i see the girls are out, a lot of freaks in the house, 2/2
i see the girls are out, a lot of freaks in the house, part 2/2
bandom, Lyn-z/Gerard Way, Alicia Simmons/Mikey Way, Lyn-z/Jamia, Gerard Way/Frank Iero
Title from Le Tigre’s “TGIF,” thanks to secrethappiness and idyll for the betas. This part ~4500 words. Posted as a part of 14valentines. [Day 4]
Part 1
Lyn-z has never been big on fate. She never had words for the itchy feeling that went down her back when people talked about things being “meant to be” until her required philosophy classes gave her a whole language to reject it with - words like “determinism” could be met not only with ideas of free will, but with logic syllogisms that pointed out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes.
It’s awesome. The best thing about college (beyond Alicia and Bob and Frank and Mikey and Ray and Gerard, of course) is finding a whole vocabulary for all of the things that Lyn-z never knew how to say before.
So Lyn-z would never say that all of this was destined to be, not her life here, or Gerard, not even all of these insane people who are her friends.
But she can kind of understand for the first time why people might say shit like that.
*
Alicia swears that first kisses forecast the whole story of two people together. Like most of Alicia’s theories, it’s pulled totally out of her ass and appears to be completely true.
Gerard and Lyn-z are a lot like their first kiss - surprising, a little awkward, a little too public, and with Lyn-z always leading, even when she doesn’t know where she’s going.
Lyn-z totally likes Gerard. He’s awkward and unsure of himself, like she’s the first girl that’s looked at him and seen something there. Actually, considering his evasiveness about previous relationships, that might be true. Sometimes, she’ll be rambling about homework assignments or assholes who come into the café on campus when she’s closing down, just wanting “one more latte” like she wouldn’t have to totally re-clean the machine if she makes them and she’ll just look over. Gerard will have this look on his face, something that looks a little bit like disbelief.
The first time she noticed it, she thought he was being an ass, making fun of her for talking so much. “What?” she snapped, grabbing her pen and shoving it into her bag. If Gerard was going to be a dick, she didn’t have to stick around.
Gerard didn’t look disbelieving anymore, he just looked confused. “What … are you leaving?” he’d asked.
And he sounded so genuinely confused that Lyn-z realized he wasn’t making fun - he just kind of thought she was magic or something.
Which is kind of … awesome.
So it works, even though it maybe shouldn’t. Lyn-z is really pretty inexperienced - her only real boyfriend before Gerard was Steve and she’s kissed, like, four other people. The ridiculous thing is that she still has more experience than Gerard does.
She doesn’t find this out until the first time that they’re making out and he gets her underwear off.
“Are you serious?” she says, propping herself up on her elbows, her astonishment momentarily erasing the fact that she was maybe about to get head for the first time in a very long time. “You’ve never …”
Gerard blushes, tugging self-consciously at the shirt that he’s still wearing. “I … didn’t have a lot of chances to do this stuff in high school, you know?” he mumbles, staring at the floor.
“Hey,” Lyn-z says, her voice a little softer in response to his obvious embarrassment. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re just … Gee, you’re gorgeous and smart and funny and you’ve been in college for two years. You’ve never … any of it?”
“No,” he says a little defensively. “I’ve done stuff. Some stuff. Just … not this.”
Lyn-z still kind of doesn’t get it. Gerard isn’t one of those guys, one of those ‘I don’t go down on girls, they go down on me’ kind of guys so …
Oh god.
“Gee,” she says carefully. “Have you had sex?”
“Yes!” he says loudly. “God, yes.”
Lyn-z furrows her eyebrows a little. Then she remembers all of their shared Opinions about queerness and definitions of sex and sexuality and smiles a little.
“Okay, I appreciate that you’ve given people orgasms. But have you ever had anything other than your hand on someone else’s genitals?”
“Um,” Gerard’s blush deepens, spreading down his neck. “No?”
Lyn-z’s grin widens. He’s so cute.
“That’s fucking hot,” she says, pulling him closer to her. “You’re going to be awesome at this.”
He is. He’s attentive and careful and he really cares that she gets off. She looks down her body at his even-messier-than-normal hair and his big hazel eyes staring straight at her from between her legs and …
Yeah, he’s good.
*
During her freshman year, Lyn-z had a bunch of bumper stickers she had gotten from the gay/straight alliance on her door, shit like "Heterosexuality is common, not normal" and "Hatred is not a family value."
So she guesses it's not that shocking that the fucking homophobes on her floor leave threatening notes on the whiteboard on her and Julie!'s door, usually misspelled and poorly-punctuated.
It sucks, some, but she doesn't feel that scared. She doesn't really understand why campus security pressures the housing department to let her move off-campus a year early, but it basically means that Lyn-z finally manages to get away from Julie! and moves into her very first apartment. Ever. By herself.
“This is why you have so many guys hanging around, huh?” Frank huffs as he carries another box of books up the second set of stairs into her little one-bedroom apartment. “So that when you need people to carry your eight million books, you’ve got us on hand?”
“Sexist much?” Alicia’s voice breaks in as she turns a corner. She looks down pointedly at the two boxes of books in her arms.
Lyn-z laughs and shakes her head as she pushes her hair back from her face again.
She’s been lucky so far - she’d found a moving day that all of her friends could help with and she had managed to sock away enough money that she actually has furniture, helped much with the addition of a couch that Gerard had found outside of someone’s house near campus.
“I think this is it,” Ray says as he walks in with one final box marked ‘Random shit, IDK,’ which was the last box of stuff that Lyn-z had thrown together in the dorm. She probably should have just thrown it out - if it didn’t have a coherent label, according to Bob, it’s probably just trash.
“Jesus,” Gerard huffs as he flops down on the couch next to her. Lyn-z automatically lifts her arm to let him slump against her side, his face a little sweaty and his hair lank against her neck. “Are we done?”
