Sasha's home was BIG, Anne mused to herself, as she lightly sipped a beer.
Her own apartment was a modest thing. Not Sasha's. Her tastes were, was, and likely always would be the full treatment. The fact her balcony was the size of Anne's apartment was proof enough of that.
Besides her, Sasha drank another beer, all in one draught, and let out a satisfied sigh as she finished.
On the opposite side lay Marcy with a grin on her face, having passed out from her drinks and lightly snoring, being way, way too lightweight compared to Anne and Sasha.
"You shouldn't have encouraged her like that."
Sasha grinned. "Hey, she brought the beer! She shouldn't… Challenge people to drinking contests, if you're not prepared for it!"
Ah, she had started pausing while talking. Soo… a bit drunk, but not near shitfaced then.
"She hasn't seen how much you can drink when you put your mind to it."
"Yeah, well… You didn't exactly stop to tell her about that either."
Despite the words, neither of the girls' tones were truly disparaging.
Sasha was right. Marcy HAD been really into doing a drinking contest with them. Apparently, she used to do something with her own friends back at her place when spitballing ideas.
With lightweight stuff. Not the kind Anne and Sasha drank.
Anne had declined, specifically because she knew exactly how it would go and so had not wanted to get a raging hangover tomorrow.
She had work tomorrow after all, unlike Marcy, who worked in bursts of activity where she drew page after page after page, and so had loads, and loads of free time neither Anne nor Sasha had, and Sasha whose work schedule was entirely dependent on when she had scheduled appointments with her kids. That could mean an entire week with an incredibly busy schedule, or lots of extra free days.
Sasha grinned, then leaned over and gave Anne a hug. It was a strong, warm hug that made Anne feel happy and safe just like it always did… But she also knew Sasha had a nasty tendency to just… Keep hugging her until she fell asleep when she was drunk.
At least if Anne let her.
Probably wouldn't happen tonight though. She wasn't that drunk. Not yet anyway.
"Mhhhmmm…" Sasha said, laying her head down on her shoulder.
Anne sighed and decided that if they were gonna cuddle, she might as well get more comfortable.
What that entailed, was maneuvering Sasha so that she was lying on her back, her head in Anne's lap. As she sat regularly on the sofa with her legs out near the end.
Sasha let her without complaint but also blushed in an adorable way Anne almost never saw her do when she was sober.
Sasha grinned up at her.
"God… You're wonderful."
Anne chuckled.
"If you're that impressed with a lap pillow, maybe we should do this more often."
It had been meant as a lighthearted joke.
Sasha instead just closed her eyes with a grin and rubbed the back of her head against her affectionately.
"Yeah… That would be nice."
Anne blushed.
It was… Weird. She and Sasha had been in a relationship for only one and a half months now, and Anne still hadn't grown used to how… Different she was, compared to her previous partners.
It wasn't like either of them had been averse to physical contact and cuddling, quite on the contrary. But Sasha was… An entirely different beast. She craved cuddling, and drunk or not, she would use any excuse to do it.
It wasn't that Anne disliked that aspect of her. It was just… New for her. At least in a romantic context.
"You used to be pretty touchy-feely back in school too." Anne noted absently.
"Until one day you just… Stopped."
Sashe stopped rubbing her head against her, and her grin faded as she opened her eyes to look up at Anne's face.
"Yeah… Sorry about that." The tone sounded… strangely guilty.
"Any reason for that?"
She had her suspicions, but she hadn't voiced them to Sasha before. Frankly, the Blonde girl seemed embarrassed to talk about them… Drifting apart in High School.
"Yeah… It was when I… Started to realize you were… There you know?"
Sasha waved with an arm that was distinctly not operating at full capacity.
"Like… I started to realize that you were a girl and… And..." The hand went down to pinch her brow and rub her forehead.
Yep. So it had been how she thought it had been. This was when she'd actually developed feelings for her… Only to not dare act on them.
It was a feeling Anne understood really, really well, though she had reacted very, very differently.
Anne had also had a major crush on Sasha back in High school. Well, truth be told, she'd had it since about a year before Amphibia, but she'd never acted on it. She'd figured Sasha just wasn't interested in her.
It was a feeling that had only grown and grown over the years, as Anne had been pretty blatant about what she felt for years on end.
And Sasha never reacted to it. At all. At least not in a way that said she reciprocated. That she loved her as more than a friend.
So she'd come to accept that Sasha did not love her the same way she did her, and had come to terms with that at the time, and opened herself up to other people instead.
