If I had a nickel for every WWII fictional lesbian couple I shipped this year I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s fucking awesome that it happened twice.
Falling in love with Kate was easy, as easy as opening a door. She was soft and warm and open, the kind of woman who brushes her arm against yours when you walk together, the kind of woman who takes your hand when she's excited or scared or happy, full of easy affection that you take for attention, you take for reciprocation. So her reaction when you kissed her - you followed the script, nice and subtle, and she eagerly slept in your bed, eagerly danced with you, eagerly returned affection - was all the more devestating.
Being friends with Gladys wasn't easy, not at first. She was all glamour and class and clean nails and clear skin and clipped, precise words and silk stockings and boys boys boys and at first you resented her. But she grew on you, slowly, as you realised how genuine she was, how much she cared, how different she was to other women in her position. After Kate, she knew, she was the only one you could bear to tell, the only one your could bear to hold you. She knew everything and she still wanted to be in your life and you wonder how you managed to overlook such a gem. She sleeps over, secure in her friendship with you, and wakes curled around you as though she's protecting you, even in sleep. It's the only time you feel safe.
Falling in bed with Teresa was easy, and simple and uncomplicated and very, very fun. Gladys gives you knowing little smiles and Kate flowers at you from across the hall. Teresa is like spring after an endless winter, and the problem with spring is it never lasts. But that's part of the beauty of it as well.
Coming back to the factory, to Kate and Ivan and Gladys and Lorna and Marco, all static after so much had changed for you, was hard. Gladys is soft and warm, as always, and she's the first to sleep over in your new digs, rats scratching in the walls and you catch up all night, falling asleep eventually, tangled together as always. When you wake up, Gladys is curled around you as usual, her open mouth pressed to your clavicle and you think you remember how this felt before, and you're sure it doesn't feel the same now. When Gladys wakes she fixes her soulful eyes on you, and you know for sure as she leans in to press her mouth against yours.
Falling in love with Gladys was the easiest thing you've ever done; you were already three-quarters there.
the year of fairy tales for betty mcrae (calm before the storm)
Pairings: McAndrews, McBond
Word Count: 4,964
Summary: Betty spends her life looking for fairy tales, but at age eleven she finds out they don't exist.
[A/N: Canon compliant. Betty centric. The life of Betty McRae from age seven up until the events of "Where There's Smoke" (Season 2, Episode 6).]
Think about little Betty McRae playing wedding with her bestfriend.
They’re seven.
She asks to be the bride; her best friend, Carla, doesn’t mind – she’s been bride enough times so she'll let Betty have a shot.
They're in the field outside the farm, found a nice tree to go under. Betty makes rings for them out of grass; Carla giggles. They hold hands and make up a fake last name. Betty pretends to be the priest – covers her mouth with her hand and impersonates a deep, manly voice. Carla giggles again.
Betty takes Carla’s hand and puts the grass ring on it. The light hits Carla’s hair in a special way; Betty feels butterflies in her tummy.
(She feels like she could fly away they’re fluttering so fast.)
Carla takes the other grass ring and puts it on Betty's finger. Her heart beats so fast.
(Her mommy told her she would feel this when she’s older – with boys, when she’s old enough to date. She smiles so wide; how wonderful it is to feel it now with her best friend in the whole world.)
They say I do and laugh together until Betty presses forward, giving Carla a little peck on the lips.
Carla grimaces, wipes at her mouth in disgust, "Ew, Betty.” Spits. “What’s wrong with you?”
Carla runs away; Betty slumps against the tree.
(The dead butterflies in her tummy are weighing her down.)
She tries not to cry because she is tough.
She vows never to be hurt like that again.
-----
Little Betty.
Remember how she vows not to cry?
She doesn't.
Not then at least.
But when she gets home? Later that night? After spending the rest of the evening wandering around the farm alone?
She lies in bed – tucking the covers up to her nose – and stares at the ceiling. Feels her eyes blink away the moisture.
(She closes them tight.)
She has a night light because mommy said nothing bad can happen in the light.
(She remembers the sun shining off of Carla's face.)
She doesn't turn the night light on that night.
-----
Betty goes to her mom the next day, asks for a doll so she can play house. Her mom smiles; she’s so proud of her daughter.
