AN: This prompt was written for someone very special because "I never write what they want me to write". LOL So here it is. ;-)
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
For anyone who reads this, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111
The first realization Andrea had was that her head was pounding. The tiny sliver of light that invaded her eyes when she cracked open her eyelids felt like it went directly into her brain to pierce through it like a knife. She closed her eyes immediately against the light. The second sensation was a slight rocking feeling to her whole body—as if she were lying on a boat at sea—and it immediately made her want to empty the contents of her stomach though she would have told anyone that she wasn't the kind of person who got sea sick.
She wasn't on a boat and she wasn't at sea. She was in a bed. The sheets felt hot and damp and gross beneath her. They felt like they were wrapped around her oddly and she moved her hand to push them off.
With her eyes closed, and even though her head was still throbbing and her stomach was still churning, it was coming back to her. Slowly and not all in its entirety, but it was coming back to her.
She was in Vegas. It was what they were calling a "girls' weekend" and she was with Michonne.
Michonne.
Her best friend, even if things were complicated at times.
They'd met at a convention seven months before. They lived three small towns apart and they often ended up in some of the same places, but somehow they'd never really gotten to know each other. At the convention luncheon, though, Andrea had stumbled up to the only table she could see with an empty chair, complaining about the fact that she'd been late and lost a heel on one of her shoes in an unfortunate sidewalk accident—otherwise she wouldn't look so unprofessional and disheveled—and Michonne had invited her to sit. Afterward, Michonne had told Andrea that her arrival to the table had actually saved her from having to engage with the others—lawyers she didn't care for at all from a rival firm—and she would be eternally grateful for that. So Andrea had let her gratitude buy a drink.
A drink had turned into four and then Michonne had invited Andrea back up to her hotel room. And, honestly, Andrea had misinterpreted the invitation. She'd accepted, after considering it a long moment, but she hadn't realized that Michonne was inviting her up there for an innocent evening. She'd only realized it when she'd asked Michonne about slipping into something more comfortable and had, accidentally, horrified her by coming out of the bathroom in one of the room's terrycloth robes and immediately kissed Michonne suggestively.
They'd had to talk about things then—in great detail. And room service and a few more drinks later, and Michonne had lamented her failed marriage while Andrea had admitted to being a lesbian that was only out to those who needed to know. After all, they did work and live in Georgia. And from there? Things had taken a turn that had landed both of them sharing breakfast in the hotel lobby that morning while Andrea assured Michonne that discreet could practically be her middle name.
Andrea had kept her promise too. She'd told no one about the details of their friendship. She wasn't pressuring Michonne to say anything about it, either, and in fact she spent more time than she wanted to spend reminding Michonne that she didn't have to change anything about her identity just because their "slumber parties" were becoming a bit more commonplace and, more often than not, it was Michonne who made the move to change the evening plans from nothing more than pizza and beer to something a little more intimate. Michonne's realization of her "self" might have changed, but she hadn't changed. She'd simply found an interest, perhaps, that she didn't realize was there before.
And Andrea, once outed by someone she trusted in a situation where she wasn't comfortable with it, wasn't going to drag her friend out of the glass-closet. Their relationship—or friendship, if that was the term they were using—was exactly what it was. They didn't need others to verify it or validate it, and they certainly didn't need to justify it.
The "girls' weekend" was the result of the both of them taking some long overdue vacation time and deciding to spend it together. Andrea had never been to Vegas, but it had always been one of those things that she'd counted on her bucket list. She wanted one of the wild Vegas weekends that everyone talked about—the kind that required the confidentiality agreement that what happened in Vegas stayed there—and Michonne was the perfect companion for such a trip. After all, they already had a pretty strong practice of keeping each other's secrets.
Michonne, on the other hand, had been to Vegas at least a dozen times before. Though she'd never had quite the wild weekend that Andrea had in mind, she'd offered to be something of a tour guide. She would coordinate the trip—leaving herself in control as she preferred to be—and she'd promised Andrea a weekend that she could never forget.
The only problem, Andrea thought as she got up to relieve her screaming bladder, was that she could hardly remember anything at all from the night before.
In the bathroom she tried to piece together what she could recall of their evening. They'd checked into the hotel pretty early by anyone's standards. They'd had a meal that was, for lack of a better way of describing it, one of those "early bird specials" where they'd ended up dining at a bargain price with a group of people who weren't a day under sixty five. Andrea had heckled Michonne about how the weekend was starting and they'd gone up to the room to change clothes.
