 countdown was on Regina’s tv. New Year’s Eve at Regina’s had been one of their traditions, even before they were old enough to stay up until midnight.
Regina ran her fingers carefully through her friend’s hair, fixing the tangles before picking up each new piece.
“So, what’s your new year’s resolution?”
Janis cocked her head to the side while she thought and Regina straightened it so she could tuck the last stray pieces behind an ear and tie the braid in place.
“Have a boyfriend so I can kiss him at midnight,” Janis said at last.
Regina looked over at the alarm clock beside her bed. 11:58.
“You don’t need a boyfriend to get kissed on New Years, Janis,” she said, like she’s pointing out that leaves grow on trees.
Janis turned to face her. “What, I should make out with some random guy?” she asked with a giggle that, for whatever reason, Regina wished didn’t sound so excited.
She followed Regina’s eyes as they darted to the clock again. 11:59.
When she looked back, Regina’s face was close to her own. Too close. But Janis paused, just for a split second, before she pulled away, suddenly stunned. Janis knew it was ridiculous; she’d always known Regina was pretty. Like, really, really, stupidly pretty. The kind of pretty that might have made Janis jealous if Regina hadn’t seemed so oblivious to it.
But she was a different kind of pretty this close up, where Janis couldn’t focus on more than one plane of her face at a time. She glanced over the freckles on her cheeks that she could normally only see in the summer; at the tiny, white scar beside her nose that she’d gotten playing kickball in elementary school; up to eyes she would have called blue a moment ago, but now she can see that they fade to an almost green at the edge of her now fully blown-out pupils.
In the half second that it took for that to register Regina closed the gap between them. She pressed her lips to Janis’s. It was chaste and gentle and didn’t last for more than a few seconds before Regina pulled away, leaving Janis’s lips feeling oddly stung. Her eyes flicked up from Janis’s lips to meet her gaze, like she was asking a nervous question.
Janis leaned forward again, resting one hand on Regina’s shoulder. Then the kisses started lasting longer, until Janis pulled back to breath.
“This is just… practice, right?”
Regina pulled her hands from where they were resting on Janis’s knee and waist with a start.
“Yeah,” she said, “of course.” The last word is barely off her lips when they come back to meet Janis’s.
They slept in the same bed all the time but that night the feeling of Regina pressed against her back was making her skin zing. And, she hoped she wasn’t just imagining it because that would probably, like, mean something or whatever, she could feel Regina's heart beating hard and her breath coming shallow against her back.
Damien scopes out the scene in the Topolewski basement as he returns with drinks to where Cady and Janis are standing in a corner.
The three of them had seen each other and caught up since they’d gotten back. Now there was just the strange familiar/unfamiliar déjà vu feeling of standing in a room with people you never knew that well in the first place but keep finding yourself around.
Cady, ever the optimist, holds up her red plastic cup and attempts a toast.
“Ah, yes,” Janis says, glancing around the room again even though she knows it won’t look any better this time. “Nothing says ‘happy holidays’ like sad tinsel, shitty beer poured with at least fifty percent head and a group of people who are mostly just here to make sure they aren't the most pathetic one in the our graduating class.”
“You know, Damien, I think maybe we shouldn't have let her move to a whole city where everyone is as cynical as she is...”
Damien shoots her one of his most deeply skeptical glances, “Um, have you met most of the country? You do realize that this is what most of these people are going to be doing for holiday parties for the rest of their lives, right?"
Someone across the room catches Cady’s eye and she waves them over. When Janis pulls her enormous cup back down from her face it’s all she can do to not spew the room temperature beer in her mouth all over the person in front of her.
Regina fucking George, wearing a pair of jeans and t-shirt. Though, Janis thinks, the jeans are skanktastically tight and Regina must know how good she looks with that neckline.
“Hey,” she says with a smile that’s almost shy, and there’s something else different about her. Janis can’t quite put a finger on it; maybe it’s how she’s standing, hands in her pockets, one hip cocked slightly to the side.
“Well holy fuck, look who it is.” Janis chokes out. It wasn’t exactly hostile, but it was pretty clearly not welcoming.
Damien doesn’t even flinch when his foot connects sharply with her shin.
“Ow, Damien! What the fuck?”
“What?” He asks like he’s affronted. “Oh hey, it’s John. I think I’m going to just go and-” his voice trails off as he leaves.
Regina pretends to not have noticed the whole exchange by craning her neck to look around the room behind her.
Cady looks nervously from one to the other. “I want food. Do you guys want food?”
Oh yeah, Janis thinks she walks behind the two other girls, there is totally nothing awkward about this. Nope, nothing at all.
Janis and Regina had stopped trying to ruin each others’ lives after Cady’s whole prom stunt. But Janis had always chocked that up more to the halo brace than anything else. It had rendered Regina’s malice inert, and it just felt wrong trying to destroy a girl who couldn’t even turn her head to sneeze. It was less that they had made peace than they just completely disengaged. They had even managed to make it through the entirety of senior year without speaking a word to each other.
Regina and Cady catch up while Janis listens, watches and quietly resists any attempt to draw her into the conversation. She’s just starting to think that Regina seems to actually be interested in what Cady’s saying (even some of the college math-club stories that had bored Janis to tears), and that maybe she should make more of an effort when Cady spots Aaron coming down the stairs. She bolts, leaving Janis and Regina facing each other over a bowl of chex mix.
Janis is going to kill Cady when she gets back.
Regina spent that spring vacation with her cousins in Ohio. The next week, when she walked down the hallways, all push-up bras and short skirts she could just barely walk in, most of their classmates did double-takes.
Janis didn’t think she looked all that different, really (but maybe she’d been spending too much time looking recently). Anyway, Janis had gotten a pink streak in her hair over the break and if there was one thing she’d learned in the resulting fight with her mother, it was that she emphatically believed that people should be able to dress however they wanted.
Other things were different too. Regina had a critiques of all of their classmates (Janis never gave a thought to what her criticism of her would be) and she talked about some guy on the football time constantly. Janis had never heard Regina mention this Kyle guy before. She was pretty sure Regina had never even talked to him before.
Whenever she talked about her new clothes or how Gretchen Weiners had started asking her for guy advice, Regina looked down, almost like she was embarrassed by the stuff that was pouring out of her mouth. And Janis had to admit, that made dealing with this strange, hopefully temporary version of her best friend a little easier.
