fic: drinking wine in the afternoon, Bess/Jenny
Title: drinking wine in the afternoon
Fandom: Indie Bandom
Pairing: Bess Rogers/Jenny Owen Youngs
Rating: PG-13 for swearing and debauchery
Warnings: RPF
Word Count: 2,345
Author's Note: If you see any of these names and think "oh hey, I totally know them, we're best buds/that's my name" PLEASE TURN BACK NOW. The back button is your friend. I am not joking. This is all out of love but really, here there be dragons.
Also this is for Chelsea, mywholecry to whom I promised this in August for "underage drinking" in realwomenfest. ONLY SEVEN MONTHS LATE.
The summer has lasted too fucking long, all these long, humid, hot days, no change in people or weather or anything, and Jenny is about to blow something up out of boredom.
What makes it worse is that Bess isn't here, Bess who would take her on midnight trips to the 7-11 in her crappy minivan and hold epic all-night Buffy marathons in Jenny's frigid basement and bring her guitar over for lazy finger plucking afternoons. Jenny doesn't know what's so great about spending two weeks in France, but Bess had been so eager eyed and twisted her fingers through her soft brown hair and Jenny had been thoroughly distracted from whatever really excellent shit the French had that Jenny didn't.
Bess had still decided to leave, though not without promising to bring back the Eiffel Tower and cute foreign accented boys, and also not before pressing a small cassette tape into Jenny's hands and hiding a soft smile before flying out to the car where her mother was crossly waiting. Jenny played it as soon as she got home, feeling the sway of classic rock and sniggering at the terrible eighties pop that Bess had inflicted on her, and possibly biting her lip at any overly soppy lyric from a love song.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't just my-best-friend-is-abandoning me kind of teenage angst that Jenny was having, and maybe there was a bit of stupidly unrequited love mixed in, but hell if Jenny was going to admit it. There wasn't a thing that she could do to make Bess unhappy or uncomfortable, and she wasn't going to give up messing over breakfast cereal for a stupid relationship or something.
The weeks after Bess's departure were filled with being comforted by Regina at the music store and moaning at Andrew at his summer camp until he told her that he really couldn't come back and maybe she should just ask Bess out for ice cream or whatever girls did for dates, and Jenny decides that she was going to kill the lot of them and go on road trips by herself and possibly find magic dinosaurs and ask no one out for ice cream, seriously, who thinks of that and throw the cassette tape out the window of her Jeep as she rolled out to Nevada, or wherever the dinosaurs were truly lurking.
***
Jenny is half-heartedly tuning her guitar and sighing along to Queen when she hears the minivan vroom up her driveway. “Fuck!" she yelps and runs her fingers through her hair before thinking fuck, fuck it all and catapulting herself to the front door. Bess is leaning lazily against the doorway with an excitingly suspicious paper bag, tanner than Jenny even thought possible and live and whole and here. Jenny bounces nervously on the balls of her toes and has to consciously not throw herself into Bess’s arms. There’s an awkward moment of silence where Jenny grins like a madman and Bess quirks the side of her mouth and neither of them knows what to say.
“I couldn’t bring back any national monuments,” Bess drawls, finally, and at the sound of her voice Jenny kind of tackles her against the wall and hugs her, saying “I missed you, I missed you” into her frizzy hair.
“So I can see,” Bess replies and Jenny can tell she’s smiling.
***
France is apparently not the epitome of culture that they had dreamed of, consisting mostly of short cold showers which leads to bad hygiene and Bess being unsuccessful at kidnapping French boyfriends and escaping crazy pantless old men. Jenny nods and laughs in all the right places, but she can't really tell Bess about her summer, which was basically listening to the mix tape until the cassette cracked and writing melodramatic poetry.
"You seem kind of quiet," Bess notices as they kick stones down the sidewalk. "You'd normally be sick to death of me talking and insist on telling me how you fought seven ninjas barehanded while simultaneously baking a cake."
"It's nothing." Jenny flips her hood up and stares fixedly at the ground. "I'm glad you're back."
"Me too." Jenny can almost feel Bess staring into the side of her hood, so she whips it back on impulse and accidentally catches Bess's eyes which are wide and dark, as if they're seeing something wrong for the first time. "I thought I'd invite Regina over tonight, you know, since we're all in town for once."
