can i just be in my head with you?

by piperreynas

"everything will be fine, they say like reyna's not leaving, like piper doesn't love her with every fiber of her being." or: piper and reyna grow up together and are Just Friends...by which they mean they're a lot more than that.

NOW:

Reyna, Piper discovers rather quickly, is a cuddler. Or rather, Reyna is a cuddler when she's with Piper. Which doesn't surprise Piper when she thinks about it- Reyna's mother is long gone, her father was there for only a few years before he vanished too, her uncle was a dick, and Hylla was (is) too burdened with looking after Reyna to look after Reyna, so. Reyna is touch starved and that's okay because really, Piper is too.

Today, Reyna's in Piper's room. Her fingernails are bitten down to the quick and she's clutching the cup of water in her hands so tightly it's close to spilling over. Her dark locks cascade over Piper's favorite pillow and despite the furrow between her eyebrows and the bags under her eyes and the worry bleeding through every word she says, Reyna looks radiant.

"Hylla isn't taking care of herself," Reyna says without being prompted. It's funny, Piper muses, that even now, when Reyna is obviously trying to distance herself from everyone, everything, she makes sure to stay close enough to Piper to be able to reach out a hand if she needs to.

Piper sighs, turns her head and gets a face full of Reyna's hair, soft and silky and flower-scented. She swallows and moves so her face is near Reyna's shoulder instead. "I thought you talked to her about that."

Reyna smiles. "I did," she answers humorlessly.

Piper reaches blindly across the mattress and finds Reyna's hand. "Everything will be fine, Rey. You'll go to Harvard or Yale or something and she won't have to worry anymore." You'll go to Harvard or Yale and leave me here.

Reyna nods, moving even farther across the mattress so her arm is pressed against Piper's side and turning her head so her chin rests on Piper's collarbone. Her slow breaths fan out across Piper's skin and as goosebumps rise, Piper realizes that she's not the only one who hates the fact that everything is changing. Piper knows she doesn't entirely believe the platitude they've been repeating like a prayer since the start of senior year (everything will be fine, they say like Reyna's not leaving, like Piper doesn't love her with every fiber of her being, like they won't be torn to pieces when this thing between them ends) and Piper can't blame her- she doesn't entirely believe herself either.

THEN:

She meets Piper McLean at school. She and Hylla finally escape their hellish uncle when she's five and the government places them in a city called Los Angeles and stuffs her into Golden Gate Preparatory School ("one of the finest establishments in the country," they said, like Hylla had any idea what that meant) when she's eight after she's been tested for 'aptitude', what ever that means.

(Blackbeard, they used to call her uncle on the streets, like he was some kind of boogeyman: be still child, be quiet or Blackbeard will come for you. Reyna always thought the moniker was too big for her uncle, her uncle who liked to drink, her uncle who spat at pictures of his parents late at night when no one was watching, her uncle the scared man who cried as he chased her out of the house.)

Piper sits next to her on bench at recess on a particularly bad day. She doesn't talk at all, just sits, waiting for her to do something. Reyna doesn't particularly know what to do- she's barely learned English, and she doesn't want to alienate the only person who might be able to understand what she's going through, as one of the few dark-skinned people in a school full of blond hair and blue eyes. When Reyna doesn't do anything, she takes it as permission to sit down and watch the birds with her the next day and the next until one day, a month later, Reyna shakes her head, smiling a little and says, "Reyna."

Piper frowns. "What?"

"That's my name," Reyna says, turning her head as she fidgets, still self-conscious about her accent.

Piper grins widely, like she doesn't notice at all, and in that moment, Reyna swears she's brighter than the sun. "I know."

NOW:

Reyna gets invited to senior prom. It's nothing new- there have been dances and there have been boys, but there's something urgent about senior year, about the impending reality of adulthood that seems to weigh over everything, and that makes it a little more real somehow: Piper is never going to have Reyna like she wants to, and Reyna is never going to want Piper the way Piper wants Reyna.

Reyna says no to all the boys. There isn't anything new about this either, but it makes Piper feel guilty that Reyna is giving up all of it up so she can be with her best friend, a misfit who still cuts her own hair with safety scissors and wears windbreakers everywhere. This makes it all the more surprising when Reyna turns to Piper the week before and says, "I want to go."

