A/N: I'm just gonna keep doing this.
Extra note: Did TV exist in 1941? Yes. Was it common? No. Is this important to the story? No. Carry on.
That night, Betty sat up in bed, Kate asleep beside her. She had been stroking Kate's hair since she first lay down and didn't quite know how to stop; didn't want to. That was a thing girls did, played with each other's hair. If it was more of a caress—no, it was perfectly normal.
She couldn't stop thinking about what Kate had said. Family. Ordinarily a dirty word in Betty's book—the kind you didn't say out loud—coming from Kate it made her belly warm and her heart swell. She wanted that more than anything, for Kate to be her family. Family—the TV kind of family, with the white-picket fence, nothing like her own childhood—meant forever. And to have Kate in her life forever sounded like a dream.
But every time she thought it, along with the warm belly and the swelling heart, there was a sharp twist in her gut. Because she didn't want to be Kate's sister.
Except that if it meant Kate would be here, with her, and if it meant Kate would let her be her best friend, Betty would do anything. Be anything. And she hated that about herself, that widening crack in her armour, but she loved Kate too much to change it in any way. She would take the hits, all of them, fast as they came.
Twin tear drops slid down her cheeks and she wiped at them with her free hand; the other stilled on Kate's neck as Betty looked up at the ceiling, blinking quickly.
Kate stirred, and one of her hands came to curl softly around Betty's at her neck. Voice muffled and sleepy, she said, "Betty, go to sleep."
Betty inhaled sharply at the sound of her voice, and it stirred something in her, sounded like… She slid down in bed and pushed the feeling away, curving her body around Kate's without touching her. She sighed, and her eyes were so adjusted to the dark she could see Kate's hair waving in the faint breeze. Raising her hand, she held it above Kate's shoulder, then brought it back to her own chest and turned her head into the pillow.
"I can hear you thinking," Kate said, less sleepy now.
"Sorry," Betty said into the pillow.
Kate reached back, found Betty's arm and followed it to her hand, then pulled gently to bring Betty's arm around her waist. At the same time she shifted back so their bodies were closely together, and she sighed.
When Kate started moving, Betty froze. When she stilled, Betty could feel her own stiffness acutely against Kate's sleepy softness, and had to focus on actually relaxing. It was a moment or two before she could close her eyes and lean her forehead on Kate's shoulder blade.
"That's better," Kate whispered, and Betty could tell she was already drifting off again.
For the moment, Betty decided to stop thinking. Despite the impracticability of that idea, she was finally getting sleepy, and a helpful fog was clouding her conscious thoughts. Instead she felt—too foggy even to try to store those feelings in her memory bank, she just felt warm and safe and tumbled slowly into sleep.
In the morning she would remember one dream: A blissful vision on a sunny summer day in High Park. A picnic blanket spread over a grassy hill, and Kate shading her eyes from the sun. Lying on the blanket with her shoulder pressed to Kate's, pointing out shapes in the perfect clouds above. Propped up on her elbow, looking down at Kate with her shadow falling over her face, and leaning down with her heart light and free—
The alarm rang. Betty woke with a start, most of her final dream vanishing in the abrupt ending. She was lying on her back with one arm pinned under Kate's body, and she stared at the ceiling. The dream pulled at her in vague tendrils, letting her feel just enough to make her wish, wish, wish—
Betty turned her head on the pillow to look at Kate, still sleeping.
Family, she thought, a fist around her heart. Here goes nothing.