Archive of Our Own

The first time Francesca catches Michaela with a woman, it is a most jarring affair. Up until that point she hadn’t even considered that women could be so intimate with other women. And then she had thought she hated it, that there was obviously something wrong with it to make her feel so off-balance. So she avoided Michaela for a good week afterward. A week that was actually extremely difficult because Michaela was practically her best friend and she thinks at times, she’s far more attached to her than the other way around.

She just didn’t know how to deal with it, the onslaught of such a discovery, of being angry about it. Yes. She felt angry. Angry at Michaela? It was such a weird feeling, one she hadn’t really felt through their entire friendship, one she felt was even impossible by the even closer formed bond after John’s death. And now, yet, she felt angry.

Why had Michaela never just simply told her actually? Maybe it wouldn’t have been so jarring to stomp her way into Michaela’s room, admittedly late at night because she had a bad dream, and find them like that if Michaela had just said that she was interested in women in such a way. Not that Francesca has any experience with this, she’s hardly ever seen anything but what is normally expected. Still, she’s heard rumors before, she could have figured it out had she had time to process it.

But, no, Michaela did not tell her about a single thing in the five years they have been friends, did not tell her that the only reason she desired to be as much of a spinster as Eloise is because she, in fact, didn’t like men at all. Really, neither did Eloise, but she thought it was still the same. Not that Michaela’s absence of attraction for men meant an attraction for women instead.

Anger wasn’t something Francesca usually felt for much of anything. Normally she went out of her way to better understand someone else’s point of view, but the anger just would not leave her. She’d close her eyes, and she’d see it all over again and the anger would return white hot in her chest and boil in her veins like a pot of water on a stove.

What was worse though was that it didn’t just feel like anger, the word alone didn’t feel like enough to describe the way the images buzzed under Francesca’s skin, how she saw Michaela arching her back behind her eyelids, how she heard her breathy whimper in her head from where that girl had been touching her.

If she thought about just Michaela and her skin that had been on display when she had first opened the door, anger wasn’t the right word at all. She only felt angry when she thought about the girl under Michaela’s hips. She only felt angry when she thought about her with her hand between Michaela’s legs while she looked up at her like… like…

Scoffing suddenly and alerting everyone else at the table to her discomfort, Francesca pushed herself back abruptly, the scraping of the chair against wood grating on everyone’s ears, including her own. She tries not to noticeably wince but Eloise who had been pouring Cressida’s tea for her was giving her a bit of a wide-eyed look, that she most definitely avoided.

Eloise knew all her secrets, knew the way her mind worked better than anyone. She wasn’t good at hiding her frustration lately, but even if she had been Eloise would have captured the shift quicker than almost anyone. Maybe not quicker than Michaela who’s eyes she can feel burning into her back as she strides out of the room, but still fast enough to get the thought that she should try and see what’s wrong.

Francesca doesn’t want her to see what’s wrong, she wants to be left alone about it.

So she goes to her music room where she knows everyone will not disturb her and she does mean to do the only outlet she’s truly good at, the only thing that ever makes sense and always makes sense to her. That’s to play out every last negative and confusing emotion swirling around in her chest on her pianoforte. But she can’t find a rhythm she wants to play, and she ends up just staring at the keys, glaring at them as if they’re that girl.

The only thing that saves her from glaring daggers into the keys of her pianoforte is Michaela, who enters without knocking, the only person that usually can enter without complaint. This time though, Francesca pries her mouth open against its will and forces out a “I’m busy” so that Michaela might leave her alone too.

Michaela doesn’t.

“You are not playing.” She says simply in response and makes her way toward her crossing space so quickly that it spikes Francesca’s heart rate with her proximity. They had not even been in much touching distance since that night, Francesca had gone through much to avoid her and avoid this. “You are mad, angry maybe. I get that, I know it is peculiar and-”

“Why did you not tell me?” She says abruptly cutting her off. Keys whine under her fingers when she presses on them to get some of the frustration lingering through her body out, to try and force the image of that girl’s face as she stared after Michaela out of her damn head. “You should have told me so that I might not find out like that.” She can feel the way her chest tightens as Michaela sits on the bench next to her, admittedly a bit uncomfortably because Francesca has not gone through the effort to make room for her, not wanting to seem inviting when all she feels like really doing is being alone so she can fume in her anger some more.

