Lexie didn’t know what sleep was, anymore. There was nothing like rest remaining in her life, only moments where she realized she was having a dream, that left her waking in the disappointing harshness of reality, or a nightmare that teased her with sudden relief at waking before she remembered that her mom was actually dead.
It had been three days. No, four. She knew it was four, because the funeral home was booked until the fourth day, and had to ask their permission to delay the preparation of the deceased. And Lexie did sympathize. She did. It was a miserable thing to have to ask the aggrieved, but she could understand.
Her mother, however, had nearly finished the destruction she’d started, all those days ago, and likely would have, if the combined efforts of Lexie, and several rallied family friends hadn’t stopped her short of the mortuary door.
She was in a black mood. A pitch-black one, and inconsolable. Nothing could be said to her, without first the matter coming to shaking or being shaken, or trying to scream over the top of someone else's tears, all of which was beginning to be too much to take.
She’d thought that Lenny and Leslie would be the hard part, but really, they were so emotionally exhausted, that they were sleeping now more than they were awake. She imagined that it must have been some long-ingrained human survival mechanism of the very young, to physically shut down, to become easily tended to in times of great grief.
Either they didn’t understand, and it hadn’t sunk in yet for them, or she wasn’t giving them nearly enough credit. Either way, for now, for the time being, she blessed their little hearts. She had more on her plate than she could handle already.
She shifted in her seat, a little, trying to counteract the discomfort of the hard wooden bench, and the lingering numbness introduced by the two heads of her siblings crowding her knees as they lay to either side, dead asleep, their faces sticky with crying.
She didn’t begrudge them the stains they were no doubt leaving on her nylons. Her face was sticky too. Everyone’s was.
Except for mum. Mum loomed. Mum crowded the corner with herself and herself alone, like a black shadow. Hers was an angry grief, and it did not become a widow, by the reaction of those present.
Lexie tried not to think about it. This was hard enough. She wanted to close her eyes, to dream again that it had been not just her mum who sprang up again when all seemed lost, but mom too, and that together both of them had done away with Sabotage, just like great partners were meant to: together.
She wanted to wake up from that dream, to find out that there was a lot of work to do on the house, and that she would be the one to do it, even!
Arceus, she thought, a fresh wave of wetness creeping down her cheeks. She would be so humbled, so penitent then, she could just lay down and kiss the floor. She’d clean it all up by hand, every burned stick and stitch, with no complaints, if only, if only that were true! She’d take back every complaint she’d ever uttered about chores, or any menial tasks, in her whole life. She’d never let her mothers lift another finger, if only it meant she would open her eyes, and not have to see her mom in that fucking pine box again!
She choked on a sob, and tried to keep it quiet for her siblings’ sakes. A familiar arm encircled her from behind, but an unexpected voice came with it. “I’m so sorry, Lexie.”
It wasn’t Tammy, who was seated in the row behind immediate family, but rather, her mother, Billy. The woman who’d been her mom’s lead guitarist squeezed with the same surety her daughter might’ve. It seemed strange, and somehow cruel that things had been so strained between Billy and, well--between her mom, between Tammy herself, between everyone, until very recently.
Billy was an unquestionably pragmatic, and Machiavellian soul, and for that, Lexie was in that moment, at least, eternally thankful. Billy didn’t tell a story, or try to cheer her up, or do anything other than express her condolences. Billy knew she didn’t want to hear it, and while maybe she had been known to be tactless at times, she finished with only a pat and a soothing rub, and then receded into her chair and was silent.
She was a funeral attendee that Lexie did not mind. She did appreciate all of the people whose lives Roxie had touched, showing their faces--Champion Ash had made no fanfare of his arrival, and even less of a fuss. He’d been quiet, said little other than to gently shake hands, and ask where to have flowers placed. At her subdued gesture, he’d beckoned in two laden assistants, who filled the table until it bowed in the middle with flowers.
