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The rain is coming down in thick sheets and the run from the car to the doorstep leaves her looking like one of their drowning victims. The sheer morbidity of the thought startles her, and makes Laura think, for about the hundredth time in the past half hour, she really, shouldn’t have come. She won’t be good company tonight and she’s only going to start soaking the expensive mahogany-panelled hall.
She hesitates, peers into the tiny frosted window on the front door, and checks to see if she can see Jean yet. She checks her phone, even as she berates herself for it, to see if a text has come through. It hasn't. She’s only really ten minutes late. If she can sneak back to the car (under cover of darkness and deluge, she thinks, snorting at her own mind’s dramatics), she could be at the petrol station around the corner in a matter of minutes, ring Jean, say they’ve got motor trouble? “What? Both of you?”, she imagines the quick, matter of fact reply. She can almost hear the playful undertone in her voice, hinting at the two of them skipping out on her for a rather cosy night in. “If only”, she actually says aloud to herself.
The wind kicks up. She really is freezing. She sighs and rings the doorbell. Jean is beaming and quickly pulls her in, peering at the sky in disgust before closing the door hard against the wind. She’s on the verge of giving her one of her quick, business-like hugs when she pauses, taking in the state of her. As predicted, she’s already standing in a puddle. “Oh”, she says in a voice that’s one part concerned for Laura, one part concerned for her floor. “Come into the living room. I’ll get you a towel.” Laura steps out of her, now squishy, shoes and hears Jean clicking down the hall.
The clicking stops as she turns back abruptly saying, “Where’s…?”
“Just me, this evening I’m afraid”, she says with a smile that she hopes is casual, in spite of how she's actually feeling.
Jean cocks an eyebrow in a way that doesn’t quite cover her curiosity. “Oh?” She pauses, waiting for an answer.
“Yes. Where should I..?” She motions to the soaked-through cardigan she’s just peeled herself out of.
“I’ll take it”, she replies, snapping back into hostess mode. “I’ll get it dry for you before you leave.” She disappears around the corner and Laura heads into the living room. She’s only ever been here a handful of times: the annual Christmas party, the odd number of times Jean has had her and whomever she’d been with at the time over for dinner. She always feels a bit swallowed up by these high ceilings, the almost bleak modernity of the furniture, but she’s wearily relieved to find a fire blazing in the hearth.
This evening was supposed to be different, she thinks, moving closer to the fire. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been looking forward to the lack of prescribed questions and answers over hor d'oeuvres, “So, what do you do?...It’s best that you talk about your line of work as Laura’s would put us all off our supper.” She’d made that joke quite a few times, and they’d all laughed with polite appreciation. Jean was good at keeping things light and buoyant between all four of them, and after Jean’s divorce, all three of them. Even if she had made the same awful pathology joke, Laura was always grateful for these little dinner parties, because they were always just an earnest, good faith effort on Jean’s part at supporting her in whatever romantic pursuit she happened to be after at the time.
It was something that she and Robbie had compared notes about in the past few months. Jean had always been after setting Robbie up with her friends. He’d had several ill-fated dinner parties with her, though in his case Jean had been playing matchmaker rather than putting an unfortunate through a sort of well meaning interrogation over wine and chicken cordon bleu.
Laura had teased him about Jean’s matchmaking efforts. “What...even after she tried to set you up with her friend who was in love with her adopted son?”
He’d winced and then smiled a bit, putting an arm around her. “She just wants both of us to be happy.”
And it's true. That's what friends want for each other, isn't it? It’s barely been an hour since Laura said the very same words, “I just want both of you to be happy”, and she meant it. It isn't as if she hadn't known in her heart that this might happen, in ways that she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge until this evening. She leans back into the sofa and runs a hand through her hair, shaking it a bit to rid it of water. She closes her eyes and sighs remembering Robbie's voice saying,
“We’re lucky she never pushed too hard to get the two of us together.”
“Maybe she saw her track record”, she’d answered. “And didn’t want to hurt our chances.”