“Whatever,” Frank says from his perch on the floor. “You carried, like, three boxes and half a chair. You can’t be that tired.”
“Hey,” Lyn-z breaks in, grinning. “He was supervising.”
“Damn right,” Gerard says smugly.
*
Things are awesome. Lyn-z loves her classes, loves her friends, even loves the little bit of extra cash she gets from her job at the coffee shop. In addition to all of that, Lyn-z lives in the best neighborhood in Spokane - she can walk downtown from her house, there’s a grocery store two blocks away, and she can walk down some metal stairs in the side of a hill to the river that’s five blocks from her apartment. Her neighborhood even comes with this awesome guy who just stands on the corner, waving and smiling at people and telling them to have a good day. Every day.
His name is Benny. She buys him hot chocolate at least once a week. He always smiles at her like it’s the first time she's brought him something when he says “thank you.”
In other words, things are going pretty well until Lyn-z walks into her first day of classes her sophomore year. She was supposed to have Contemporary Feminist Politics with Frank and Bob, but the stupid registrars fucked up her registration. She managed to find a political science class that was also crosslisted with Women’s Studies, but in addition to it being a pain in the ass, it was also, unfortunately, Environmental Ethics.
It’s not that she doesn’t like Environmental Ethics - it’s an interesting course, combining political science and philosophy and gender critique and it’s team-taught by a philosopher and a real, honest-to-god priest.
So the class should be awesome, but it’s also hard, and there aren’t really any Women’s Studies students in there. It’s really just a couple of senior philosophy students looking to round out their classes before grad school applications and all of these asshole Poli Sci majors who are planning on being contracts lawyers and practical shit like that.
It kind of sucks, not liking any of them.
There’s this one girl that Lyn-z thinks might be a possibility, at least at first. Jamia has a black Betty Paige cut and a constant smirk. She’s also smart as hell - she’s the first person to answer a question, the first to challenge both of the professors. Lyn-z thinks she would like Jamia - she likes smart people in general - but she’s so goddamn smug. She acts like if you don’t know about queer jurisprudence, you’re not worth her damn time. Lyn-z thinks she’s an asshole. A hot asshole, but an asshole.
Plus, she wants to be a lawyer.
*
Maybe it’s classes not being perfect that breaks the happy hazy glow around life, but things in general feel a little harder, a little rougher than they did the previous semester. Things aren’t bad - Lyn-z has great friends and Gee is super-sweet and she loves her apartment and even likes her job - but she’s starting to see the things she didn’t catch in the first glow of love-with-her-life.
For example, Alicia is kind of a flake when she’s falling for someone and will regularly fail to show up for coffee dates or meetups at the movies.
And that things with Gerard are good, not great. Gerard and Lyn-z try, they really do. They have awesome conversations and great sex and really really like each other. They laugh in corners of rooms at parties and they cuddle and watch zombie movie marathons on the couch.
Lyn-z likes him a lot, likes sex with him and his stupid bashful grin and the way he still kind of looks at her like she’s a treasure that he doesn’t know how he ended up with. But she’s started to think that it’s not as simple as liking him. Because she likes him, he likes her, they like each other.
They’re just not really managing to fall in love.
*
“So you’re saying …” Alicia trails off, sounding confused. “I don’t get it.”
It’s one of the nights that Mikey and Gerard have their regular Dungeons and Dragons game with Ray (who was thrilled to find people to game with again). Alicia and Lyn-z claim the gaming nights as “girls’ night in.” Although some people (Mikey) might think of pillow fights and matching lingerie, they mostly sit around in sweatpants, listening to the Raincoats and eating pizza.
Lyn-z shrugs, flopping on her stomach and grabbing another piece of cheese pizza. “It’s just … I don’t know. There’s a difference between good and great, you know?”
Alicia raises an eyebrow, her whole body radiating uncertainty. “Not really?”
“Yeah,” Lyn-z sighs. “I know. You don’t know.”
*
It’s easier than Lyn-z thought it would be. There’s no drama, not really. She just sits down with Gerard on her bed, pulling him next to her and putting her head on his chest as she explains it all.
It’s dumb and she uses all of the wrong words, shit like “love you but not in love with you,” making her feel like some kind of character in a fucking romance novel, but Gerard gets it. He won’t say it, he probably never will, but she thinks he’s been thinking all of the same things, too.
And yeah, they both cry a little, but Lyn-z knows that she’s doing the right thing when she keeps lying with her head on Gerard’s chest, their hands entwined. She actually doesn't think much will change except that it's okay that she's not in love with him.
Things will be okay.
*
And things really are okay. Lyn-z thinks she should probably be devastated and there are definitely times where she turns to Gerard and goes to kiss him or something and then remembers oh yeah, we don’t do that anymore.
But the thing is, she still has a Gerard to turn to. They still watch monster movies together and he’s still the first person she calls when a cup of coffee is the only thing stopping her from killing someone and he’s still her favorite person.
She sees people, guys and girls that she eyes in class across the coffeeshop, and is vaguely interested but the interest is never strong enough for her to approach them. She’s not really gun-shy, but she doesn’t really want to deal with the implosion of another relationship, especially since it’s very unlikely to go as well as the breakup with Gerard has gone. Sure, she misses getting head sometimes (because Gerard was really tremendously good at that), but it’s really not much of a sacrifice.
What is a sacrifice, in contrast, is realizing that she really needs a study partner for Environmental Ethics. The class is interesting, still, but the material is hard and so far outside of Lyn-z’s experience that she really needs someone to talk it out with. She loves her friends and every single one of them except Ray and Bob (Ray because he’s a music major with, in his words, “no applicable skills” and Bob because he hates Political Science) are willing to talk it out with her. But what she needs, she knows, is someone who gets the Political Science part.
Unfortunately, as much as she hates to admit it, she needs the best Poli Sci student in the class.