Through that part of the evening, Andrea could recall everything. She remembered, too, that they'd made their way to a bar somewhere that Michonne remembered fondly from one of her trips. As soon as they were there, though, they'd found out that it wasn't exactly as she recalled it to be. A few shots to start the otherwise slow night off and they'd left.
They'd hit another bar after Andrea had stopped someone on the street—someone she thought looked very much like they wouldn't be judgmental of her request—and found out where the closest gay bar could be found. The place had been livelier than the last bar, and a little more Andrea's style than Michonne's, but they'd spent a while there drinking. Andrea vaguely remembered some friends that they made—friends that she remembered took them to a strip club. At least, Andrea hoped it was a strip club because she remembered at least part of a pretty long conversation about singles that she was pretty sure she handed out to some lovely ladies who more than pleased to accept them.
After that? The night got more and more blurry. As Andrea tried to remember it, she found herself having a hard time figuring out what was probably memory and what, more than likely, was something she'd seen on television that her brain was offering her to fill in the "holes".
Giving up for the moment, Andrea went to the sink and turned on the water. Her head was still pounding and she dipped her head and drank directly from the faucet. There was no one watching, after all, and she trusted the faucet's cleanliness more than she ever trusted the glasses that were left in the bathrooms of any hotel. Once she'd drank as much as she could stand, Andrea dipped her hands into water and splashed her face. She reached for a towel and patted her face dry, taking a moment to study her reflection in the mirror.
She was really too old to be drinking like that. The morning after showed these days more than she recalled it showing ten or fifteen years ago.
She might have gone back to the room, roused Michonne and asked about breakfast, but something caught Andrea's eye that hadn't caught it before. She stopped and stared at her reflection. Then she moved her hand away from her face and stared at her hand to make sure that it wasn't some kind of mirror-trick built in to mess with the hungover minds of Vegas-going lost souls.
On her finger there was a wedding ring. Andrea tried to pull it off, but it was too tight. It was either the wrong size or her fingers were swollen. Regardless of the reason, though, the ring was stuck tight and wasn't likely to budge at all.
Her trip to the bedroom to rouse Michonne was faster now than it might have been before, and breakfast was the last thing on Andrea's mind.
"Mich! Mich! Michonne!" Andrea barked, her own voice hurting her ears. She dived onto the bed, practically on top of Michonne, and burrowed the through the tangled sheets to find Michonne's hand before Michonne was even able to fully come around to what was happening.
"What the...? What's wrong? Oh—God—what's wrong?" Michonne groaned.
Andrea found Michonne's hand and Michonne sat up a little before she collapsed back into her pillow again. Her awakening was much ruder than Andrea's had been and she apparently needed a moment to wallow around in the bed. It didn't matter. Andrea already saw what she was searching for. She backed off of Michonne somewhat, crawling backward on the mattress with her knees, and then she held her hands out to calm Michonne before the woman even had the chance to know why she might be worked up.
"Mich? Don't panic but..." Andrea started.
Michonne sat up, gathering the sheets around her like she needed to protect her modesty from Andrea, and immediately looked like she was beginning to do just what Andrea asked her not to do.
"What?! What?!" Michonne asked, looking around her like she was going to see some evidence of why she shouldn't panic—a fire, perhaps, or snakes and spiders crawling around the bed.
"I said don't panic!" Andrea yelped back at her.
"Andrea! The fastest way to make somebody panic is to tell them not to panic!" Michonne yelled back, her brow furrowed now.
Andrea stopped for a second and sucked in a breath to calm herself. It wouldn't do any good for her to tell Michonne not to panic if she couldn't do the same herself.
"Don't panic," Andrea repeated, this time her voice a little calmer than before, "but I think we got married last night."
Michonne panicked. But instead of looking at her hand, like anybody else might have done in the moment, she flapped around and felt the sheets like she was searching for something. Andrea caught Michonne's arm, forced her to turn it around to look at it, and lined her own hand up with Michonne's.
It was only then that Michonne stopped searching for the unnamed something and, breathing heavily from her exertion, focused on what Andrea was showing her.
"Where did those come from?" Michonne asked.
Andrea shrugged.
Michonne returned to the searching.
"What are you looking for?" Andrea asked, now that she'd lost possession of Michonne's hand.