Exhausted from the day, she thinks to herself, “Perhaps Jean should have tried with us. She couldn't have made a worse go of it than we did ourselves.” But perhaps this isn't fair. All either of them could ever be accused of is being perfectly open with the other.
There had been two conversations that had led her to where she is now. The first was a concerned remark from Robbie that perhaps they should start about doing the work of finding a nice girl for James. “Or a nice boy”, Laura had remarked offhand.
Robbie's long silence and look of barely stifled surprise had caught her off guard. “I think he might play for both sides,” she’d said. She remembers pausing, waiting for Robbie to say something before she continued, “In my experience more people do than you might think.” She'd felt her face start to go pink, betraying the fact that she may have stumbled into a confession. She had grasped his hand with a loving squeeze and given him a look that she had thought said, “Here's a secret about me that I would like you to know”. But looking back she see's that he must have read it completely differently.
He had read the same look as, “I have found out your heart, Robbie, even if you haven't yet.” No wonder the look he had returned to her had been so haltingly sad. And this afternoon, only a week later, the second conversation that began with, “Laura, I think I need to talk to you”, and ended, hours later, with, “Robbie, I think you need to talk to James.” “As calm a split as I could have hoped for”, she tells herself. But the hurt is too recent and the thought does nothing to soothe her.
Jean's blithe question from the kitchen of, “white or red?” calls her back to the present, none too soon.
“Red,” She responds. She's usually a white wine drinker. White keeps her crisp, witty, refreshed. Red goes to her head, warms her and makes her a bit sleepy, but, most importantly, it dulls the sharpness of her feelings, which is absolutely what she needs.
As soon as Jean returns, she spreads a blanket over Laura and hands her the wine in a single movement. Laura takes a long sip, feeling it warm down to her toes, and when she emerges from the glass Jean’s eyes are piercing through her. There's a beat while Laura steels herself for the inevitable, but it's so less jarring when it comes, and she's so unprepared for the gentleness that it almost hurts.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Laura sighs, swirls the wine in her glass, takes another sip, stalling. “Not really.” She manages a self-deprecating smile, “Not much to talk about. Not a very interesting story.”
“Alright”. Jean pauses. “But don't let it simmer for too long.” She holds Laura's eyes with a knowing gaze, one that speaks of recent heartache and regret. Feeling a bit disarmed by how unfamiliar but naturally tenderness sits on her host’s face, Laura is about a second too late in realizing there are tears on her cheeks.
Jean is by her side by the time she’s wiping them away, dismissively. She registers a warm hand on her shoulder, but doesn't allow herself to give in to the threatening tightening in the back of her throat. Laura puts up a hand, and Jean withdraws her hand, and sits back.
“Sorry…”, Laura manages, “I'm just being silly, I didn't actually want to do this right now.” She takes a deep breath and a sip of her wine. “Please, tell me about this wonderful dinner you've made.”
Over the scallops au gratin, Laura hears every detail of the culinary classes Jean has started taking. She isn't sure if Jean is aware of the way her eyes light up as she talks about selecting the right herbs at Waitrose, and how she'd learned to test their freshness, but Laura notices. She imagines what Robbie would say if she were a suspect he were summing up. “Seems to have got over her recent divorce rather well, Mam, through throwing herself into her hobbies.” Hearing his voice in her head makes her all the more doubtful as to whether she could do the same in her newly single state. But then, as if on cue, Jean is asking her, “But you must know all about it. You grow herbs, don't you?”
“Yes, herbs and quite a lot a lot of other things too”, she replies.
“What's in season?”
And for the next twenty minutes she thinks only of fennel and rosemary, and temporarily forgets her earlier embarrassment of tears.
It is only when they’re halfway through dessert that Laura realizes they haven’t talked about work at all. When she says as much to Jean she smiles wryly and remarks, “there are other things.”
Laura declines another glass of wine, saying she has to drive home, and then stays only long enough not to be accused of dining and dashing. The rain is still pouring relentlessly when she returns to her car, having profusely thanked Jean for dinner, but as she turns the key the engine refuses to start. She tries it a second and third time. She pounds the dashboard as all the frustration from which she’d been granted a short, blessed respite comes flooding back.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
And then there's a knock on her window.