(She buys it the next day.)
Betty likes to play with them alone in her room, rearranging furniture in the doll house.
(Carla won't play with her anymore.)
She skips the wedding of the dolls – went straight to a comfortable marriage.
She names the boy doll Carlo.
(She doesn't think about why.)
It takes her a few weeks to realize that she always has the Betty doll outside the house playing with the other girl dolls.
Carlo is always left in the doll house.
(She never makes them kiss.)
She realizes that in here – alone in her room with her doll house and dolls – she doesn't have to make them kiss.
The Betty doll can do whatever she wants.
(She can do whatever she wants.)
Because it's all play pretend – make believe.
The stuff of fairy tales.
-----
Betty is eleven when she finds out fairy tales don't exist.
-----
She’s outside of her room – away from her dolls, away from her doll house – in the school yard with all the other boys and girls.
It's truth or dare time; Betty picks dare. She always picks dare.
(If she can't whisper truths to herself why would she tell it to them?)
Becky smirks at her; she always has such a wicked smile.
(It’s not like Betty stares at her lips or anything.)
She tells Betty to kiss Jacob right on the lips. Betty shrugs, crosses her arms – says it’s not a big deal.
(Her stomach is turning. Her chest is caving. Her head is hurting.)
Becky taunts her, says if it's not a big deal then to get it over with.
Jacob is standing on the sidelines, gangly arms dangling by his side and just the right amount of bashfulness on his lips.
Betty clenches her jaw, raises her chin. Marches right up to Jacob – stares at him for a second, waiting for an objection.
(Please stop this. We don't have to do this. Tell them you don't want to. Tell them you hate me. Tell them you think I’m too ugly. Tell them anything.)
Jacob is silent.
Before her lips can start to quiver she leans up on her tip toes; he won't meet her half way.
She presses her lips against his. They’re rough and chapped, not like Susan described kissing Chris was like. She said she was over the moon – that she could see the stars.
Betty feels like she is being pulled down through the ground to the Earth’s core, surrounded in darkness.
(Nothing bad can happen in the light – but the sun is so bright that day.)
Jacob presses into her, laces his fingers with hers. They feel like bear traps. She pulls back suddenly; Jacob is smiling down at her. Bashfulness still textured around the rough contours of his lips. She thinks of her dolls and her doll house and playing pretend. Make believe. Fairy tales.
(She remembers she’s not in her room anymore.)
She smiles back. Her friends are making ooo-ing noises around them.
(She wants to scream. She just smiles wider.)
Jacob asks Betty to be his girlfriend the next week; she doesn’t hesitate to say yes. School is a time for boyfriends; home is a time for dolls.
(She cries before going to school every morning.)
Jacob is very nice. They both actually love hand ball and she finds that he's fairly helpful with her math homework. She finds that as the months go on she really likes him. Except when he tries to kiss her. She makes them short and sweet, echoes her mother’s rhetoric about a real lady never going too far with a man when he presses.
(She’s never been more grateful for her mother in her life.)
Jacob always nods and smiles – he understands.
(It's more that he's just too shy to take what he wants. Regardless, Betty is grateful.)
It's the end of year party when it happens. They’re all huddled together in the barn on the Terrance farm, joking about the teachers they’re not going to miss over the summer. Jacob’s long arms still feel foreign around her shoulders.
(Six months and it still feels like the first time.)
Becky is there again; her smile is still wicked. Betty feels unnerved under her stare, feels her mouth go dry when Becky asks them how far they’ve gone together.
Betty tells her to shut her trap. Jacob’s arm tightens around her shoulder. It’s meant to feel reassuring; she feels like she’s going to suffocate. Becky ignores her – suggests to the group that they play a new game her older sister told her about.
Seven minutes in Heaven.
(Betty feels sick.)
Becky describes the game - tells them they'll go up to the loft of the barn in pairs and come down seven minutes later.
Or more if they're really having fun.
She winks.
(Betty feels faint.)
Jacob is drumming his fingers against his knee nervously; Betty places her hand over his to still them.
(Please be nervous because you don't want to. Please be nervous because you don't want to. Please be nervous because you don't want to.)