This just presses Michaela’s arm into her own, body heat radiating enough to make Francesca press keys a bit more urgently to chase the spark that lingers from her touch away as best as she can even through layers of clothing. “You are right. You have the right to be angry, but you must understand that I-” Michaela doesn’t finish her sentence even as Francesca cuts her playing off so abruptly that the last note lingers in the air like a bout of tinnitus in the ears.

When Francesca caves and does look at her, something within her resolve crumbles a bit. Michaela looks terrified, an open vulnerability in the eyes that stare at her that she hadn’t quite seen as prominently since John’s death. “You should have told me sooner.” Francesca says much softer, feeling her own heart trip and race when Michaela’s hand reached out to brush a wayward strand of honey colored hair behind her ear.

“I know.” She says vulnerably, a look of regret swirling deeply in the brown of her eyes, a color that Francesca had memorized so that she might think of them to soothe her own worries when she had them. “I did not want you to hate me.” Michaela’s fingers continue their journey, brushing across her cheek, thumb soothing the skin under Francesca’s eye.

She is leaning into it without much of a thought. “I could never hate you.” She says honestly, feeling her eyelids flutter a bit heavily with the affectionate touch, already feeling the calming nature of her touch. “Please do not keep things from me.” She finds that her tone is a bit begging, but this just seems to unravel Michaela’s vulnerabilities more, water springing forth and swimming in the deep doughy brown of her eyes.

It makes Francesca’s heart lurch painfully. She hates it when Michaela cries. “I thought you might not want me anymore. In your life.” Michaela sniffles and her touch on Francesca’s cheek falls away so that her hand can frustratedly wipe away the tear that falls. “I selfishly did not want to find out. I cannot bear a life without you in it.” Her tone is harsh and yet brokenly soft with her confession, her worries.

Feeling as frustrated with herself as she is with this surprising news about Michaela, she shifts on the seat to face her more clearly, taking Michaela’s face in both her hands and brushes her own thumbs under her favorite color of eyes to trail away the hot sting of Michaela’s tears and her fears away. “It is you and I, that is the promise we made after John, for the rest of our lives no matter what may come to us.” She wants to tell Michaela something scandalous, like if she needs affection that Francesca can and should be the one to give it to her, that she doesn’t need to seek it with anyone else.

She doesn’t say that though, she doesn’t even know what to do with such a thought. “I do not want you to feel disgusted by me.” Michaela whispers and presses her forehead to Francesca’s, eyelids fluttering closed, her breath brushing against Francesca’s lips, that warm feeling she hasn’t been able to name surging through her body again when she thinks of Michaela. Michaela and her arched back and her little whimper and now her breath.

“I could never be disgusted by you.” She brushes her nose affectionately against Michaela’s and smiles a bit when Michaela lets out the smallest of happy noises. She backs up from her now, feeling a little like she might close the distance between their mouths if she keeps hovering in such close proximity. “I am just a bit confused, is all.” What she’s really confused about is why seeing Michaela with another woman has given her such startling clarity as to what all of these feelings have always meant when it comes to the other woman.

“You can ask me, if you have questions.” Michaela’s deep brown eyes are quite imploring and beautiful, so Francesca lets herself stare after them for awhile before even considering an answer.

She thinks that if she were to ask anything involving what most of her racing thoughts have been within the last couple of weeks, they might rock a foundation she isn’t ready for. So instead, she just says, “I am not sure I would know what to ask.” with a sheepish smile gracing her face.

“That is okay too.” Michaela’s hand reaches and grabs one of her own. “Will you stop avoiding me now?” She asks it lightly, but she can tell by the slight hurt that swirls there in her gaze that Michaela had found it as painful to be apart as Francesca did. That Michaela was hurt by her distance.

