Chapter Text
Their first vacation together had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, really. On the way home from Vigrid--and from the ruins of Isla del Sol--Bayonetta had suggested a pit stop at a reasonably priced hotel for the weekend before braving the transpacific flight. It seemed like a grand idea. And Jeanne remembered very little after checking in.
She was able to find pieces if she thought back hard enough; taking a long, scalding shower while thinking about how Balder's tendrils of control had warped her behavior, using copious amounts of shampoo as if she could wash the mind control away; glancing out the window, and walking downstairs. The next thing she remembered was waking up to Jack Nicholson's face on their room's flat-screen TV as he screamed "Heeeeere's Johnnnyyy!", and realizing she was now the friend who had to be cradled like a baby when inebriated.
"Sweetie," Jeanne whimpered, the headache feeling like a truck was parked on half of her face, "Did I do anything...stupid?"
Bayonetta looked down at her from the television. "You're fine," she said quietly.
"I'm...I'm going to try to...get a water from the minibar," Jeanne said, and tried to lift her head from Bayonetta's lap, but the other witch gently put her hand on her shoulder.
"Ah. Jeanne. Um. You're going to throw up again. You've got water right here."
"Where?"
"Right here. Drink it, here...there's a good girl. You'll feel better soon, dear. Don't drink it all at once."
Look at me, shotgunning water, Jeanne thought with shame. She waited a few moments before sipping at a more reasonable speed. It was like bathing her brain with ice, which was just what she needed.
And, although she would glance over credit card transactions at home that she certainly didn't remember, she realized that weekend had needed to happen one way or another. She had crashed the system and restarted it in safe mode. She'd even waved away liquor during the flight.
But she didn't want to do that again a year later.
B
That was why Jeanne had elected to take an early night. The window was open, warm salty breezes tickling the green curtains, and the moon was just out of sight. The TV was off, so were the lights; everything except a scented candle Jeanne had packed, making the room smell like beautiful. She could hear the palm fronds rustling in the wind, occasional cars zooming by on the road outside, the road that separated them from the beach.
It was hard to believe it'd been a year since their last 'vacation' together. Bayonetta had dressed to the nines and left to go clubbing a couple hours before. She had looked over to Jeanne in askance, nodding in the direction of the door. And Jeanne felt a thrill of gratitude that she hadn't made the offer out loud, for some reason. Bayonetta had the gift of picking up on her sometimes...just feeling better leaving things unsaid.
And so she shook her head with a smile. Thanks, but I'm good, have a good time.
Once some of her students told her that they were relieved she didn't seem to like hearing the sound of her own voice as much as the other teachers. And although she had responded with a smile and a shrug, it made her wonder. Maybe the reason a lot of teachers became teachers was to make a captive audience listen to them speaking for hours. It certainly seemed the case with University professors, one of whom she'd had the misfortune of speaking to at a garden party a week ago.
Like Luka, she'd thought to herself as the man explained a concept the entire group already knew with a self-satisfied smirk, except not as handsome.
Except Luka was far more interesting and honorably motivated than Jeanne gave him credit for. One of the thoughts she often pushed away was that she was jealous of him. On a deep, unspoken level she could accept being attracted to Bayonetta; you'd have to have never seen her not to, to be honest. But since that thought went against the hard moral standard that she shouldn't be attracted to friends, especially straight ones, it was easier to turn her frustration to Luka.
She heard the card key zap the door open, and stumbling steps. Then, a heavy weight slammed down on the other side of her mattress. She finally sat up.
"Is someone home?"
Bayonetta had completely missed her own bed--an accomplishment, since it had been closer--and was lying facedown on Jeanne's, just as if she was one of the crocodiles at the zoo they'd been to yesterday. The reptiles were delightfully portly and seemed to enjoy sunbathing, with just a tail languidly dipped in their pond. "Oh, did someone have a good time?"
No answer. Not even a moan or giggle.
Jeanne slid her hands under Bayonetta's armpits--drunk people were babies, babies were drunk people--and gently picked her upper body up. Bayonetta's head moved limply on her neck, her messy hair dangling, her lipstick rubbed off by God knows how many drink rims, straws, possibly people. Her eyeliner had stayed on like magic, though.