Lyn-z needs Jamia.
*
She just bites the bullet one day and walks up to Jamia’s desk as she’s putting her books and notebooks into her backpack.
“Do you have any nights free this week?” Lyn-z blurts out. Oh nice. Very smooth.
Jamia’s head snaps up, her brown eyes widening comically. “What?”
Lyn-z blushes and … what the fuck, blushes? She doesn’t blush.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, not like that. Look … we’ve got the test next week and I get the theory part, but I’m having trouble with the political implications part. I don’t really … understand policy, I guess.”
“Oh,” Jamia’s eyes narrow back to normal. Her face looks … something. Lyn-z can’t read it, but it doesn’t look like Jamia’s about to laugh at her or anything, so Lyn-z stands her ground. “What makes you think I want a study partner?”
Lyn-z shrugs and taps her fingers on the edge of the desk. “I’m pretty good at the ecofeminist stuff and you kept asking questions about it today. Maybe talking it out would help?” She looks up hopefully. Jamia still strikes her as kind of … curt. But she doesn’t seem mean, exactly, just too smart for her own fucking good.
“I …” And it’s Jamia’s turn to flush, just a little bit. Lyn-z bets she’s not very used to being offered help. “You actually understand that?”
“Yeah, we’re studying it in Feminist Theory, too. I kind of have double-duty on ecofem this semester.”
“Huh,” Jamia says. “All right. How about Thursday at six in the study lounge of the library?”
“Cool,” Lyn-z smiles, bouncing a little on her feet.
*
It turns out that Jamia isn’t really very mean at all. She actually brings Lyn-z a latte to their second study meeting and just shrugs when Lyn-z offers her money for it.
She’s super-fucking-smart, that much of the first impression was definitely true, but she’s not mean. She’s just … focused.
“Lyn-z, come on,” Jamia snaps, her voice a little rough with exhaustion. They’ve been studying for three hours. “Why hasn’t the US signed onto Kyoto protocols?”
Lyn-z sighs. “Because the Clinton administration sold out the environment for hopes of Gore winning the 2000 elections?”
Jamia snickers a little. “Okay, yeah, arguably. But what was the reason they gave?”
“Some economic impact shit. Jesus, Jamia,” Lyn-z lifts her head up from the table. “Seriously. If we don’t have it now, we’re not gonna get it. Please, God, let me stop.”
“God, okay.” Jamia makes a face, but she closes her books and stretches a little. “I’m kind of tired, anyway.”
Lyn-z’s eyes snag on the little strip of Jamia’s belly bared by her stretch and …
Oh. Well. That’s a little unexpected.
“I gotta go,” Lyn-z says quickly, grabbing her stuff faster and shoving it into her bag.
God, how stupid could she be? She’s just barely managed to convince Jamia that she’s not a total idiot and now she’s …
She’s gotta go.
“Okay,” Jamia says, her voice sounding a little confused. “You don’t want to stop and get some food on the way home?”
“Um,” Lyn-z shakes her head, not meeting Jamia’s eyes. “No, that’s okay. I’m just gonna … I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Jamia’s voice is already fading as Lyn-z is at the door.
Shit.
*
It’s a couple of months after Gerard and Lyn-z break up that she sees him walking in front of the library with Frank as she is closing up after her Wednesday night shift. He doesn’t see her - he is totally engrossed in whatever it is that Frank is saying, his whole body leaning in and his attention honed.
Ah. So that’s how it is.
She can’t say that she’s hurt or even surprised. It’s not like she had ever thought that she and Gerard were forever.
Still, seeing Gerard and Frank makes something pull a little in her stomach, a something that she tries not to think about. It’s not like she’s jealous of Frank in particular, the thing with Gee was great but not going to go farther than it went. Really, she’s just kind of envious in general, jealous that they’ve managed to figure something out that still hasn't gotten right.
She tosses the trash from the café into the dumpster and resolves to go and get nicely drunk.
*
“Booooooob,” Lyn-z groans, setting her head very, very carefully down on the table in The Rocket Bakery. She has very little memory of the end of the night before, but she apparently called Bob and made him promise that he’d make her eat the next day.
Carbs. Lots of stomach-settling carbs.
Bob’s lips quirk a little, the silver of his new lip ring flashing a little in the light. He doesn’t appear to be very sympathetic.
“I’m not very sympathetic,” he says. “You did this to yourself, girl.”
Lyn-z waves her hand crankily. Her friends suck. Suck.
“Hey, babe,” Ray says softly, setting a bagel with lox and cream cheese and capers down in front of her. “I brought you food.”
Her friends rule.
“Lyn-z?”
Oh Jesus. Awesome. It would be awesome if Lyn-z were so hung over that she could hallucinate Jamia’s voice right now. A little out of the ordinary, sure, but awesome because it would mean that Jamia weren’t standing there, witnessing Lyn-z’s most horrifying morning in recent years.
Oh yeah, this is the way to seduce a girl.
“Hey, Jamia,” Lyn-z croaks, lifting her head from the table and thanking god for the sunglasses she’d grabbed.
”Wow,” Jamia says. “You … kind of look like hell, actually.”
“Yeah, um,” Lyn-z tries to think of anything to say, other than: “I’m so hung over, I think I might die.”
Which, apparently, is what her mouth chooses to say anyway.
Jamia’s lips quirk a little. “Hard night?”
Lyn-z groans.
“Hey,” Ray says, breaking in like the God of Conversations Lyn-z Doesn’t Want to Have. “I’m Ray. This is Bob. We’re friends of Lyn-z’s.”
“Jamia,” she says. “Me, too.”
Wait.
Lyn-z lifts her head from the table.
They’re friends? How did she miss that, exactly?
“Well, I’m gonna run,” Jamia says. “Nice to meet both of you. Take care of that head, Lyn-z.”
Lyn-z nods dumbly.