When she talked about Kyle, though, Regina didn’t look down. Instead, she watched Janis’s face with the kind of concentration Janice was used to seeing when Regina was taking on a math test or trying to figure out a new chord on her guitar. Regina watched her so closely that Janis felt it like a hand putting pressure just below her ribs.
It was weird. But things were weird enough already that she didn’t want to risk making it worse by asking.
So instead, after yet another five minutes of not-listening to Regina talk about Kyle’s hair or arms or whatever, and pretending like having someone look at her face that hard was normal, Janis snapped her book shut and turned toward her friend.
“Oh. My. God. Regina, we get it. He’s amazing” she drew out the last ‘a’ and laughed at the look on Regina’s face, like she’d been caught not paying attention in class.
Regina composed herself quickly though, “I’m just saying that he’s got-“
Under the impending threat of another round of Kyle-worship, Janis snatched up a pillow and used it to knock Regina over, tumbling with her when she went down onto her back easier than Janis had expected. Janis landed with one hand one either side of Regina’s shoulders, hovering just over her face. And there were those damn freckles again, those same blown-wide pupils. She felt a jolt, like that pressure thing below her ribs had suddenly turned into a fist clutching tight on various squishy inner bits.
Janis realized her mouth was gaping open and willed her lungs to get with the picture so her voice wouldn’t sound as breathy and moronic as she felt. She aimed for mocking nonchalance when she asked “Are you in love with him now?”
The look that flashed across Regina’s face looked like half a sneer, but before Janis could be sure it had disappeared and Regina had lifted herself up on an elbow, bringing her mouth to within a centimeter of Janis’s own and stopping there.
Their breath mixed and Janis’ couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t moving backward, but her arms felt like lead and when they finally kissed she really wasn’t sure who’d made that last move forward.
Regina’s lips were flavorlessly sweet and sticky from her lip-gloss, which was soon smearing all around the edges of her mouth. Janis was about to roll away when Regina put a hand on her hip. A sharp chill ran down her back. It scared her a little, but not in a way that made her want to stop. So instead, she reached up to wipe away some of the pink gloss with a thumb and made both girls giggle.
Regina smiles at her nervously and starts to pick pretzels out of the bowl “Are you still with Kevin?”
“No.” Janis deadpans, chin jutting like she’s daring Regina to comment.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean-” Regina looks completely flustered and even a little nervous. Janis is taken a little aback-- she can’t remember the last time she saw Regina like this-- and she backpedals on her answer at top speed.
“No, no, it’s fine. He was going to school in LA, so we split up in the summer.” She tries offering a smile that almost feels sore. “No big deal.”
“Oh, right.” Regina says, the tension in her voice easing just a bit. “Is he coming back for the break, or,”
“No,” she says, wishing she could start an answer with something else, “He’s visiting family in India.”
“Then I guess he has all of us beat,” Regina says, looking around the room.
Janis surprises herself by laughing. “Yeah, I guess he does.”
Regina points at her cup, “You need another drink?”
Janis grimaces slightly, and opens her mouth to answer, but Regina gets there first.
“I know where the liquor cabinet is upstairs if you’ve hit your Natty Light limit.”
“Of course you do,” Janis rolls her eyes.
“What was that?” Regina asks, cocking her head, one hand on her hip.
Janis holds both her hands up in mock placation, “Nothing, absolutely nothing. Lead on.”
Regina ran all her plans for her fourteenth birthday party by her cousin. Cassie was sixteen. She was dating the football captain of her school, her friends were the prettiest girls Regina had ever seen, and she always seemed to get whatever she wanted.
“I was wondering if I should invite Kyle… but I mean it’s a pool party and it’ll just be girls… in their bathing suits. And then him. Would that be weird?”
“Oh, hun. The most important thing isn’t who you invite, it’s who you don’t invite.”
“What do you mean?”
“Seriously, are you retarded? It’s the oldest trick in the book. If you want people to care about your party, leave someone off your list. And make it worth talking about.”
“But-”
“Ryan’s here, gotta run, sweetie.” Cassie hung up before Regina could get another word out.
Regina stared at her list for what felt like forever before putting a big X through the first name.
After Janis’s mom called her house, Regina swore she wouldn’t ever listen to Cassie again. But she realized within a week she had no idea how to keep up this new act on her own. And Janis since had left the school completely; there wouldn’t have been any point in taking it back, even if she could.
Regina not only knew where the liquor cabinet knew was, she also knew how to mix an impressive number of drinks with its contents.
The dark and stormies got them through the obligatory catching up. They also got Janis to stop expecting unpleasant twists or traps in the conversation and eased Regina’s nervous fidgeting.
The Mexican martini got them reminiscing and laughing hysterically about the pranks they used to play on Janis’s older brothers.
Fuck all, Janis thinks, if I have to tell Cady that things might actually have changed more than she’d ever admitted before.
By the time they were draining their rum and cokes they hit the topic they had both been avoiding all night. Janis can’t remember how exactly this came up (though she guesses it had to eventually) but suddenly Regina looks completely stricken.
“Seriously though, it worked out ok for me. The whole teen-angst, social-ostracization thing.” The deer in the headlights look on Regina’s face would be funny if it didn’t tug at a spot just below her navel. “So, don’t, like, feel bad about it anymore. You know, if you did.”
Regina doesn’t say anything for a while. The bass is making the stairs they're sitting on vibrate and she hopes it will cover the way her hands are shaking.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I’d just had the balls to tell people,” she pauses for the whole five seconds it takes for her to steal herself and lift her gaze from her cup to Janis’s face, “to tell people that I was the big dyke.”
Once those words come out it’s like the last bits of tension eased out of her shoulders, which should be a good thing, but she still looks a little frightened of what she just said.
Janis’s brain feels like its still trying to catch up with what’s going on here, but she starts stumbling through words anyway because it suddenly feels really important that Regina hear this.
“You know, about before, it wasn’t that I didn’t like…” she mumbles, “I mean, I just didn’t know…”
Clearly, she is not doing this right because Regina, if anything, looks more terrified.
“We don’t have to. Talk about it, I mean,” Janis says, trying to pump the breaks, to do whatever to get that look off Regina’s face.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
But somehow Regina just looks disappointed, not relieved, and Janis is suddenly very thankful for the alcohol in her system telling her to cut to the fucking chase.