"Yes!' Jenny pounces on this idea with maybe a bit too much enthusiasm, but she's never been one for breaking awkward silences. She'd much rather have Bess all to herself, but as Andrew reminded her, "That just leads to a lot of wistful staring while you two figure out how to successfully bone each other" which was preposterous. "They can probably get off early from camp and pick up Andrew on the way."
They reach a payphone and Bess fiddles three quarters in to make a call. "Hi, Dresden Dolls Records? Is this Reg- yeah, it's Bess, hey!" She gives Jenny the thumbs up. "Yeah, I'm with Jenny, we were wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight? I've got some shit French wine and an empty basement, it'll be epic." Jenny taps her converse against the glass wall of the booth that Bess has pulled them inside of, so that their legs are brushing and she can't fidget without bumping against something inappropriate. "You...want to talk to Jenny? Okay..." She hands the phone questioningly over.
"Hello?"
"JENNY." Andrew booms over the phone. "TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT. THE NIGHT OF DESTINY. YOU WILL HAVE YOUR REWARD."
"What the actual fuck, Andrew. Did you have something of substance to say?"
"GO FORTH AND DRINK. I SHALL GUIDE YOU." The sounds of a small tussle erupt and Regina's unbelievably adorable voice pipes through. "Andrew thinks the fates are guiding you two to hook up tonight."
"Regina. Regi. What. I mean." Bess is still giving her that look and Jenny hastily carries on the conversation. "So does this mean you're not coming?"
"YOU WILL NEED NO COMPANY," Jenny hears Andrew roar, "ONLY DENTAL DAMS."
"Have fun tonight. It's taken you long enough," Regina says, then hangs up. Jenny stares at the receiver in abrupt horror. The evil Regina behind her cute, innocent exterior is far too clever for her own good.
***
At ten o’clock the night was stilted and awkward. Neither of them were really speaking, even though Jenny felt like bursting every time she had to avoid brushing Bess's fingers on the bottle. But by eleven fifteen or so they realize that the sweet French wine is something like thirty two percent alcohol and tears are streaming down Bess's face as she tells some story about a park bench in Paris.
"I cannot get up," Jenny giggles face down into the orange couch. "I am never getting up again. Not even for brunch."
"And then---ha ha ha-there were so many damn pigeons, Jenny, I thought the sky had gone black!" Bess laughs with her whole body, arching back and up on the carpeted floor, which brings some highly inappropriate images to Jenny’s whirling head. Suddenly she vaults to her feet with a dangerous gleam in her eyes, though she's wobbling at the same time. She jumps to Jenny like a kangaroo and tugs at her waist. “I’ll show you! It was just like tonight. You would have loved it.” A thought stops her dead in her tracks. “We should go outside.”
“I am a rock,” Jenny intones. “A dead rock of dead. You are not moving me from this couch.”
Bess pokes her mercilessly in the armpit and Jenny twitches violently, grumbling to her feet and all the way out the door, while Bess is so hyperactive and sways along the pavement so much that Jenny can’t tell if Bess is spinning or the world is.
It’s a miracle that her parents don’t hear a thing as they spin out past the manicured lawns and the empty park and onto the meadow of yellowing prairie grass that looks out on the pretty part of New Jersey. Bess clutches the wine bottle and throws her arms out like a star, stretching her arms so tightly Jenny thinks they might burst.
Jenny takes a pull from her own bottle. She feels dim, like a light bulb flickering, filled with her inebriated thoughts and somehow empty. Bess collapses finally next to her, letting the last drops of wine drip deep into the soil.
“It didn’t get this hot in France,” Bess breathes, her chest gently rising and falling. “It’s too hot. Make it stop, Jenny,” she moans, nuzzling into Jenny’s neck.
“I’m not sure how many superpowers you think I have,” Jenny jokes. She feels breathless under Bess's slightly sweaty skin. Bess rolls on her stomach, and Jenny can see the small of her back under the black cotton of her shirt.
The stars are twinkling overhead, but she can’t see anything but shadows. Her stomach twists uncomfortably. It’s a stupid amount of tension for two teenage girls (best friends) drunk in a meadow, and the buzz of wine is making her stare too long at Bess’s stained red mouth.