“See you tomorrow at the Elk, right?” Jamia asks as she moves toward the door. “We’ve got that test on Tuesday.”
Lyn-z nods again. Jamia waves with a little smile and walks out.
“Woah,” Ray says under his breath.
“What?” Lyn-z asks, turning her head slowly to look at Ray.
“Dude, I’m gay and even I know she’s hot.”
Bob snickers a little. “Well, I don’t see it. But she definitely thinks Lyn-z is hot.”
“What?” Lyn-z might squeak a little. Maybe. She plans on blaming it on the hangover. “What are you …? No! She’s just … she’s my study partner, Jesus.”
Bob looks at her like she’s stupid.
Bob. Looks at Lyn-z like she’s stupid.
“Yeah, because I always make plans for a Friday night to study for a test on Tuesday.”
*
Lyn-z doesn’t exactly have moves, is the thing. Like, she’s pretty cute, she knows that. She’s smart and she’s funny and if you’re into people like Lyn-z, you’ll probably be into her. Thus, she’s never really bothered to develop any moves.
Which explains why, the next night, after Jamia buys her a coffee and a tofu Rueben and they’ve been working for an hour, Lyn-z just blurts out: “Do you like me?”
“Yeah, I like you,” Jamia blinks, looking up from her notes. “Wait. What?”
“Do you like me?” Lyn-z is more than a little horrified with herself, but she kind of doesn’t have any other choice but to continue. “Because … I think you’re really funny and smart and I love your hips and I was kind of wondering if you would want to do this again?”
Jamia raises a slow eyebrow.
“Lyn-z, we do this all the time.”
“No,” Lyn-z says, frustrated. “More dinner, less books.”
“What? Wait,” Jamia lifts the other eyebrow. “Did you say that you love my hips?”
“Um,” Lyn-z fidgets with her napkin a little. “Yes?”
Jamia’s eyes widen. “This is … a little sudden?”
“Shit,” Lyn-z says quickly, shredding her napkin nervously and staring at the table. “I don’t even know if you date girls, I just … I don’t want things to be weird, but Bob said … and then …”
Jamia’s hand comes down over Lyn-z’s, stopping her paper-shredding. Lyn-z looks up, wincing.
Jamia doesn’t look pissed. In fact, she’s kind of … smiling.
“I said it was sudden. I didn’t say ‘no.’”
*
So Lyn-z has a type, maybe. People that kind of drive her nuts and are kind of out of it. She had to catch Jamia up to speed, but once she was there, she was there. And it works, like it did with Gee, but different, too.
The relationship is good. Jamia isn’t jealous of Gee, and Gerard thinks that Jamia is awesome. Jamia likes Lyn-z’s friends and likes having her own space and would never dream of stifling anyone.
Lyn-z is a little impulsive for Jamia and Jamia maybe needs to be compulsively on time and has a million plans, but they compliment each other well.
It’s different from any relationship that Lyn-z has ever been in. They argue more than she’s used to and they spend more time apart. They don’t watch horror movies together, but they do fall in love. So that’s different, too.
*
Gerard is a doofus. Lyn-z is so fucking glad that they managed to stay friends, that their breakup was way more about them not being right for each other in that way than anything else. Because, otherwise, she would miss the beauty that is Gerard and Frank owning matching airbrushed unicorn t-shirts.
Matching. Airbrushed. Unicorns.
It’s fucking glorious.
Lyn-z actually kind of likes the shirts. “Jam, we should do that.”
“Do what?” Jamia is distracted. She had just been complaining about the International Policy quiz she has the next day. Apparently, there’s a ton of Econ on it, which Jamia just sucks at.
“Gee and Frankie!” Lyn-z’s voice is maybe a little more insistent than she would have thought it would be. But … it’s cute. They’re, like, visibly marked for each other. Not tattooed - Gerard would never agree, even though she thinks that Frank may already be planning one - but marked, publicly. Something everyone can see. It’s cool.
Jamia looks up from her books for the first time, narrowing her eyes as she looks across the study area in Crosby. Her eyes stop on Gerard and Frank, being ridiculous and cute. As usual. “Honey, we’re already offensively visible queers. We already do that.”
“No,” Lyn-z pouts. “Not that.”
Jamia looks again, closer. “Oh god, the unicorns? You know I love you right?”
Lyn-z beams. “Yup.” She does. It’s cool. Because, really, nobody knows much of anything with Jamia, but Lyn-z gets this in her, this assurance that Jamia’s love is fierce and hers and it kicks ass.
Jamia puts down her book for emphasis. Apparently, this is important.
“Lyn-z, there is not enough love in the world to wear something that ugly.”
*
Lyn-z threatens to pout forever and she totally intends to do so until Jamia shows up with some Peruvian cuff bracelets made out of wood with a totally cool hinge in them. She puts one on Jamia’s left arm and one on her own right arm, clasping their fingers together tightly.
Lyn-z looks down at their entwined hands and the sheen of wood reflecting wood.
This is a mark, too. She gets it.
She smiles.
*
If this were one of those romantic comedies that Alicia loves but denies watching, Jamia and Lyn-z would have some kind of misunderstanding that pulls them apart, right before they’re pulled back together at the last minute. If it were one of those art-house French films that Gerard is constantly forcing Frank and Lyn-z to watch, they would sail off together into the sunset in a boat that nobody is steering while looking into each other’s eyes.
Also, there would probably be a mime.
But life isn’t like that. They aren’t forced apart by circumstances that are hilarious in hindsight or weird misunderstandings and Lyn-z is pretty sure that neither of them even knows a mime.
But they are happy sometimes and sad sometimes. They fight and they make up. She still has lunch with some conglomeration of Bob and Frank and Alicia and Mikey and Gerard and Ray. Couples break up and tests are passed and life moves on. Her life moves on. It’s not always perfect, but it’s hers.