She leans forward, cupping Regina’s cheek with one hand and catching Regina’s lips with her own. Regina tenses, but she doesn't pull away. They’re still for what can’t be longer than a few seconds, but it seems longer than it is and Janis is just starting to worry when Regina begins to kiss her back. It’s hesitant and soft, closed mouthed at first, but Janis’s heart is hammering away regardless. She slides her hand down to the back Regina’s neck to pull her closer and she feels Regina’s lips part slightly more, her own hand snaking around Janis’s waist.
Janis breaks from the kiss, only pulling her face back far enough for her to see Regina clearly.
“That was what I was, uh, failing at saying before.” Her own voice sounds lower and breathier than she’d expected.
Regina still looks half terrified, but she’s smiling and she lets Janis lead her by the hand a little further up the stairs, away from the few people who had noticed them.
At the top of the stairs Janis places her palms against the taller girl’s hips and presses her gently back against the wall. Janis kisses her slowly, trying to coax her out, but Regina still seems tentative.
Janis leans forward and her breasts and stomach brush, then press, against Regina’s. She moans, a lot louder than she means to, into Regina’s mouth and feels Regina’s stomach muscles jump against her own. Regina’s hands tighten on Janis suddenly and she pulls her closer. Regina’s kisses get more deliberate and her fingertips start running over the strip of bare skin where Janis’s shirt had ridden up. They get faster, fingers tangled in hair; hands cupped, first gently, then harder, against breasts; necks and ears peppered with kisses and nips.
Janis hadn’t kissed a girl since Regina, but it was becoming pretty clear that Regina had. She somehow manages to put her hands, lips and teeth just where Janis needs them, making her skin feel like it was burning and her breath come ragged. Janis finds herself following Regina’s lead, mirroring the way she was being touched.
And it was working, Regina was breathing fast against her ear, and Janis can feel her racing pulse when she kisses Regina’s neck; but Janis wants to feel like she made that happen, entirely on her own
Feeling the heat that’s been building between her own legs, she leans forward to press her thigh tight and high between Regina’s legs. Regina’s hand slips from her shoulder and she moans into the kiss while her hips buck forward. When they come up for air Janis has got that wicked grin, the one Regina had always associated with doing something that would get them in trouble but be totally worth it.
She pulls Regina back across the hallway into the bathroom and shuts the door behind them.
Regina has the button and fly of Janis’s jeans undone and the tips of her fingers hooked into her underwear when she leans back.
Regina’s lips are swollen, she’s breathing fast and it’s really not helping Janis be patient with the ache pounding between her legs.
“Are you ok with this?” she asks.
Janis delivers the ultimate ‘are you shitting me’ stare in response.
“No, I mean… I mean are you ok with it here. If people saw us come in here…”
Regina leaves the sentence hanging like the rest of it might hurt, but Janis laughs.
“They might, what? Call me a big lesbian? At least this time I’d get to have the fun first.”
When Regina looks unsure how to respond, Janis reaches forward and undoes her fly. As she slides her palm down Regina’s stomach, fingers edging under the elastic of Regina’s underwear, Janis leans forward to whisper in her ear, “I’ve done the time.”
Her fingers curl to brush against where Regina was nearly as wet and hot as she felt, “Isn't there some saying about enjoying the crime?”
Regina inhales, sharp, almost like a hiss against her own ear and pulls Janis bodily against her. She starts kissing her as she tucks her hand down Janis’s pants and slides one, then two fingers into her, holding tight when Janis’s knees give slightly.
They build rhythms that match each other, fingers finding just the right angle and palms canting to give leverage just there (Janis doesn’t mind following Regina’s lead here) until their kissing becomes panting and Regina comes, biting on Janis’ shoulder and just managing to keep her hand rocking until Janis crashes over the edge too.
The next morning Janis meets up with Cady and Damien for a grease-fest breakfast. It’s the only diner in town, and half of the people from the party are there battling hangovers with pancakes and bacon.
On her way to pay she passes a table of football players gone slightly to seed and hears snickering.
“Hey, Janis!” one of them calls, “You back to your old ways? I hear you were munchin’ Regina’s carpet last night.”
“Aw, are you jealous?” She asks, smiling as she leans over their table. “It’s ok, your mom was jealous too.”
She walks away before they can figure out just how many ways they could take that comment.
As she’s leaving the diner her phone vibrates. The number isn’t in her contacts, but that doesn’t matter.
The text reads ‘Got plans New Year’s?’
Le meilleur de tous les mondes (AO3 link)
Pan Am
Colette Valois, Kate Cameron, Laura Cameron, Maggie Ryan (Colette/Kate if you squint)
Rating: Gen
Words: 3010
Assignment written for a 'what happens post-canon' request.
New Year’s Day, 1964, New York
Colette leans on the balcony railing, watching the straggling groups stumble out of Times Square and the few remaining couples sway together under the still-bright lights.
She hears the pop of yet another cork over the music still blasting inside and a round of cheers. Colette begins to wonder just how Maggie came into that money she spoke of, and decides with smile that she would probably rather not know.
The door opens and the volume of the music jumps She feels a scarf wrapped around her shoulders as Kate steps in beside her.
“You might not feel it, but you’re definitely cold,” Kate says as she presses one of the two champagne glasses she is carrying into Colette’s hand.
As she takes a sip, Colette muses that the tradition of starting the new year right nearly always results in a most unpleasant January first. But Kate’s smile is far too bright for Colette to share that thought, so she raises her glass to toast her friend.
“1964,” Kate says. Their glasses nearly miss one another, but they eventually manage an overly loud clink through their laughter.
“Puissions-nous être meilleurs et plus sages que nous l'étions en 1963”
“Always,” Kate returns.
They peer over the balcony for a while, watching the scene below with shoulders pressed together. Colette realizes she must have been cold before. She blames her failure to notice it before on Maggie and her two cases of champagne.
Kate nudges Colette’s shoulder. “So how do you plan to top being courted by royalty?”
“I promise you, I have no plans for dating in 1964,” she says, shaking her head, one hand half-covering her face.
“Maybe you’ll find yourself an emperor in the East.”
“Well in that case, perhaps I could be persuaded.” Colette smirks against the rim of her glass as she takes another sip.
“So, you’re still leaving us for life in the Orient?”
One corner of Colette’s mouth quirks into a half smile but she keeps her eyes down, focused on a point well above the people milling below.