Jeanne moved Bayonetta to one shoulder, stood up, pulled aside one of the sheets of the other bed and flopped the woman back on the pillow. Except that wasn't how things went. Bayonetta's arms had somehow wrapped around her neck, so she went down on top of the witch, landing against her shoulder.
"Baby," Bayonetta murmured, in that voice people have toward the end of six to eight shots of tequila. Capital-D Drunk.
"Fuckin' Looney Tunes," Jeanne muttered, unwrapping Bayonetta's arms, with some difficulty. No matter how wasted she was, Bayonetta's grip was still a damned boa constrictor when she wanted it to be. Jeanne pushed off and tucked the witch in.
"Jeanne."
"No."
"Jeanne."
Jeanne shook her head at her friend. "We never grow up. Hundreds of years. Can't believe it." She pulled off Bayonetta's heels from under the sheet and dropped them off the bed.
"Jeanne, baby."
"Go to sleep."
Finally, a giggle escaped the witch, and she rolled her head to the left to look at Jeanne from her pillow as she returned to her own bed. Jeanne looked back, partly with amusement, and then with a sinking realization that she was having all the wrong feelings in response to this stimulus. All the wrong thoughts. So even though Bayonetta's glittering eyes were a couple feet away, separated by a table with a bible in it, she pulled the sheet over her face and shut her eyes.
B
"Jeanne? Wake up. What did I say last night?! Jeanne! Wake up!"
A pair of hands were shaking her through the sheets. Jeanne pulled off the sheets to see a very upset Bayonetta, towel wrapped around her hair. Birdsong flitted into the window.
"What?"
"What did I say last night?! When I got back?! Bayonetta was uncharacteristically losing her cool.
"I don't know. You were hammered. Did you have a good time?"
Bayonetta fell with her butt against her mattress and put her hands on her kneecaps, then interlaced them, looked at her hands, and then looked at Jeanne again. "Did I...did I do anything ridiculous?"
"I mean I wasn't at the club? You didn't promise to house swap with a strange German couple or something, did you?" They'd seen some pretty weird tourists around. Vacation destinations, it seemed, tended to attract pretty curious types; not that a pair of hundreds of year old witches wearing bikinis made of their own hair were normal or anything, but they at least didn't fight with the employees at tiny sushi spots to show off the fact that they knew what rice the traditional restaurants were supposed to use, despite this being Mexico and the price for that rice variety being exorbitant at Costco. Then there'd been the old man fighting with a convenience store worker about the beer costing what amounted to one US dollar. "I'm going to tell your boss that you're doing this," he'd said before storming out. Jeanne had raised eyebrows at the store's staff before taking her time picking out some choice spicy mango candy while Bayonetta joked with them about how he was paying considerably more for the Viagra and not yelling at the pharmacist back home about it.
"I don't mean that. Jeanne--what did I say to you?"
Bayonetta's cheeks were aflame. Jeanne buried those most inconvenient of feelings and got out of bed, looking out the window. She turned back to Bayonetta. "You just kept repeating my name. Stop beating yourself up."
The relief that fell into Bayonetta's shoulders, the fear that vanished from her eyes; she flopped on her back with the deepest exhalation that Jeanne had ever heard. Jeanne smirked and threw her beach towel at her. Bayonetta caught it with her crotch.
"Just kidding. You did a really bad striptease on my bed. A disco ball came out of the ceiling. I threw my Walgreens card at you and went back to sleep."
Bayonetta laughed, and the tension her body was losing through that laugh was almost palpable. Jeanne slid open the balcony door and basked for a moment in the soft breeze, the look of yellow asphalt with teen local skateboarders clattering by, the palm trees, and the painfully bright sun reflected on the ocean. There was a stink of seaweed and boat fuel in the air, too, grounding it in the reality of a place that people lived in every day, not someplace that vanished when their vacation ended.
"Let's go," Jeanne called softly back into the room, leaning on the railing. Everything from the notary's building to the gates of people's houses around them was beautiful for some reason in this light. Bushes of pink and red bougainvilleas and hibiscus lined alleyways. "Let's go for a walk, Bayonetta. We can make a sand castle."
There was a sound and she turned to see Bayonetta next to her, resting her elbows on the railing. She surveyed the view too, but then glanced at Jeanne.