There aren't Happily Ever Afters, not for anyone. But there is happy. And that's something.
bandom, Lyn-z/Gerard Way, Alicia Simmons/Mikey Way, Lyn-z/Jamia, Gerard Way/Frank Iero
Title from Le Tigre’s “TGIF,” thanks to secrethappiness and idyll for the betas. This part ~4500 words. Posted as a part of 14valentines. [Day 4]
Part 1
Lyn-z has never been big on fate. She never had words for the itchy feeling that went down her back when people talked about things being “meant to be” until her required philosophy classes gave her a whole language to reject it with - words like “determinism” could be met not only with ideas of free will, but with logic syllogisms that pointed out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes.
It’s awesome. The best thing about college (beyond Alicia and Bob and Frank and Mikey and Ray and Gerard, of course) is finding a whole vocabulary for all of the things that Lyn-z never knew how to say before.
So Lyn-z would never say that all of this was destined to be, not her life here, or Gerard, not even all of these insane people who are her friends.
But she can kind of understand for the first time why people might say shit like that.
*
Alicia swears that first kisses forecast the whole story of two people together. Like most of Alicia’s theories, it’s pulled totally out of her ass and appears to be completely true.
Gerard and Lyn-z are a lot like their first kiss - surprising, a little awkward, a little too public, and with Lyn-z always leading, even when she doesn’t know where she’s going.
Lyn-z totally likes Gerard. He’s awkward and unsure of himself, like she’s the first girl that’s looked at him and seen something there. Actually, considering his evasiveness about previous relationships, that might be true. Sometimes, she’ll be rambling about homework assignments or assholes who come into the café on campus when she’s closing down, just wanting “one more latte” like she wouldn’t have to totally re-clean the machine if she makes them and she’ll just look over. Gerard will have this look on his face, something that looks a little bit like disbelief.
The first time she noticed it, she thought he was being an ass, making fun of her for talking so much. “What?” she snapped, grabbing her pen and shoving it into her bag. If Gerard was going to be a dick, she didn’t have to stick around.
Gerard didn’t look disbelieving anymore, he just looked confused. “What … are you leaving?” he’d asked.
And he sounded so genuinely confused that Lyn-z realized he wasn’t making fun - he just kind of thought she was magic or something.
Which is kind of … awesome.
So it works, even though it maybe shouldn’t. Lyn-z is really pretty inexperienced - her only real boyfriend before Gerard was Steve and she’s kissed, like, four other people. The ridiculous thing is that she still has more experience than Gerard does.
She doesn’t find this out until the first time that they’re making out and he gets her underwear off.
“Are you serious?” she says, propping herself up on her elbows, her astonishment momentarily erasing the fact that she was maybe about to get head for the first time in a very long time. “You’ve never …”
Gerard blushes, tugging self-consciously at the shirt that he’s still wearing. “I … didn’t have a lot of chances to do this stuff in high school, you know?” he mumbles, staring at the floor.
“Hey,” Lyn-z says, her voice a little softer in response to his obvious embarrassment. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re just … Gee, you’re gorgeous and smart and funny and you’ve been in college for two years. You’ve never … any of it?”
“No,” he says a little defensively. “I’ve done stuff. Some stuff. Just … not this.”
Lyn-z still kind of doesn’t get it. Gerard isn’t one of those guys, one of those ‘I don’t go down on girls, they go down on me’ kind of guys so …
Oh god.
“Gee,” she says carefully. “Have you had sex?”
“Yes!” he says loudly. “God, yes.”
Lyn-z furrows her eyebrows a little. Then she remembers all of their shared Opinions about queerness and definitions of sex and sexuality and smiles a little.
“Okay, I appreciate that you’ve given people orgasms. But have you ever had anything other than your hand on someone else’s genitals?”
“Um,” Gerard’s blush deepens, spreading down his neck. “No?”
Lyn-z’s grin widens. He’s so cute.
“That’s fucking hot,” she says, pulling him closer to her. “You’re going to be awesome at this.”
He is. He’s attentive and careful and he really cares that she gets off. She looks down her body at his even-messier-than-normal hair and his big hazel eyes staring straight at her from between her legs and …
Yeah, he’s good.
*
During her freshman year, Lyn-z had a bunch of bumper stickers she had gotten from the gay/straight alliance on her door, shit like "Heterosexuality is common, not normal" and "Hatred is not a family value."
So she guesses it's not that shocking that the fucking homophobes on her floor leave threatening notes on the whiteboard on her and Julie!'s door, usually misspelled and poorly-punctuated.
It sucks, some, but she doesn't feel that scared. She doesn't really understand why campus security pressures the housing department to let her move off-campus a year early, but it basically means that Lyn-z finally manages to get away from Julie! and moves into her very first apartment. Ever. By herself.
“This is why you have so many guys hanging around, huh?” Frank huffs as he carries another box of books up the second set of stairs into her little one-bedroom apartment. “So that when you need people to carry your eight million books, you’ve got us on hand?”
“Sexist much?” Alicia’s voice breaks in as she turns a corner. She looks down pointedly at the two boxes of books in her arms.
Lyn-z laughs and shakes her head as she pushes her hair back from her face again.
She’s been lucky so far - she’d found a moving day that all of her friends could help with and she had managed to sock away enough money that she actually has furniture, helped much with the addition of a couch that Gerard had found outside of someone’s house near campus.
“I think this is it,” Ray says as he walks in with one final box marked ‘Random shit, IDK,’ which was the last box of stuff that Lyn-z had thrown together in the dorm. She probably should have just thrown it out - if it didn’t have a coherent label, according to Bob, it’s probably just trash.
“Jesus,” Gerard huffs as he flops down on the couch next to her. Lyn-z automatically lifts her arm to let him slump against her side, his face a little sweaty and his hair lank against her neck. “Are we done?”