Piper tilts her head, rubbing her temples as she looks down at her Pre-Cal homework. "Go where?" she murmurs distractedly.

"Prom."

Piper looks up so fast she nearly snaps her neck. "I...where is this coming from?" she asks, rubbing a sweaty palm against her thigh as images rise in her mind's eyes: Reyna in a red dress, the lights bouncing off her dark hair, dressed to the nines.

Reyna shrugs, avoiding Piper's gaze. "It's senior year and we should be...I don't know, living it up or whatever it is that they say."

Accepting the fact that she's not going to get a real answer until Reyna's ready to provide one, Piper sighs. "With who."

She shrugs again. "No one." She pauses, looking up at Piper through her long lashes. "You."

She swallows hard as her imagination goes into overdrive (Reyna grinning and coaxing her into an abandoned hallway and pulling her close, close, closer until-) "And you're sure?" she asks, clearing her throat. Reyna nods. And in what might possibly be the largest lapse in judgement she's ever had, she says, "Okay."

THEN:

Reyna hangs out with Piper a lot. It's gotten to the point where Hylla doesn't have to ask where she'll be after school, and Mr. McLean has accepted thatReyna is coming over every day. It doesn't seem weird to Reyna that she spends as much time as she does with Piper- they're friends. Best friends.

The "guidance counselor" at the "support group" they forced Reyna and her sister into seems to think otherwise. One day, Ms. Brown, a short squat woman who is probably the most generic looking white person she will ever see, marches up the hall into her group session in her ineffective orthopedic shoes. "Reyna?" she calls in her sugary-sweet soprano. "We'd like to see you."

She shares an eye roll with her group then follows Ms. Brown into a small, sterile, blindingly monochromatic room. "Now," Ms. Brown begins, smoothing her skirt. "It has come to my attention that you have become...particularly close friends with a girl at your school."

"Piper McLean," Reyna sighs. Ms. Brown tilts her head confusedly. "My friend. That's her name."

"Right. Well they say you've been spending a lot of time with each other."

Reyna rolls her eyes. "I was under the impression that that was what you did with a friend- spend time with them. Or do you Americans have a different definition?"

Ms. Brown waves her hand dismissively. "Everyone in town is under the impression that you've spending a little too much time with Piper McLean."

"I''m sorry?"

Ms. Brown fidgets in her chair some more. "Reyna have you ever heard of...homosexuality? Lesbianism?"

"Of course," Reyna says. "And frankly I don't see what's so wrong about it. Isn't that what your country was built on? Accepting people regardless of their differences, sometimes because they were different?"

"Let's not turn this into a civil rights discussion," she says, hurriedly. "The point is that several people think the two of you are...lesbians."

Reyna scoffs. "What so now we can't even spend time together like normal people?"

"Now dear, that's not what I'm saying-"

"That's exactly what you're saying! And even if we were that way, what is so wrong about loving who you want to love and believing what you want to believe? That's why some people came here isn't it? It is why Hylla risked her life to bring me to your country."

"Again this isn't about civil rights this is about you. And while we're on that subject, this is your country too, Reyna," Ms. Brown says, smiling in a way that Reyna thinks is supposed to be welcoming.

"No," Reyna says vehemently. "I will never forget where I came from." Needless to say, Reyna leaves early that day.

Later, she remembers the way she felt when she first saw Piper smile all those years ago, the way she still feels when she holds Piper's hand in her own, the pride she has in being Piper's best friend, and she feels sick. (There's nothing wrong with me, she mouths in front if the mirror one day. She tries to say it out loud but the words get stuck somewhere. I'm normal, she tries. It comes out as "I'm lesbian." She repeats it, her voice cracking, and again and again until she sinks to her knees. That is how Hylla finds her thirty minutes later.)

NOW:

Reyna's smiling when she meets Piper for their weekly hot chocolate date. Piper orders for the both of them as Reyna runs over, ignoring the weird look the cashier gives them (it's the middle of February) and takes a sip to try and quell the butterflies in her stomach. Piper can count on her hands the number of times she's seen Reyna smile like she is now, usually because of her, but this time she knows exactly what's just happened and it's not something she's especially excited for.