"Want to come next time?"
Jeanne pulled her own brightly colored beach towel off the railing and folded it. "They...very likely...don't have the kind of clubs I'm into down here."
She slipped back inside and dropped the towel on her bed, topping it with some mirrored shades.
"We could look to see," Bayonetta said from the balcony. "I admit, the ones I went to last night might have been a bit classy for your taste."
"Classy," Jeanne said with a smirk.
Her sunscreen landed on the towel, knocking the sunglasses aside.
"The music might have been a bit--how do I say this--live."
"You know me, I like it freshly killed."
"Of course. Actually, do you mind if I ask you something?"
This sudden pivot from their tennis match of teasing made Jeanne look up from the suitcase she was digging through for her bucket hat. "Of...course?"
So Bayonetta was actually getting ready for the beach. A similar pile was forming on her own mattress, albeit one with a couple more spine-cracked, dog-eared, weatherbeaten cheesy romance novels from the hotel lounge.
"Are you seeing anybody right now?"
Jeanne turned the reversible hat over in her hands, rubbed at its stitching. It suddenly looked unfashionable instead of, how she'd seen it at home, functional for sun protection.
"I'll have a fling or two in the summer, Bayonetta...during the school year it's just...I don't want to put someone through that, I always take work home..."
Bayonetta nodded without speaking, and dropped her earbuds on top of her own hat, a pretty straw one with a wide brim.
B
The water ran over their bare feet and it felt odd walking at the slight incline the sea made the smooth wet sand into. Jeanne looked to her left and wanted to drink in the blue, the screaming of the seagulls, the occasional pelican, the black stinky seaweed the ocean vomited up; all of it. She wanted to put it in her bag and take it home to look at over and over. She felt a gentle tap on her right arm and stopped, turning to see Bayonetta crouched down over a shell. It was smaller than a finger, and spiraled to a point, pink and beige with pretty dark red patterns.
"Is a hermit crab going to find it and live in it?" Bayonetta asked, turning it over in her hands.
"Yes," Jeanne said automatically. "If their body fits inside. They outgrow shells frequently--sometimes they use plastic trash. They have a ritual where they exchange shells with other crabs. They line up largest to smallest and all switch their shells."
"That's house swapping."
Jeanne made a husky chortle. "Whatever."
"What was in it before, anyway? If a hermit crab uses it secondhand."
As Bayonetta stood up with a knee crusted in sand, holding the shell, Jeanne shook her head. "I'm a teacher. You cannot ask me a question like that and not expect to be bored out of your mind for twenty-five minutes."
"Okay first off," Bayonetta held up the shell, "This has nothing to do with history."
"That's what Ty said when I made them watch the documentary."
"You're a history teacher why would you show a documentary on hermit crab--"
Jeanne put a finger to Bayonetta's lips. "Well, like Somaya told Ty, 'shut up we're getting credit for this and it's cute'."
"That must be a violation of state curriculu--" Bayonetta stopped midsentence. Then she raised a finger to point at Jeanne's face. "You don't. Have a pet hermit crab in your classroom. In your class about world history."
"His name is Charles."
Bayonetta rolled her eyes and leaned her head back before looking back at Jeanne. "This is why! This is why you looked at me like that while I had the crab legs at dinner--"
"I wasn't going to say anything--"
"--I was eviscerating Charles's cousin right in front of you and you weren't going to say anything--"
"Look," Jeanne said, "When you take care of them for years--they have a certain smell when they're old, or dirty, and--cooked crabs have the same--"
"No! No!" Bayonetta covered her ears, one of her hands still holding the shell.
Jeanne smirked. "Can you hear the ocean?"
"It's right next to me, of cou--OHHHH YOU--!" Jeanne ran off while Bayonetta pursued her; the witch managed to get away somehow, possibly due to more pretty shells needing to be looked at, and stretched her towel over the sand in a not-too-crowded area. The wind was stronger here, and kept moving her towel and sending bits of sand flying onto it. She glanced over to see an empty lifeguard chair.
Guess we're on our own. She had a stray, protective thought of Bayonetta and pushed it down; she's an adult, she can take care of herself. Besides, the waves were small, nothing an Umbra witch couldn't handle.