“Whatever,” Frank says from his perch on the floor. “You carried, like, three boxes and half a chair. You can’t be that tired.”
“Hey,” Lyn-z breaks in, grinning. “He was supervising.”
“Damn right,” Gerard says smugly.
*
Things are awesome. Lyn-z loves her classes, loves her friends, even loves the little bit of extra cash she gets from her job at the coffee shop. In addition to all of that, Lyn-z lives in the best neighborhood in Spokane - she can walk downtown from her house, there’s a grocery store two blocks away, and she can walk down some metal stairs in the side of a hill to the river that’s five blocks from her apartment. Her neighborhood even comes with this awesome guy who just stands on the corner, waving and smiling at people and telling them to have a good day. Every day.
His name is Benny. She buys him hot chocolate at least once a week. He always smiles at her like it’s the first time she's brought him something when he says “thank you.”
In other words, things are going pretty well until Lyn-z walks into her first day of classes her sophomore year. She was supposed to have Contemporary Feminist Politics with Frank and Bob, but the stupid registrars fucked up her registration. She managed to find a political science class that was also crosslisted with Women’s Studies, but in addition to it being a pain in the ass, it was also, unfortunately, Environmental Ethics.
It’s not that she doesn’t like Environmental Ethics - it’s an interesting course, combining political science and philosophy and gender critique and it’s team-taught by a philosopher and a real, honest-to-god priest.
So the class should be awesome, but it’s also hard, and there aren’t really any Women’s Studies students in there. It’s really just a couple of senior philosophy students looking to round out their classes before grad school applications and all of these asshole Poli Sci majors who are planning on being contracts lawyers and practical shit like that.
It kind of sucks, not liking any of them.
There’s this one girl that Lyn-z thinks might be a possibility, at least at first. Jamia has a black Betty Paige cut and a constant smirk. She’s also smart as hell - she’s the first person to answer a question, the first to challenge both of the professors. Lyn-z thinks she would like Jamia - she likes smart people in general - but she’s so goddamn smug. She acts like if you don’t know about queer jurisprudence, you’re not worth her damn time. Lyn-z thinks she’s an asshole. A hot asshole, but an asshole.
Plus, she wants to be a lawyer.
*
Maybe it’s classes not being perfect that breaks the happy hazy glow around life, but things in general feel a little harder, a little rougher than they did the previous semester. Things aren’t bad - Lyn-z has great friends and Gee is super-sweet and she loves her apartment and even likes her job - but she’s starting to see the things she didn’t catch in the first glow of love-with-her-life.
For example, Alicia is kind of a flake when she’s falling for someone and will regularly fail to show up for coffee dates or meetups at the movies.
And that things with Gerard are good, not great. Gerard and Lyn-z try, they really do. They have awesome conversations and great sex and really really like each other. They laugh in corners of rooms at parties and they cuddle and watch zombie movie marathons on the couch.
Lyn-z likes him a lot, likes sex with him and his stupid bashful grin and the way he still kind of looks at her like she’s a treasure that he doesn’t know how he ended up with. But she’s started to think that it’s not as simple as liking him. Because she likes him, he likes her, they like each other.
They’re just not really managing to fall in love.
*
“So you’re saying …” Alicia trails off, sounding confused. “I don’t get it.”
It’s one of the nights that Mikey and Gerard have their regular Dungeons and Dragons game with Ray (who was thrilled to find people to game with again). Alicia and Lyn-z claim the gaming nights as “girls’ night in.” Although some people (Mikey) might think of pillow fights and matching lingerie, they mostly sit around in sweatpants, listening to the Raincoats and eating pizza.
Lyn-z shrugs, flopping on her stomach and grabbing another piece of cheese pizza. “It’s just … I don’t know. There’s a difference between good and great, you know?”
Alicia raises an eyebrow, her whole body radiating uncertainty. “Not really?”
“Yeah,” Lyn-z sighs. “I know. You don’t know.”
*
It’s easier than Lyn-z thought it would be. There’s no drama, not really. She just sits down with Gerard on her bed, pulling him next to her and putting her head on his chest as she explains it all.
It’s dumb and she uses all of the wrong words, shit like “love you but not in love with you,” making her feel like some kind of character in a fucking romance novel, but Gerard gets it. He won’t say it, he probably never will, but she thinks he’s been thinking all of the same things, too.
And yeah, they both cry a little, but Lyn-z knows that she’s doing the right thing when she keeps lying with her head on Gerard’s chest, their hands entwined. She actually doesn't think much will change except that it's okay that she's not in love with him.
Things will be okay.
*
And things really are okay. Lyn-z thinks she should probably be devastated and there are definitely times where she turns to Gerard and goes to kiss him or something and then remembers oh yeah, we don’t do that anymore.
But the thing is, she still has a Gerard to turn to. They still watch monster movies together and he’s still the first person she calls when a cup of coffee is the only thing stopping her from killing someone and he’s still her favorite person.
She sees people, guys and girls that she eyes in class across the coffeeshop, and is vaguely interested but the interest is never strong enough for her to approach them. She’s not really gun-shy, but she doesn’t really want to deal with the implosion of another relationship, especially since it’s very unlikely to go as well as the breakup with Gerard has gone. Sure, she misses getting head sometimes (because Gerard was really tremendously good at that), but it’s really not much of a sacrifice.
What is a sacrifice, in contrast, is realizing that she really needs a study partner for Environmental Ethics. The class is interesting, still, but the material is hard and so far outside of Lyn-z’s experience that she really needs someone to talk it out with. She loves her friends and every single one of them except Ray and Bob (Ray because he’s a music major with, in his words, “no applicable skills” and Bob because he hates Political Science) are willing to talk it out with her. But what she needs, she knows, is someone who gets the Political Science part.
Unfortunately, as much as she hates to admit it, she needs the best Poli Sci student in the class.
Lyn-z needs Jamia.
