Harlequin
Part One
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

ARCHIVE: Yes, but please write and tell me where.
CATEGORY: f/f Slash (humor?)
SPOILERS: None
RATING: NC-17 (where's the fun in G Slash???)
SUMMARY: There's a thin line between love and hate, especially in popular fiction.

DISCLAIMER: All "ER" characters and institutions are the property of Warner Bros., ConstantC Productions and Amblin Television. This is written strictly for entertainment value, no infringement of copyright or ownership is intended, and nobody is making a profit on this piece. I'm just borrowing the characters in question. Just wash 'em off when I'm done, and they'll be as good as new. As always, any errors in continuity, characterization, or common sense are entirely my own fault.

SEND ALL COMMENTS (positive or negative) to scottjwelles@yahoo.com

...The door to the doctors' lounge flew open and Susannah Loomis stood framed in the doorway. "You brazen hussy!" she exclaimed.

Mary spun about, taken by surprise. "Dr. Loomis, what is the meaning of this outburst?" she demanded.

The taller resident crossed the room to stand before her superior, glaring boldly into her upturned face. "You can't deceive me any longer, Dr. Seaver," she stated. "I've guessed your secret. At last I know why you have hounded and tormented me all year!"

The petite chief resident squared her shoulders and frostily replied, "I assure you I have no idea what you are referring to."

"Liar! You know full well what I mean!" And with those words, Susannah flung caution to the winds and took her fellow doctor in her arms. "You love me," she declared, "Whether you admit it to yourself or no, you love me just as surely as I now realize I love you!" And she pressed her lips against those of the astonished Mary Seaver.

Mary's amazament [sic] gave way to purest joy as her cold heart was finally melted. At last the forbidden love she had harbored was rewarded by the woman who meant more to her than life itself...

"Oh my GOD!" Susan shrieked, dropping the dog-eared paperback on the patio table. "That bitch, I don't fucking believe she wrote that!" The author's true identity had come to her, all of a sudden, and it was about the last person in the world she would have guessed.

Just to check, she glanced at the author's name on the cover. "By KELLY WALKER...?! Un-fucking-believable! She couldn't come up with a better pen name than that? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my gahhhd!!" She clutched her head in disbelief.

Susan took a swig from her Coke bottle, trying to calm herself. She'd only recently gotten Susie down for a nap, and her swearing might carry through the bedroom window and awaken the child. It wouldn't do to have Little Susie hear her Aunt Big Susie use that kind of language. It was bad enough that Chloe still cursed around her sometimes, and they didn't want a repeat of that month early in the child's speech development when she toddled around for a week happily babbling, "fuck off, fuck off, fuck off..." all the time. That child loved got very vocal around company, and she loved to show off her newly expanded vocabulary.

Even in her cutoff jean shorts, sandals and brief halter, Susan was hot. Phoenix was being scorched by a freak heat wave, and not the dry kind. The air was muggy and thick, and she could feel a sheen of perspiration all over herself. The lounge chair in the backyard of Chloe and Joe's house was perched in the shadiest spot she could find, but there was no breeze to cool things down. It figured that their air conditioning would break down the same day Susan volunteered to baby-sit. She had placed the only electric fan in the house in the child's room, hoping to let her get a nap during the heat of the day.

Too enervated by the climate to rant further, Susan lay back on the extended chair, sipping at her coke and occasionally muttering, "The nerve of that damn woman... can't believe I didn't figure it out... thousands of romance novels, and Chloe buys that one..." until she heard the car pull into the driveway.

The screen door to the backyard opened a minute later, and Chloe appeared. "Hey, Susie-cakes! Hot enough for ya?" She handed a fresh Coke to her sister.

"Thanks," Susan said, taking the bottle glumly.

"Sorry about the AC," Chloe told her, sitting on the other lounge chair. "The guy's s'posed to come fix it tomorrow."

"Great."

"Hey, Joe's gonna cook some burgers on the grill when it gets cooler. You wanna stay? We rented that Julie Andrews movie you like."

"Which one? 'Mary Poppins'? 'Sound of Music'?"

"No, the drag one, you know..."

" 'Victor/Victoria'."

"Yeah, that one."

Susan shrugged. "Okay. Maybe I'll stay."

Chloe looked at her strangely. "Whats'a matter with you?"

Susan held up the paperback romance. "You know this book you urged me to read?"

"Uh-huh. Ain't it cool?"

"It took me eight chapters to figure out why it seemed so familiar," Susan snapped. "This is me and everyone back in Chicago! Look at this... 'Martin Bean', 'Paul Denton' from surgery, nurse 'Carly Holliday'...shit, this is me, right here: 'Susannah Loomis'! Do you believe this? I know the woman who wrote this book! I used to work with her!"

"I know! I figured it out right away, and I knew you'd get a kick out of it!"