Jean's opening the door, huddled under a rather old fashioned umbrella. She has to yell to be heard over the storm and says, “When it rains…”
“Sorry”, Laura bites out. The tears of frustration are threatening a return and she's blinking them back frustratedly. “I’ll call the AA.”
“It'll be ages before they can get here, night like this. You'll have much better luck in the morning”, Jean says matter-of-factly. “But for now, come inside, for goodness sake. I've a spare bedroom and an extra toothbrush.”
Laura hesitates for a moment before snapping out of her self pity long enough to realize that Jean must also be freezing. She gets out of the car and there's a warm hand to her lower back, guiding her under the umbrella, then an arm round her shoulder pulling her close and their heads are nearly touching under the tiny oasis.
She’s grateful for the warmth and closeness, and doesn’t ask questions or so much as raise an eyebrow as Jean leads her back into the house and divests her of her coat. She leads her to the guest bedroom, where she rummages through some drawers, producing a new toothbrush, an oversized cotton t-shirt and silk robe and Laura sinks gratefully onto the thick, satin bedspread.
Jean leans against the doorway. Her arms are crossed and she’s assumed her very best “assess the situation” attitude, that Laura has witnessed any number of times at work. Except that she’s gone a tad pink about the ears, and she isn’t quite meeting Laura’s eye as she says, “Make yourself at home. Don't feel the need to talk. I know you aren’t ready to talk about what’s happened between the two of you. And I certainly wouldn’t ask you to continue to make small talk with me, as you’ve already been remarkably brave in carrying on this evening as if you’re completely fine. When clearly you aren’t.”
Laura can’t help but laugh bitterly when Jean calls her brave.
“I mean it!”, she protests gently.
“Brave?” Laura asks incredulously.
“Yes, really Laura, and strong. It takes all kinds of strength that we may not even know we have to carry on as normal when something we value deeply is broken.”
Laura is immediately ashamed of having laughed. There is a fire in Jean's tone that catches her off guard, although it shouldn't. Jean's rather a force to be reckoned with, which of course makes her all the better at her job. She always seems to face the day as if armed for battle. But Laura had never given a thought, to how that armour must have been forged. How long had her marriage been in trouble before it collapsed? How many dinners had Laura herself sat through with Jean and her husband, the both of them outwardly placid, with a turmoil brewing just below the surface, secreted away from their guests? Jean could have been in Laura's place any number of times, making pleasant small talk to distract herself from feelings that would overwhelm her if she let them.
Her mind pauses on the phrase, “small talk’. She wants to tell Jean that their talk over dinner had been anything but small, or if it was, it was only because it had been made up of small, simple and wonderful things: her garden, the meal they were sharing, the way they both loved to feel the air hum with excitement as the undergraduates returned to the university and town in the autumn.
All of this “small” talk had stretched large enough to fill the hours, to loosen the knot in her stomach that had been rapidly tightening when she’d arrived.
“Thank you”, she says sincerely. “Truly, Jean, thank you for dinner and for letting me stay.”
“Of course”, Jean answers simply. “Make yourself at home”, and she leaves Laura to change.
When Jean returns with a gentle knock on the door Laura is startled from just having nodded off. She’s got the silk robe wrapped tightly around her and hadn’t even managed to get under the covers before “just closing her eyes for a moment” she had claimed to herself. She had stripped out of her wet clothes and put on the t-shirt and robe, a bit amused at the silky sexiness of the one and the utilitarian cotton of the other. But they are both oddly comforting in their own way. The knock wakes her and she tells Jean to come in. She carries a mug of hot something, and as she sets it on the table Laura gets a whiff of whiskey. “Old fashioned hot toddy” she says, setting it down gently on the bedside table. Laura sits up, suddenly aware of the sheerness of the t-shirt, of how little she is wearing. Jean hesitates briefly, clearly wanting to honour her promise of not insisting Laura talk about it, but her eyes are full of worry and she says with a slight, pained smile, “How are you feeling?”
Laura sighs. “Tired.”