But he didn’t smile, or smirk in that way that some of the other champions--or champions' sons, she’d known might’ve. He didn’t make it about himself. It wasn’t a display of opulent wealth, or grace. It was just...well...him, doing what he wanted to do there, she guessed. That must have been all, because, he only nodded, as though that were sufficient, and then left, just as quietly as he’d come in.
And then there were the wailers, and the gnashers. There were more than a few of these. Roxie’s travels had taken her far and wide, of course, and in her time, she’d known her share. The worst of these, in her mind, was somehow also the most talented of them.
She remembered that so-sincere-it-sounded-fake sobbing from years ago, and while then it had been somehow equal parts intriguing and unsettling, now it was a sound that made Lexie wish it’s originator would drop dead.
Cynthia wasn’t even crying. She was the only one whose face wasn’t splotchy or wet, and her bunched kerchief was even less so, in spite of her well-applied makeup.
In truth, she hated this whole thing just as much as her mum did. Part of it felt honest, and real, and another part, felt just like a piece of curio put on display. It didn’t help that all of Roxie’s clothes had burnt in the fire, save what she’d been wearing, and the funeral home had dressed her in a calf-length sheath dress and a women's blazer, without consulting her mum. She looked so unlike herself, with neatly combed hair, that it felt like they were approaching someone different, until they were right up next to her.
She remembered talking to Tammy, quietly, before the viewing yesterday, as she stood over the lip of the casket, in one of those bizarre lucid moments where she could actually talk about it.
“I don’t feel like this is what mom would have wanted.”
Tammy standing there as well, though much more steadily, let out a ghost of a sound that didn’t have the nerve to become a laugh. “What do you mean?”
Lexie put her hand over her face. “I just don’t feel like she would have been okay with everyone getting together and crying over her. She wasn’t that sort of person.”
Tammy only shrugged. “What do you think she’d have wanted?”
Lexie groaned in frustration. “I dunno, other stuff!”
Tammy looked at the woman in the casket, and smiled very lopsidedly. “There would be lots of booze here.”
Lexie nodded. “That’s for sure.”
Tammy went on, however, not quite done. “Probably work it out with the funerary staff, so that they would put her upside down, in there, just to irritate people.”
Lexie, not expecting to laugh, snorted. The crushing sadness let a moment of humor in and she dove on it, so thankful she might’ve cried for a different reason. “Mom would have had them pose her with both hands down her pants, and her mouth open.”
Tammy sniggered. It seemed a very black-humored thing they were doing, but when Lexie opened up to it, she couldn’t help but be the instigator. “There’d be a sign outside “Roxie Toxic, viewing today, Attendees: Lingerie only!”
They just kept going back and forth like that, for a long time, while they’d been there alone together, with her mum handling paperwork off in the office, until Lexie found she really was crying for another reason. She had held Tammy’s hand, and chuckled just a few times more. The sadness crept back in from the sides, but the warmth held, because she knew she was right. Her mom really was that sort of person.
“So...why isn’t it more like that?” Tammy had asked.
Yesterday, she hadn’t known what to say. But having thought about it, she knew exactly why.
Roxie would have wanted them to celebrate, to consider the positive memories they shared. And likely also to debauch and fornicate in varying degrees if yesterday’s discussion did in fact hold true. But the key factor, the crucial thing to remember, was that Roxie hadn’t been the one to determine their grief. Her mom hadn’t just passed. She hadn’t left. She’d been taken!
Roxie could not tell them how to mourn her. Sabotage had gotten the final say.
And it had become clear over the past several days, that without guidance, her mom did not know how to mourn. She had no idea how to grieve. She knew how to be distraught and horrified and angry, that much was certain, but the distinction was totally lost on her.
That was why they were sitting here, silently, waiting for this hideous chapter of their lives to close in a way that was only Sabrina’s best approximation of normality. If a funeral was what you had, then by Arceus, they would have one, even stripped as it was of any sense of legitimacy or connection. Her mum was only doing what seemed to make sense, in a time where she couldn’t make sense of anything.