“I put in my request for a transfer a few weeks ago, but I haven’t heard back yet. And now,” she pauses. “Knowing that I have a brother, out there somewhere.” She looks at Kate and her smiles spreads. It’s cautious, but it looks true. “I don’t know what I will do if they find a place for me in Hong Kong. A few days ago I was starting to feel like the end of 1963 had… run away with me, and it still feels like too many decisions to make. But,” she nods to the glass doors and Kate spots what looks like Ted and Maggie both making resolution proclamations; glasses held high and good intentions on their faces, despite the sway in their postures giving away that these resolutions may well be forgotten or regretted in the morning. “it has conveniently created too many complications for me to make any resolutions. So tonight I just want to enjoy all the possibilities. Making decisions can begin in the morning."
Someone’s resolution must have proven too provocative, because they see Maggie and Ted begin yet another one of the bickering matches Kate swears are reserved for brothers and sisters. Kate sees Dean, laughing, look past Maggie’s gesticulations and, spotting the two on the balcony, raise his glass.
Kate loops and arm through Colette’s and they return to the railing; there’s only one couple left in the square below now. “All the possibilities, huh?”
When Colette turns to her with a questioning glance, Kate puts on a look innocent curiosity. “You know, I think I just may have seen one of those possibilities when the ball dropped.”
The light is dim on the balcony, but even so Kate can see the blush rise on Colette’s cheeks. She laughs and snakes a hand around the smaller woman’s waist for a one-armed hug.
“I’m happy for you,” she says, smiling as she watches the blush deepen.
“Like I said, tonight I would just like to enjoy the possibilities,” Colette returns.
Kate restricts her comment to a raised eyebrow.
“I’m considering a transfer myself”
Colette lets out one of those little gasps Kate had thought were so affected the first few weeks they flew together.
A look passes across Kate’s face, like she feels as though she ought not have said it, and she finishes off her glass of champagne with something bordering on abandon.
“Are you, really?”
“Just,” Kate looks half abashed, trying to pretend that it was an off-hand comment; the smile she can’t suppress betrays her, “just a thought. Something I’m… considering.”
“Where will you transfer to? Have we opened a hub in Yugoslavia I’m not aware of?” Colette nudges her friend gently as she finishes her own glass.
For Kate’s face falls a bit. “No, no they haven’t.”
She looks at the skyline around them for a while, “I guess I don’t know where I’d end up. It was just a thought, anyway.”
They sit together. Colette has learned Kate’s rhythms over the last two years, especially after Laura started rooming with Maggie, so she knows when the silence has lasted long enough that she can be sure Kate won’t say anything further.
“Did Maggie ever say how she came into this little bit of money?”
Kate laughs, “That is probably a secret best left in 1963, don’t you think?”
“Come, you’ve hardly done debriefings with us since the summer and I miss your dancing.”
Kate takes Colette’s offered hand and stands with an exaggeratedly mistrustful look. “I will choose to take that as a compliment… for now”
January 3rd, 1964, New York
During the elevator ride up to Richard’s floor of the hospital Kate thinks with chagrin that she has the combination of Pan Am’s lessons in poise and a defected British spy’s training in deception to thank for the fact that she isn’t letting the anxiety she feels make itself known with some nervous tick or a strained facial expression.
She still hasn’t made up her mind about taking Richard’s- the CIA’s- offer to be trained as a full agent, but with the class starting at the end of the month she knows she’ll be asked to decide soon. Given their history, she also knows she may be asked to decide suddenly, and not on her own terms.
The last thing she knows, that she is afraid of, is that she will probably come out of Richard’s room later that day having made her decision.
She reaches Richard’s closed door, hands still, face calm; but when she opens it she finds the room empty.
That day Kate gets an offer to take a spot on the crew of a round-the-world flight leaving the next week. She says yes.
January 29th, 1964, New York
Kate places her bags on the floor as she turns to close her door.
“You missed this round of recruits at Langley,” the voice startles her and she spins on a heel.
“Richard!” He’s sitting, one leg over the other, on her couch. “I know being in the CIA gives you certain privileges, but this is ridiculous.”
“You missed this round of recruits,” he repeats, “but there’s another class starting in May. We’ll need you decision by the end of next month. And don’t think just getting on a plane to avoid giving us an answer will work this time." Kate knows there’s no point in arguing, so she takes a seat facing him.
“So, if I become an agent,” her voice is steady despite the hammering behind her ribs, and she realizes this disjoint is becoming habit, “do I still have to take my orders from people who disappear without warning and break into my apartment whenever they feel like it?”
He doesn’t respond, doesn't even change his facial expression.
“Honestly though, Richard, are you going to answer any of my questions before you demand that I decide?”
“Of course, Kate, we’re not unreasonable.” She needs to work on that, being able to blithely say something so false it sounds true, “But there are going to be limits on what I can tell you.”
“Ok. If I go through this training, what will the assignments be like?”
“They will be longer, but there will be fewer of them. We can’t risk you being recognized once you no longer have an excuse to pop up all around the globe.”
“So I’ll have to leave my job completely?”
“Yes,” No hesitation. That part was clearly non-negotiable.
“And what about my family? What do I tell them?”
“We can arrange for them believe that you have been given a position as a secretary,” Kate kept her grimace inward, “in Pan Am’s administrative branch. Something that requires that you travel extensively, possibly spend months in other countries during development negotiations.”
“Even Laura?”
“Especially Laura. With her travelling around the world, if she let something slip to the wrong person, someone might think she was working as an asset as well. It would only put her in danger.”
For a moment, Kate feels guilty that she’s surprised he even considered the risk to Laura. But that only lasts until she realizes the potential for Laura to let something slip is the only part of that contingency he is concerned about. It’s the guilt that she never considered the risk to her sister that lingers.
He pauses a while. “Anything else?”
“No.”
“Alright,” he stands and moves toward the door, “I’ll be seeing you soon for your answer.”
May 17, 1964, Stockholm
It had been nearly a year since Colette had seen John and more than a year since she’d seen him without the wife and son he conveniently forgot to mention when they met; so it came as something of a shock when he had appeared on their flight.
Colette had been even less ready for how he pestered her throughout the flight, alternating between apologizing and trying to flirt. He even made an excuse to walk through coach when she switched positions with Laura to get away from him. By the time they landed he’d had a few drinks and the flirting had gotten aggressive. Seeing him off the plane felt like exhaling a breath she’d been choking on for hours.
That night, after a very short debriefing, she headed up to her room, where Kate appeared a few minutes later with an entire bottle of very nice red.