And then in spite of this she continues, “And this is only the beginning. Of feeling this way, I mean.” Jean raises her eyebrows in question so she continues, “I’m slow to fall in love.” Laura's surprised that it comes out so frankly, strangely unemotional and almost clinical, the way she might rattle off intimate details in a post mortem. She chuckles a bit at that and at her relief at having said the thing she's always feared about herself aloud. Jean sits on the bed beside her and as Laura reaches for the mug she says, “Robbie and I were...the longest foreplay in the history of foreplays.” Jean laughs out loud at this and Laura takes a sip, feeling the whisky (or maybe, she thinks quickly to herself, it’s the laughter?) warm her and flush her cheeks. “Really”, she leans back on the bed, stretching out her legs, cradling the drink in her lap. “But of course when I met him he was married and very, very, happily so. So I never really let myself think about it. And then for a long time he was in such a bad way. So very sad.”
Jean has scarcely moved and Laura doesn’t like the sad way she’s looking at her. “No, don’t think it was like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like little helpless Laura pining over someone she’ll never have.” The look Jean gives her is just so “cut the bullshit” trademark Jean, that Laura can’t stop from laughing. She’s being ridiculous but she’s so very tired and she never thought she’d ever be here, like this with Jean, talking so very frankly.
“For the record Laura”, Jean says, “I never have, nor ever could find you helpless.” For just moment she puts a hand to Laura's leg stretched out in front of her and continues, “but whatever you are right now I’m liking it.”
And Laura can feel herself blushing almost immediately. “Oh?”, she falters. “And what is that?”
“Honest, open”, Jean shrugs. “Just so very yourself.”
Laura smiles and as she does so, takes advantage of feeling so very raw and emotional, and asks the question of someone she thinks will probably know, “Do you think I’ll be so very slow to fall out of it...love I mean?”
“Every day is easier. Provided you have enough distractions”. Her tone is one that Laura can't quite figure out. Distractions as in gardening? Cooking? Probably. But there’s something else in her voice. And then Jean looks at Laura intently saying, “You know there are people, people who care about you, who would be very happy to find ways of distracting you.” She holds Laura’s gaze for several moments. “Think about it--when you're ready.”
Laura feels herself blushing again. And she’s very nearly furious with herself. She’s vulnerable, she has to be imagining things.
Jean takes the abandoned mug from the bedside table. She pauses by the door, and Laura wonders whether she’s breathing, but she must be, because she manages a “good night” just after Jean closes the subject with, “I’m always happy to help, you just let me know” right before she closes the door with a warm smile.
In the morning there’s fresh coffee and a full breakfast, but Laura leaves as soon as her car’s fixed. She's halfway through a cup of coffee when she declines what she wants more than anything--to stay.
And as she steps into the shower upon returning home, she thinks that it’s perhaps because she wanted it so badly that she declined.
__________
A week later Jean announces her departure from the station without much fanfare in a small staff meeting. There's a position opening up closer to her son and his family and she's taken the opportunity. The gossip has reached the morgue by the end of the day.
Laura goes home, has a glass more than her usual nightly limit of wine--red this evening--but despite the pleasant soporific feeling it gives her, she can’t sleep. She’s thinking herself back into Jean’s spare room, wondering if she had been imagining things, letting the evening play out a bit differently in her head.
On the evening of the send-off she puts on a black silk cocktail dress that she won’t admit she had purchased with this evening in mind, or if she does, she tells herself it’s meant to impress Robbie, to make him regret what he’s lost. Deep down though, she knows she’s not that petty.
Nearly the whole station is there and there are a number of toasts. They range from heartfelt to backhanded to rueful. Laura knows there’s some there who can’t wait for the Chief Super to be gone, but they all keep it relatively staid as they’ve got one day left with her, and Jean can spot a hangover in a single wince.
Laura makes weak conversation with Robbie and James as they walk to the parking lot, and perhaps her sadness is ill concealed. She can’t help but notice them leaving together. She’s trying desperately to be happy for them as she watches them walk to the car, Robbie’s hand to James’s lower back in a calm, soothing touch that she’s felt any number of times herself. And then there is a hand in her own and she starts and finds Jean beside her. She doesn’t pull her hand away as Jean follows her eyes to the men.