"My phone," Michonne said. "Where—where the hell is my phone?"
A quick scan of the room and the phone wasn't hard to find. Andrea retrieved it from beside the television and grabbed her own at the same time. Hers was dead, and it wasn't until the middle of the search for her charger that she realized she still hadn't even bothered to put any clothes on. Michonne hadn't either.
Andrea laughed to herself and came back toward the bed with the phones. Michonne was reaching for hers before Andrea even crawled onto the mattress.
"I would like to know what the hell is so funny," Michonne said.
Andrea shook her head, but Michonne pressed her, insisting that she had to tell her.
"I was just thinking," Andrea said, "that if we did get married? I think—we already consummated our glorious union."
Michonne didn't look amused. She took her phone and started looking for whatever she was after while Andrea worked to get her phone plugged in and charged enough to even turn on. Before hers had come to life, Michonne was already slapping at her arm.
And when Andrea looked at what Michonne had to show her, there was no doubt in her mind. The name of the place wasn't clear, but its function was. It was one of those little hole in the wall wedding chapels. Someone, possibly their strip club going friends, had taken the photos. Documented for them both was the two of them, obviously intoxicated but clearly enjoying themselves, exchanging vows. They'd had cheap flowers and everything.
"Awwww," Andrea cooed. "They got the kiss."
"You think this is cute?" Michonne asked.
Andrea raised her eyebrows at Michonne and shrugged.
"I think we might as well think it was cute," Andrea said. "It happened. And, besides, I don't think being married to you would be the worst thing in the world."
Michonne groaned and dropped back against the pillow.
"Being married to me, on the other hand, clearly would be," Andrea said.
"Noooo..." Michonne said, dragging the word out. "No—it isn't that. But—how am I going to tell everyone? How am I going to tell my family? My marriage with Dean failed—so I went to Vegas and married Andrea?"
Andrea laughed to herself.
"I'm sure we could come up with a much better way of handling things," Andrea pointed out.
Michonne glared at her.
"Mich—it's not even legal in Georgia," Andrea said. "And—it's probably not even legal here. I don't know how legit those places are. And this doesn't even look like the nicest one of those chintzy chapels around. We were drunk. We weren't truly able to consent. They probably don't even file anything. Mich? We're not married—not really. We'll just—call the bank and find out where the payment cleared from and we'll go down there. After breakfast. Explain that it was a misunderstanding and—clean the whole thing up. No harm, no foul."
Michonne stared at her.
"You think it'll be that easy?" Michonne asked.
Andrea shook her head.
"This place? I doubt it was legal. And I'm almost certain we'll get there in time to stop them if it even could be legal. It's just—some stupid photos for our scrapbook. Nobody has to even know about it. Just me, and you, and—Rhonda."
"Who's Rhonda?" Michonne asked.
Andrea flipped through the pictures and found the woman, whose name returned to her now, who had been their unofficial tour guide for the evening. She showed the photo to Michonne.
"Our friend," she said with a smile. "And—probably our witness. It stays here, Mich. What happens in Vegas?"
"Stays in Vegas," Michonne said with a nod. Andrea nodded her agreement and was surprised when Michonne reached a hand up and caught a handful of her curls. She pulled Andrea's hair until Andrea had no choice except to follow it down. Then, lifting herself up, Michonne met her with a kiss.
Andrea smiled at her.
"You need to brush your teeth," Andrea said.
"Look who's talking," Michonne responded. Andrea nodded.
"I wouldn't have minded being married to you, you know?" Andrea said, not really bothering to try to understand the oddly sad feeling that came over her. She thought, maybe, that she saw some of that sadness reflected on Michonne's features. Michonne nodded at her.
"Maybe," Michonne said. "But—if we were to do that? I'd want it to be done a whole lot differently. A different time. A different place."
Andrea nodded, not that she had any real belief that anything like that would really come about.
"Hey," Michonne said. She smiled at Andrea and reached a hand up, touching her cheek. "We're still married right now, though, right? What do you say we—order up breakfast and—consummate this one more time? Before we make some calls?"
Andrea laughed, but she nodded her agreement to the plan.
"Maybe tonight we don't have to be as adventurous as last night," she offered. "We could just—go out? Have a nice dinner? Come back to the hotel...watch a movie? Like an old married couple?"
Michonne laughed to herself then. She nodded.
"Couldn't think of anyone else I'd rather do that with," Michonne replied.