*
She just bites the bullet one day and walks up to Jamia’s desk as she’s putting her books and notebooks into her backpack.
“Do you have any nights free this week?” Lyn-z blurts out. Oh nice. Very smooth.
Jamia’s head snaps up, her brown eyes widening comically. “What?”
Lyn-z blushes and … what the fuck, blushes? She doesn’t blush.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, not like that. Look … we’ve got the test next week and I get the theory part, but I’m having trouble with the political implications part. I don’t really … understand policy, I guess.”
“Oh,” Jamia’s eyes narrow back to normal. Her face looks … something. Lyn-z can’t read it, but it doesn’t look like Jamia’s about to laugh at her or anything, so Lyn-z stands her ground. “What makes you think I want a study partner?”
Lyn-z shrugs and taps her fingers on the edge of the desk. “I’m pretty good at the ecofeminist stuff and you kept asking questions about it today. Maybe talking it out would help?” She looks up hopefully. Jamia still strikes her as kind of … curt. But she doesn’t seem mean, exactly, just too smart for her own fucking good.
“I …” And it’s Jamia’s turn to flush, just a little bit. Lyn-z bets she’s not very used to being offered help. “You actually understand that?”
“Yeah, we’re studying it in Feminist Theory, too. I kind of have double-duty on ecofem this semester.”
“Huh,” Jamia says. “All right. How about Thursday at six in the study lounge of the library?”
“Cool,” Lyn-z smiles, bouncing a little on her feet.
*
It turns out that Jamia isn’t really very mean at all. She actually brings Lyn-z a latte to their second study meeting and just shrugs when Lyn-z offers her money for it.
She’s super-fucking-smart, that much of the first impression was definitely true, but she’s not mean. She’s just … focused.
“Lyn-z, come on,” Jamia snaps, her voice a little rough with exhaustion. They’ve been studying for three hours. “Why hasn’t the US signed onto Kyoto protocols?”
Lyn-z sighs. “Because the Clinton administration sold out the environment for hopes of Gore winning the 2000 elections?”
Jamia snickers a little. “Okay, yeah, arguably. But what was the reason they gave?”
“Some economic impact shit. Jesus, Jamia,” Lyn-z lifts her head up from the table. “Seriously. If we don’t have it now, we’re not gonna get it. Please, God, let me stop.”
“God, okay.” Jamia makes a face, but she closes her books and stretches a little. “I’m kind of tired, anyway.”
Lyn-z’s eyes snag on the little strip of Jamia’s belly bared by her stretch and …
Oh. Well. That’s a little unexpected.
“I gotta go,” Lyn-z says quickly, grabbing her stuff faster and shoving it into her bag.
God, how stupid could she be? She’s just barely managed to convince Jamia that she’s not a total idiot and now she’s …
She’s gotta go.
“Okay,” Jamia says, her voice sounding a little confused. “You don’t want to stop and get some food on the way home?”
“Um,” Lyn-z shakes her head, not meeting Jamia’s eyes. “No, that’s okay. I’m just gonna … I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Jamia’s voice is already fading as Lyn-z is at the door.
Shit.
*
It’s a couple of months after Gerard and Lyn-z break up that she sees him walking in front of the library with Frank as she is closing up after her Wednesday night shift. He doesn’t see her - he is totally engrossed in whatever it is that Frank is saying, his whole body leaning in and his attention honed.
Ah. So that’s how it is.
She can’t say that she’s hurt or even surprised. It’s not like she had ever thought that she and Gerard were forever.
Still, seeing Gerard and Frank makes something pull a little in her stomach, a something that she tries not to think about. It’s not like she’s jealous of Frank in particular, the thing with Gee was great but not going to go farther than it went. Really, she’s just kind of envious in general, jealous that they’ve managed to figure something out that still hasn't gotten right.
She tosses the trash from the café into the dumpster and resolves to go and get nicely drunk.
*
“Booooooob,” Lyn-z groans, setting her head very, very carefully down on the table in The Rocket Bakery. She has very little memory of the end of the night before, but she apparently called Bob and made him promise that he’d make her eat the next day.
Carbs. Lots of stomach-settling carbs.
Bob’s lips quirk a little, the silver of his new lip ring flashing a little in the light. He doesn’t appear to be very sympathetic.
“I’m not very sympathetic,” he says. “You did this to yourself, girl.”
Lyn-z waves her hand crankily. Her friends suck. Suck.
“Hey, babe,” Ray says softly, setting a bagel with lox and cream cheese and capers down in front of her. “I brought you food.”
Her friends rule.
“Lyn-z?”
Oh Jesus. Awesome. It would be awesome if Lyn-z were so hung over that she could hallucinate Jamia’s voice right now. A little out of the ordinary, sure, but awesome because it would mean that Jamia weren’t standing there, witnessing Lyn-z’s most horrifying morning in recent years.
Oh yeah, this is the way to seduce a girl.
“Hey, Jamia,” Lyn-z croaks, lifting her head from the table and thanking god for the sunglasses she’d grabbed.
”Wow,” Jamia says. “You … kind of look like hell, actually.”
“Yeah, um,” Lyn-z tries to think of anything to say, other than: “I’m so hung over, I think I might die.”
Which, apparently, is what her mouth chooses to say anyway.
Jamia’s lips quirk a little. “Hard night?”
Lyn-z groans.
“Hey,” Ray says, breaking in like the God of Conversations Lyn-z Doesn’t Want to Have. “I’m Ray. This is Bob. We’re friends of Lyn-z’s.”
“Jamia,” she says. “Me, too.”
Wait.
Lyn-z lifts her head from the table.
They’re friends? How did she miss that, exactly?
“Well, I’m gonna run,” Jamia says. “Nice to meet both of you. Take care of that head, Lyn-z.”
Lyn-z nods dumbly.
“See you tomorrow at the Elk, right?” Jamia asks as she moves toward the door. “We’ve got that test on Tuesday.”