“Oh, I see”, she murmurs and then, “Are you alright?” She squeezes Laura’s hand affectionately.
Laura returns the squeeze. “Yes, I think so. Or I will be.”
Jean drops her hand and takes a step back, taking Laura in. “I’m glad you’re here. You look radiant”, and she says it with such a straightforward tone that it sounds less like a compliment and more like a fact.
Laura is surprised by how much she feels the absence of Jean’s hand, though it was only there for a moment. She makes up for it by putting a hand to Jean's shoulder.
“I wouldn’t have missed it.” She casts her eyes towards Jean's face. The evening air is close and the sky is so clear and full of stars, and she thinks to herself that it really is so romantic, before she thinks that she really has been looking at Jean for too long without speaking. “I will miss you though.” And then she's up on her toes, leaning up and hugging her. For half a second she thinks this is where she will leave everything, but then she's kissing her, pausing about a second longer than a friendly good night kiss should take.
And she loves the way it speeds her heart, the way Jean barely conceals her smile after Laura breaks away, but not before Jean whispers in her ear, “I told you you were brave.”
She can tell that Jean means it to be flirtatious, but it sounds rather more wondrous, surprised, and even possibly joyful. Jean glances in the window and Laura can see the disappointment in her face as she decides she has to go back in, that it's in bad form to leave her own party. “I'll see you tomorrow”, Laura says, barely suppressing a smile. She can feel Jean's eyes on her as she walks back to her car. She feels just as Jean described her: radiant.
The next day passes in a blur. She hesitates in front of Jean’s office a few times, but never manages to catch her eye. She dithers about her work, feeling sluggish and skittish all at once. She’s thinking herself back to that night, she’s thinking herself back to previous evening. She’s anywhere but their old dusty building.
When she finally emerges from the morgue she feels her heart sinking to see the office she has been steadily avoiding and finding reasons to pass by all day, has gone dark. She feels a bit dizzy. She walks slowly to her car and leans against the driver side door, taking a deep breath, wondering what she was expecting. She hears her own voice of several weeks ago saying, “I fall in love slowly” and thinks, “love?” She has no reason, no right to think it, but the word is there, deeper, fuller and bolder than the word it had displaced days ago, “distraction.”
Maybe she doesn’t fall into (“love!” the voice in the back of her brain is yelling at her while) it (the voice of reason supplies) as slowly as she might think. Maybe that’s the narrative she’s been telling herself to fit the story as it suited Robbie and her.
No.
She stops halfway through opening the car door. That’s the story as it suited Robbie: to take literal years, to be so blind to his own feelings for her, to his own feelings for James that he nearly sabotaged everything with both them, wasted years of all three of their lives before finally, finally realizing his own heart.
“I told you you were brave”. She hears it again, just as she heard it last night and she lets all the wonder and surprise wash over her as she starts the car and decides to be just that.
For the second time in a month she’s on the same doorstep. This time she doesn’t attempt to peek through the glass. She just waits. When Jean opens the door Laura takes a deep breath and her words come out a bit quicker than she intends, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything but...if your offer still stands…?”
Jean gives Laura one long searching gaze before taking her hand and pulling her inside. She closes the door behind them. Her eyes are all inquiry as she asks, “What did you have in mind?”
Laura takes Jean’s face between both her hands. Her hold is soft but she’s kissing her hard. After she breaks away for air, she leans in, nestles her head into Jean’s neck, breathing in her perfume that has been tantalizing her for days, the scent barely reachable, at the edge of her memory. She can feel Jean’s fingers running through her hair, the backs of her palms smoothing against Laura’s face as she begins kissing the hollow of her throat, planting kisses quickly in a path to her chin where Jean takes a firm hand to the back of Laura’s head and lifts her face to meet her own. She could get lost here, Laura thinks. She goes to reach for Jean’s other hand and finds that it's braced against the closed front door.
“I do have a bedroom, you know,” Jean says.
“How far?”
