#barkins

Emma’s heart hammered hard in her chest. She pressed her elbow a little harder into the wooden table top underneath it and leaned her cheek against her palm. Across the kitchen table, Becky darted this way and that between the pale blue cabinets in her small kitchen. When Becky’s pale blue eyes met her own, Emma’s heart jumped a little in her chest, but she couldn’t help but return the bright smile Becky sent her. Emma sighed and rubbed her free hand down her face in an attempt to wipe away the stray hair she could feel clinging to her skin but had yet to actually find. 

Becky’s soft, amused voice drifted over to her from across the small kitchen. “Hey,” she muttered, and when Emma’s gaze snapped to her own she was leaning against the cabinets next to her stove. “You okay over there?”

Just then, she felt the hair stuck to her cheek just next to her left ear, and she huffed under her breath as she pulled it away. “Yeah,” she answered as she rubbed her hand against her jeans. “Just had a hair stuck to my face.”

Becky quirked an eyebrow at her and her stomach promptly dropped, a reminder that her hair was certainly not all that was bothering her at the moment.

“Well,” Becky responded with a smile after a moment. “Since that crisis is averted, did you still want me to teach you my lasagna recipe?”

There was something a little familiar in Becky’s eyes when they met, a little bit of the same nervous energy that Emma herself was feeling, maybe. Sometimes she could hardly believe it had been nearly a year since she’d come back to Hatchetfield after an unfortunate car crash in Guatemala. Her leg was just about back to normal, though she wondered if she’d always be able to feel a change in the weather coming days ahead of time throughout her left thigh. It had ended up being a somewhat fitting end to her world wide adventures, which ended just as abruptly as they’d begun. 

When she showed up for the first day of physical therapy in Hatchetfield, due to mercifully being young enough to still be on her mother’s insurance, perhaps the last person she’d expected to see there was the woman on the other side of the room. But over the next month or two, she became less of ‘Becky Barnes that goody two-shoes from high school’ and much more of ‘Becky Barnes the badass who escaped her shitty husband and ended up needing physical therapy’. It wasn’t long before Emma was far more likely to call Becky her friend than anything else.

Eventually, one thing led to another, and she found herself in Becky’s bed several nights a week. ‘Letting off steam’ was how they’d put it in the beginning, and Emma had started out sure that it would just fizzle out, that Becky would meet some guy and it would be over. But it had been more than six months now, and the idea of sleeping with anyone else made her sick to her stomach. And worse, the idea of Becky sleeping with anyone else.  

Becky’s gaze had turned concerned and Emma realized she had been silent just a bit too long. She sputtered on her response, “Yeah, um, yes, for sure,”she muttered as she pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s make some fucking lasagna.”

Emma raced past Becky where she leaned against one of the old, mismatched chairs that sat around the oval shaped kitchen table and walked up to the counter where there was a glass pan waiting. Worry had taken up residence in Becky’s face when she turned back to look at her but she just shoved her hands into the pockets of the jeans that distracted Emma every time she wore them. She wandered up next to Emma at the counter and walked her through the recipe.

Soon they fell into a kind of easy rhythm that always seemed to win out and Emma’s fears had seemingly fallen by the way side by the time they sat down to eat. Later on that evening, the movie they had started was pretty much playing on forgotten in the background while Emma focused on the feeling of Becky underneath her, the way she sighed into the kisses that passed between them, a smile crossed her face. “I’ve missed this,” Becky muttered when Emma pulled back slightly to adjust her leg that was starting to get a little sore. 

Emma laughed and rolled to her right slightly, her arm braced against one of Becky’s pillows. “You mean in the whole two days since the last time I was here?”

Becky huffed out a short laugh of her own and threaded her fingers into Emma’s hair to pull her back in again once she was settled. “What can I say,” she muttered, and Emma felt a shiver run down her spine when Becky’s hand slipped underneath her tank top. “A girl has needs.”

Emma slipped her leg between Becky’s in an effort to get closer to her, and smiled at the racing heart she could feel against her own. “I get it, though,” she eventually muttered in affirmation. She was so caught up in the moment she went on with hardly a thought, “I think I’d do just as well to be here all the time.” 

Becky inhaled sharply and pulled away just enough to meet Emma’s gaze. Emma thought she might throw up, ‘Why did I say that?’ 

“Do you mean that?,” Becky asked, voice barely above a whisper. Emma couldn’t find the words for how much she meant it, but she found she couldn’t do anything but stare back. When she didn’t respond immediately, Becky went on. “Em?”

Words still eluding her, Emma felt a smile spread across her face as she nodded vehemently a few times and cupped Becky’s jaw to kiss her slowly again. Were it not for her position right next to her, Emma might not have heard Becky’s whispered response, “I think I love you.”

Emma’s eyes snapped open to meet Becky’s, there were fear and a fair amount of nerves held in her gaze, but not a hint of uncertainty. She felt a smile spread across her face. “You do?,” Emma asked, so softly that she was unsure if she’d even made a sound until Becky nodded softly. Emma huffed out a laugh. “You said you wouldn’t fall in love with me,” she teased softly, before she connected their lips in a slow kiss to be sure Becky knew the intent behind her words.

She felt Becky’s smile right up against her lips, and the words that followed, “I lied.”