She uncorked it with a flourish, “On Pan Am, as an apology for the bad flight.”
Kate let her vent out her frustrations (in French, which felt even better) and didn’t comment when they went from being about John, to men, to Dean and back to men in general.
By the end of the bottle, they’d roundly abused the other sex and had moved on to laughing about them.
Colette turned on the bed to face Kate. “I’m glad you didn’t leave," she said, placing a hand on Kate’s shoulder “Today especially.”
“Don’t be silly, Maggie would have been only too happy to help you with that idiot.
Colette stood, only a bit unsteadily. “Maggie is good for spiking someone’s drink or embarrassing them at a bar for you, but sometimes that isn’t the best solution.”
She leaned down and kissed Kate on each cheek.
“I’m glad you stayed.”
January 1, 1965, Istanbul
Colette takes a deep draw from the narguile on the low table and lets it out in such a long, slow stream that it draws a laugh from her exhausted friends.
“Ugh, ringing in the 1965 on board a flight was a terrible idea,” Laura groaned. “I blame Maggie for signing us up for this.”
“Hey, I was just trying to figure out a way to provide champagne like last year,” Maggie retorts.
“Yes, except we didn’t actually get to have any,” counters Colette.
“That wasn’t my fault,” says Maggie, indignant.
“Honestly, the only part of the trip worse than when the passengers were downing champagne like water was when they found out we’d run out,” Kate says, covering her face with her hands.
“Ok, enough of this feel sorry for ourselves crap,” Maggie stands up. “The man in 6C said he was having a party on his yacht at ten, which,” she glances at her watch, “should give us just enough time to get ready and head down to the marina.”
Kate laughs, “Oh no. No, I don’t think I can deal with another enclosed space full of drunk people today.”
“I’m with you,” Colette says as she settles deeper into the cushions.
“I’m sorry, did you not hear? A party on his yacht,” she lays a hand on one hip as she cocks it to the side, “his yacht on the Bosphorus. Which probably has plenty of champagne to make up for last night.”
Maggie stares at them contemptuously for a few moments before giving up and leaving.
Laura give Kate once last glance, “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
“Yes,” Kate waves her off, “Just takes pictures for me; you’ll make it look better than it really was anyway.”
Laura rolls her eyes as she walks away, but she was still smiling.
Kate and Colette wander back down the street, picking over the stalls that were still open, and find a table at their hotel bar.
Kate watches the people around them and thinks how nice it is to not be working on this trip; to not have to be on the look-out for a person who’s picture she has in her pocket; to not have to make excuses to leave her friends; to not think about guarding herself from anyone other than the same pickpockets they have in New York.
“Kate?” Colette’s voice breaks her train of thought.
“Hmm?”
“You looked worried, are you alright?”
“Yes, yes I’m fine. I’m good, actually; I was just thinking how nice it is to relax for a change.”
Colette makes a soft sound of assent as she takes another sip.
A few minutes later, Kate ventures a question she hopes will be vague enough.
“Collette, have you ever had something… someone that made you feel like someone else? Someone you liked better than who you are?"
Kate can tell Colette’s wondering if she’s talking about Niko, but she doesn’t ask.
“Of course, yes,” To her surprise, Colette smiles. “But those kinds of people rarely stay around for long.”
“So what do you do about it?”
Colette relaxes back in her chair and glances slowly around the room before focusing back on Kate.
“When you meet someone like that, you should become the person that they make you feel like; the person you’d rather be.”
Kate twirls the stem of her wine glass, eyes not meeting Colette’s.
“And if that person you feel like is dangerous, or just… if that person is trouble?
Colette’s eyes narrow, “That’s your choice, I suppose.”
September 26, 1968, Paris
Colette sits beside her with her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed blankly on the intricate mural on the opposite wall of the waiting area. Almost four years of searching for her brother had led her here.
The secretary calls ‘Valois’ and they are escorted down a long hallway and into an office where a small man sits behind a desk covered in stacks of paper.
Colette drifts through fifteen minutes of bureaucratic paperwork, face impassive, before she says anything beyond ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
“You said he died in Portuguese Guinea?”
“Yes, in July. He was caught in the crossfire during a Portuguese raid on the town he lived in.”
“I,” Colette’s voice cracks, “I didn’t know he was living there.”
Kate sees her chin quiver for a moment, then she sits up straighter. “Can you tell me, what was he doing there?”
The man behind the desk leafs through his papers.
“It appears that he was helping the relief effort for Guinean refugees. He had been there almost since he graduated from University.” He glances up at Colette over the glasses perched at the end of his nose. “Now, we only need your signature on these two last papers stating that your inquiry into your brother’s whereabouts was fulfilled.”
All her Pan Am and CIA training doesn’t keep the look of fury from flashing across Kate’s face. She’s about to object when Colette accepts the papers and signs without glancing at their contents.
“Yes, of course,” she hands them back without glancing up across the desk once.
Kate laces her fingers into Colette’s as they stand to leave the office. During the entire walk back to their hotel, Colette doesn’t say a word but she keeps Kate’s hand a vice-like grip.
Colette sits on the bed without taking off her coat.
“Colette? Are you alright?”
“No.”
Her voice is perfectly steady, and that’s what worries Kate.
She removes her own coat, then Colette’s, before moving to the bed. She pulls Colette up to rest against the headboard next to her, and wraps one arm around her.
“I’m so sorry, Colette.” she pauses, “But, it seems like he was a truly incredible man. He sounds a bit like you, actually.”
It starts as hitch in Colette’s breath that builds painfully into sobs. Kate holds her, smoothing one hand over her hair, placing a kiss on her temple, waiting until she sleeps.
December 31, 1972, Outside Kingstown, Jamaica
Kate holds up a hand to shade her eyes against the setting sun. After spending the day wandering the area around the school and visiting the classrooms, then spending the evening reading on the porch, she has to admit she’s a bit jealous of Colette.
The children, all orphaned refugees from Haiti, clearly adore Colette, and Kate isn’t surprised. Pan Am had trained them all to be warm and welcoming but Colette was the one who had always felt like that naturally.
That night, at midnight, they toast.
“Puissions-nous être meilleurs et plus sages que nous l'étions en 1963”
Kate smiles, “Always.”
Cease and Resist (Double Jeopardy Remix) (AO3 link)
Mean Girls
Janis Ian/Regina George
Rating: Explicit (Gen for the 8th grade parts of the fic)
Words: 4007
Pinch-hit written for a request for backstory on why Regina thought Janis was a lesbian.