Becky announces that it's only fair if couples go first. Guess who the only couple in the group is?
Jacob's grip tightens.
(She's not sure if it's meant to reassure him or her anymore; all she knows is she's still suffocating.)
She stands up with wobbly knees. Their very own Bambi. Jacob reaches down to lead her by the hand.
(They're still bear traps after all these months.)
He climbs the ladder first; mumbles about how she's wearing a dress so he'll be a gentleman. She smiles – maybe this won't be so bad.
(There are those moments where there is a glimmer of hope peaking behind the clouds – where it's been dark for so long that the little bit of sunlight helps to serve as a reminder that things aren't always as terrible as they seem.)
-----
(They call it the calm before the storm.)
-----
They get to the top of the barn and Betty sits herself on the edge of a bale of hay. Maybe he'll take the hint and sit on the opposite end.
Jacob plops himself down right beside her, barely a needle's width between them.
(If someone wanted to find the needle in the haystack here they would just have to look at the space between their thighs.)
She can tell Jacob is nervous. She smiles at him.
(She doesn't know why she's smiling.)
He smiles back, rests his hand on her thigh.
(Her smile is frozen.)
Bear traps.
(The prey has been captured.)
He tells her that he really likes her. Her smile is like a block of frozen ice on her face. Petrified stone unable to move.
He leans in to kiss her.
This is the part of the fairy tales where the ice from her lips melt away and the rush of adrenaline would warm her from her ears to her toes.
(Betty learns at eleven that fairy tales don't exist.)
He presses into her further, her lips still unmoving. She feels something strange against her mouth.
Jacob pulls back. “Don’t you like me?' he says
She nods. Auto-pilot. She's learning well.
He presses into her again, bear traps digging harder into fleshy thigh. She feels the wetness against her lips again.
(She's turned to stone.)
He asks her to open her mouth a little.
She nods. Auto-pilot. She's learning well.
His tongue is foreign inside her mouth, like most things about Jacob. She's wondering when things are going to start feeling familiar. It's nothing like Susan described her first open-mouth kiss with Chris to be like. Susan talked about fireworks and bright colour and magic. The only thing Betty can feel are bombs going off inside of her.
(The first one in her chest, right by her heart. The last one in her brain, to help her forget.)
He's pressing harder now, tongue frantic in her mouth. She wonders if he's ever done this with anyone else. Maybe he's just as nervous as she is.
(Rays of light become hope. The calm before the storm.)
She tries to move her tongue - maybe it will please him and he'll want to stop.
It only spurs him on more.
There's a mess of tongue and teeth and something inside of Betty is screaming but she can't let out a sound.
(Petrified stone. The calm before the storm.)
His hand moves up her thigh and she's finally broken free. She leans back, says that she thinks their seven minutes are up. There's a fire in his eyes she’s never seen before; he smiles.
(Almost all of the bashfulness is gone from the contours of his still-chapped lips.)
“We can stay longer if we're having fun.” He's staring at her lips, looks at her with hopeful eyes. “Remember?”
(Betty feels sick.)
“Aren't you having fun?”
Betty nods. Auto-pilot. She's learning so, so well.
He leans back into her, pressing her farther back until her back hits hay. It feels like sandpaper against her skin. For a brief moment she wishes that it tore into her, make her feel something other than the nauseating feeling churning in her stomach or the heavy feeling in her heart.
(She'll later learn that the heavy feeling and nausea are self-hatred.)
His hands inch higher. Bear traps looking for new prey. They find them on her chest, an awkward fumble over the fleshes of skin that aren't even fully developed yet.
She tries not to cry.
(The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm.)
She moves his hand; they wind up back on their target. She tries again but he persists. She finally gives up – remembers stories Susan's older sister told them about her and her boyfriend. How boys are so easy if you give them what you want.
She clenches her eyes shut, grasps onto the back of his neck. Kisses him hard. Pretends she's back in her room where she's allowed to make believe.
(His tongue tastes like acid.)
She closes her eyes tighter. Pictures she's with Carla instead. They don't talk anymore, but she's grown up to be so beautiful. Betty still lives for the days where she can catch a glimpse of her on the playground with the sun hitting her face just right. It's the first time she's allowed herself to properly think of her – but it's okay because Betty is just playing pretend.