Normally, this is where a service would have been held, some denominational sermon, a priest or a well-regarded community figure would have spoken on the behalf of those present. But her mum strongly disliked the second sort that Saffron had on offer, and the first sort did not highly regard her, either, being that she’d spent her life unrepentantly spitting in the face of most if not all of their spiritual foci, so instead they sat in cold silence.
That there was no service, Lexie didn’t mind. Her mom wouldn’t have wanted some tight-collar doing her lip-service with watered down lies, either. She’d have wanted people up telling all of her filthiest most embarrassing secrets, and only crying so long as they were laughing on their way to it, she was sure.
But the problem was, that none of them could bring themselves to. It was all too sudden, too abrupt, too horrible.
And so nobody was saying anything. They were just going up and taking their turns to see her, and dependent upon how tactless they were--Cynthia obviously was the first person to say so--commenting upon how nice she looked, how peaceful and at ease.
Lexie wanted to scream. Her mom had died on the garage floor with half her brain pouring out of her nose, not in some recumbent, fulfilled pose, all her life’s deeds showing fruit. She’d died alone, and she’d died because of mistakes her and mum had made, plain and simple.
Lexie was second to last to pass before the coffin, and before her, again was Billy. She was trying to center her own thoughts, to say what, she didn’t know, but suddenly she found herself distracted, as Billy reached down into the casket, and did something unseen below its rim. She didn’t know what to say or do, so she remained silent until it was clear she could approach alone. Billy excused herself from the parlor, patting around for something, likely some source of badly needed nicotine relief from the pressure of the room in general, as she trudged outside.
Lexie, though, was pretty sure she could tell there would be some tears to follow outside, as well, if Billy’s hard-set jaw was any indication.
She supposed that it said a lot about Billy, and maybe also a lot about herself, as well, that the first thing she did when peering over into the casket, was look for something that might be missing. She felt loathsome when she saw the thing sticking from under Roxie’s borrowed lapel.
She pulled it out only far enough to see it clearly, to read what it said, and then put it back. It wasn’t hers, and she didn’t feel right seeing it, since it was obviously meant for Roxie alone.
It was an acid-blue guitar pick, thick, and made of PVC. On it, someone had written “Friends Forever, Consuelo.” She pushed it back where it was, partially hidden, and then looked up.
It was hard to look at that face, and expect it not to move, not to grin or to wink, or to flick its tongue rudely behind one obscuring palm, while her mum wasn’t looking. She remembered being terribly exasperated by all those things, as a child. Her and mom had never gotten on all that well when she was little. To Lexie, it had always seemed like Roxie was the child, and not the other way around. She’d never had even a whisper of the gift, and she’d always been so...silly, by comparison to Sabrina. She’d only began to appreciate what her mom really had to offer, quite recently in the scheme of things, and for that, she knew she would always harbor regrets.
She’d been the first child, the experiment, the testing of the waters. And, unsurprisingly, her mom had nearly drowned in the deep end, almost straight off. But that wasn’t anybody’s fault, especially not hers. And even if it had been, it ought not to have gone on for as long as it did. After all, Sabrina hadn’t bore out any resentments against Roxie for not being there when she was born. So why had she taken that upon herself to carry it out for so long? Maybe she hadn’t done it consciously, but, still, she’d done it.
She had known she was going to cry the moment she stood to come face the music one last time, since truthfully she hadn’t been able to, even once over the past two days, come and look at her mom without doing so, but still, the bitterness of it overwhelmed her.
Arceus, she wanted to say something so badly, but it was all so brief, and so sudden, and so ultimately pointless that it made her skin crawl, to think she was going to have this moment, and this moment alone to settle things, to say anything, just to talk to her mom one last time.
She felt that same feeling she had on the garage floor, knowing that if she walked away, that she would never again be granted the opportunity to say anything in her mom’s presence.