“I kissed a girl in France," Bess blurts out. Her eyes flicker down to the grass and Jenny’s heart starts playing crazy tattoos against her chest.
“Um. Okay. That’s.” Oh god oh god oh god, words, words should be coming, pretty mouth, oh god. “That’s great?”
Bess snorts violently and turns away. “I spend hours on the flight back worrying about how I’m going to tell you, and I get ‘that’s great?’”
“Well, it is!” Jenny is only slightly hysterical at this point, and she’s digging her fingers into her jeans. “It’s fine. Really. If you want to kiss girls, kiss them.”
Bess stares incredulously at Jenny’s face and Jenny wonders how this lazy conversation wound up here. “If you have a problem with it--”
“Jesus, Bess, I don’t have a problem.” Jenny’s punches her lightly on the shoulder because Bess is giving her this look as if something inside her has cracked.
"Then what the fuck have you been playing at, if you don't have a problem?" Bess sits up suddenly. "Why don't you want to hang out with me anymore? I can feel it, it's only been four hours and you don't care at all about me being back even though I brought you wine and stories, and really, I thought you would hate me forever and I can't bear it if you do."
Bess's eyes are brimming with tears, which scares Jenny because Bess has always been the definition of bad ass and punk rock and now she's deflated like a sagging birthday balloon. Jenny can't feel her fingertips because it's all going to come out now and they're never going to be friends again unless she says something right fucking now.
Jenny feels ridiculously brave, or maybe it’s the alcohol in her veins, and she grabs Bess’s hands, calloused and warm, and says quickly, “I listened to your mix tape all summer even though you put Bohemian Rhapsody on it three times.”
“What are you...?” Bess looks down at her hands, and Jenny feels terrifyingly sober and plunges on. “I stole your hoodie from your bag before you left and wore it for three weeks, and I don’t care how much of a creep that makes me. Let me make this clear-I want to hunt dinosaurs with you.” Jenny stutters out, and she’s all ready to keep going with her confessions of ice cream dates and true love when Bess curves her fingers around Jenny’s neck and kisses her, lightly on the mouth. Jenny’s breath hitches, and Bess sort of sighs and laughs and brings her other hand to Jenny’s hair, and suddenly Jenny is toppling over and Bess has her pinned at the shoulders, hips slotted together like spoons. She’s laughing, eyes squeezed shut and face stretched wide, and Jenny is so goddamn happy that she fists her hands in Bess’s cropped hair and pulls her even closer though it doesn't even seem possible.
“Oh god,” Bess moans, “Oh god, Jenny, you are such an idiot, such an idiot for not telling me sooner.”
“Shut up,” Jenny says, ‘Will you shut up for a minute?" She rolls Bess over so that her chest is rising and falling faster than she’s ever made anyone feel before and a little thrill of excitement. "I've spent a good two months wallowing in self-pity and I'd like to get my reward without you talking all through it."
"You're the one who won't be quiet," Bess chuckles and crushes her lips against Jenny's again, nipping and licking just a little bit at her bottom lip. Jenny lets out an embarrassing noise but doesn't really care now that their tongues are mingling as well.
"I can't believe you broke the fucking tape and still didn't know I had a huge crush on you," Bess breathes, straddling Jenny's hips and pushing down at an obscenely nice angle. "Eighties music is always a sign of love."
"I'm going to have to kiss you now," Jenny says, "because you never stop talking and you're driving me crazy in the best possible way," and Bess's happy face when she says it is so worth everything.
***
They kiss for what feels like hours but what could've been minutes and Jenny can't stop smiling. She wakes up in the morning sprawled on the dewy grass at sunrise, with the worst hangover she's ever had, but Bess's head is nestled just above her heart and she's tracing little circles on Jenny's stomach with a sprig of grass. She looks up at Jenny with dreamy eyes and Jenny says, hesitating "well?"
"I would love to hunt dinosaurs with you," Bess says solemnly, and Jenny pulls her up for another kiss.
--
I made the playlist for fun. Because I'm crazy.
