A/N: Not something I want to particularly see in Season 4, nor something I expect to be in Season 4 but something I wanted to get out regardless because it has been bouncing in my head. Thank you for reading and yell about Season 3 with me in the comments
i. a conversation on persuasion with her favourite mum
"Babes, oh my god!"
Maeve smiles, bright and big, as she watches Aimee run to her at the speed of a roaring train, not bothering to stop for pleasantries and crashing headfirst into her with a hug which makes her heart and some of her internal organs squeeze.
"You're back, oh how I've missed you!" Aimee gushes after managing to spit out some words from their prolonged embrace.
"I've missed you too, Aimes. America wasn't half as fun without you in it." Maeve answers, her face aching from the smile that hadn't been erased from her features yet.
"Oh, we'll be going together next time! We can road trip it! With Goat!" Aimee nods, situating herself beside Maeve on the steps of Anna's patio.
Maeve raises a silently amused eyebrow, partially at the mention of the road trip and partially at the thought of doing that with a goat.
"Aimes, we can't drive there. America's across the ocean."
"Oh, but they built the channel or whatever, the English Channel. It like connects the entire world." Aimee nods her head emphatically.
Maeve laughs, despite herself, and leans into the back of the steps. "Aimee, the English Channel is what separates the rest of Europe and us."
"So it doesn't go to America?" Aimee asks, tilting her head sincerely, her eyes wide with shock.
"No," Maeve shakes her head, amused. Oh, how she's missed this.
Aimee considers it for a second, scratching her head. "Well, geography's stupid anyway."
"Leave all the chatter; how are you? I'm sorry I couldn't pick you up from the airport; I had a baking order halfway across town!"
"It's fine, Aimes. I'm good. Weird being back, though." Maeve bites her lip as she reflects on what she let slip out. She doesn't particularly care, though. If anyone would get it, it's Aimee.
Aimee nods her head in faux understanding, her face bobbing as she looks up to agree with Maeve.
"What d'you mean? You don't like Moordale anymore?"
Maeve lets out a sordid chuckle, grabbing her packet of cigs from her pocket. She pulls one out and flicks the lid to grab another for Aimee, which she promptly accepts. The girls each light their respective cigarettes before Maeve pauses to ponder on Aimee's question.
"It's not that. Everything's different now." Maeve answers, stopping there without any further elaboration.
Aimee takes a long drag of her cigarette, blowing out gratuitous smoke before slipping the cigarette to the side. "Well, I'm still the same, you know. I didn't change my hair or anything."
Maeve lets out a proper laugh at that, almost choking on the tobacco smoke before leaning over and putting her head on Aimee's shoulder. Leave it to Aimee to pick at flowers then stare at the field.
"I'm dead serious, love. I was thinking of getting a curtain fringe. Like 2015 Zooey Deschanel. Or like a 2018 Selena Gomez." Aimee peers down her already existing bangs to look down at Maeve resting on her shoulder, smiling in the process.
Maeve reaches up to part Aimee's hair across her forehead, trying to picture Aimee's dreams of modelling the brunettes. "I think we can make it happen."
Aimee takes another go at her cigarette. "Good. I was waiting for your advice. It was really shitty looking at your hair from video calls."
Maeve smoothes her own ponytail that hangs below her hairline, feeling the dead pieces at the bottom from her blonde adventures in the states. She'd wanted to get a cut before coming back, but alas, leave it to her and unfinished plans.
"Yeah, I think I'm due for a trim, anyway," Maeve responds, remembering her cigarette and getting a puff before it went to waste.
"That's great! You're gonna have to do it for me, though. I tried cutting Goat's hair over break, and I think she's a bit bald now."
Maeve stubs out the rest of her cigarette as the last portions of it crumble to the ground, nodding her head to Aimee's response, the smile that had never really sunk, returning back to her face. "Speaking of her, where's Goat?"
"You wanna see her? She's on Anna's porch!" Aimee exclaims excitedly, immediately getting up in a flourish to get Goat.
Before Maeve could even utter an appropriate reply, Aimee has vanished through the glass doors to grab her pet apparatus. While waiting, Maeve unconsciously chews on her broken cuticle, thinking about the words she'd mentioned to Aimee. Everything was different. She doesn't know if she can highlight how, but she feels it.
Maeve is rudely interrupted from her mind-wanderings with an impatient bleat and a shout from Aimee. She turns around, and what is met with her eyes renders her usually eloquent words shocked.