Next year she is totally flying home for the holidays, Janis thinks as she makes yet another hopeless attempt at finding a less painful position in her seat. Nine hours into the drive she’d given up on getting comfortable and changed her goal to not letting her whole ass fall asleep.
Her phone buzzes for the millionth time since this marathon tour of middle America embarked from Penn Station.
A text from Damien, again. Making sure she was planning on going to Steve Topolewski’s party with him. Again.
“Yes, assuming my fellow passengers don’t stone me for excessive texting. See you in three hours”
Janis tucks her phone away and shoots a bright, shiny fuckyou smile at the woman scowling at her from across the aisle. She dropped the middle finger that used to complete the gesture that fall. She’d seen a middle schooler use it on a doorman and decied she was done with it. She thinks quieter, more insidious dissent suits her college-self better.
The woman, clearly getting the message even without the added appendage, turns to face forward with a huff.
So totally flying next year.
Around October, word had popped up in the Lincoln High rumor mill (which continued to function without a hitch despite their all, you know, leaving Lincoln High) that John Kubina had come out the minute he’d set foot on a college campus. And ever since he’d gotten a mass-invite on Facebook to this stupid party, he’d been begging Janis to come with him so he might get a chance to talk to him. Janis hadn’t gotten an invite. She was apparently an outlier for not accepting all the Friend Requests that came pouring in from people she’d known her whole life once they had graduated and, she thought, never had to see each other again. Janis had caved and said she’d go, but because it was Damien asking.
But this party was still the thing she was looking forward to least, even less than helping her crazy grandmother make the traditional 800 Christmas cookies. Because Cady might think she established peace last year, but Janis knows better. The social anomaly that happened their senior year was just a cease-fire. Sure, all sides stopped chucking bombs, but no one had gotten rid of their arsenals.
Regina sat behind Janis on the bed, twisting heavy, wavy locks of her hair into some complicated braid. Wrappers from the candy they’d snuck from the party downstairs were spread around them and MTV’s year end top-40 countdown was on Regina’s tv. New Year’s Eve at Regina’s had been one of their traditions, even before they were old enough to stay up until midnight.
Regina ran her fingers carefully through her friend’s hair, fixing the tangles before picking up each new piece.
“So, what’s your new year’s resolution?”
Janis cocked her head to the side while she thought and Regina straightened it so she could tuck the last stray pieces behind an ear and tie the braid in place.
“Have a boyfriend so I can kiss him at midnight,” Janis said at last.
Regina looked over at the alarm clock beside her bed. 11:58.
“You don’t need a boyfriend to get kissed on New Years, Janis,” she said, like she’s pointing out that leaves grow on trees.
Janis turned to face her. “What, I should make out with some random guy?” she asked with a giggle that, for whatever reason, Regina wished didn’t sound so excited.
She followed Regina’s eyes as they darted to the clock again. 11:59.
When she looked back, Regina’s face was close to her own. Too close. But Janis paused, just for a split second, before she pulled away, suddenly stunned. Janis knew it was ridiculous; she’d always known Regina was pretty. Like, really, really, stupidly pretty. The kind of pretty that might have made Janis jealous if Regina hadn’t seemed so oblivious to it.
But she was a different kind of pretty this close up, where Janis couldn’t focus on more than one plane of her face at a time. She glanced over the freckles on her cheeks that she could normally only see in the summer; at the tiny, white scar beside her nose that she’d gotten playing kickball in elementary school; up to eyes she would have called blue a moment ago, but now she can see that they fade to an almost green at the edge of her now fully blown-out pupils.
In the half second that it took for that to register Regina closed the gap between them. She pressed her lips to Janis’s. It was chaste and gentle and didn’t last for more than a few seconds before Regina pulled away, leaving Janis’s lips feeling oddly stung. Her eyes flicked up from Janis’s lips to meet her gaze, like she was asking a nervous question.
Janis leaned forward again, resting one hand on Regina’s shoulder. Then the kisses started lasting longer, until Janis pulled back to breath.
“This is just… practice, right?”
Regina pulled her hands from where they were resting on Janis’s knee and waist with a start.
“Yeah,” she said, “of course.” The last word is barely off her lips when they come back to meet Janis’s.
They slept in the same bed all the time but that night the feeling of Regina pressed against her back was making her skin zing. And, she hoped she wasn’t just imagining it because that would probably, like, mean something or whatever, she could feel Regina's heart beating hard and her breath coming shallow against her back.
Damien scopes out the scene in the Topolewski basement as he returns with drinks to where Cady and Janis are standing in a corner.
The three of them had seen each other and caught up since they’d gotten back. Now there was just the strange familiar/unfamiliar déjà vu feeling of standing in a room with people you never knew that well in the first place but keep finding yourself around.
Cady, ever the optimist, holds up her red plastic cup and attempts a toast.
“Ah, yes,” Janis says, glancing around the room again even though she knows it won’t look any better this time. “Nothing says ‘happy holidays’ like sad tinsel, shitty beer poured with at least fifty percent head and a group of people who are mostly just here to make sure they aren't the most pathetic one in the our graduating class.”
“You know, Damien, I think maybe we shouldn't have let her move to a whole city where everyone is as cynical as she is...”
Damien shoots her one of his most deeply skeptical glances, “Um, have you met most of the country? You do realize that this is what most of these people are going to be doing for holiday parties for the rest of their lives, right?"
Someone across the room catches Cady’s eye and she waves them over. When Janis pulls her enormous cup back down from her face it’s all she can do to not spew the room temperature beer in her mouth all over the person in front of her.
Regina fucking George, wearing a pair of jeans and t-shirt. Though, Janis thinks, the jeans are skanktastically tight and Regina must know how good she looks with that neckline.
“Hey,” she says with a smile that’s almost shy, and there’s something else different about her. Janis can’t quite put a finger on it; maybe it’s how she’s standing, hands in her pockets, one hip cocked slightly to the side.
“Well holy fuck, look who it is.” Janis chokes out. It wasn’t exactly hostile, but it was pretty clearly not welcoming.
Damien doesn’t even flinch when his foot connects sharply with her shin.
“Ow, Damien! What the fuck?”
“What?” He asks like he’s affronted. “Oh hey, it’s John. I think I’m going to just go and-” his voice trails off as he leaves.