Total Eclipse of the Heart
Red Rain
I just called to say I love you
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody
Ghostbusters
I wanna dance with somebody
Flashdance
Don't Stop Believing
Baba O'Reilly
Bohemian Rhapsody
Fandom: Indie Bandom
Pairing: Bess Rogers/Jenny Owen Youngs
Rating: PG-13 for swearing and debauchery
Warnings: RPF
Word Count: 2,345
Author's Note: If you see any of these names and think "oh hey, I totally know them, we're best buds/that's my name" PLEASE TURN BACK NOW. The back button is your friend. I am not joking. This is all out of love but really, here there be dragons.
Also this is for Chelsea, mywholecry to whom I promised this in August for "underage drinking" in realwomenfest. ONLY SEVEN MONTHS LATE.
The summer has lasted too fucking long, all these long, humid, hot days, no change in people or weather or anything, and Jenny is about to blow something up out of boredom.
What makes it worse is that Bess isn't here, Bess who would take her on midnight trips to the 7-11 in her crappy minivan and hold epic all-night Buffy marathons in Jenny's frigid basement and bring her guitar over for lazy finger plucking afternoons. Jenny doesn't know what's so great about spending two weeks in France, but Bess had been so eager eyed and twisted her fingers through her soft brown hair and Jenny had been thoroughly distracted from whatever really excellent shit the French had that Jenny didn't.
Bess had still decided to leave, though not without promising to bring back the Eiffel Tower and cute foreign accented boys, and also not before pressing a small cassette tape into Jenny's hands and hiding a soft smile before flying out to the car where her mother was crossly waiting. Jenny played it as soon as she got home, feeling the sway of classic rock and sniggering at the terrible eighties pop that Bess had inflicted on her, and possibly biting her lip at any overly soppy lyric from a love song.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't just my-best-friend-is-abandoning me kind of teenage angst that Jenny was having, and maybe there was a bit of stupidly unrequited love mixed in, but hell if Jenny was going to admit it. There wasn't a thing that she could do to make Bess unhappy or uncomfortable, and she wasn't going to give up messing over breakfast cereal for a stupid relationship or something.
The weeks after Bess's departure were filled with being comforted by Regina at the music store and moaning at Andrew at his summer camp until he told her that he really couldn't come back and maybe she should just ask Bess out for ice cream or whatever girls did for dates, and Jenny decides that she was going to kill the lot of them and go on road trips by herself and possibly find magic dinosaurs and ask no one out for ice cream, seriously, who thinks of that and throw the cassette tape out the window of her Jeep as she rolled out to Nevada, or wherever the dinosaurs were truly lurking.
***
Jenny is half-heartedly tuning her guitar and sighing along to Queen when she hears the minivan vroom up her driveway. “Fuck!" she yelps and runs her fingers through her hair before thinking fuck, fuck it all and catapulting herself to the front door. Bess is leaning lazily against the doorway with an excitingly suspicious paper bag, tanner than Jenny even thought possible and live and whole and here. Jenny bounces nervously on the balls of her toes and has to consciously not throw herself into Bess’s arms. There’s an awkward moment of silence where Jenny grins like a madman and Bess quirks the side of her mouth and neither of them knows what to say.
“I couldn’t bring back any national monuments,” Bess drawls, finally, and at the sound of her voice Jenny kind of tackles her against the wall and hugs her, saying “I missed you, I missed you” into her frizzy hair.
“So I can see,” Bess replies and Jenny can tell she’s smiling.
***
France is apparently not the epitome of culture that they had dreamed of, consisting mostly of short cold showers which leads to bad hygiene and Bess being unsuccessful at kidnapping French boyfriends and escaping crazy pantless old men. Jenny nods and laughs in all the right places, but she can't really tell Bess about her summer, which was basically listening to the mix tape until the cassette cracked and writing melodramatic poetry.
"You seem kind of quiet," Bess notices as they kick stones down the sidewalk. "You'd normally be sick to death of me talking and insist on telling me how you fought seven ninjas barehanded while simultaneously baking a cake."
"It's nothing." Jenny flips her hood up and stares fixedly at the ground. "I'm glad you're back."
"Me too." Jenny can almost feel Bess staring into the side of her hood, so she whips it back on impulse and accidentally catches Bess's eyes which are wide and dark, as if they're seeing something wrong for the first time. "I thought I'd invite Regina over tonight, you know, since we're all in town for once."