"Trade you," Reyna says and Piper can hear how happy she is without even having to look at her. It just makes her even sicker as she exchanges, taking a letter from Reyna and handing over the cup, albeit a little too concerned with making sure none of it spills over the side.

Piper clenches her free hand as she pulls the letter out of the envelope and tries to stop it from shaking. She knows without having to read it that Reyna's been accepted. To Stanford. In California. Which is three times farther she thought Reyna was ever going to be.

Piper clutches the paper so hard it nearly rips. Her vision tunnels. "I told you so!" Piper blurts, a smile spreading over her face despite the dread she feels. "I told you you'd get in!"

Reyna frowns, somehow realising that Piper's smile isn't as genuine as she wants it to be. "Piper?" Piper drops her full cup in the trash and turns to Reyna with another unnaturally bright grin.

"Race you!" she yells, tearing down the block like they used to when they were younger. She runs and runs and runs until she can't feel anything but her feet pounding the pavement, can't hear anything but the blood roaring in her ears, can't feel anything but the wind rushing past her.

THEN:

Reyna goes to a sleepover at Piper's house when she is fourteen. Hylla fusses for thirt minutes, making entire speeches about caution and women's safety in large cities and boys regardless of the fact that the only people in the house besides Piper are her father and Jane, her father's reclusive assistant. The comment slips out somehow, after five hours of excessive sugar consumption and avoidance of sleep. "The Koch twins think we're lesbians," she says conversationally over a glass of Coke. (Hylla would have her head is she knew what they'd been eating.)

"What?" Piper asks, bolting upright almost comically, and in the process, upsetting their bowl of popcorn and nearly toppling a decorative floor lamp.

"Mm-hmm."

"I mean...I'm fine with it, but really? Lesbians?"

Reyna laughs a little too shrilly. "I know right?"

"That's just crazy," Piper says, laughing a little too loudly, smiling a little too brightly.

Reyna coughs. "Are you a...you know?" she asks tentatively.

Piper looks around as if Susie and Mary Koch and Ms. Delacroix from bridge club and Mr. Armstrong from the Anti-Gay Alliance can somehow hear her. "Of course not," she says a little too quietly.

"Of course not," Reyna echoes.

NOW:

"What happened to Naina?" Reyna asks, slipping into her usual seat beside Piper in English class and staring curiously at the empty desk in front of her.

Piper gazes sadly at the smiley face sticker on the back of the chair in front of her. "You didn't hear?"

"Hear what?" Reyna asks confusedly, watching as Kristina Barett glances at the desk with a smirk on her way to her seat.

"The Anti-Gay Alliance ran her out of town because Koch twins heard from Angie who heard from Ingrid that she was at Atlantis. You know, the gay bar in the next town over?"

Reyna blinks. "Ran her out of town? With pitchforks and fire and the whole deal?"

"Pitchforks and fire? No, no one does that anymore," Piper says, sighing as the teacher strolls in. "Not even in this town."

Reyna scowls, clenching her fists. "But she didn't even do anything wrong!"

Piper takes her hand under the desks where no one can see. "I know," she says softly looking over at Reyna, beautiful, compassionate Reyna, truly understanding for the first time that Reyna can never know what Piper wants from her.

"God, that poor girl," Reyna says so sadly that Piper wants to cry.

THEN:

Piper's dad builds her a tree house the summer before her freshman year of highschool, by which she means her father hired someone to build her a treehouse. Reyna doesn't really know why- Piper's actual house is so large that even her father hasn't been inside all the rooms. If she wanted to, she could hide in her house for years and not be noticed. Piper thinks it's ridiculous too.

("What is this?" Reyna asks the first time she sees it.

"A treehouse."

Reayn tilts her head, and looks up at the treehouse. From this angle it looks like nothing more than a discombobulated mass of brightly painted wood. "But this is a room."

"It's a figure of speech, Rey," Piper says amusedly.

"If this a house," Reyna starts again, wrinkling her nose, "what is your actual house for?"

Piper laughs. "I have no clue.")

The night before school starts, Piper hauls a stack of blankets and popcorn up into the small room through some small, inhuman burst of strength as Reyna watches from below. "You need any help?" Reyna asks, knowing full well she'll say no.