Francesca takes in a sharp breath then, feeling a sense of guilt she had not anticipated. “I am sorry.” She finds herself saying noticing the tension that Michaela must have been under with the straining of their friendship after such a revelation. “I should not have been so avoidant, I just… as I said, I am a bit confused about it.” She doesn’t know how to address that she never wants to see Michaela touch another person that might not in fact be her again. That if she catches someone else ripping that gorgeous little sound from Michaela’s throat, she might simply lose her mind.

Michaela seems to at least sense the most basic parts of her thoughts though and says; “Well. I am not with her, it was just… a dalliance.”

“Hmm.” Francesca turns her hand over so their fingers can tangle together. “You do not seriously court someone?” She can’t look at her as she asks, fearing the answer would be that she would in fact be seeing that girl as if she was another member of the household. She is sure she could recruit Cressida into some mean girl actions to chase her off, but she isn’t sure she could commit to it without guilt.

She doesn’t wish for Michaela to be alone and unhappy, even if she feels she shouldn’t be feeling alone at all, not when they have their life together, the one they’ve had for several years now, that seemed to content the both of them to no end. She had never thought Michaela wanted anyone else or needed anyone else. It pains her to not be enough, and it pains her that strangers might know Michaela in ways that she doesn’t when she wishes to know every last inch of her.

Michaela looks at her for a long time after she asks that, her eyes brushing across the different features of her face as if searching for an answer. “No.” She eventually says. “I have no interest in courting.” She brushes her thumb across the softness of Francesca’s skin and Francesca feels the gentle touch travel through her as it normally does. “It is just sometimes that I might get lonely and-” Michaela bites her plump lower lip rather distractingly and Francesca finds her eyes following the action closely.

Warmth blooming in the turning of her own stomach. “You are a bit of a rake is what you are saying?” She quirks an eyebrow at her because she knows of all the women her brothers would spend their nights with before meeting their wives and wonders if it must be the same for unmarried women who prefer women.

She can’t stand the thought of Michaela with one other woman, let alone several.

The thought of Michaela with other women, so many of them in fact, resurfaces the hotness of her earlier anger. “I wouldn’t-” Michaela blushes deeply then, eyes cutting away from her with embarrassment. “It is just that I know I am not to find someone who loves me, so it is just the way of things.” Her free hand waves in the air as if some document full of rules for this kind of thing is meant to appear for Francesca to read.

“I love you.” Francesca confesses without much thought, which seems to stun Michaela only a moment before Francesca is barreling on. “Why would you not think that you could be loved when you are so very easy to love?” It always confuses her when Michaela says things that are similar to this, like she’s someone difficult to be around, someone unworthy of affection.

Francesca has loved Michaela since maybe the moment they met, that’s how easy it is for her, and she doesn’t understand how Michaela could ever think herself not worthy of such a thing. “It is not like courting at balls Fran. Love’s not like finding a John for me who will stand in silence outside. Love for me is not even accepted amongst most people.” Michaela huffs then, a frustration that Francesca knows isn’t directed at her. “It is just the way of things. And I am content most of the time with our life together that I do not much seek companionship outside of it. It is just that-” Michaela doesn’t meet her eyes, instead they lock on the fingers she plays with on Francesca’s hand that she holds in her own. “I get lonely.” She mumbles quietly and Francesca feels her heart pang with a want so strong she had nearly spilled it out loud without thought.

Again, that urge surfaces like fire to comfort her, to insist that if she’s lonely then Francesca can take care of it, that Francesca could take care of her in any way that she might need, in every way. That she doesn’t need another woman to ever be around for it. The only reason she doesn’t say any of that is because she doesn’t know what it actually means, nor does she know what to do with it. The only thing she does know is that it would change the very fabric of everything they’ve come to hold dear to them and change was a terrifying thing. “Okay.” She says instead, feeling a bit like she’s swallowing glass.

“Okay?” Michaela looks up at her again, looking a bit confused.

