Trigger Warning: Brian Lawson, reference to past unhealthy sexual situations and dubious consent (obviously not between Yumiko and Magna)
"So. . . what song does meet your approval for sex?"
Yumiko groaned. "Magna."
"What? I'm curious. Since your standards are so high. Whatever shit was loud enough to keep other people from hearing was all I cared about."
"Charming."
"More like necessary." Magna snorted. "My uncle would have fucking killed me." Yumiko felt a disquieting tug in her chest, unable to tell whether that was an exaggeration or not. Biting her tongue, she dug her fingers into Magna's shoulders reflexively, watching as her features proceeded to screw up - the expression far more adorable than it had a right to be. "Can't listen to Rob Zombie anymore with a straight face, that's for sure."
"Rob Zombie?"
"Living Dead Girl," she said, as if that should somehow clear things up - rather than muddy the waters into an even further state of bizarre. "What, never heard it? Little painful on the ears but no-one's hearing anything over that shit."
Sounded wonderful.
The absolute pinnacle of musical artistry.
"I'll bear that in mind."
"Just trying to educate you." Her mouth turned up the barest amount. "Never know when these things will come in handy."
Yumiko rolled her eyes at the not-so-subtle hint. "Mazzy Star. Fade into You."
"What?"
"That's a song that meets my approval."
Magna stared - before a grin slowly worked its way across her face. "Fade into You?"
Yumiko refused to be embarrassed. At least her song wasn't called Living Dead Girl. "Yes. It's gentle. Slow. Sets the mood. Not so overpowering that you can't even focus on what's going on."
Magna shook her head, laughing. "Rob Zombie definitely wouldn't tick your boxes then."
"I don't know. . ." her mouth drew up slightly, "might have come in handy back when we were living on the rig."
Magna snorted. "Yeah, something tells me the others would have caught on real fast if we started blasting that all of a sudden after getting together."
"True. But at least they wouldn't have heard anything."
"Probably wouldn't have been hearing anything ever again. And neither would we." She winced, twisting a finger in her ear. "That shit gave me lifelong tinnitus."
Yumiko suppressed a smile. "It wouldn't have been long enough anyway. Unless we were playing it on a loop."
A torture loop.
"I mean with most guys that's all the time you need. Hell, more than you need even."
Yumiko blinked. "That quick?"
Magna snickered at the look on her face. "If you're lucky. Sometimes you'll get a guy who just goes on and on. Or decides that they're gonna take a stab at getting you off as well."
Not the kind of image she wanted in her head.
Still. . .
"I would think that'd be a good thing."
"Not if you're just wanting to get shit over with."
Not exactly the attitude Yumiko liked to approach sex with. But then she'd never had sex with someone she wasn't attracted to. She'd probably want to get things over with as quickly as possible in those circumstances too.
(and she had dated Nicole. Attraction might never have been an issue between them but towards the end of their relationship sex had become a complex, volatile thing. So that urge to get through it, rather than experience it, wasn't entirely foreign.
Magna's cavalier attitude over it all, however, very much was)
Yumiko knew that she hadn't come to terms with her sexuality until some time after they'd met. Or even really started to examine it for that matter.
She would never claim to understand why Magna had been sleeping around with boys - considering her attraction to them was nowhere to be found - but given her aunt and uncle's attitudes towards sex, it wouldn't surprise Yumiko if she'd done it, at least in part, as her own little private rebellion. Ear-splitting music aside, perhaps a part of her had wanted to get caught.
You would have been better off fooling around with girls in that case.
Though Yumiko was relieved that she hadn't. Hadn't pushed things that far.
She had very little doubt that her uncle might really have killed her in that case. If he'd found out. And Yumiko knew enough about Magna to lack confidence that she would have been anywhere near discreet enough to hide such a thing. To protect herself.
In one of her angrier, more reckless moments, she might even have purposefully gotten herself caught.
Self-destructive.
All that aside, though, she would hardly be the first lesbian Yumiko had met who'd had sex with men before they'd been able to reach a place of understanding and acceptance about their sexuality. It wasn't something Yumiko could personally relate to. But she didn't have to relate to it in order to know that it was a common experience. That not everyone had as simple a time figuring out their sexuality as she had - or accepting it.
Magna certainly hadn't.
Why she'd continued having sex with men after reaching that place, though. . . well that was a little harder to understand.
"But you're right - we'd probably need the whole album in our case."
Yumiko blinked, retreating from the unwelcome path her thoughts had taken. It took a moment for Magna's words to catch up to her. And their meaning.