In hindsight, had she been more self-aware back then, she probably would have realized that Sasha had gone through something similar, and had either of them broken the ice and confessed, things might have gone very, very differently.
But, that was a road that had not been taken. It was best not to dwell on it. Live in the now, and don't worry about how things might have gone.
Out loud she said: "That's when you fell in love with me?"
It had been meant as a helping hand for the drunk Sasha.
Instead, her girlfriend waved her hand dismissively and replied.
"Nah… I've been heads over heels for you since we were 9."
She said it so casually like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Anne froze.
"9? Seriously?"
"Yeah."
Maybe Sasha was a BIT more drunk than she thought.
"Sooo… What made you fall for me then?"
It was a half-serious question, and she expected a drunk answer.
Instead, Sasha looked up at her with… Sad, drunk eyes. Anne had been sorta right. Sasha WAS way more drunk than she had assumed, but… As she began talking, it wasn't some silly drunk stuff she talked about.
"When… When my mom and dad… Broke up… It was… It was bad… like…" She closed her eyes with a grimace and sought out Anne's hand. The mostly sober girl grabbed it and held it supportingly.
"Like... all hope was gone for me you know?"
She opened her eyes again and looked up at Anne with those sad, drunk eyes.
"Only time I felt as bad as then… was after… Newtopia, and… The Moon."
She did not need to clarify what she meant by "Newtopia". Both of them tended to dance around "Newtopia" as a topic like it was a live flame. It was a period of deep, deep shame for both of them. Sasha in the throne room, and her at the Gatehouse.
"Anyway… I… My Dad… He wasn't a good dad… He never defended me from… My Mom…"
Sasha never liked to talk to her parents. It was a topic she had avoided like the plague since childhood, and Anne and Marcy had just learned to not talk about it. At all. That hadn't changed since they had reconnected earlier in the year.
It was the first time she had ever really heard Sasha truly talk about her parents beyond just mentioning them. Her choice of words though immediately conjured up images for Anne. Very, very bad ones.
Not defend.
"You… You mean she… Beat you?"
Sasha let loose a sound, a pitiful one that was something between a cry and a snort.
"Nah… She never… Never beat me… Never touched me… The police might have cared then… But she… She said stuff to me… well… Yelled."
"Like what?" Anne whispered, genuinely horrified.
This was Sooooo not where she'd expected this night to go.
"Like… Like that I was… Trash… that belonged in the garbage…"
Sasha was crying now, not heavily so, but she was.
Anne's free hand went down to stroke her face gently.
"Oh, Sasha. I'm so sorry."
"She… She told me I was a stupid kid… Who ruined her life… And… That I was an unlovable brat… That no one ever would love… That I didn't… I didn't deserve love..."
Anne didn't know how to react… Other than shock at the story, Sasha was telling, to keep holding her hand and try and comfort her with the other.
Inside she felt various feelings dance inside of her. Horror at the story Sasha was telling, anger at Mrs. Waybright and her appalling treatment of her own 9-year-old child, and nauseating disgust at her dad for not stopping it. And more than anything, pity for Sasha, for the woman currently lying in her lap.
"I… I believed her Anne… I was a stupid, stupid kid… I... actually believed her… God, I was a dumb kid…"
"You weren't dumb." She said, FIRMLY.
"I-" "You Weren't. Dumb." She said again, this time with real force in her voice.
"Alright… I wasn't dumb." She said in a tone that even through her drunkenness was very clearly just her placating her.
"Anyway… I… I was… I was in a bad place Anne… the divorce took the entire summer… Remember?"
She nodded. She did remember. Anne and Marcy had both commented on it a lot. What to do when Sasha came back. What games to play, what movies to watch. Kids stuff.
"It… It was awful. When we came back home… It didn't feel like my home... I didn't feel safe anymore."
She waved again, to the side, though what she was trying to convey, Anne didn't know.
"I felt like… Mom was right. That I was unlovable… That nobody would ever love me again… I was scared. Scared of my dad… That he would start yelling at me like mom did…"
Anne had had a pretty neutral opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Waybright before tonight. Boy was that gone now.
"He never did but… I was scared of going out too… Scared of going out there… And then…"
She smiled. She actually smiled up at her despite the tears.
"There you were. On my door, asking if I wanted to play."
The grip Sasha had on her hand tightened.
"You… And Marcy… You loved me… Dad didn't… Mom didn't… But you two? You still loved me, despite everything mom said. And you… Every day you'd be out in front of my house… Ready to walk me to school."
Anne wrecked her mind trying to remember that. But she didn't. Her and Sasha walking to school was just such a regular occurrence before Middle school that it wasn't anything she recalled in particular.