“I am okay with it.” She thinks it’s a lie, her chest burns hot with anger at the thought of women around Michaela, touching Michaela, pulling that whimper from Michaela. “I do not want you to be lonely.” She says almost painfully, and watches Michaela’s features soften as she stares at her.

“I am hardly lonely with you.” She says, like a promise but Francesca can’t be sure what she’s promising or what she even wants her to be promising. Michaela pulls her hand up to kiss the back of it, a soft affectionate smile gracing the plumpness of her mouth.

It is the last they speak of it for a while. Francesca doesn’t think about it much after either except for at night when her treacherous mind fills with the images of Michaela and her arched back, the planes of skin that she had never seen before that night. The dip where her spine is, the itch to trace every notch up until she’d reach her hair. Treacherous because it makes her feel alive to think about Michaela like that, and then angry to know that she had not been the one to make her make that lovely little whimper she had heard right before the coupled pair had realized they had been caught by her.

She sees it every night, and every night it simmers hotter and hotter inside of her chest that it doesn’t allow her to go back to normal with Michaela, not completely. She doesn’t avoid her, but there’s a noticeable lingering frustration that she feels if she even notices Michaela noticing another woman that makes her feel irrational and just a fraction toxic. At first, she thinks she manages to control it well enough that nobody would even be able to tell that something is wrong with her.

But then she notices that Michaela notices her lady’s maid a lot. Sarah.

Sarah has honey colored hair and blue eyes and fair skin and is nearly taller than Francesca. She’s also quite kind and a bit funny too, Francesca, up until now, has never had a single issue or problem with her whatsoever. In fact, she had been quite a delight these last few years to have under her service.

Now though, as Sarah was helping to tie Michaela’s cloak and blushing at her while she did so, Francesca felt the irrational urge to shove her. She didn’t give into the emotion though, but she did approach them rather suddenly that Sarah’s tying faltered and Michaela jumped a bit before offering her a warm smile in greeting, one that is just reserved for Francesca on most occasions. “I was just heading into town to get that cloth you were speaking of for the curtain you wanted. The red one.” There is a calmness to her that eases some of Francesca’s frustration but not all of it.

Francesca eyes Sarah warily. “Right. Sarah, can you leave us.” Sarah seemed shocked by this, as the tie she had been making had come loose in her surprise and she had to pull her fingers away from something unfinished.

Francesca had also never spoken to her so tightly before, it was clear that it was showing at least to her if not to the both of them. “Yes, my lady.” She bowed her head a bit, offered Michaela one last blushing smile and disappeared.

“Are you alright?” Michaela asked carefully, eyeing her suddenly cautiously.

Francesca looks away from her to watch Sarah leave the room entirely and then she takes Sarah’s place in tying her cloak. “Do you averagely go for lady’s maids?” She asks without looking at her, keeping her own eyes on her fingers as they tie the strings of Michaela’s deep purple cloak closed.

“I have before.” Michaela asks with a touch of amusement in her tone. “You do not think them fit for me?” She seems to sway closer to Francesca, so her chest brushes up against the arms she has raised as she finished the tie. She can feel Michaela’s heart racing and hates that the bitter thought of that girl returns to her, wondering how it might have raced while she had been with her.

“They are below your station.” Francesca says with a touch of anger before her hands move from tied strings to smooth out the edges of her cloak along her shoulders. She doesn’t meet Michaela’s eyes but does see her grinning at her, as if anything Francesca is doing is funny in the slightest.

As if anything was funny when Sarah had looked just as starry eyed as the girl that she had caught with Michaela a couple of weeks ago. “Princess, my station?” Michaela’s fingers had snuck their way to her chin to turn it. “Do not worry, I have not slept with any of our help and do not plan too.” She quirks a dark eyebrow at her as if trying to figure out where Francesca’s mind is.

The study is too close on her face, she worries that Michaela will be able to see it all for what it really is, and that dreadful change will surface and crumble their foundations. “She likes you.” Francesca says with a bit of bite before regrettably pulling her chin away from Michaela’s delicate fingers.