But what could she say? What could adequately frame what she felt? What could possibly clear the air of everything that needed to be said? Why should this scant remainder of a breath she would be permitted have to bear all the weight of what she ought to have said earlier, sooner, when it counted, when it mattered--when her mom was alive to hear it!?
Her mum was a person of few words. She let her actions speak quite loudly, and made no excuses for that. But that had nearly cost her her marriage before it had even begun. When there had been more communication, more talking, instead of blind action, things had gotten better. But still, there should have been more. From all of them. More would have been better. And she had no choice but to try, in some small way to fill the deficit now.
The words hurt as they came up, because she couldn’t afford them time to dawdle, to artfully construct themselves, to make themselves pretty and nice, for everyone to hear. And she knew, truthfully, that sort of thing didn’t matter a damn to her mom. She liked things off the cuff, raw, and no-holds-barred. Everything, all the way up to 11.
“I feel like I spent my whole childhood trying to convince myself you weren’t cool!” she said, and then laughed in the middle of a sob. “I thought you were just so...so...I dunno, such a diva! Everything you did was for attention! Everything you said was some joke, or lame come-on, and it was just so embarrassing I thought I would die!” She gripped the edge of the casket, and the tears poured heavily, “But I realize you were just trying to get me to notice, get me to react, because you didn’t know what you were doing! And how could you? First kid, and not only is it a psychic, but you can’t even understand where it came from?”
She felt herself rocking back and forth, and all she wanted to do was shake herself from the gilded box, like a prisoner wrestling with the bars of their cell. “And then, I dunno, somewhere it finally clicked. Everything just...started to work. I understood you, and...you understood me. Or maybe...I dunno, maybe you always understood me, and I just didn’t understand myself.”
She sniffed. “I wish I wasn’t having to tell you all this right now, this way, but, mom:” her voice withered to a shredded whisper. “I was listening to you, when you told me what I should do. I know I put you off, and rolled my eyes, like I always did, but, I heard you.”
She brought her hand up and covered the whole side of her face, while her lips quivered and her throat constricted and her eyes poured down her cheeks.
“It hurts so bad right now. It hurts so bad I could just lay down in there with you.” She admitted, quietly. “But I won’t. You told me that I was on the outside of the box, remember?” She didn’t laugh, because she was certain that if there was an act guaranteed to get you a direct pass straight to hell, it was punning at a funeral. “And you told me I should run with it. And I did, didn’t I?”
She thought of her mother’s expression when she’d told her about the band, and though she cried all the harder, it felt better now than it had before. “And I’m gonna keep running,” she promised. “I’m never gonna stop!”
By now, she was just about inhaling her kerchief in the ragged breaths required to keep her voice even, and she could feel Tammy--it was really Tammy this time--gently touch her arm. Lexie allowed herself to be corralled away then, slowly, both hands to her face.
Sabrina, the last to approach, said nothing. She only stared.
She looked at Roxie’s hands, and at her lips, and at her eyes. She looked at every bit of her, in the foul caricature that she’d become in the days since untimely death.
It made Sabrina feel sick. Sick with herself. Sick with everything.
Sabrina had gotten everything she had wanted in life, from the second she’d been in control of it. She’d wanted Roxie in her life, and she’d gotten that. She’d wanted kids, and she’d gotten those too. Everything, down to the smallest detail, had fallen her way, unless otherwise noted, for a long, long time.
Now, for the first time, she wanted something, and she couldn’t have it.
She wanted her life back. She wanted her wife to get up and kiss her and take her to bed, and say all the strange magical things she always did to turn any misfortune right again. She wanted the one person who possessed the one power she did not, to be whole again.
Roxie was the only person who had ever made her truly happy. And now, Roxie was dead, and nothing she did could change that.
She closed the casket with a bang and said nothing. She did not turn. She hunched low over the coffin and grit her teeth. Clad in black, she hovered like death itself over the altar and pointed, slowly, toward the door.
