Title: Saturday Morning
Author: iridescentZEN
Fandom: Desperate Housewives
Rated: T
Pairing: Bree/Lynette
Spoils: Season 2
Birds are chirping, children are playing. It's a wonderful Saturday morning on Wisteria Lane. Well, it was a wonderful Saturday morning for Lynette, until she saw something that shook her to her core while cutting coupons. She barely felt the scissors when she stabbed herself in the hand by accident. Even now, the pain is a slight sting compared to the pain in her heart. She even uses the wounded appendage to knock loudly on the Van de Kamps' front door.
It cracks open slowly to reveal an exhausted Bree. "Oh, good morning Lynette. How are you?" Bree asks, a fake smile ghosting its way across her face to match the dead tone of her voice.
Lynette doesn't respond verbally, fury making her mute. Instead she holds up the engagement announcements from last week's newspaper in her badly bandaged hand.
"You came over at seven in the morning to tell me that there's a sale going on at Mattress World?" Bree's tone is completely innocent, her eyes fixed on the jagged, ripped page of newspaper. It's obvious that she's confused.
Lynette's sharp blue eyes narrow as she realizes her mistake. Flipping to the right side revealed a picture of Bree and George Williams announcing plans for a wedding. Announcing an engagement. Lynette waves the article around like she's a soldier with the United States Flag, conquering a nation and claiming it as her own.
Bree's skin turns ashen, and she turns her back on Lynette, her shoulders stiff, tensed with stress. A clear sign that major Van de Kamp denial is coming. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" Voice pleasant now, almost chipper. Anguish locked in a box.
Wordlessly, and much too furious to speak, Lynette follows her into the kitchen.
The house is large and empty. Andrew's at a camp for troubled teens, and Danielle is either still sleeping or not at home. Lynette thinks it's probably the latter.
Bree hands Lynette a steaming cup of coffee. Skim milk, two sugars and dark brown like Lynette likes it. They make eye contact, both of them angry for different reasons. Bree's eyes dart back and forth from Lynette's hand to her eyes as though she wants to ask her if she can bandage it correctly, but it's Saturday morning and Lynette is in her pajamas, her hair haphazardly thrown into a pony tail and she is angry and hurt. Not even caring that Karen McCluskey is watching her from her kitchen window. Lynette is in no mood to be nursed and cooed at.
Bree sits down across from her; her shoulders slumped with defeat.
"I-" Bree's voice cracks, "I'm sorry, Lynette. I didn't intend for anyone to actually see that. Least of all you."
Lynette's words are laced with venom, "Is he here? Did he stay here last night? Are you really going to marry him?" Her voice rising with every question, Lynettte feels very much on the verge of hysteria; it isn't fair because her conscience tells her that she can't judge. That she can't tell Bree who to see and who not to see. There's no justification for telling her best friend who is so much more than that, that she can't sleep with a man or pursue a relationship when Lynette lays her head on Tom's muscular chest before falling into a peaceful slumber every single night.
Lynette's husband is very much alive, virile, and kicking.
Bree is not as fortunate, and Lynette knows she shouldn't be spiteful or jealous. That the venomous words spewing out of her mouth are unjustified. Bree is human, and resting her head on her pillow at night in a big empty bed where her husband used to be for the last eighteen years must be so incredibly painful and lonely. Lynette hopes to never know what that feels like and is sorry that Bree does.
No, Lynette Scavo should not be judging.
Not at all.
"No, George is not here and he didn't stay last night. As for marriage? I seriously doubt it," Bree replies honestly.
Lynette trails her eyes to Bree's hand and sees that there is no ring on her finger, anger dissipating like a popped bubble. To anyone else, Bree would seem closed off and distant, but Lynette can see the anguish surrounding her as heavy as the weight of the world. Bree's eyes are stuck on the image of herself and George Williams, and before Lynette can say a word she grabs the paper and crushes it into a ball of printed lies in the palm of her hand.
"You're bleeding," Bree throws the newspaper in the trash can and moves back to the table to take Lynette's injured hand in her own.