She ignores the short hair and chapped lips and growing problem between the legs of the body on top of her – except the thing is she can only ignore it for so long.
(Betty forgets how hard it is to play pretend outside of her room.)
Her eyes open and she can feel the wetness gathering in the corners. She puts her hands to his chest and pushes him up. He looks down at her, darkness and hunger now brewing in his eyes.
“What's wrong?” He asks.
“Don't you like me?” He asks.
“I don't know.”
The statue speaks.
It's a miracle.
For the first time in the past 6 months Jacob looks angry.
“You're my girlfriend,” he says
“What kind of freak are you,” he spits.
It feels like the ground is caving in underneath her, the whole world opening up to swallow her up whole.
(The storm. The storm. The storm.)
He gets up abruptly; she delicately sits up. They walk downstairs in silence, the group is ooo-ing at them again.
Jacob swings his arm back around her shoulder for good measure.
The next day he dumps her – rumours start to spread. She knows mainly by Becky; it bothers her more than it should. Especially when she notices Carla is staring at her for the first time in years. She thought she knew what fear was like up until that moment.
She’s wrong.
The rumours stick to her like a shadow; they only go away in the darkness of her room.
(Honestly? Fuck what her mom said about the light.)
She dates boys into her adolescence. Boys after boys after boys. She never goes all the way but just far enough. Religion is a beautiful thing: virginity is a sacred item never to be cast away so carelessly.
(She doesn't like to think of the irony.)
It only lasts so long until she gets to be too old to play this game – being in her early twenties with no husband? Atrocious.
(Her mother used to be so proud. Used to be.)
She's clinging onto the edge when a harness pulls her to safety in the form of the Second World War. Her duties now range from wife to mother to placeholder for real men who are off fighting men that share her last name.
(Her real last name. The one carved into the tree of her ancestors. Not the assimilated slur of letters thrown together when her grandmother landed here.)
It's a bomb factory, her first assignment. She can feel something stirring in her bones that mirrors a feverish passion.
(Who knew she would feel so alive from making things that cause so much death.)
On her first day at the factory she stares at the bombs. She thinks of that day in the barn with Jacob, of all the other nights huddled together with other boys behind trees or in dark rooms or in cramped cars. She thinks of all the bombs that have gone off inside of her other the years.
(So many little parts of her have died that she's starting to feel like a walking graveyard.)
She pushes the thought aside – lifts her chin and vows that this year things will change.
This will be the year of fairy tales for Betty McRae.
-----
She's a few months on the job, already the best worker in the whole place, when Kate Andrews is thrown at her. She's shy and clumsy and not as intuitive as Betty.
(She's also gorgeous. Betty hates her for it.)
Well – she wants to hate her, but she can't. She has scars just like Betty, except hers are on the outside whereas Betty's are rough and scabbed over on the inside. She also has a voice that makes her start to believe in a God she isn't even sure exists.
They become close – too close. Too close because Betty is starting to feel like that seven year old all over again. Except this time she's no longer alone in her room because she has Kate by her side; and she thinks – with her arm tucked around Kate's shoulder and a promise to keep her safe off her lips – she thinks, yeah, I could get used to this.
-----
1941: The Year of Fairy Tales for Betty McRae.
-----
(At eleven Betty learns that fairy tales don't exist.)
-----
(When will she learn?)
-----
It hurts her more than she could have ever dreamed – and she briefly wonders if this is how all of those boys felt when she stopped their advances – but Kate is just there and her heart is beating so fast and God, this is the closest she has felt to familiar in her entire life so she would be stupid not to lean forward and hope for the best.
Hope has gotten her nowhere before, and all it's gotten her now is a broken heart full of love and a fleeing best friend.
(Technically she’s taken, but the lack of resistance when Kate locks eyes with Betty is enough to push those stubborn tears to the surface for hours before bed that night.)
Betty learns that old habits die hard: Carla and Kate, and now the countless boys and Ivan.
She falls into him naturally. If she squints hard enough she can almost see Jacob.
(Old habits die hard.)
It’s almost enough to manage if she didn't have the love of her life back at work and an accomplice to homicide under her belt.