It was not some symbolic gesture, meant for Roxie, but instead, a very real command, intended for the rest of them. When it was not clear, evidently, given Cynthia’s brisk approach, she tensed so hard and so visibly that her hair might’ve stood on end. Her voice, from unseen mouth seemed twisten and gigantic in comparison to her body, like it were coming through a mouthful of broken knives. “Go away. Walk. Out. The door. I don’t want your comfort. I don’t want to see your face. Don’t touch me. Don’t speak to me. Don’t even think about me, as you leave.” She hissed, low and heavy. “Roxie was your friend. I was not.”
Cynthia, from the way she walked away, might’ve thought the words had been intended just for her, but they weren’t. The same went for everyone in this room. And slowly, at first, they began to realize it. They filed out, and trudged away, in ones and twos, with various attempts at civil goodbyes and apologies, none of which she cared about, until she was only one of two people remaining.
There was her, and as she spun, she realized, there was Pop. Roxie’s Dad, holding his hat in hands before uniformed chest, spoke with extreme tact. “S-sabrina,” he began, “My dear, I know these are trying times--”
Sabrina whirled, but he held up both hands then, head down. He knew, quite properly who his daughter-in-law was, and had listened very carefully to the stories his own daughter had regaled over the years. He was no fool, and he certainly wasn’t a rude fool. “Please, Sabrina, I wouldn’t come to you now, if it wasn’t important.”
Sabrina knew it was important. That was why she was going to refuse.
“I know now isn’t a convenient time, but, the family plot is--”
“No.” she said with venom.
Pop blinked. “I beg pardon?”
She placed both her hands on the lid of the casket, and squeezed her fingers together until the lacquered wood whined under her grip. “Exactly what I said. You came to ask my permission to take her remains to be buried in Almia. With her mother, right? Well, I won’t give it.”
“You can't be serious!” Pop said, in stark alarm.
Sabrina glared such an awful glare then, that Pop shrank away. What more did these people want from her? She’d given all of them what they wanted to see, she’d let them cry their tears, and wring their hands while her wife laid there for their eyes to see like meat under glass. Did they not understand that it was torture for her to see Roxie this way? There was no closure in this! There was no peace for her to garner. Why should they get any, when she could not have it!? Why did these people want to force themselves into her sorrow like uninvited houseguests? Why did they want to wrest pieces of it from her, to call their own? Roxie had been hers, not theirs! She spoke through gnashed teeth, eyes wet. Her words were cruel, and hurtful, because that was all she felt, underneath.
“I would rather die, than let you take her across the ocean. I would rather see her burned to ashes and stuffed in a coffee can, than let this go on for even one minute longer. Roxie won’t EVER go anywhere I’m not. And since I don’t intend to go to Almia, since I never intend to be anywhere near your family farm, or see anyone or anything that has to do with her family or friends, ever again in my life, I couldn’t possibly be more serious. No, is my answer.” She elevated her hand again, toward the door. “Now get out, and stay gone. Your daughter is dead, and since this matter is concluded, there’s no longer any reason for you to speak to me, so don’t.”
Pop was aghast, and his tired old face was truly pale. He looked on the verge of pleading, but just then, Lexie and Tammy came back in, with the kids, and so the seaman stood firm, and did as he was bid with what scant dignity had been left to him.
Lexie could tell that something was wrong when her grandpa passed her without speaking, but Sabrina didn't comment, instead, she took them all home in heavy silence.
Home, right now, was cramped apartments in Sabrina’s mother and father’s home, where Sabrina and Lexie shared a bed in maximized discomfort, while Leslie and and Lennox alternated between wriggling and kicking them awake in the middle of the night and sleeping fitfully on pallets arranged on the floor.
Sabrina’s parents, her grandmother and grandfather, were travelers, more frequently than sedentary, so it made sense for their arrangements to be spartan, she guessed, but she missed her home, and she missed having her own bed to sleep in.