She meets Jean's eyes long enough to see the amused expression that sharpens into desire. “Cheeky”, Jean chides her. “The guest room’s not far. As you’ll recall.” She smiles teasingly, “I’ve been wanting to do this for years, I think I can hold out for the trip down the hall.”
She still has a hold of Laura’s hand and she leads her down the hall, through the doorway and pulls her down on the bed. Despite their fervent kissing, they are more tentative now that they are in a new location.
“For years?”, Laura whispers. She’s actually made Jean blush. Jean answers her by nodding her head just slightly as she focuses in on unfastening Laura’s blouse buttons. She moves exquisitely slowly so that by the time Laura’s free of her bra she’s hyper aware of every sensation, including every slow, lingering kiss Jean leaves from her neck to her sternum. Finally, she traces the outline of her nipple with just the tip of her tongue and then sucks hard and releases making her give a quick little gasp of arousal. She shudders thrillingly as Jean leans her back against the bed, undoing the button of her trousers and slipping a hand below the waistband of her pants, gently stroking, barely touching and it’s so tantalizing that Laura can feel her toes curling in anticipation as she lets out an almost painfully yearning sigh.
Jean interrupts the sigh with kissing and Laura can feel them sighing almost in unison. She reaches up to tug at Jean’s dress and makes a clumsy job of it. Jean surfaces from kissing her, gasping for breath and laughing giddily at the dress bunched up around her shoulders. She sits up and pulls it off before returning to her stroking of Laura’s cunt; her soft, precise fingers very nearly dipping into her warm wetness.
“What do you want?” Jean asks her, eyebrow cocked infuriatingly in mock confusion. Laura’s clenching her teeth in frustration, just before Jean abruptly glides two fingers inside her so that she’s caught in the midst of a full bodied moan. She’s so ready, she can tell, she’s so sensitive without even having been touched yet, and her hand is reaching down but she feels Jean pulling it away saying, “No, that’s my job. You just lie back and enjoy it.” And then Jean’s got the heel of her hand pressed hard against her clitoris and she starts massaging in slow, deliberate circles.
Laura does as she’s told. She leans her head back, she lets her sighs come deeper and quicker. She starts to feel a new peak of arousal that spreads through her like ripples in a pond radiating out in circles. She relaxes into it, and can feel her knees shaking even as the sensation is building.
She’s got one hand wrapped around the bedpost behind her, holding on as the ripples are coming closer and closer together. She takes her other hand and reaches it up to run her fingers through Jean’s hair before giving her the gentlest of nudges. Jean follows the suggestion and kisses her desperately while Laura’s reaching a point of no return. Her whole body goes rigid and Jean takes the tip of her two fingers soft and warm from their earlier ministrations, and gives her clitoris a series of quick, hard, strokes. And Laura comes hard and urgent, breathing all of her cries and exclamations into Jean’s hair and neck, their faces close.
Laura feels her whole body releasing onto the bed, she’s contently and exhaustedly kissing her. Jean’s breathing is almost as quick as hers as she sinks down beside Laura taking her into her arms.
She's lost in her own afterglow for the next several minutes, enjoying feeling encompassed by Jean's arms. “Pleasant enough distraction for you?”
She rolls over, brushes the fringe out of Jean's eyes and says, “More than pleasant. And hopefully more than a distraction?” She realizes she may be overstepping her bounds here, but she's spent literal years of her life worrying about moving too quickly, and look where that got her.
Jean's got that same look of wonder and her words are hesitant, “I would like that. If that's what you want.”
Laura thinks of just how interested Jean looks whenever she talks about all the small things she loves. She thinks about how this house, this room is her refuge once more. She thinks about how Jean thinks about her: brave.
“Yes.” She answers simply. She lets her fingers run down the length of Jean's body stretched out before her. “For now, it's your turn.”
Jean sighs in anticipation but looks at her a bit worriedly, saying, “ it's been a while since I was with anyone. Sometimes it takes me... a bit longer than that.”
Laura smiles, kisses her tenderly, and says, “I hope I made it clear that I'm not going anywhere.”
In the morning there's fresh coffee and a full breakfast. And she does what she wants more than anything-- she stays.