"Yes!' Jenny pounces on this idea with maybe a bit too much enthusiasm, but she's never been one for breaking awkward silences. She'd much rather have Bess all to herself, but as Andrew reminded her, "That just leads to a lot of wistful staring while you two figure out how to successfully bone each other" which was preposterous. "They can probably get off early from camp and pick up Andrew on the way."
They reach a payphone and Bess fiddles three quarters in to make a call. "Hi, Dresden Dolls Records? Is this Reg- yeah, it's Bess, hey!" She gives Jenny the thumbs up. "Yeah, I'm with Jenny, we were wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight? I've got some shit French wine and an empty basement, it'll be epic." Jenny taps her converse against the glass wall of the booth that Bess has pulled them inside of, so that their legs are brushing and she can't fidget without bumping against something inappropriate. "You...want to talk to Jenny? Okay..." She hands the phone questioningly over.
"Hello?"
"JENNY." Andrew booms over the phone. "TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT. THE NIGHT OF DESTINY. YOU WILL HAVE YOUR REWARD."
"What the actual fuck, Andrew. Did you have something of substance to say?"
"GO FORTH AND DRINK. I SHALL GUIDE YOU." The sounds of a small tussle erupt and Regina's unbelievably adorable voice pipes through. "Andrew thinks the fates are guiding you two to hook up tonight."
"Regina. Regi. What. I mean." Bess is still giving her that look and Jenny hastily carries on the conversation. "So does this mean you're not coming?"
"YOU WILL NEED NO COMPANY," Jenny hears Andrew roar, "ONLY DENTAL DAMS."
"Have fun tonight. It's taken you long enough," Regina says, then hangs up. Jenny stares at the receiver in abrupt horror. The evil Regina behind her cute, innocent exterior is far too clever for her own good.
***
At ten o’clock the night was stilted and awkward. Neither of them were really speaking, even though Jenny felt like bursting every time she had to avoid brushing Bess's fingers on the bottle. But by eleven fifteen or so they realize that the sweet French wine is something like thirty two percent alcohol and tears are streaming down Bess's face as she tells some story about a park bench in Paris.
"I cannot get up," Jenny giggles face down into the orange couch. "I am never getting up again. Not even for brunch."
"And then---ha ha ha-there were so many damn pigeons, Jenny, I thought the sky had gone black!" Bess laughs with her whole body, arching back and up on the carpeted floor, which brings some highly inappropriate images to Jenny’s whirling head. Suddenly she vaults to her feet with a dangerous gleam in her eyes, though she's wobbling at the same time. She jumps to Jenny like a kangaroo and tugs at her waist. “I’ll show you! It was just like tonight. You would have loved it.” A thought stops her dead in her tracks. “We should go outside.”
“I am a rock,” Jenny intones. “A dead rock of dead. You are not moving me from this couch.”
Bess pokes her mercilessly in the armpit and Jenny twitches violently, grumbling to her feet and all the way out the door, while Bess is so hyperactive and sways along the pavement so much that Jenny can’t tell if Bess is spinning or the world is.
It’s a miracle that her parents don’t hear a thing as they spin out past the manicured lawns and the empty park and onto the meadow of yellowing prairie grass that looks out on the pretty part of New Jersey. Bess clutches the wine bottle and throws her arms out like a star, stretching her arms so tightly Jenny thinks they might burst.
Jenny takes a pull from her own bottle. She feels dim, like a light bulb flickering, filled with her inebriated thoughts and somehow empty. Bess collapses finally next to her, letting the last drops of wine drip deep into the soil.
“It didn’t get this hot in France,” Bess breathes, her chest gently rising and falling. “It’s too hot. Make it stop, Jenny,” she moans, nuzzling into Jenny’s neck.
“I’m not sure how many superpowers you think I have,” Jenny jokes. She feels breathless under Bess's slightly sweaty skin. Bess rolls on her stomach, and Jenny can see the small of her back under the black cotton of her shirt.
The stars are twinkling overhead, but she can’t see anything but shadows. Her stomach twists uncomfortably. It’s a stupid amount of tension for two teenage girls (best friends) drunk in a meadow, and the buzz of wine is making her stare too long at Bess’s stained red mouth.