Michaela’s eyebrows trip upward with curiosity, too much of it. “I have not noticed.” Her fingers fall to rest at her sides and Francesca nearly has the urge to grab her arms and pull her right into her own body, to feel her against her and soothe away with uncomfortable anger that burns in her chest and makes her own heart pang with a horrible ache.

She doesn’t. “Well, she does, so mind your flirtations.” Her tone has softened somewhat, the nerves of Michaela seeing through her to the crux of the real issue doing its job at dampening her rage. Instead, the pain of Michaela not wanting her as she wants these other women seems to work more wonders than anything else for her rage, suddenly spiraling into her a melancholy she cannot entirely control.

“I was not flirting, but I will.” Michaela is back to being amused at her. “To be clear, it is not that she’s a woman but that she is below my station that bothers you? You think I should be flirting with ladies with title? I did not take you for a classist with all of your ideals.” Michaela leans over to grab her money pouch off the table she had set it on when preparing to leave. Her tone is full of a mischief that is not uncommon for her but usually Francesca finds more endearing than she does now.

“I-” Francesca huffs with frustration, glaring at Michaela when she releases a chuckle at her expense. “I do not wish to talk about it anymore.” She says suddenly and steps back from Michaela. She swallows and then softens. “Thank you for going to town for me.” She mumbles, diverting their attention away from the obvious… the jealousy that Francesca can still feel lingering under her skin.

“I would ask you to come but I know how you would prefer not to.” Michaela lets her change the subject, gazing at her with that look again, that one just for her that she consumes greedily. She has never seen Michaela gaze at anyone else with such a look and she likes to think she never will witness such a thing.

“I am sure I’d go anywhere if it was with you.” She finds herself saying and watches Michaela’s eyes grow a bit starry themselves.

It makes her heart race, thinking that maybe… what if… “Alas I would be forcing you. I shall return shortly, my love. By dinner.” And then Michaela leans up and kisses her cheek warmly, quick as ever, something she’s done a hundred times but every time she does it makes Francesca feel a little crazy, a little closer to succumbing to emotions she doesn’t understand.

Michaela is gone before she can recover and ask to join her anyway.

Michaela does not come back for dinner.

At first it worries her, she is sure something bad could have happened and had even sent her footman, Gary, out to look for her. She was not meant to be gone so long. Long enough that the moon was high, and the stars sparkled through the sky, and Francesca should definitely be in bed. But she couldn’t sleep without Michaela home, without knowing she was safe, sometimes she couldn’t even sleep without Michaela in the same bed as her. Tonight felt eerily like one of those.

She paced the length of her music room for what felt like hours of the night until she had heard her. She had heard her steps, not exactly quiet, first and had reached for the door before she heard more than just her steps and then heard a giggle. A not Michaela like giggle and she could feel her blood immediately start to boil in that same kind of low simmer that she had felt all week when thinking of what she had walked in on, or when witnessing Sarah giggle around Michaela.

This is why she was late?

She jerks the door open without much thought as to why it might be better to let them pass and escape into Michaela’s room without her interruption. She cannot stand it, the thought of some other girl, some girl just like the one she had seen the first time, in Michaela’s room, in her bed, with her hands all over her… all over what is hers… what’s hers.

“Oh, Frannie, I’m sorry. I thought you would be asleep.” Michaela said with a slight slur to her tone. She had this girl, slightly taller than her, and a lot similar looking to Sarah which leaves a thought she does not wish to evaluate too closely, pinned to the wall between her arms. “Why are you not asleep?” Michaela asks with sudden worry in her tone, her arms removing themselves from the girl so that she might turn her body toward her fully.

Francesca clenches her jaw in an effort to control her own rage. “You did not come home as you said you would.” She wonders if Michaela even went to town for the very thing that she had said she was going to get or if Michaela got distracted by skirts as easily as her brothers and had completely forgotten that sweet task she had originally left for.

