Disclaimer: Don't own them, don't sue me, please!
Distribution: Flights
Rating: R
Content: f/f relationship
Summary: Kat and Amy finally come to terms with each other. Sequel to A Friend.
I don't know how it happened but I end up waking up facing Amy. I sigh and stretch my body delicately, being careful not to wake either one of them. Jeff is behind me, his face buried in the hair at the back of my neck. As for Amy, at some point during the night, her fingers have twined themselves around mine.
"Why," I whisper into the semi-darkness of the room, "why can't I forgive you?"
Amy stirs back to life then and her hazel eyes focus on me. She smiles and moves forward to kiss my mouth. I back away sharply, in the process hitting Jeff's head, waking him up rather painfully.
"Jeff?" Amy asked, looking dazed and confused, seeing his pained expression over my shoulder, "what the hell-- oh, right, I remember."
"Yeah."
There's an awkward silence as we all get our bearings. Jeff snatches his arm off my waist as I lie there, unmoving between my lover and my friend and Amy rolls over on her side. I see her shoulders move. Oh no, please God-- she's sobbing.
"Amy," I whisper.
"I'm losing you, aren't I?"
"No."
"You spent last night with your two former lovers and last night, you had a potential lover sleep with us."
"I'm a potential lover?" Jeff asks.
"Jeff isn't a potential anything. He's just a friend Amy. Do you understand that I've been the odd man out for most of my life? That with Jeff, well, he's odd and I'm kind of odd and it's OK."
"I'm odd?"
"You're odd. I just need someone I can do my stuff with, Amy, that's all."
"Why can't that be me?"
"Because you don't like my stuff."
"And he does?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, I do."
"I'm going to shower."
She stalks off to the bathroom and I'm left in bed with Jeff who puts his arm around me.
"She's hurting too," he tells me. "It's like she's missing out on parts of your life she didn't even know about. And that's what's hurting her so much."
"I see."
"Do you? I think that's why she was so mean to you the other night. I don't think it was the guy you were with she was so jealous about. I think it was more about him getting to a part of you she couldn't get to."
"You might turn out to be a wise man yet Jeffrey Nero Hardy."
"Yeah? So, will you let this wise man watch your make-up kiss?"
"Ugh! You spend too much time with twisted Jason."
"What did I say?"
I leave him on the bed and follow Amy into the bathroom. I lock the door behind me and look at her body through the treated glass treatment. Without a sound, I take off my clothes and slide the glass door. She turns around and I see the tears in her eyes. I don't know how to say what I feel. I love her. That's it. I just love her. So I open my arms to her.
We stand in the shower for a long moment, her tears mixing with water in the small well created by my shoulder and my neck. I run my hands up and down her back in silence, knowing this is the comfort she needs.
"You're pulling away from me," she tells me, looking up at me. "And I need you."
"I'm not pulling away from you Amy. It's just..."
"What?"
"You know what? When I first started going out with you, I was so desperate for you to love me that I did one stupid thing after the other and the stupidest was letting you believe that I liked the same things you liked. I HATE Pearl Jam. Your music gives me a headache."
"But why did you pretend you liked it then?"
"Because you liked it! I so wanted you to like me Amy. I would have done anything. So I pretended to like your music."
"Wow."
She moves out of my embrace and I stand in the tub, my skin beaded with water so clear it looks like crystal. She moves into the spray, her back to it. She looks right at me.
"Why?" she asks simply.
"Because I wanted you to like me."
I feel so bare. Not physically, but emotionally. God, what an idiot I am. I was so desperate for her to like me.
"I never had anyone do that for me before."
"It's stupid, I know. But I was so desperate for you to like me."
"What else don't you like that I like?
"Just the music."
"What kind of music do you like?"
"Pop, R&B, rap, Latin, Haitian. Anything I can dance to."
"Why didn't you tell me what kind of music you liked?"
"I wanted to. And I was about to. Until that day we were all watching MTV and the 'She Bangs' video came on. You guys reamed him out completely. That was kind of my clue not to tell you I loved him and his music."
Amy looks down. She looks a bit ashamed.
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. You don't like him. But the thing is, you were so vocal about it. You belittled him so much, I didn't really want to perk up and say but I like him and have you and all of your friends look at me as if I'd just turned white."
"I didn't know..."
"I know you didn't. See, I was afraid that if I told you I liked him, you'd realize we have so little in common, you'd want to break up with me."
"You know, for a woman who's going to make her fighting debut in the WWF, you're awfully insecure."
"I know. But in the ring, I'm fine. I know what I'm doing. With you-- I could fuck up at any moment and lose you. I don't want that to happen to me. Losing you would -- I don't know what it would do to me but I don't want to think about it. Ever."
"Kat, you have to understand something..."
As she says those words, my knees start to shake. Oh God, she's going to tell me we're done with. Oh God, kill me now.
"That night-- when I said what I said-- I regretted on the spot. The look on your face-- that literally killed me. That's when it hit me. That's when I knew I loved you. I hear a voice asking me how I could hurt the woman I loved that way and that's when it hit me that I loved you."
"Amy..."
"When I got to our hotel room and all of your things were gone-- Kat, my heart died that night. Ask Nora. I thought that you had crossed me off your list, that you hated me, that you never wanted to be with me again.
Now that I loved you, I'd lost you."
"You came close to losing me Dumas. Very close."
"And why haven't I?"
"Why do you think?"
"You love me."
"I love you. But my love isn't enough for the both of us."
"There's more than just your love," she tells me, stepping closer to me. "There's my love too."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yes. I love you Kat. I really do."
Those four words I love you Kat. That's all it took for me to melt and forgive. She loves me. What else can I ask from her except love? Understanding, my inner voice tells me.
"But do you understand me? Can you tell me you'll respect my choices, musical and otherwise?"
"Understand you? Yes. But Kat, I don't want you to do that to me again."
"Do what?"
"Hide things from me. Pretend you like certain things."
"OK. And you, I love you. Men are good looking hunks of meat but none of them look as good as you."
Amy grins brightly at me and I open my arms to her again. My mouth hovers over hers for a moment then we hear pounding on the bathroom door.
"What the fuck? Who's out there?" I ask, more than slightly ticked off.
"It's me!" Jason. Oh God!
"What the hell do you want?"
"If you two are having make up sex, I want to be there to see it!"