She supposed she ought to have taken the opportunity to sleep, to be alone with her mother out of bed, and both her younger siblings sound asleep, but she could hear her mother and grandmother arguing.
“No, I don’t need your help!”
“Sabrina, you clearly do,” Grandma said, trying desperately to ply her daughter. “I’m sorry that you lost her, but--”
Sabrina yelled so loud that even Lexie jumped a little. “No you’re not! Stop lying to me! You always hated her!”
Lexie laid there and crushed her eyes shut. Grandma had always had her objections, but to believe that the woman had wanted her mom dead was just ludicrous. She couldn’t stand this! Her mum was losing her mind!
She resolved to get out of bed right then, and go do some yelling of her own, but then, she overheard something that she hadn’t wanted to, and wished even more desperately that she’d gone to sleep when she’d first crawled into bed.
Losing her patience, Lexie’s grandmother started yelling “I don't understand why you just don't use the money Roxie left you, to--”
“BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY!” She could hear a pounding sound like the table being rapped against. “All the money from the tour got wrapped up in moving Billy and Tammy out of the Cross, and all the rest that was supposed to be left over, is immaterial! All of Roxie’s money belongs to the record label!” Her voice dripped with sarcasm, as she went on. “And no, before you ask, she didn’t make out a will, I guess she never expected to be murdered in her own home at 46, mom! Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive my reckless whore of a late wife for leaving us destitute and homeless because of her own grievous lack of foresight?”
Sabrina was throwing her mother’s own words back at her, bitterly, which must’ve stung, Lexie thought, because grandma, like her, was stunned silent for a while.
Then, voice quavering, grandma asked the same question that was on her mind. “What will you do?”
Sabrina too, was quiet for a time. “I’m going to take the kids and move into the vacation home. I’m already having Roxie interred out there, since it’s the only place I can put her without anybody coming to plague me over it.” She could hear her mom taking deep, labored breaths. “But, whatever, just so long it gets me away from...all this, it will be fine. I don’t...” She succumbed finally, to miserable crying for the first time today, “I don’t want to be around here anymore.”
Lexie did get up then. Angrily, she got up. She threw on her shoes, and her coat, and ran down stairs, and when she finally got to the kitchen where her mum and grandma were talking, she didn’t say a word. She didn’t have anything to say, she just blazed past them, and straight out the door.
Tammy woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing, which was odd, given that it was very late at night. She was used to a different sort of neighborhood, where thieves were much less polite. Or more polite, depending on how you looked at it. At least they didn’t wake you up while they were stealing your TV set. She came down the steps in her night-clothes, and grumbled.
She hadn’t quite gotten used to living on this side of town, yet. And neither had her mother. There was still a heavy aluminum bat behind the door, which pretty much said it all. And if it didn’t, the loaded shotgun certainly put a period at the end of the sentence.
She didn’t bother with either of those, however, because she could see who it was through the glass-paneled door. She opened it, and rubbed a hand through her sloppy, disheveled bed-head. “Lexie. What’s up?”
Lexie stood red-faced on the covered porch, fists gripped at her sides. “Is...Is your mom home?”
Tammy shook her head. “No, she’s got a gig tonight. Probably won't be home till morning, why?”
“Your brother?”
Tammy frowned. “Staying at a friends house. He didn’t want to go to the funeral, so...” She angled her head. “Is something--”
Lexie took the same sort of long, loping stride she’d seen her mom take so many times, the kind where she would lunge forward and then straighten at the knee like she was about to vault off the ground and take Sabrina with her, soaring into the air. It was a move like only she could pull off, so impatient and so punch-drunk that it would’ve seemed ridiculous and laughable from anyone but her.
But she understood that wanting, finally. She understood what it was like to be so desperate for bodily satisfaction that you would risk almost certain bodily harm just to have a few more seconds of it, or be there for it just a few seconds faster. She understood what it was to want, to need with your whole body, and to know in your heart that nothing else would do but to crash headfirst into it, and let the wreckage sort itself out where it may.