Jesus.
An entire album of tunes sung by a man who thought Living Dead Girl was an appropriate song title. "My ears are already bleeding thinking about it."
"I'll have to see if I can dig up a record here. Play it for you."
Yumiko hid a grimace. "Don't put yourself out."
Magna smirked a little. "No, I insist. I've got to expand your musical education. Widen your horizons."
"Out of the goodness of your heart."
"Goes without saying."
Yumiko snorted. "Your charitable nature is truly inspiring."
"Isn't it?"
She shook her head, unable to deny the slight tug of her own lips. Magna. "You know, I'm surprised your aunt and uncle even let you play him."
If they'd had a problem with Elton John, she couldn't see how they would have tolerated a man by the name of Rob Zombie. They might even have thought Magna was in need of an exorcist - or that she'd joined a Satanic cult.
"Oh, they wouldn't have. Or at least, not without storming in to switch it the fuck off - which kind of would've defeated the purpose if I was in there getting sweaty with someone." Yumiko grimaced. Why had she chosen to engage in this conversation? "No, it got brought out when I was at other people's houses. Still necessary - if their folks sprung us, almost guaranteed it would have made its way back to the Purity Police. Almost."
Yumiko raised a brow.
Magna shrugged. "It happened a couple of times. I was lucky. They just drove me home and banned me from ever coming round again. Wanted to keep that shit in-house, you know? Two biggest sins in that town: pre-marital sex and being queer as the fires of hell. You'd get less judgment for killing someone." She snorted. "And I'm saying that as someone who's three for three. . . they could have forgiven me for Brian. Eventually. But not for the shit I did before then. Not for what I was. Am. Not that they ever found out that last bit but. . ." She shrugged. "Still. It wasn't being a murderer that made them hate me. All that did was make it open season."
Yumiko tensed a little.
Something that didn't go unnoticed.
Magna cleared her throat, glancing away.
It was still going to take some time to get used to. The truth about what had happened. At least enough not to react at Magna casually dropping it into conversation.
It wasn't just the murder.
It was the lie it represented.
The years of history she was still struggling to rewrite.
(but she didn't want any of that conflict to invade the easy time they were having right now, to tarnish this rare moment of peace between them. Ruin it)
Hastily, Yumiko forced herself to recover. To seal that crack. "Sounds logical."
What she really wanted to say was that it sounded tough.
Tough to grow up in. To navigate.
To withstand.
She couldn't imagine living in that kind of environment. A place where, if you didn't fit the mould, fit it perfectly and completely, then you were rejected altogether. Cast out.
Magna snorted, mouth turning up, though the expression didn't reach her eyes. "Yeah. Every day was a riot in that place." She met Yumiko's gaze. "It was different for you, though, right?"
"You could say that." She smiled wryly, though it came out as more of a grimace. "You know Mum was an OBG-YN. I got the safe sex talk when I was twelve. Complete with diagrams." She closed her eyes. "And so, so many pamphlets."
Magna laughed. "She did love her pamphlets."
Right. Yumiko had forgotten that she'd fallen victim to them as well. Swallowed a groan. "The experience scarred me so much, I never even kissed a person until I was out of high school." Granted, that was mostly because she'd had no interest in such things. Curiosity, yes. Who didn't get curious? But back then, all her attention had been entirely devoted to her studies.
"I still can't believe that. You're like an alien."
Yumiko rolled her eyes. This wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. "Hardly. Plenty of people don't have sexual experiences in high school."
"Right."
The doubt in her voice was tangible.
In a way, it amused her, how baffled Magna continued to be by this. Especially considering she was the one who'd grown up in a family of strict baptists.
Shaking her head, Yumiko moved on. "Funnily enough, even with Mum's. . . all too thorough approach to the birds and the bees, she missed the ballpark completely. Very little of what she said ended up pertaining to me."
That was back before she'd possessed any inkling of Yumiko's sexuality.
In the end, she'd had to do her own research. Educate herself. Not something that she minded. In fact, she'd preferred it that way. But Yumiko wasn't oblivious to how, if she hadn't been so inclined to search for answers on her own, or lucky enough to find those answers, then she would have been left fumbling in the dark.
Magna shrugged. "I don't know. I think I prefer my method - just fuck around and find out."
Yumiko sent her a look. "And how did that work out for you?"
"Oh, badly. Very badly. But still a heck of a lot less awkward."