Lyn-z nods again. Jamia waves with a little smile and walks out.
“Woah,” Ray says under his breath.
“What?” Lyn-z asks, turning her head slowly to look at Ray.
“Dude, I’m gay and even I know she’s hot.”
Bob snickers a little. “Well, I don’t see it. But she definitely thinks Lyn-z is hot.”
“What?” Lyn-z might squeak a little. Maybe. She plans on blaming it on the hangover. “What are you …? No! She’s just … she’s my study partner, Jesus.”
Bob looks at her like she’s stupid.
Bob. Looks at Lyn-z like she’s stupid.
“Yeah, because I always make plans for a Friday night to study for a test on Tuesday.”
*
Lyn-z doesn’t exactly have moves, is the thing. Like, she’s pretty cute, she knows that. She’s smart and she’s funny and if you’re into people like Lyn-z, you’ll probably be into her. Thus, she’s never really bothered to develop any moves.
Which explains why, the next night, after Jamia buys her a coffee and a tofu Rueben and they’ve been working for an hour, Lyn-z just blurts out: “Do you like me?”
“Yeah, I like you,” Jamia blinks, looking up from her notes. “Wait. What?”
“Do you like me?” Lyn-z is more than a little horrified with herself, but she kind of doesn’t have any other choice but to continue. “Because … I think you’re really funny and smart and I love your hips and I was kind of wondering if you would want to do this again?”
Jamia raises a slow eyebrow.
“Lyn-z, we do this all the time.”
“No,” Lyn-z says, frustrated. “More dinner, less books.”
“What? Wait,” Jamia lifts the other eyebrow. “Did you say that you love my hips?”
“Um,” Lyn-z fidgets with her napkin a little. “Yes?”
Jamia’s eyes widen. “This is … a little sudden?”
“Shit,” Lyn-z says quickly, shredding her napkin nervously and staring at the table. “I don’t even know if you date girls, I just … I don’t want things to be weird, but Bob said … and then …”
Jamia’s hand comes down over Lyn-z’s, stopping her paper-shredding. Lyn-z looks up, wincing.
Jamia doesn’t look pissed. In fact, she’s kind of … smiling.
“I said it was sudden. I didn’t say ‘no.’”
*
So Lyn-z has a type, maybe. People that kind of drive her nuts and are kind of out of it. She had to catch Jamia up to speed, but once she was there, she was there. And it works, like it did with Gee, but different, too.
The relationship is good. Jamia isn’t jealous of Gee, and Gerard thinks that Jamia is awesome. Jamia likes Lyn-z’s friends and likes having her own space and would never dream of stifling anyone.
Lyn-z is a little impulsive for Jamia and Jamia maybe needs to be compulsively on time and has a million plans, but they compliment each other well.
It’s different from any relationship that Lyn-z has ever been in. They argue more than she’s used to and they spend more time apart. They don’t watch horror movies together, but they do fall in love. So that’s different, too.
*
Gerard is a doofus. Lyn-z is so fucking glad that they managed to stay friends, that their breakup was way more about them not being right for each other in that way than anything else. Because, otherwise, she would miss the beauty that is Gerard and Frank owning matching airbrushed unicorn t-shirts.
Matching. Airbrushed. Unicorns.
It’s fucking glorious.
Lyn-z actually kind of likes the shirts. “Jam, we should do that.”
“Do what?” Jamia is distracted. She had just been complaining about the International Policy quiz she has the next day. Apparently, there’s a ton of Econ on it, which Jamia just sucks at.
“Gee and Frankie!” Lyn-z’s voice is maybe a little more insistent than she would have thought it would be. But … it’s cute. They’re, like, visibly marked for each other. Not tattooed - Gerard would never agree, even though she thinks that Frank may already be planning one - but marked, publicly. Something everyone can see. It’s cool.
Jamia looks up from her books for the first time, narrowing her eyes as she looks across the study area in Crosby. Her eyes stop on Gerard and Frank, being ridiculous and cute. As usual. “Honey, we’re already offensively visible queers. We already do that.”
“No,” Lyn-z pouts. “Not that.”
Jamia looks again, closer. “Oh god, the unicorns? You know I love you right?”
Lyn-z beams. “Yup.” She does. It’s cool. Because, really, nobody knows much of anything with Jamia, but Lyn-z gets this in her, this assurance that Jamia’s love is fierce and hers and it kicks ass.
Jamia puts down her book for emphasis. Apparently, this is important.
“Lyn-z, there is not enough love in the world to wear something that ugly.”
*
Lyn-z threatens to pout forever and she totally intends to do so until Jamia shows up with some Peruvian cuff bracelets made out of wood with a totally cool hinge in them. She puts one on Jamia’s left arm and one on her own right arm, clasping their fingers together tightly.
Lyn-z looks down at their entwined hands and the sheen of wood reflecting wood.
This is a mark, too. She gets it.
She smiles.
*
If this were one of those romantic comedies that Alicia loves but denies watching, Jamia and Lyn-z would have some kind of misunderstanding that pulls them apart, right before they’re pulled back together at the last minute. If it were one of those art-house French films that Gerard is constantly forcing Frank and Lyn-z to watch, they would sail off together into the sunset in a boat that nobody is steering while looking into each other’s eyes.
Also, there would probably be a mime.
But life isn’t like that. They aren’t forced apart by circumstances that are hilarious in hindsight or weird misunderstandings and Lyn-z is pretty sure that neither of them even knows a mime.
But they are happy sometimes and sad sometimes. They fight and they make up. She still has lunch with some conglomeration of Bob and Frank and Alicia and Mikey and Gerard and Ray. Couples break up and tests are passed and life moves on. Her life moves on. It’s not always perfect, but it’s hers.
There aren't Happily Ever Afters, not for anyone. But there is happy. And that's something.