(1941 1942: The Year of Fairy Tales for Betty McRae.)
Her attention to Kate is too much for Ivan to handle. Kate is drowning in alcohol and Betty is drowning in Kate. She finally does the right thing – for once in her life – and breaks it off with him.
Kate is as close as ever and in a twisted turn of fate is suddenly interested in Ivan.
(She briefly wonders what she would have done if Carla and Jacob dated. Probably throw up like she wants to right now.)
But all those bombs going off inside of her all of these years, she finds out some were duds just waiting for the right spark to go off. And sitting across from Kate on that bed – well, the look of complete denial and ignorance is just the flick of heat the sleeper bombs need to go off. It's cathartic, in a way, watching herself open and come undone to someone she loves and hates all at once.
She feels like she’s starting anew.
She wishes she could go back to little Betty, give her the courage to tell Carla and Jacob and all the others that she's not a freak. She has just enough energy that she thinks she could have done it.
Something feels different in the air. The barometric pressure is changing.
(The calm before the storm.)
-----
The sun peeking through the clouds comes in the form of a female soldier. The first thing she notices is she's different from Kate. There's an air about her – this quiet confidence like she's sure, just so sure.
(Of what? Betty isn't sure yet.)
When she speaks to Betty it feels like she's sharing a secret with her and only her. Something no one else can know.
(Of what? Betty isn't sure yet.)
They keep running into each other in the strangest places. If Betty was a girl younger than eleven, she would believe it was fate.
(The calm before the storm.)
She speaks to Betty in riddles and she feels herself tripping over her shoes to keep up; but if she's honest with herself this is the closest to hope she'll allow herself to feel.
(The calm before the storm.)
She doesn't know how they end up there, but they're back at the girls' quarters. It's not like with Ivan where the others make a spectacle. She's just with one of the girls, right?
(Right. Breathe. Right.)
They're standing in her room.
Her room.
Her.
Room.
Teresa mentions that she's happy to see it; Betty's heart is racing in her chest.
The rapid thump thump thump is pulsing through her veins and pushing out a catastrophe of letters that are strung together to say things like wall and window and brush and wall, wall, wall.
(She wishes one of those surprise bombs inside of her would go off right now and put her out of her misery.)
After the train wreck that is the onslaught of letters pouring out of her mouth, she lands on one that spills over and sends knots twisting at the bottom of her stomach: bed.
Teresa makes a joke. Betty tries to laugh but she can feel the other woman's eyes on her. She tries to stare at the bed for as long as she can.
(The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm.)
But those eyes, they're calling for her – like a magnet. She looks despite herself, gives the most helpless shrug on the planet. Because she is: helpless and drowning and in way over her head. She’s dreamed about this for so long, but when she's actually here? She doesn’t know what to do with herself.
(It's never as good as the dream.)
Before she knows what's happening, there's a hand being brought up to her lips. Her first instinct is to flinch. For so many years it's been her natural reaction to touch, she's basically conditioned herself.
(Touching is for them, not for you. Save yourself, save yourself, save yourself.)
She gasps for air, the feel of skin against skin too much to handle.
She is frozen – frozen, frozen, frozen just like she always is.
She prepares herself for the worst but she gasps. She gasps because the touch is warm, the touch is soft – the touch is slowly melting away the layers of ice she has built over the years. It catches her off guard.
She's so close to having hope. So close. The closest she's ever been.
But she squashes it down, frantically chases the fire slowly building in her chest away with sand and water. Cools the ice around her face to prepare for the next part.
The inevitable press forward. The awkward motions. The empty touches.
She holds her breath in waiting, and if she held her breath until that moment came she would have died.
Because it never does.
No.
Instead, all of a sudden Teresa is leaning back – telling Betty that she doesn't have to do this if she doesn't want to. Betty is screaming inside her head, wracking her brain to understand what is going on.
This isn't how it's supposed to go.
They only kiss her for themselves.
They don't do things for her.
They never listen to her.
They never stop, not unless they absolutely have to.
But here's Teresa – sweet, thoughtful, fearless Teresa – stopping before it's even begun.
That's when Betty realizes that for the first time in her life she wants it to start.
Teresa is already across the room - how did she get away so fast? - when Betty says as much: “No, I want to.”