She eyed her with an exasperated smile. "I'm not sure awkwardness should factor in to whether or not to give kids a proper sexual education."
"Yeah, well, it should."
Despite her words, though, Yumiko doubted she was actually committed to the argument. Not after some of the conversations they'd had in the past. But Magna had a habit of taking the opposing side in any argument just to be contrary.
Yumiko suspected she got a kick out of it.
Not unlike the kind she'd always gotten herself during mock debates. Or in the courtroom.
Lips curving up, she allowed her fingers to creep back onto their former path, nails grazing undefended skin. Magna squirmed, subtly trying to inch away. Only for Yumiko's attack to follow.
She huffed. "Stop it."
"Stop what? This?" She grazed a trail behind Magna's ear, earning a shudder.
"Miko."
She grinned at the whine. "You started it."
"I was just being friendly." Magna affected a look of innocence.
Yumiko scoffed. "A little too friendly."
"No such thing." She grinned, drawing slightly closer to her. "Besides, something tells me you didn't mind it overly much."
"Well, unless that something is backed up by solid evidence, I'm afraid you're going to need a little more to sell your argument. I don't accept conjecture."
Magna snorted, gaze dropping. Just a moment. Just for the barest of seconds.
But Yumiko knew where it had landed.
What impulse the darkening of her eyes hinted at.
Magna wet her lips.
Leaned in—
Space opened up between them once again as she turned her head away, breaking the connection.
(Yumiko bit down on a curse)
"Prince Sebastian's watching us. Looks kind of constipated. . . can't tell if he's pissed off or getting off."
Yumiko grimaced. "Seriously? Don't put that thought in my head."
She shrugged, eyes still trained on Pamela's son. "What? We're hot. I'd be surprised if he wasn't being a creep about it."
Yumiko groaned, throwing her head back. "You're a menace."
Just what I needed in my life. More nightmares.
She was used to Magna's deflections by now but she could have chosen something a little less likely to ruin her sleep. Yumiko was also getting somewhat tired of the constant back and forth, push and pull.
She'd been about to kiss her.
Yumiko knew she'd been about to kiss her.
But she hadn't.
And Yumiko could feel the frustration throbbing under her skin, which had started to burn hot under the intensity of Magna's stare before she'd torn herself away.
What do you want, Magna?
Do you even know?
Because there was only so much of this Yumiko could take. Only so much push and pull she could withstand before it knocked her to the floor. It was exhausting. And nerve rattling.
And more than anything confusing.
So confusing.
Yumiko had never coped well with not knowing things. Lack of certainty. Unpredictability.
And this dance tonight had boasted all three in spades.
Nothing was certain.
Not between them.
When she looked back down, Magna's gaze was trained on her neck, eyes dark.
Mouth slightly parted.
Yumiko raised a brow.
Instantly, she looked away. Cleared her throat.
Honestly.
Taking a breath, she pushed her frustration and confusion to one side. Deciding that it was best to move this conversation back to a territory that was safer for both of them - and much less liable to give her nightmares.
(she really didn't need to hear any more about just what thoughts Magna imagined Sebastian Bartholomew Milton might have going round in his head, especially in regards to them)
"What about you?" Yumiko asked. "Who gave you the talk?"
Magna snorted. "Depends on your definition of talk. Got lots of lectures on how just holding hands with a boy would rain down fire and brimstone. Mostly from my aunt and uncle. Though that was a favorite of Pastor Owen's too. . . I remember there was this one girl in Sunday School who thought she was pregnant because she'd played apple on a stick with a boy in fourth grade."
Given some of the stories she'd heard, that didn't surprise Yumiko in the least. "What about your school?"
"Karen and Mal would sooner have stripped down naked in the street than signed over permission for any of us to be given a lesson on S-E-X." She shrugged. "Besides pretty sure that lesson mostly consisted of: 'sex', 'bad' - 'don't do it'. . . honestly, the most help I ever got on that front was from Brian."
Yumiko stiffened, hand tightening against her waist. "Brian?"
"Yep." Magna made a point of examining a group of women over by the podium. "He was the only person in that town willing to have an open conversation about sex. Not to mention the only one who didn't preach abstinence." She snorted, mouth curling bitterly. "Wonder why."
With her hand splayed against Magna's back, the stiffness in her frame was unmistakable; her spine taut as a bow string. Yumiko wished that she could more clearly see her face, or rather her eyes. Wished that she would look at her.
But she didn't.
Frowning, Yumiko kneaded her fingers lightly into Magna's back, trying to draw out the tension she could feel there. Waiting.