Susan glared at her grinning sister in exasperation. She had to admit that Chloe had come a long way since moving to Phoenix. She was a surprisingly good mother and a responsible person, holding a steady job as assistant manager of a bookstore. But her sense of humor remained somewhat...well, insensitive at times. "You could have warned me, you know," she said.

"Are you kidding? I wanted to see your reaction when you figured it out. Eight chapters, huh? What tipped you off?"

Susan felt herself blushing as she showed Chloe the page she was on. "This bit, here, where I start making out with 'Mary Seaver'."

"Oh, right. She's the one you told me about, huh? The chick with the limp who used to drive you up the wall all the time." Chloe stood and mimed a Long John Silver limp. "Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag..." she whined.

"Don't do that, that's not funny," Susan told her.

The screen door opened again, and Joe came out, carrying his not-yet-entirely-awake daughter, her head propped on his shoulder. "Hi, Susan," he said brightly. "You staying for dinner?"

"Hi, Joe. Yeah, thanks, I'd love to."

"We were just talking about the book," Chloe told Joe. "Susan got freaked 'cause it turns out she's a dyke."

"I am not a-!" Susan caught herself and lowered her voice. "A dike is an engineering structure designed to retain water, in which leaks are traditionally plugged by the fingers of little Dutch boys," she said, "and I am not gay, as you know full well."

"Yeah, I know, don't worry about it," Chloe breezily assured her. "Whoever wrote it probably just threw that part in 'cause the public's into that lesbian shit right now."

"Chloe, your child can hear you, you know."

"Ahh, she doesn't understand grown-up talk, do ya, Susie-Bear?" She reached over and ruffled her daughter's hair. To her husband, she added, "Joe, why is it you guys all get off on two chicks doing it with each other?"

"Oh, don't even drag me into this," Joe answered her, easily. Joe seemed to do everything easily, Susan reflected. He was a cop who didn't seem to act like a cop. At least not the swaggering, macho movies-and-TV type of cop. Much of his work was in community relations, which meant he did things like public safety seminars, workplace violence prevention, teen counseling, and things of that nature. His easygoing personality leant itself ideally to his job. In another moment, he had changed the subject entirely, without being obvious about it. The way he neatly diffused the tension he had felt from Susan impressed her.

The little family enjoyed a good dinner, passed the evening playing board games - Susie won, to her delight - and then the adults put the child to bed and settled on the couch to watch the movie. Chloe and Joe loved it, but Susan had trouble concentrating.

"Hey, you still upset about that book?" Joe asked her later, as she was preparing to leave. Susan was struck, as always, how perceptive he was.

"Yeah," she replied. "I know it's all just a bunch of made-up bodice-ripping stuff, and I shouldn't get upset about it, but..."

Joe lowered his voice. "That bit with you and your friend really touched a nerve, huh?"

She found herself blushing. "She wasn't my friend," she told Joe. "In fact, we never really got along at all. She spent all her time either on my back or in my face, until I finally told her to back off. We didn't have as much friction after that, but we never became friends or anything."

"So she just made up that part about you two being...?"

Susan said, "Oh, yeah. I don't know what she was thinking with that..." but there was just the slightest hesitation before she said it. From the look on his face, she knew he'd caught it.

"Susie's sleeping fine," Chloe said, joining them from the hall. "Hey, thanks again for sitting, Suze. Joe and I really needed some time alone together."

"Oh, no problem. You know I love taking care of her." Susan kissed them both and said her goodnights.

Driving home to her apartment, though, she couldn't help dwelling on that scene in the novel, and all the memories it brought back.

Susan should have realized who wrote the novel as soon as she read 'Susannah Loomis' declare that she'd rather be drawn and quartered than associate closely with the patronizing 'Mary Seaver' any more than absolutely necessary. Seaver had smiled quietly and replied, "Ah, at last, your true fires are unleashed! Perhaps you do, indeed possess the strength of character to which Dr. Bean has attested." Except for the ridiculously flowery prose, it was the exact same damn thing that had happened years ago, back at County!

Then, of course, there was that melodramatic scene where Loomis burst in on Seaver and declared her undying love for Mary. The one that had finally clued Susan in to the author's identity. Joe had suspected that there was more truth to that scene than Susan was willing to admit; she could see in his eyes. It was just her good luck that Chloe had interrupted them before he could ask her anything more.

"Oh, Kerry, why'd you have to write that..." she sighed to herself as she entered her cozy bachelorette. She opened the windows to let the stuffy apartment air out and retrieved another Coke bottle from her refrigerator before settling onto the sofa and picking up the novel again. Part of her wanted to read on and see what other exploits her literary counterpart was engaged in, but she still found herself unsettled by the amount of reality that had been reproduced within those pages already.

Susan leaned her head back and remembered what really happened that day...