That had only changed with a new school and drastically bigger travel distances.
Sasha's free hand went up trying to caress her face like Anne was hers, only be a bit more… Clumsy about it than the Sober Anne was.
"Mom was wrong. You… Proved that to me, Anne. Every day. In the morning… At school… After it...You were amazing… Wonderful…"
She closed her eyes again, and once more rubbed her head up against Anne.
"Wonderful…" She repeated as she kept her head where it was.
Anne just stared at her, still stroking her face.
It took her a minute or two just listening to Sasha's breathing, and the now still arm leaning ul against her, before she realized her girlfriend had passed out.
Anne carefully put the arm back down… Then leaned back and took in a deep breath.
Well. That was… She had, somewhat stupidly it seemed, assumed she knew mostly everything about Sasha and Marcy by now. At least the major stuff before they had gone their different ways in high school.
It was a sharp lesson, that even in adulthood, she didn't know everything.
Far from it.
Anne let the story just churn over in her head.
There was… Some stuff that didn't quite line up. For one thing, Sasha had claimed she fell in love with her at nine years old, but the divorce of her parents had happened when she was 7, she remembered that much. So unless drunk Sasha had remembered wrongly, there was quite some time between that autumn and Sasha… Falling heads over heels for her.
God… The way Sasha had described her… She didn't remember exactly how she'd acted back then, but the way she remembered it, she had just been trying to cheer Sasha up.
Her mom had told her Sasha was going through a bad time, and that she should try and be supportive. And so she had. In the way that a 7-year-old, who barely understood fully what was going on(And as this conversation had proven, did not understand at all) would be supportive.
Sasha had been sad, and so Anne had tried her best to cheer her up. With playing, Video games, movies, and the like.
Looking back at it with full context, it was pure cringe.
But Sasha hadn't thought so. At all. She'd thought Anne was amazing. The ONLY thing she had cared about, was that Anne and Marcy had loved her.
Speaking of which…
Over on the other side of the table, Marcy sat on another sofa, fast asleep, content in only the way a drunk person fast asleep could be.
Sasha had not excluded Marcy from her story of how the girls had made her feel loved when she needed it… But it was her, and not Marcy, who had managed to make Sasha fall "Heads over heels". Why was that?
She didn't know.
Man… It was… Humbling, to learn just how much Anne had affected Sasha back then. It was also… Depressing.
If Sasha had been in love with her all this time… Then she'd been in love with her during the entire worst part of their relationship.
When Sasha had been so desperate to feel in charge, to feel safe, that she turned into a manipulating bully. It was a scary thought that Sasha had once been capable of acting like that… Even against the people she truly loved.
She… also understood more about where Sasha had been coming from now. Her desperate need to be in control. To feel safe.
It didn't excuse her previous behavior of course, but… Well, it didn't really matter anyway.
Sasha had changed, and she had changed without Anne ever learning this story.
THAT was what was important. Not how Anne judged Sasha's past actions now.
The woman beneath her loved her, and made her feel… Like she was everything... That she was worth the world.
That was what mattered.
That, her giving Sasha her own love and support.
I
As Sasha woke the next day, she felt the familiar feeling of a hangover pounding her skull like a drum.
She groaned as she pushed herself off… Her balcony couch? Yes, her balcony couch.
Every movement was met with PAIN, as she got up into a sitting position.
Yes, it was coming back to her now. She and Marcy had had a drinking contest(Marcy was lying on the other couch, still sleeping.) At the lovable nerd's insistence.
And she had… Well, drunk like she was back at college.
It had been a dumb, dumb move, and completely unnecessary. She'd chugged beer after beer while Marcy was still on her third and already smashed, just to impress her and look cool. Stupid move.
She… Didn't think she had been completely shit-faced, but she had been thoroughly drunk enough.
She headed to the kitchen, prepared to chug down glass after glass of water.
What she found was Anne having already made her and Marcy breakfast(God bless that woman), before heading out to work.
It was a bit cold by then, but she appreciated it anyway, to go alongside her drinks of water.
It wasn't before she was done, had drunk 24 glasses of water, and been to the bathroom twice, and was… Kinda feeling a bit better, that she noticed that Anne had also left a note on the fridge.
She squinted and tried her best to read…
"Left you food. We'll talk more when you're ready, okay? I'll always be here for you. I love you Sasha. Anne."
Sasha spent more time than she should have, trying to piece together what the hell it meant. Then, she began to remember that she and Anne had talked about… Stuff. High school. Her parents.
Shit.
