Pokemon, Jessie/Cassidy -- #10
Title: The Left Side of Her Chest
Fandom: Pokemon
Claim: Jessie/Cassidy
Prompt: 10-Loyalty
Pairing: Jessie x Cassidy, Jessie x James (one-sided)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jessie hates the song that goes, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” (One more to go!)
It’s some kind of weird loyalty thing. That’s the only way Jessie can think to explain it. James is more than a partner and more than a best friend and doing this feels wrong, like she’s cheating on her husband or something. Guilt swells inside of her every time Cassidy kisses her, every time Cassidy touches her, every time she looks at the digital motel clock and sees how long she’s been there, how long she’s been away from him.
So she calls him, while she’s waiting for Cassidy to finish in the shower, naked and twisted nervously in the sheets.
“Hello?”
“James.”
“Jess.” She loves and hates how she can hear him smile when he says her name. “You’re on vacation and you can think of nothing better to do than call me? I know you don’t miss me.”
“Of course not,” she laughs, twines the phone cord around her fingers. “You just have no idea how insanely bored I am.”
“Oh, is that it?”
God, she’s missed him. She’s missed him teasing her, her teasing him. It isn’t the same with Cassidy. With Cassidy, it fuels the fire between her legs. With James, it fuels the fire in the left side of her chest.
“James…”
She’s in love with him, she knows, and she’s known it for years. And she wants to tell him, always wants to tell him.
“Yeah, Jess?”
“James, I…”
But she can’t. She can’t and she knows why she can’t and it disgusts her and so she runs, runs to this motel, to Cassidy, who disgusts her, too.
“I know, Jess.”
She’s crying when she hangs up, when Cassidy gets out of the shower, smelling of steam and soap. She refuses to look up when Cassidy lies down beside her, puts her arm around her, rests her chin on Jessie’s bare shoulder. She holds her and for a moment, Jessie feels less pathetic. For a moment, she feels like what she’s doing maybe isn’t wrong because Cassidy is warm and her hold is soft and maybe she can learn to love this.
“You know he’s gay.”
But then she’s pathetic again, disgusted again, and she knows that she’ll never love this, she’ll never love what she can actually have, she’ll always love what she can’t. And she wonders if her loyalty would even matter to James, if he’d smile and feel like he’s won something when she tells Cassidy to shut up and pulls out of her embrace and goes to take her own shower.