That was when Bayonetta landed on her back and wrapped her arms around Jeanne's neck. "You never answered my question!"
Jeanne laughed involuntarily and put up a tiny amount of struggle as Bayonetta held her. "Sea snails! Sometimes bivalves and scaphopods. Sometimes pieces of wood if they're hollow, rocks, anything that's big enough--they have to protect their back end, it's soft. They're really swapping armor."
"And why do they need shells to begin with? Why don't regular crabs need shells?" Bayonetta pointed to one, almost invisible against the white sand, crawling sideways and disappearing into a hole in the sand the size of a silver dollar pancake.
"They have armor of their own. The hermit crab has a curved soft abdomen that keeps growing. Sometimes it fights over shells with other crabs if there aren't enough shells."
"So you won't let me take these home," Bayonetta dumped two handfuls of shells on the towel in front of her.
"I...wasn't going to say anything," Jeanne said. God--Bayonetta was still wrapped around her, and the closeness was too much, but she just couldn't push away. If she didn't say anything about it, Bayonetta wouldn't be weirded out...and she might keep doing it.
And Jeanne hadn't realized she was this starved for touch.
"I am taking homes away from your pets."
"Whatever. Let's use them to make the sandcastle extra grand."
Bayonetta opted to take a dip first, so Jeanne started the sandcastle on her own, glancing over occasionally to make sure Bayonetta's head was still above water while pretending not to. She'll just think I'm annoyed with her for leaving me the hard architectural work, it'll be fine.
When Bayonetta did come bounding out of the foamy waves like something out of Baywatch, she slapped Jeanne on the back as she came around her. Wet. Very wet.
"You don't want your towel?" Jeanne said, looking up at her while shaping the first tower.
"No, why? You're coming to swim for real with me after, right?"
"Right," Jeanne looked down immediately at the sand. Playing with Bayonetta in the water seemed like a literal slippery slope into the best kind of disaster. Especially with her questions earlier--Jeanne should have said something, anything else, although she was pretty sure Bayonetta knew what was up.
Bayonetta set a shell, point side up, on top of Jeanne's tower. It did look grand. Jeanne wanted to live inside it.
"I could steal that kid's buckets," Bayonetta said. "Wow, now, if looks could kill, missus goody two shoes, I was joking!"
"You were serious," Jeanne said with a voice full of murder.
"Well he's not using them right now."
"Already halfway to hell. No wonder you're the superior heir to the Umbra."
"Well now he picked one of them up. All I'm saying is we need some sort of shaping tool to get a proper parapet set up. The parapets you make by pinching the sand just looks like pyramids."
Jeanne self-consciously returned to the parapets and tried to sprinkle some more wet sand on them to make them rectangular-esque, but the droplets of water from her hand tended to make it look partially melted. She felt another wet hand, this time at her shoulder, but she was too focused to look up. Suddenly a child's voice came from behind her.
"Hi, do you wanna use my buckets?"
The boy had to be four or five, holding his father's hand, and he dropped two sand-shaping buckets in front of them. Jeanne looked at him and smiled. "You are so nice! Thank you! Bayonetta, say thank you!"
"Thank you, dear. Are you going swimming? Be careful."
"Papa's with me," the kid said, and his father smiled as they walked into the surf holding hands. Jeanne felt a warm glow as she turned back to their little castle. Bayonetta wasted no time in refurbishing the parapets. She rapidly shoveled sand in and made several more buildings, which Jeanne attached to the earlier ones by forming a wall. Bayonetta topped each building with a seashell. The kid came over after his swim and played with them for a bit, telling them stories, before him and his father had to go to lunch. Jeanne and Bayonetta bid them a warm farewell.
"I didn't realize it was already lunchtime. What do you feel like?" Jeanne said. She had already taken copious photos of their castle, but she just had to admire it some more.
Bayonetta's voice came in far too close to her ear. "You promised. Swimming."
"Oh."
Oh.
B
Jeanne was several kinds of not ready.
She wasn't ready for the coolness to wrap her whole body, sending delicious chills through her and washing off the sweat. She wasn't prepared to be splashed by a wave right in the face, making her cough and spit, and making Bayonetta laugh her ass off.