Regina pretends to not have noticed the whole exchange by craning her neck to look around the room behind her.
Cady looks nervously from one to the other. “I want food. Do you guys want food?”
Oh yeah, Janis thinks she walks behind the two other girls, there is totally nothing awkward about this. Nope, nothing at all.
Janis and Regina had stopped trying to ruin each others’ lives after Cady’s whole prom stunt. But Janis had always chocked that up more to the halo brace than anything else. It had rendered Regina’s malice inert, and it just felt wrong trying to destroy a girl who couldn’t even turn her head to sneeze. It was less that they had made peace than they just completely disengaged. They had even managed to make it through the entirety of senior year without speaking a word to each other.
Regina and Cady catch up while Janis listens, watches and quietly resists any attempt to draw her into the conversation. She’s just starting to think that Regina seems to actually be interested in what Cady’s saying (even some of the college math-club stories that had bored Janis to tears), and that maybe she should make more of an effort when Cady spots Aaron coming down the stairs. She bolts, leaving Janis and Regina facing each other over a bowl of chex mix.
Janis is going to kill Cady when she gets back.
Regina spent that spring vacation with her cousins in Ohio. The next week, when she walked down the hallways, all push-up bras and short skirts she could just barely walk in, most of their classmates did double-takes.
Janis didn’t think she looked all that different, really (but maybe she’d been spending too much time looking recently). Anyway, Janis had gotten a pink streak in her hair over the break and if there was one thing she’d learned in the resulting fight with her mother, it was that she emphatically believed that people should be able to dress however they wanted.
Other things were different too. Regina had a critiques of all of their classmates (Janis never gave a thought to what her criticism of her would be) and she talked about some guy on the football time constantly. Janis had never heard Regina mention this Kyle guy before. She was pretty sure Regina had never even talked to him before.
Whenever she talked about her new clothes or how Gretchen Weiners had started asking her for guy advice, Regina looked down, almost like she was embarrassed by the stuff that was pouring out of her mouth. And Janis had to admit, that made dealing with this strange, hopefully temporary version of her best friend a little easier.
When she talked about Kyle, though, Regina didn’t look down. Instead, she watched Janis’s face with the kind of concentration Janice was used to seeing when Regina was taking on a math test or trying to figure out a new chord on her guitar. Regina watched her so closely that Janis felt it like a hand putting pressure just below her ribs.
It was weird. But things were weird enough already that she didn’t want to risk making it worse by asking.
So instead, after yet another five minutes of not-listening to Regina talk about Kyle’s hair or arms or whatever, and pretending like having someone look at her face that hard was normal, Janis snapped her book shut and turned toward her friend.
“Oh. My. God. Regina, we get it. He’s amazing” she drew out the last ‘a’ and laughed at the look on Regina’s face, like she’d been caught not paying attention in class.
Regina composed herself quickly though, “I’m just saying that he’s got-“
Under the impending threat of another round of Kyle-worship, Janis snatched up a pillow and used it to knock Regina over, tumbling with her when she went down onto her back easier than Janis had expected. Janis landed with one hand one either side of Regina’s shoulders, hovering just over her face. And there were those damn freckles again, those same blown-wide pupils. She felt a jolt, like that pressure thing below her ribs had suddenly turned into a fist clutching tight on various squishy inner bits.
Janis realized her mouth was gaping open and willed her lungs to get with the picture so her voice wouldn’t sound as breathy and moronic as she felt. She aimed for mocking nonchalance when she asked “Are you in love with him now?”
The look that flashed across Regina’s face looked like half a sneer, but before Janis could be sure it had disappeared and Regina had lifted herself up on an elbow, bringing her mouth to within a centimeter of Janis’s own and stopping there.
Their breath mixed and Janis’ couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t moving backward, but her arms felt like lead and when they finally kissed she really wasn’t sure who’d made that last move forward.
Regina’s lips were flavorlessly sweet and sticky from her lip-gloss, which was soon smearing all around the edges of her mouth. Janis was about to roll away when Regina put a hand on her hip. A sharp chill ran down her back. It scared her a little, but not in a way that made her want to stop. So instead, she reached up to wipe away some of the pink gloss with a thumb and made both girls giggle.
Regina smiles at her nervously and starts to pick pretzels out of the bowl “Are you still with Kevin?”
“No.” Janis deadpans, chin jutting like she’s daring Regina to comment.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean-” Regina looks completely flustered and even a little nervous. Janis is taken a little aback-- she can’t remember the last time she saw Regina like this-- and she backpedals on her answer at top speed.
“No, no, it’s fine. He was going to school in LA, so we split up in the summer.” She tries offering a smile that almost feels sore. “No big deal.”
“Oh, right.” Regina says, the tension in her voice easing just a bit. “Is he coming back for the break, or,”
“No,” she says, wishing she could start an answer with something else, “He’s visiting family in India.”
“Then I guess he has all of us beat,” Regina says, looking around the room.
Janis surprises herself by laughing. “Yeah, I guess he does.”
Regina points at her cup, “You need another drink?”
Janis grimaces slightly, and opens her mouth to answer, but Regina gets there first.
“I know where the liquor cabinet is upstairs if you’ve hit your Natty Light limit.”
“Of course you do,” Janis rolls her eyes.
“What was that?” Regina asks, cocking her head, one hand on her hip.
Janis holds both her hands up in mock placation, “Nothing, absolutely nothing. Lead on.”
Regina ran all her plans for her fourteenth birthday party by her cousin. Cassie was sixteen. She was dating the football captain of her school, her friends were the prettiest girls Regina had ever seen, and she always seemed to get whatever she wanted.
“I was wondering if I should invite Kyle… but I mean it’s a pool party and it’ll just be girls… in their bathing suits. And then him. Would that be weird?”
“Oh, hun. The most important thing isn’t who you invite, it’s who you don’t invite.”
“What do you mean?”
“Seriously, are you retarded? It’s the oldest trick in the book. If you want people to care about your party, leave someone off your list. And make it worth talking about.”
“But-”
“Ryan’s here, gotta run, sweetie.” Cassie hung up before Regina could get another word out.
Regina stared at her list for what felt like forever before putting a big X through the first name.
After Janis’s mom called her house, Regina swore she wouldn’t ever listen to Cassie again. But she realized within a week she had no idea how to keep up this new act on her own. And Janis since had left the school completely; there wouldn’t have been any point in taking it back, even if she could.