“I kissed a girl in France," Bess blurts out. Her eyes flicker down to the grass and Jenny’s heart starts playing crazy tattoos against her chest.
“Um. Okay. That’s.” Oh god oh god oh god, words, words should be coming, pretty mouth, oh god. “That’s great?”
Bess snorts violently and turns away. “I spend hours on the flight back worrying about how I’m going to tell you, and I get ‘that’s great?’”
“Well, it is!” Jenny is only slightly hysterical at this point, and she’s digging her fingers into her jeans. “It’s fine. Really. If you want to kiss girls, kiss them.”
Bess stares incredulously at Jenny’s face and Jenny wonders how this lazy conversation wound up here. “If you have a problem with it--”
“Jesus, Bess, I don’t have a problem.” Jenny’s punches her lightly on the shoulder because Bess is giving her this look as if something inside her has cracked.
"Then what the fuck have you been playing at, if you don't have a problem?" Bess sits up suddenly. "Why don't you want to hang out with me anymore? I can feel it, it's only been four hours and you don't care at all about me being back even though I brought you wine and stories, and really, I thought you would hate me forever and I can't bear it if you do."
Bess's eyes are brimming with tears, which scares Jenny because Bess has always been the definition of bad ass and punk rock and now she's deflated like a sagging birthday balloon. Jenny can't feel her fingertips because it's all going to come out now and they're never going to be friends again unless she says something right fucking now.
Jenny feels ridiculously brave, or maybe it’s the alcohol in her veins, and she grabs Bess’s hands, calloused and warm, and says quickly, “I listened to your mix tape all summer even though you put Bohemian Rhapsody on it three times.”
“What are you...?” Bess looks down at her hands, and Jenny feels terrifyingly sober and plunges on. “I stole your hoodie from your bag before you left and wore it for three weeks, and I don’t care how much of a creep that makes me. Let me make this clear-I want to hunt dinosaurs with you.” Jenny stutters out, and she’s all ready to keep going with her confessions of ice cream dates and true love when Bess curves her fingers around Jenny’s neck and kisses her, lightly on the mouth. Jenny’s breath hitches, and Bess sort of sighs and laughs and brings her other hand to Jenny’s hair, and suddenly Jenny is toppling over and Bess has her pinned at the shoulders, hips slotted together like spoons. She’s laughing, eyes squeezed shut and face stretched wide, and Jenny is so goddamn happy that she fists her hands in Bess’s cropped hair and pulls her even closer though it doesn't even seem possible.
“Oh god,” Bess moans, “Oh god, Jenny, you are such an idiot, such an idiot for not telling me sooner.”
“Shut up,” Jenny says, ‘Will you shut up for a minute?" She rolls Bess over so that her chest is rising and falling faster than she’s ever made anyone feel before and a little thrill of excitement. "I've spent a good two months wallowing in self-pity and I'd like to get my reward without you talking all through it."
"You're the one who won't be quiet," Bess chuckles and crushes her lips against Jenny's again, nipping and licking just a little bit at her bottom lip. Jenny lets out an embarrassing noise but doesn't really care now that their tongues are mingling as well.
"I can't believe you broke the fucking tape and still didn't know I had a huge crush on you," Bess breathes, straddling Jenny's hips and pushing down at an obscenely nice angle. "Eighties music is always a sign of love."
"I'm going to have to kiss you now," Jenny says, "because you never stop talking and you're driving me crazy in the best possible way," and Bess's happy face when she says it is so worth everything.
***
They kiss for what feels like hours but what could've been minutes and Jenny can't stop smiling. She wakes up in the morning sprawled on the dewy grass at sunrise, with the worst hangover she's ever had, but Bess's head is nestled just above her heart and she's tracing little circles on Jenny's stomach with a sprig of grass. She looks up at Jenny with dreamy eyes and Jenny says, hesitating "well?"
"I would love to hunt dinosaurs with you," Bess says solemnly, and Jenny pulls her up for another kiss.
--
I made the playlist for fun. Because I'm crazy.
Total Eclipse of the Heart
Red Rain
I just called to say I love you
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody
Ghostbusters
I wanna dance with somebody
Flashdance
Don't Stop Believing
Baba O'Reilly
Bohemian Rhapsody