No, this isn't right, Lynette thinks as Bree urges her from the kitchen table to the bathroom. Bree shouldn't be tending to her wounds that were accidentally self-inflicted at the sight of her lover in the arms of the local pharmacist in a week old newspaper.
One look at Bree and George Williams had Lynette accident prone. And now, seeing Bree and sensing her pain, she's pretty sure she deserved it.
Lynette will never leave Tom as Bree never would have left Rex, and they will always be Lynette and Bree: rock and a hard place. Which sounds way more sexy than it actually is, she thought, pouting.
Bree drowns Lynette's injured hand in hydrogen peroxide with her own shaking hand. She recalls doing this for her children when they were little, and the way that a kiss on the cheek from her would have their tears stopped, and how a cookie made the pain go away.
They hated her now.
Bree hoped that Lynette didn't hate her as well.
Lynette stares and doesn't feel the sting of the cleansing solution; she's totally caught up in the beauty of an all natural Bree. A tired, normal forty one year old mother of two, a widow. She's so beautiful, even miserable but all Lynette can think is what she blurts out, "Did you sleep with him?"
Bree's hand stills. The butterfly stitches that she's applying to Lynette's wound are still being pinched by her fingers.
"Does it matter?" Bree looks away, focusing on closing the wound. Lynette tastes bile at the back of her throat, because she can read between the lines and it's what Bree doesn't say that counts. It wasn't a yes, but it was definitely not a no.
Finished with the stitches, Bree wraps a clean bandage around Lynette's hand. She holds onto it for a moment, before bringing it to her lips to place a gentle kiss on the newly doctored wound.
Tears well up in Lynette's eyes because she doesn't deserve Bree. Doesn't deserve such kindness after barging in with such accusation and spite. Begrudging her friend, her lover, of any chance at pleasure however minute it may be.
Lynette looks away and nods her head no. "No, no. Of course not." Ignoring the cut, she embraces Bree tightly. "I'm sorry. I don't ... I don't know what came over me. I have no right -" There is no fight left in her.
Bree places a fingertip over Lynette's lips, effectively quieting her. "I understand. It's okay."
The touch of Bree's fingertip on Lynette's lips is soft, and electric. The warmth spreads its way through her body, making her want to do things to Bree that weren't normally allowed on the weekends, but the boys will be up soon and it's pancake day. And it's not okay. Everything is not okay. Parker's best friend is an umbrella and Lynette can feel the estrangement from her middle child acutely, can feel the resentment that comes with such a jarring change.
Tom doesn't understand any of it.
He doesn't understand how much it hurts her when the twins are easily pleased with kisses and hugs upon waking up and bedtime, and how not seeing her every day is okay with them. Damn them and their independence. And Penny, god, Penny. She's growing faster than Lynette can keep up with, because there's Nina and there's Ed but there's mostly Nina with her unrealistic expectations and her child-less lifestyle that makes her completely NOT understand fevers and chicken pox or the constant visits to the principal's office.
There is Bree. Beautiful, hurting Bree. Always trying to patch everyone up while she falls apart.
There is Bree whose son despises her with every fiber of his being, and the estrangement there is real. Andrew's in Montana, all that teenage angst brewing inside of him and Lynette, filled to the brim with her own problems, does not want to even begin to imagine a world where one of her children hates her that much. She would rather have Parker love his umbrella than hate her with that much passion.
It takes Lynette a moment to realize that Bree hasn't moved away from the embrace. Instead, she falls into it, startling Lynette from her reverie, and her gorgeous aqua eyes are welling with tears. There's a look in them that Lynette recognizes: shame. "I'm so sorry, Lynette."
Lynette doesn't move. She holds Bree Van de Kamp to her, startled at how thin she and frail she is in her arms.
Bree's head is resting against her shoulder, and she smells of shampoo and muffins, as much an enigma as she always has been.
"No. I'm sorry," Lynette apologizes, a sob escaping, her face crumpling with hurt. With the unfairness of it all.
"Shhh, it's okay. It's okay," Bree assures her, rubbing circles on Lynette's back to soothe her.
No, it's not.
It's not okay.
It probably never will be.
END