Piper stops halfway up to contemplate her situation. "No!" she calls back down, sounding like she completely regrets her answer. "I can do it!"

Reyna shakes her head smiling. "Yeah you can!" she calls, climbing up behind her and laughing as Piper drops her load as soon as she gets to the top of the ladder and then proceeds to collapse exaggeratedly onto the floor of the treehouse. "What are we doing up her exactly?" Reyna asks, watching as Piper winces and then gets to work, spreading blankets across the too-small space.

"Stargazing!" Piper chirps brightly,

"We could've done that just as easily on the ground," Reyna counters skeptically.

"Killjoy," Piper sing-songs, flopping down into her comforter cocoon and pulling Reyna down with her.

Reyna turns her head, watches the moonlight dance across Piper's face, her long lashes and smiling lips. She scoots closer, grinning into Piper's neck. Piper begins to laugh for no reason and Reyna joins in too, half delirious with the thrill of staying up so late.

Piper opens her eyes and turns to look at her, and Reyna watches the stars in her eyes. "What?"

"You were right," Reyna says softly. "This is much better than the floor."

Piper grins. "Told you so," she replies sleepily, wrapping an arm around Reyna and sighing contentedly into her hair. Reyna sighs too, wishing she could be as satisfied with this, with them, as Piper is.

NOW:

"This isn't going to work," Piper whispers from her spot on the floor, watching as Reyna systematically dismantles every bit of evidence of her presence in her childhood bedroom and packs it into boxes.

Reyna, observant as ever, quirks an eyebrow at her from the chair she's standing on. "Did you say something?" The question is rhetorical. Reyna knows Piper said something.

Piper looks around the space, covered in dust and parts and boxes and tape, and considers denying everything. She says, "This isn't going to work."

She says, "Long-distance is stupid."

She says, "This sucks."

Reyna doesn't answer. Piper flings a piece of cardboard at the wall. Reyna gets off the chair and sits down next to Piper. "Where is this coming from?" Piper picks at a scab on her left hand, lets her hand drift to her braid. It's a fishtail today, she notices offhandedly. "Piper?"

"You're sitting on a roll of tape."

"Piper," Reyna repeats. "Talk to me."

"I am," Piper says, anticipating a shout, a yell, something, and instead all she hears is Reyna getting up and walking into the kitchen. Piper follows. "What are you doing?"

"Getting coffee," Reyna answers coldly.

"You don't even like coffee."

"Well what else am I supposed to do? Just sit there and listen to you tell me that it's all going to fall apart?" Reyna snaps.

"What do you want me to say?" Piper starts, angrily. "Everything will be fine even though statistics say otherwise and I'll be totally okay with seeing you every other month because I definitely don't have feelings for you-" Reyna nearly drops the mug she's holding as Piper turns on her heel stalks back into Reyna's room, grabbing her bag with shaking hands.

Reyna follows. When Piper turns around again, Reyna has locked the door and is baring her way, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. Piper sighs. "I don't have time for this, Rey, I have work tomorrow-"

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Reyna asks quietly.

Piper laughs a little hysterically. "And tell you what? I'm a freak who likes girls-"

"I thought I was going insane," Reyna says anguishedly, walking to Piper and stopping just shy of her, awkwardly. "You made me think I was insane-"

"-I fell in love with my best friend because I'm an idiot-" Piper continues and then she can't say anything more because somehow in the middle of all this Reyna's worked up the courage to kiss her.

Reyna pulls away a few seconds later leaving them both panting. Piper stares, unwilling to say anything and somehow mess it all up. "We're not freaks," Reyna says calmly, having caught her breath a few seconds later. "We're normal, and we're going to be fine."

Piper lets out a breath slowly, watching as Reyna smiles brighter than she has in years, and she lets herself believe it. "We're normal," she agrees, leaning in again with a grin. "Everything's going to be fine," she whispers against Reyna's lips like she's telling a secret.

; ; ; ;

notes: first and foremost, i am not lesbian, nor am i puerto-rican so if I wrote something that was offensive to either party, please do not hesitate to let me know. second, there are several inaccuracies in this fic, mainly because i'm not out of high school and therefore i do not know how college applications work nor do i know what happens to immigrants who come across the border but it is what it is.

as always, reviews/comments are greatly appreciated!