She knew better than to speak just yet.
It took a moment but eventually Magna shrugged, turning her attention back to Yumiko and wiping the bitter smile from her face. The nonchalant, almost wry mask that came to replace it was a familiar one and she suspected that Magna had said more than she'd intended to. More than she was comfortable with. "Still beat the talk Karen gave me."
Yumiko's jaw clenched, remembering that particular tale. "It's hard to imagine anything wouldn't."
Though it was disquieting to think about what kind of sexual topics a rapist would consider appropriate and educational.
At the same time, Yumiko knew she probably shouldn't be this surprised. Brian Lawson wouldn't be the first predator to prey on a young person's lack of education - not to mention curiosity - around sex and offer to fill in the gaps. He'd probably done the same with Maisie. To far more disastrous results.
"So. . . do I get a prize?"
Yumiko blinked. Had the conversation somehow wandered on without her? "A prize?"
"For the worst birds and the bees talk. Pretty sure, pedophile trumps OB-GYN."
Yumiko raised a brow. "There's not really an award for that."
And she hadn't been aware it was a competition.
Magna put on a pout - and Yumiko would never cease to be amazed at how expertly she used humor as a deflection. "Doesn't seem fair."
"No. It doesn't."
She wasn't referring to the prize.
A muscle in Magna's jaw tensed and Yumiko immediately regretted the words, knew that she'd let her down by not playing along. But, well, it wasn't exactly the easiest thing to joke about. Magna's humor tended to run much darker than hers - and Yumiko had always struggled to meet it.
Sonja hadn't. And neither had Bernie.
(but neither of them had loved Magna as much as her)
Still, Yumiko gave her waist an apologetic squeeze, watching as her face relaxed slightly under the contact, back into its humorous mask.
(the transition was disturbingly seamless)
"He skipped out on the gay thing too," Magna continued.
"Just so you know."
"Shocking."
"So we're tied for that. And, hey, didn't get any pamphlets; so that was a plus - and a point for you. I was fourteen, not twelve - not sure which one of us gets the point there. . ."
Yumiko tried to keep her expression nonchalant. For Magna's sake. But it was hard not to let her mind wander. To imagine just what might have been included in that talk. The things that could have been said. The kind of materials that could have been shown.
Magna shook her head. "Stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Whatever it is you're thinking. Or nightmare scenarios you're cooking up. It wasn't actually that bad. I mean, awkward and uncomfortable as hell. But not bad."
Yumiko had the sudden thought that her comment about awkwardness earlier might not entirely have been for argument's sake - if this was the kind of awkwardness she'd had for comparison.
Magna shrugged, looking away again. "Brian was a monster. But I think he was actually trying to help for once."
Yumiko didn't believe that for a second.
And she had a hard time believing that Magna could.
She knew the relationship between her and Lawson was complicated. Magna hated him, yes. Probably more than she'd ever hated anyone in her life, even her father. But it was obvious that at some point she'd also trusted him. Cared for him. Maybe even loved him.
It had made his betrayal all the more devastating
"Do you really believe that?"
Another shrug, the act of nonchalance ruined by the fact that she still wouldn't meet her eyes. "He never gained anything from it." Questionable. The gain could very well be that he got off on it. But Yumiko wasn't about to say that. Not to Magna. "I guess sometimes even monsters do good things. It's what makes them so hard to spot. . ." she trailed off, going quiet.
"And sometimes they just do things that appear good."
Magna's jaw clenched, gaze still elsewhere. "Yeah. . . sometimes they do."
Yumiko knew she was remembering all the times Brian Lawson had helped her simply to get close to Maisie. And it was entirely possible that this was just another addition to that long list.
Nothing would ever convince Yumiko that a predator had taken the time to educate a young girl on the topic of sex out of the goodness of their heart. But she could understand why it might appear that way. Especially if he was the only one to ever try. To ever talk about sex with Magna in a manner that didn't frame it as shameful.
Wrong.
Yumiko knew that she'd become sexually active fairly young. And growing up in a family and town that preached she'd be going to hell for it - she could well imagine that Brian Lawson's opposing view would have been comforting. More than comforting.
A lifeline.
Yumiko also knew that people were multifaceted. That even the very worst might have a redeeming quality or two. She'd seen it time and time again in her career. It would be so much easier to convince a jury that a man had beaten his wife every day after coming home from work if he hadn't also spent three afternoons a week visiting sweet old grandma down at the retirement home. But cartoon villains were the stuff of fairy tales. Everyone had a redeeming quality. Even Lawson.