As if Francesca is an afterthought to other girls, the mere thought takes her boiling rage to an overflow, sure steam is practically coming out of her own ears. Bile rises in her throat. “Oh,” Michaela’s features shift into what must be guilt. “I am sorry darling, I did send word back with Gary, did he not find you?” She looks drunk and utterly confused and maybe as if she’s slightly forgotten about the girl she leaves against the wall now that her back is to her.

Francesca blinks, the rage and bile not decreasing, simply just simmering over like an overheated pot, taking her over. “No, he did not.” She snaps and Michaela stares at her with a bit wider of eyes, unused to seeing Francesca so angry, so ready to explode with untapped rage.

“He was meant to when he brought back the cloth, do you know if he may have returned at all?” Now her eyebrows knit adorably in thoughtful concern. It only briefly distracts Francesca from the rage surfacing in her body, but all it takes to have it return is a glance behind Michaela and it slams through her with force.

“No.” She says shortly, her eyes leaving Michaela entirely to take in the girl that was still leaning against the wall, messy untidy honey colored hair tangled around her, eyes glazed much like Michaela’s and watching the both of them with a sense of wonder and curiosity that did nothing to dampen or cool Francesca’s anger.

Michaela opens her mouth to speak but the girl speaks first as if suddenly remembering that she was here as well and not just an observer of a play unfolding. “I did not know you had a wife.” She says with a slight chuckle, a delicate hand raising to her mouth to tamp down on the drunk uncontrolled sound of it. “If you had told me this was a party, I would have brought someone along too.” She utters with full flirtation. Francesca does not like the way her eyes rake themselves down Michaela in almost a hungry fashion, like she can’t wait to tear the dress she wears from her very body.

Something ugly rears it’s head then in Francesca, something she had never in her life done even once. “I think it best you leave.” And she doesn’t even recognize the tone from herself. Cold and dangerous, like she is more than willing to fling herself across the space and forcibly remove her no matter the amount of strength.

“Oh Fran, I really am sorry I didn’t mean-”

“I want her to leave.” She snaps even colder, meeting Michaela’s eyes and something must be blazing there because for once Michaela is the one to shrink from her, an unsureness to her movements that Francesca had never once caused her before.

“Okay.” Michaela says quietly, looking scolded and fearful.

The girl looks surprised at her answer, pulling herself off the wall. “Okay?” A harsh tone of disappointment and shock seems to be coloring her voice. Her being disappointed greatly satisfies Francesca though, knowing that she won’t be getting her hands on what doesn’t belong to her, at least not tonight.

“Yes, I will walk you out.” Michaela doesn’t touch her, and it is only when they are out of her sight that Francesca realizes she had been clenching her jaw hard enough to nearly crack her own teeth. Only when they are gone that she can feel the bite of her nails into the skin of her palm that informs her she had been curling her hands into fists and that perhaps she was even shaking with her pent-up rage.

She releases her breath, anger simmering white hot in her gut and forces herself to breathe in deeply and then out as she waits for Michaela’s return. But the longer Michaela takes the worse her anger seems to simmer. By the time Michaela does return, she’s already curling her hands into fists again. “Fran-”

“You do not say you are going to be back for dinner and then do not come back. You do not do that!” She feels so angry, so annoyed, so upset, so… jealous. “And to bring someone back here when you are not even in your right mind.” She can’t even stand the thought of Michaela being anywhere but home while inebriated, let alone the hands of others moving to take advantage of the state.

“She’s a lady with a title.” Michaela says and she must think herself clever until she’s averting her eyes down to her feet when Francesca gives her a scathing look. “You do not like it, do you?” Michaela says, voice suddenly full of emotion. “It upsets you that I am the way I am. You do not like it.” Her voice wobbles with the emotion of the accusation, her drunkenness allowing for a lack of control of her own emotions. Admittedly, Michaela was more open with her feelings in front of Francesca than Francesca could be about her own anyway, but there is always a certain level of ease Michaela finds when like this that cannot ever be matched in a sober state.