She didn’t have the expertise her mom had, though, even if she had the theory down. She pushed into Tammy, and kissed her so suddenly that they both fell, and their teeth clicked together painfully as their mouths failed to couple at the correct angle. But like her mom, Lexie did not let momentary failure stymie the overall conquest. She pressed both hands to Tammy’s cheeks and held her there as she kissed her, scrambling with both knees to stay upright as the whole mess of them went tumbling backward.
Tammy, at first, seemed like she would resist, and that made Lexie feel afraid, but when she realized that her girlfriend was only holding her wrists to keep from falling on the floor, and that she, as much as Lexie herself, was desperate to touch and to taste, she let herself be fully absorbed in the task at hand.
They stopped soon, both needing to breathe, and neither one entirely on top of the situation as it unfurled between them. Tammy did the obvious thing, as they got up and tried failingly to disentangle themselves from the other’s moving, desperate hands, enough that they could, and shut the door. By the time that she had latched it, and tried to turn again, she found it impossible with Lexie’s hands on her thighs and her mouth on the back of her neck. It was all the guitarist could do but put her hands to the doorframe and gasp.
But Lexie pulled her around, pressing in so close that she could rest her elbows against the glass, and feel all of Tammy pressed under the weight of her body. She rested her head on her girlfriend's shoulder, feeling her heart lose its momentum. Tammy felt comfortable and warm, and all the things she didn’t have to call her own, right now, and she wanted to crawl selfishly into this girl’s arms, and let herself be dulled down, to crease the sharp edge of pain she felt. She knew implicitly that Tammy would do that for her, could do that, was the only person capable of doing that for her, right now.
But then, she knew that if she let herself slump down into that embrace that soon she would weep, soon she would have to remember why she was here, and what she’d come to say, and all she wanted right now was Tammy. She wanted this girl, this woman, who had meant so much to her, to fill her every thought, to push away every bit of grief and dismay and replace it with herself.
She broke the embrace, slowly, and mindfully, drawing away, but not distantly. She started taking off her clothes. She hadn’t worn much. She didn’t have much to wear. Her formal dress from earlier was all she’d bought in the interim, so she took off the same clothing she’d been trading back and forth with spare, overlarge clothes borrowed from her grandma, the same clothes she’d worn to school that day, and let them fall to the floor. She fumbled the words. They felt so urgent, so true, and yet, she didn’t know how her mom had ever coped with the embarrassment of being so forward.
She tried to seem like she knew what she was doing--and truthfully she did--but it all seemed so amateur, so hamfisted, to her hearing of it, when she said it. “I want you,” she gasped. “I don’t want to think about anything else right now, but you, and I don’t want you to think about anything else but me. I want that so badly I could scream.” She admitted. “Please don’t say no. Please take me.” She went to go slide her thumbs under the side of her knickers, and push them off to the floor but, then...
Well, then she realized that there was always a dividend paid for being so earnest and forward. There had never been a time when Sabrina had refused her mom, to her knowledge, and this must’ve been why. Tammy’s face turned dark red, and her breath audibly caught, but then, there her hands were, right where Lexie’s might’ve been if she’d waited one second longer, pulling her underwear down with a rapidity that made even Lexie gasp.
The psychic cupped Tammy’s face as she crouched before her, thumb grazing past lip awkwardly to be fully enveloped in Tammy’s mouth. Lexie drew a breath at the new sensation as Tammy bit urgently at her knuckle, and all the while pushed and adjusted and strenuously supported Lexie as they tried to find the correct positioning, for them both to end up where they wanted.
Lexie finally found the wall, where all else was blurry and irresolute and she put a hand on it, even as the other slid back and into Tammy’s hair, leaving a wet streak across her cheek. And then there they were, Lexie gasping at how good it felt, and Tammy not saying much that Lexie could understand, all of it overwhelmingly positive. Whenever Lexie would try to adjust lower, or bow deeper, or move in a facilitative way, Tammy would only push or shove her legs and ankles until she was right back where she was before, and deny her any chance of drawing away.