Regina not only knew where the liquor cabinet knew was, she also knew how to mix an impressive number of drinks with its contents.
The dark and stormies got them through the obligatory catching up. They also got Janis to stop expecting unpleasant twists or traps in the conversation and eased Regina’s nervous fidgeting.
The Mexican martini got them reminiscing and laughing hysterically about the pranks they used to play on Janis’s older brothers.
Fuck all, Janis thinks, if I have to tell Cady that things might actually have changed more than she’d ever admitted before.
By the time they were draining their rum and cokes they hit the topic they had both been avoiding all night. Janis can’t remember how exactly this came up (though she guesses it had to eventually) but suddenly Regina looks completely stricken.
“Seriously though, it worked out ok for me. The whole teen-angst, social-ostracization thing.” The deer in the headlights look on Regina’s face would be funny if it didn’t tug at a spot just below her navel. “So, don’t, like, feel bad about it anymore. You know, if you did.”
Regina doesn’t say anything for a while. The bass is making the stairs they're sitting on vibrate and she hopes it will cover the way her hands are shaking.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I’d just had the balls to tell people,” she pauses for the whole five seconds it takes for her to steal herself and lift her gaze from her cup to Janis’s face, “to tell people that I was the big dyke.”
Once those words come out it’s like the last bits of tension eased out of her shoulders, which should be a good thing, but she still looks a little frightened of what she just said.
Janis’s brain feels like its still trying to catch up with what’s going on here, but she starts stumbling through words anyway because it suddenly feels really important that Regina hear this.
“You know, about before, it wasn’t that I didn’t like…” she mumbles, “I mean, I just didn’t know…”
Clearly, she is not doing this right because Regina, if anything, looks more terrified.
“We don’t have to. Talk about it, I mean,” Janis says, trying to pump the breaks, to do whatever to get that look off Regina’s face.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
But somehow Regina just looks disappointed, not relieved, and Janis is suddenly very thankful for the alcohol in her system telling her to cut to the fucking chase.
She leans forward, cupping Regina’s cheek with one hand and catching Regina’s lips with her own. Regina tenses, but she doesn't pull away. They’re still for what can’t be longer than a few seconds, but it seems longer than it is and Janis is just starting to worry when Regina begins to kiss her back. It’s hesitant and soft, closed mouthed at first, but Janis’s heart is hammering away regardless. She slides her hand down to the back Regina’s neck to pull her closer and she feels Regina’s lips part slightly more, her own hand snaking around Janis’s waist.
Janis breaks from the kiss, only pulling her face back far enough for her to see Regina clearly.
“That was what I was, uh, failing at saying before.” Her own voice sounds lower and breathier than she’d expected.
Regina still looks half terrified, but she’s smiling and she lets Janis lead her by the hand a little further up the stairs, away from the few people who had noticed them.
At the top of the stairs Janis places her palms against the taller girl’s hips and presses her gently back against the wall. Janis kisses her slowly, trying to coax her out, but Regina still seems tentative.
Janis leans forward and her breasts and stomach brush, then press, against Regina’s. She moans, a lot louder than she means to, into Regina’s mouth and feels Regina’s stomach muscles jump against her own. Regina’s hands tighten on Janis suddenly and she pulls her closer. Regina’s kisses get more deliberate and her fingertips start running over the strip of bare skin where Janis’s shirt had ridden up. They get faster, fingers tangled in hair; hands cupped, first gently, then harder, against breasts; necks and ears peppered with kisses and nips.
Janis hadn’t kissed a girl since Regina, but it was becoming pretty clear that Regina had. She somehow manages to put her hands, lips and teeth just where Janis needs them, making her skin feel like it was burning and her breath come ragged. Janis finds herself following Regina’s lead, mirroring the way she was being touched.
And it was working, Regina was breathing fast against her ear, and Janis can feel her racing pulse when she kisses Regina’s neck; but Janis wants to feel like she made that happen, entirely on her own
Feeling the heat that’s been building between her own legs, she leans forward to press her thigh tight and high between Regina’s legs. Regina’s hand slips from her shoulder and she moans into the kiss while her hips buck forward. When they come up for air Janis has got that wicked grin, the one Regina had always associated with doing something that would get them in trouble but be totally worth it.
She pulls Regina back across the hallway into the bathroom and shuts the door behind them.
Regina has the button and fly of Janis’s jeans undone and the tips of her fingers hooked into her underwear when she leans back.
Regina’s lips are swollen, she’s breathing fast and it’s really not helping Janis be patient with the ache pounding between her legs.
“Are you ok with this?” she asks.
Janis delivers the ultimate ‘are you shitting me’ stare in response.
“No, I mean… I mean are you ok with it here. If people saw us come in here…”
Regina leaves the sentence hanging like the rest of it might hurt, but Janis laughs.
“They might, what? Call me a big lesbian? At least this time I’d get to have the fun first.”
When Regina looks unsure how to respond, Janis reaches forward and undoes her fly. As she slides her palm down Regina’s stomach, fingers edging under the elastic of Regina’s underwear, Janis leans forward to whisper in her ear, “I’ve done the time.”
Her fingers curl to brush against where Regina was nearly as wet and hot as she felt, “Isn't there some saying about enjoying the crime?”
Regina inhales, sharp, almost like a hiss against her own ear and pulls Janis bodily against her. She starts kissing her as she tucks her hand down Janis’s pants and slides one, then two fingers into her, holding tight when Janis’s knees give slightly.
They build rhythms that match each other, fingers finding just the right angle and palms canting to give leverage just there (Janis doesn’t mind following Regina’s lead here) until their kissing becomes panting and Regina comes, biting on Janis’ shoulder and just managing to keep her hand rocking until Janis crashes over the edge too.
The next morning Janis meets up with Cady and Damien for a grease-fest breakfast. It’s the only diner in town, and half of the people from the party are there battling hangovers with pancakes and bacon.
On her way to pay she passes a table of football players gone slightly to seed and hears snickering.
“Hey, Janis!” one of them calls, “You back to your old ways? I hear you were munchin’ Regina’s carpet last night.”
“Aw, are you jealous?” She asks, smiling as she leans over their table. “It’s ok, your mom was jealous too.”
She walks away before they can figure out just how many ways they could take that comment.
As she’s leaving the diner her phone vibrates. The number isn’t in her contacts, but that doesn’t matter.
The text reads ‘Got plans New Year’s?’