"Go fuck yourself, Bayonetta, I bet that happened to you when you first ran in!" Jeanne coughed the last bit of salt water out, but it was definitely still in her nose and her eyes were stinging. That was her daily sodium intake taken care of. She paddled a bit farther, wanting to lose the sensation of wet sand underfoot.
"Jeanne. There's no lifeguard."
"Shut up!"
"This isn't a dick-measuring contest. Get back here."
Jeanne whipped around to face her. "Did you just say--of all the things you could have said--"
Bayonetta said, "Sometimes it feels like that, with you! What can I say?"
"I was being controlled by Balder back then!"
"What, when we were...no, I didn't mean that," Bayonetta swam closer. "It's just that you're being a little too careful. Relax, all right? I mean..."
The statement was completely contradictory. Jeanne stared at the other witch for a few moments, and then Bayonetta swam behind her and put her hands on Jeanne's shoulders. It was non-obtrusive, and Jeanne realized it was a sign. That Bayonetta was waiting for her to communicate how comfortable she was with being held in the water.
And Jeanne was absolutely not ready to be given that choice.
If Bayonetta had playfully, forcefully grabbed her without asking, that would've almost protected her. But now she had taken Bayonetta's hands and wrapped them around her shoulders. Now it was her fault that she and Bayonetta were touching. This was why people hogged the bathroom to fuck in it, Jeanne realized. Water was a magical intimacy enhancer, and Bayonetta wasn't clutching her too tightly, or gripping her at all, but felt so close by virtue of their shared buoyancy.
This is not going to become my fantasy. This is not going to become my fantasy. This is not going to become--
Bayonetta rested her head on the part of Jeanne's back between her neck and shoulder. Jeanne took a deep breath, but she wasn't going to tell her to move off. She wanted this like air.
"Just trying...to not make you uncomfortable. That's all," Jeanne said.
"Oh?"
Jeanne took a few minutes to collect herself, then turned and continued paddling farther out. Bayonetta didn't seem to slow her down at all, and it was a thrill to think that she might be quietly enjoying the ride.
The waves were hardly noticeable the farther out they went. And there were still people swimming out at this depth, just not families, and some of them had snorkels. Jeanne wondered if they should buy some...but then they only had a couple of days left.
"Are you going to dive?" Bayonetta asked, with a challenging lilt to her voice. It was hardly above a whisper, but she was so close to Jeanne's ear she could hear her perfectly. And her chin was resting on Jeanne's shoulder blade...
"With...with you?"
"Do you think I can't handle it? I was under a lake for centuries. Just tell me when."
"When," Jeanne murmured.
She waited to hear Bayonetta take a breath, and then slipped under the surface, kicking strongly up and gliding across the blue mesh of light playing on the sand. Everything was clear, even if it stung her eyes a little bit. When they were at the floor, Bayonetta grabbed a handful of it, and everything clouded. Jeanne broke the surface a few moments later, then turned to her passenger. "Smooth."
"I saw a crab."
"My ass."
"No, not your ass. I mean I saw that too. But I also saw a crab."
"We need to go have lunch."
"One more dive! I won't do that again, Jeanne!"
Jeanne looked around--no one else was swimming at this depth. It was probably a good idea to head back. Bayonetta was, in a way, her tandem skydiver.
"Jeanne?"
"Just a moment, I'm catching my breath."
Bayonetta leaned her cheek and ear on Jeanne's back. "So...you mentioned you have a fling or two in the summer?"
Jeanne's heart rate spiked.
"Who pays?"
"What?"
"Who pays for the date if it's a fling?"
That was definitely a gender question. Oh did Bayonetta think she was clever.
"I don't get paid enough. And I'm too proud to make it a gift, if that's what you're asking. Splitting it only makes sense. The real gift is the time."
Bayonetta didn't respond to that, probably still reeling from the fact that she wasn't going to get a direct I'm a lesbian from her Jet-Ski, and Jeanne decided to hit back.
"Do you and Luka...fight over the check?"
"I mean," Bayonetta said in a weird voice, "yes, but then he complains."
"About what?"
Bayonetta didn't answer. Which was a shame, because deep down Jeanne really would have liked to know what someone who got to date Bayonetta had to complain about.