If Lexie’s hands tried to leave her head, Tammy would only drive the matter more intensely, until she had no choice but to put them back, just to keep her balance. When Lexie pulled instinctually, she would only probe more deeply with her tongue, when Lexie twisted her hair, she would only latch on, forcing Lexie to pull her off with a great audible smack of the lips before she went back again.
Lexie wanted to be spoiled, and Tammy was going to put everything into this. What more could she do, right now, for the girl who’d changed everything in her life? She’d have slit her own throat to see Lexie happy again, after what had happened. If all she wanted was to be loved, then Tammy would give her anything. Everything. Until she couldn’t cope with it anymore.
Lexie groaned, high and tight in her throat, and shuddered, after only a few minutes more, and Tammy knelt, face shimmering and eyes fixed. They didn’t say anything for a while, but just slumped there, together in the entryway. It seemed like Lexie would say something, and Tammy was afraid it would be an apology, now that she’d cleared her head, if she let it come out, so she spoke first. “Lex, let’s not think about tomorrow. Let’s not think about anything. Just...Just let me do the best I can for you, for right now. Let’s not worry about anything else.”
And so they didn’t. For hours they didn’t. Tammy didn’t think about all the ways her mother would have skinned her alive if she’d been there to see what she was doing all over the house, because that wasn’t important. Lexie didn’t think about her broken life, or all the scattered remains of it still left to pick up before her, because right now, that didn’t matter. Tammy didn’t think about the strain this would put on her girlfriend, or their relationship, because she didn’t care. She could deal with it. Lexie, hardest of all, didn’t think about the fact that this would be the last night she ever spent with Tammy. She didn’t think about how she would be moving away tomorrow. She didn’t think about how she would probably feel wretched about it all, when she woke up.
She just thought about tonight. They just thought about each other.
As it would turn out, when the whole matter had shaken loose, only one of those worries ever came close to reaching fruition...
Billy was not at all pleased that morning to come in and find her daughter and Lexie naked in each other’s arms on the couch, but, being that times were tough all over, rather than pick up the shotgun at the door and raise hell--though at one point she did deeply consider sticking it in her mouth--she just climbed the stairs and pretended to have never seen it.
She was too exhausted for this shit anyways.
“I know.” Sabrina said, before the Saffron Joy had finished pointing out the dark spot in her lung on the x-ray, and telling her that it was healing nicely and without complication, in direct defiance of all her medical training and expertise.
She didn’t often visit, unless it was for Roxie or one of the kid’s sakes, and she was really only here because the fucking funeral home had gotten wind of the stirred up dispute between her and Roxie’s father, and refused to turn custodianship of the body over to her until she could produce a clean bill of health. It was only through intervention of her mother and father that she hadn’t melted the head mortician’s eyes clean out of his face when the matter had come up in the first place, and only after a great deal of gnashing and spitting had she agreed to come have herself examined.
The only thing wrong with her was that she still felt a lasting sickness, a pain, deep in her gut, over her wife. That, nobody could cure. That, would never go away. That, she knew for certain.
It was a truly odd day, when somebody told her something she didn’t know. So much so, that Joy must’ve been quite pleased with herself, when she rallied off all the tests and checklists, saying that everything was normal, or satisfactory, until the last: “Urine sample returned a high level of chorionic gonadotropin. Were you aware that you’re pregnant?”
Sabrina took the paper that was offered to her, numbly, and walked out, without a word.
She didn’t even teleport away, she just walked, all the way back to her parents home. When she was there, she sat the paper on the kitchen table, set her elbows to either side of it, put her palms into her eyes, and tried to brace her whole body before she started to cry.
“Arceus,” she cursed. “Oh, Arceus.”