Aimee smiles up at Maeve with an expectant smile, which is only met with Maeve's massive "O" of surprise. She rushes right past it in proper Aimee behaviour, "Do you like the colour?"
Maeve focuses her eyes on the woolly animal, the fur of which had been dyed a hot pink. The hair was also styled so that Goat favoured a mohawk on the crown of her head, which was tinged in an even brighter pink. It took Maeve a good 2 minutes before she could voice her thoughts to Aimee.
"Well, it's certainly something, Aimee," She spits out, not exactly sure what to think of the sight in front of her.
"Oh, I know I messed up her haircut! But I thought the pink would be good since she's a lesbian!"
Aimee nods excitedly, bringing Goat closer to Maeve so that she can pet it. Maeve touches her hair gently, her fingers hyperextending, still a bit unsure of the hot pink dye.
"Goat's a lesbian, Aimes?" Maeve questions, looking up at her best friend.
"Babes, did you not hear the story?" Aimee asks incredulously, giving Goat a pat or two of her own.
While Aimee combs her fingers through Goat's hairstyle, Maeve can see the bald spot Aimee was talking about earlier. She retains a smirk to herself.
She shakes her head, swift turns that blur her vision in response to Aimee's question. She sits down on the steps again, patting the spot on her right to invite Aimee to follow suit.
As Aimee gets comfortable beside her, dragging Goat so that she could be situated in front of them, she launches full force into her story,
"So I found out about it last term when I met Maureen at Otis's house, and Goat was eating Jean's 70's porno. Did you know Jean has an entire magazine collection? There're so many boobs," Aimee gushes intently.
Before Maeve can give an appropriate answer, Aimee continues, "Speaking of the Milburn's, have you talked to Otis yet?"
Maeve feels her heart freeze in her stomach, where her heartbeat had somehow travelled to as soon as the name Otis had come out of Aimee's mouth. Her mouth is sewed shut, stitched together by her fright to speak of their fragile relationship out loud. Her hands, though, are fidgeting against the night breeze, shaking along with the wind.
"Babes?"
Maeve bites on a torn cuticle on her pinky finger. 'Yeah, sorry, no, I haven't talked to him yet."
"Did you tell him you're back?"
"He knows I'm coming back to Moordale this weekend, but I didn't tell him when," Maeve says, her head bent backwards, observing the blood that was oozing out of her skin from her chewing.
"Why not? I bet he would have ran across the airport. It would have been so romantic. Like how it was in Love, Actually." Aimee swoons, grinning enthusiastically at Maeve.
Maeve snorts, the tobacco from her old cig coming back up her nostrils. "Hush, you know you're the only person I'd run through an airport for, right?"
"Oh babes, you're the only person I'd run through an airport for too!" Aimee resolves happily.
Maeve laughs, turning her boot against the stones that line Anna's patio.
Aimee seems to be in a potentially relentless mood today because she doesn't drop the subject. "You should talk to him, Maeve. Live for the day!"
Maeve sucks in a breath, the intake of oxygen seemingly in short supply in her body because her heart and brain feel faint. They both squeeze painfully inside of her, reminding her of the hug that Otis left her with.
"I can't, Aimee; I think I've messed it up again."
"What did you do this time? You're not leaving again, are you?"Aimee emotes earnestly, her eyebrows touching the tip of her fringe.
"No, well, at least I don't know yet." Maeve pauses. "I'm not leaving again, it's just I left him last time, and I don't know if he's still mad at me."
'That's a stupid reason to not talk to him. It's like what Alice Walker says, 'Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise." Aimee mentions casually, drawing in Goat to scruff her chin hairs.
Maeve raises an eyebrow, "You read the poems?"
"Of course, I did! They were quite good, very enlivening."
"Enlightening, Aimes, enlightening." Maeve corrects, sinking her teeth into her lips.
"Yeah, that's what I said. Stop trying to change the subject; you need to talk to Otis!"
Aimee's reading feminist poetry, Goat, was apparently a lesbian with a hot pink mohawk and a few balding spots. Maeve is a bit dizzy from the changes around her. Or maybe it's the little piece of her buried heart that spins a little from the mere mention of Otis. She can't be sure. Or perhaps she is, and she doesn't want to accept it.
Aimee pursues the conversation further, feeling a bit like a dictator intent on putting a rule in place. "You talked to him while you were in America right, so what's the issue now?"