Teresa is still across the room, near one of the damn walls Betty wouldn't shut up about. She's far - so, so far - and Betty feels like she's spun upside her head. She's never had this much space. This much freedom. This much choice.
Always she's used to pressure and invasion and unwanted touch, touch, touch.
It feels like they're an ocean apart and Betty finds herself treading over, ready to drown herself if she has to if it means she'll be that much closer to her.
Teresa doesn't move forward until Betty is almost there. Betty is overwhelmed, drunk off the power of freedom and choice Teresa is giving her.
(The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm.)
She finds a million words running through her mind – all in a race to flow down and rush out of her mouth. They jumble in the back of her throat; they’re mixed up and making it hard for her to breathe.
(There's the war and Kate and murder and Carla and Jacob and all too much for her to know what to say.)
She settles with: “How can this happen so fast?”
Because it is. It's fast and unexpected and complicated and if she was playing a game of truth or dare right now she would pick truth. She would pick truth with such conviction and confidence that she wouldn't recognize herself.
Because she's finally ready to whisper those truths to herself and to someone else.
(And if the question was do you want to kiss Teresa? the answer would be yes.)
There are delicate hands brushing against her, moving from one side of her hip to the other hip to her upper arm – until finally they land on both arms, the final hold more firm than the rest.
They're not bear traps this time; they're anchors, helping to keep them together at sea.
(The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm. The calm before the storm.)
She sees it happen before it actually does – like an out of body experience. She can see it in the fire burning in Teresa's eyes. Can feel it in the beating of her chest. Can taste it in the shared air between their mouths.
Teresa is far and then all of a sudden she is close. So close – so, so close that she can taste her on her lips and in her mouth. She's gasping for air; not the air around her – but Teresa's air.
(She wants everything about her.)
It's fast - too fast, everything is too, too fast - and over before it hardly began. Teresa is the one to pull away with a smile and soft laugh. But they're never the ones to pull away. It's always Betty. They always just take, take, take and she has to be the one to remind them that she only has so much to give.
Teresa doesn't need reminding.
(If she’s still playing truth or dare, Betty would pick truth and admit that she doesn't want to remind her.)
They're both out of breath, too out of breath for a four second kiss. It sparks something in Betty's chest and she can feel a rumble slowly start to pulse its way through her veins. She's trembling, with Teresa too close and too caring and too thoughtful. She whispers something about waiting a long time and that's when it hits her. This storm that has been brewing ever since that day by the farm when she was seven years old. It hits her all at once and almost knocks the wind out of her chest.
(The storm. The storm. The storm.)
She's drowning in a hurricane, a tsunami, a monsoon. She feels everything all at once and can't stop her feelings from spilling over and shaking her to her core, leaving her this trembling mess in the arms of a woman who doesn't deserve to put up with this kind of brokenness.
The storm is raging, is horrendous, is all-consuming.
She's seconds away from throwing in the towel and letting herself be taken by the sea – to wash away like the other countless lost causes – but she stands still. Rooted to the spot and anchored by the arms of a woman who wants to put up with that kind of brokenness.
(They always talk about the calm before the storm. But no one talks about the peace that is after the storm, when the destruction is done and all that is left is the ability to rebuild what was lost with the hands of the willing.)
She's still trembling, but from positive shocks. Aftershocks of the earthquake of happiness bursting through her core. Teresa is kissing her again, she is kissing her and she has never felt more alive – more ready to take on the world.
She is Sleeping Beauty, walking the world asleep for all of these years until the right person came along to wake her up.
At eleven Betty learns that fairy tales don't exist.
But she is wrong. So, so wrong.
Because she was too clouded with slumber to realize that it was just waiting for her this whole time.
And when her mother told her that nothing bad can happen in the light, she finally knows that she was completely wrong, too. Because even though the light was there to shine in Teresa's eyes or the lamp was there to illuminate the softness of her skin or the glow of the warmth was there to highlight the tenderness of her touch – those things didn’t matter.
Light or dark means nothing because no matter where she is, Betty is finally done playing pretend.
-----
1942: The Year of Fairy Tales for Betty McRae.
She finally believes it because dreaming about something for so long, it's never as good as imagined.