Yumiko had a hard time believing that any such qualities would have extended to Magna, though.
Some pedophiles might claim to care about their victims. And perhaps in their own deluded minds they did. But it was a poisonous care. A selfish care. The kind that served no one but themselves.
From everything she'd heard, though, Yumiko didn't think that was a care even Lawson possessed. Towards anyone. There'd been a sadistic quality to his actions. And Yumiko had gotten the sense that he didn't have much respect towards women. Or girls. Quite the opposite.
And whilst not every child molester derived pleasure from hurting people, she couldn't help but think that Lawson had. Sonja, far more familiar with his type, had shared in her belief.
Magna squeezed her eyes shut. "If we keep talking about this I'm going to march over to Sebastian Milton and punch him."
"Why Sebastian?"
"Easy target."
Fair enough.
"Then we won't talk about it anymore." Before she could think better of it, Yumiko raised a hand, gently smoothing a lock of hair from Magna's face. "How about we just dance for a bit instead?"
The look of relief Yumiko received for this suggestion was profound - and the biggest sign that the conversation had gotten to Magna more than she'd let on. "Sounds good."
She moved closer - almost imperceptibly - but Yumiko tightened her hold, feeling the far too obvious tension under her touch. She felt guilty for pursuing the line of questioning in the first place, though she hadn't known beforehand that it would lead to the likes of Brian Lawson.
Still. . . it hadn't escaped her notice that Magna had called an end to the discussion without starting a fight or running away. Threats of bodily harm aside, she'd done it calmly. Far more calmly than Yumiko was used to.
It was perhaps the biggest piece of evidence she'd seen so far of just how much Magna had changed in their time apart.
And it was a good change. Yumiko knew it was a good change. But she was also sad that she hadn't been there to witness that change come into being.
That, apparently, in order for Magna to grow. . .
She'd needed Yumiko out of the picture.
A/N: Magna, baby, I love you, but you gotta stop giving mixed signals, you're doing Miko's head in
So this chapter was supposed to just be light and funny but then it took some dark turns because I couldn't stop certain elements of Yumiko and Magna's backstories from bleeding into it. Slight downside of having plotted out so much of those backstories is that I'm hyperaware of it when writing their present lol.
So I ummed and arred over whether to change Rob Zombie's name to something like Rob Sicko given that the term zombie doesn't really appear in the walking dead series. It does however appear in the comics. And the showrunner said this "And really, for this story to work, you can't just have people saying, 'You shoot them in the head, y'know… just like the zombies from the Romero movies!' So you have to assume this is a universe where George A. Romero didn't create the modern zombie." However, Rob Zombie's name is based on the black and white film White Zombie which came out decades before Romero's modern zombie and the zombies in that movie are VERY different from the modern zombie/walkers you see in the walking dead (made through voodoo, mind controlled, don't eat flesh, don't need to be shot in the head, don't actually look like a corpse, etc.). So it's reasonable to assume that people wouldn't make the leap to seeing walkers and connect them to these zombies in the same way they wouldn't connect them to vampires.
I did use to listen to Living Dead Girl when I was a teenager, though eventually had to stop due to sensory issues as it IS a little hard on the hears. But I do like the song. This chapter tho was inspired by the fact that I was wandering around on the internet and came across this post about songs people were most likely to have been conceived to depending on the year and Living Dead Girl was one of them. Which I found hilarious. And thus a chapter was born.
It does need to be said that Yumiko doesn't actually know for certain that Brian was a pedophile. Most people who sexually abuse children aren't. BUT given the fact that most of the population tends to refer to everyone who sexually abuses children as pedophiles I do feel it's realistic that Yumiko would sometimes do this with Brian as well. Especially since there's no evidence to say that he wasn't one.
Also figured I better make something clear in the notes because I don't want anyone to think I'm erasing Magna's sexuality: she is definitely a lesbian and not attracted to men in the slightest. However it took her some time to figure that out and accept it. She also has an incredibly complicated and unhealthy relationship with sex. But that's something that I'll be exploring more in other fics, particularly the sequel to Conflict Resolution.
I'm also just going to say right now that I find the whole gold star lesbian thing incredibly offensive and there's no place for it in my fics. Also sex has nothing to do with a person's sexuality. The only thing that determines whether someone is gay, bi, pan, etc. is who they're romantically and/or sexually attracted to. Your sexual history in no way defines your sexuality.