Because everything feels consequential now. She thinks. And she can't help but feel that now that they're on the same page, that it won't work out. Or the ticking time bomb of their relationship that ended with graduation if they did get together. Maeve was a realist. And she knew realistically that the shoe was ready to drop soon in her life because things were too good for too long now.
But she can't ignore the way her buried heart, covered in the soil of grief and loss, feels a little full today. She can't ignore the respite inside herself, and Maeve feels a bit high - high on the dopamine that came with her recent success. She's not afraid of hope but is deathly scared of its potential. But Otis was always good at reminding her where she belonged, and she hated that she cared enough about his opinion to warp her heart in this way.
Aimee prods her, and Maeve feels a surge of guilt course through her. Aimee's patience ran endlessly, an infinite supply reserved for everyone, but Maeve was not being very fluent with her at the moment. It was times like these where she missed her ecstatic bursts with Otis, snippets of conversation that weren't really sentences but got across to each other anyways. Yeah, she needed to talk to him.
"Sorry, I'm a bit out of it at the moment," Maeve confesses. She wishes she hadn't wasted her smoke earlier because her hands were itching for the comfort of the nicotine. But, alas, she's only stuck only with her thoughts and Aimee. Aimee was there. Aimee was there for her.
"It's okay, we don't have to talk about it. But if you and Otis don't get your shit together this time, Eric and I are going to intervene. We made a pact now." Aimee decides, patting Maeve's shoulder, giving her a bit of comfort.
"You're friends with Eric now?" Maeve asks, squiggling her eyebrows in surprise.
"Mhm, I started sitting with Otis and Eric for lunch after you left. I didn't really have anyone after I broke up with Steve, and you left," Aimee says airily as if it didn't really bother her, and being Aimee, it probably didn't, but Maeve still feels a sharp pain in her head, wincing at her forgetfulness.
"Yeah, sorry about that." She apologizes swiftly, back at ripping her nails under the firm watch of her mouth.
"It's fine honestly, Eric's great company! I didn't know we had that much in common, honestly!" Aimee explains, tilting her chin up with a grin.
Maeve gives Aimee a smirk and a playful swat. "Ditching me for Eric now, huh?"
"I think you were the original ditcher", Aimee winks, matching her tone.
"Right, if you say so," Maeve huffs, her erratic breathing from before a bit controlled now.
Aimee brings the train back to the station like a faithful conductor, drawing the conversation back to the point, "You're gonna talk to Otis, though, right? I'm asking as your mum, now."
Maeve chuckles at Aimee's motherly presence, deciding that she'd have to agree soon enough before she fell apart in front of her best friend right then and there, "Yes, I will."
Even saying those words out loud gives Maeve's diaphragm a burst of dynamite, thinking of the conversation to follow with Otis with the same confidence she did her faith in humanity.
Aimee nods, seemingly satisfied with Maeve's agreement. "Good, I'm happy for you. I know I called him a stupid boy, but he really is nice."
"Yeah." Maeve agrees. She thinks it's time for her to conduct the conversation now. "But for now, I have you, and I think that is enough."
"I think we intricately nourish each other, as mums and as friends." Aimee reflects, the words falling in the oddly silver-tongued way that only she could manage.
Maeve twists her head towards Aimee, interested in her friend's recent literary adventures. Intricately nourished, she wondered.
"Aimee, who else have you been reading up on?"
"Oh, I don't know. I read a bit more on Simonne De Beauvoir. Then I found out about Bell Hooks. Did you know she's not a fisherman? Otis also recommended me a few books about a lady named Roxanne Gay. They've all been quite lovely!"
"Why didn't you tell me about this when you called?" Maeve ponders.
"Because telling you about the new Gossip Girl reboot was obviously so much more important, babes," Aimee answers thoughtfully.
Maeve rests her head against Aimee's shoulder as she fills their night with endless chatter, thinking about her first night back in Moordale. Her leg was shaking erratically, the veins popping in and out in her calves as her mind wrapped around all the changes that were whirling around her. She feels a pitter inside the submerged tissue of her heart, questioning all that she had to do in front of her. The moonlight kisses maples against her upturned lips, spying the gossamer that was growing on the pines growing behind Anna's backyard. She learns to breathe, little by little in the dead of night, thinking that maybe she could teach her heart the same - that perhaps she could unearth her hope again.
A/N:A bit fragmented, so if you need clarity on the fluidity, I will be happy to provide it! I do know where this is going, so next chapter will be an Otis & Maeve interaction. What it is? I guess we'll have to find out ;)