Francesca breathes through her nose to control her anger in order to find her patience, something that she had never much had a problem with finding in her past. “That is not the problem.” She finds herself moving without much thought after that, tipping Michaela’s chin up so she stops looking at her feet, drowning in the darkness of the hallway and the softness of her eyes as she stares at her. Francesca anger finally starts to ease almost entirely, the magic of Michaela and her starry eyed looks. “I was worried.” She admits softly. “I thought something had happened to you.” She feels her anxiety ease, anxiety she had felt when Michaela never returned.

Michaela, drunk enough apparently to have less inhibitions, swings her arms suddenly around Francesca’s waist and pulls her right up against her body just as Francesca had daydreamed about earlier. “I truly did not mean to worry you. I am so sorry.” Francesca has let her own fingers move with a mind of their own, reaching to brush them against a warm blushed cheek, flawless dark skin right under her fingertips. Michaela turns her head just barely into the touch so that she can gently kiss Francesca’s hand before looking up at her, starry eyed once again. “Can you forgive me?” She asks softly, her tone at a slight rasp and full of her emotions.

Francesca finds that she had forgiven her long before she even asked. All her anger suddenly gone now that she’s the one holding Michaela’s attention and in Michaela’s arms. “I am not angry.” She says truthfully, knowing all her anger had not truly been for Michaela at all. “We must get you to bed, you are drunk.” She brushes her fingers affectionately against that warm cheek before fiddling with a coiled curl around her finger.

“Only a little.” Michaela smiles at her, warm and teasing. “You want to go to bed with me?” She flutters her eyelashes and Francesca immediately feels her face flush with a blush at the implication. “Oh.” Michaela’s arms abandon her then and a spike of panic rushes through her that Michaela was able to see her earlier attitude for what it really is. “I am sorry. I did not mean it like… I do not wish to make you uncomfortable.” She presses a hand to her forehead as if suddenly dizzy, a worry crossing her features that Francesca finds immediately endearing.

So she tells the truth. “I’d love to go to bed with you, come.” She reaches her hand out in offering and watches Michaela hesitate as she digests her words.

She smiles unsurely at her and takes her hand, letting Francesca guide them to Francesca’s room, not Michaela’s. “Do we get Sarah?” Michaela asks as Francesca closes the door behind her once she’s lead Michaela through it.

Annoyance surfaces before she can stop it, earlier anger simmering enough still to immediately cover her tone with it. “No.” She says coldly and avoids Michaela’s eyes when they search to find her own.

She looks adorably confused now. “But I cannot do this myself and-”

“I can do it.” Francesca says. The possessiveness to be everything and exactly what Michaela needs controlling all of her senses that she cannot even evaluate if it’s a good idea for her to be doing this or not, to be undressing Michaela and helping her to bed in a way one titled lady does not do for another titled lady.

Michaela stares at her so openly for a moment, the silence becoming deafening. It would consume them even more if it weren’t for the crackling of a lit fireplace that sparked across the curious planes of Michaela’s face, her dark skin looking soft to the touch in the firelight. Francesca felt her hands twitch with the desire to trace every contour she could see, to find the blemishes that she can’t see with her eyes, to make Michaela make that stupid fucking whimper she can’t get out of her head. “That is below your station.” Michaela finally says. A full tease with a dopey drunk grin gracing the lovely plump edges of her beautiful mouth.

Francesa cannot resist the smile that escapes her at seeing Michaela’s face relaxed into such amusement. “Shut up and turn around.” She demands and snorts when Michaela gives her a drunken salute and spins, wobbling enough that Francesca immediately reaches out and stills her with her hands on her hips.

Michaela’s intake of breath is sharp and loud at her touch. It sends a shiver through Francesca she can’t tamp down on and control in the same way she hasn’t been able to control her own rage and jealousy. “You are kind of like torture, do you know that?” Michaela says with a sigh as Francesca reaches to pull some of the adornments in her hair out, helping soothe the coiled curls of her hair around her fingers gently.

“How so?” She abandons the soft hair to start tugging at the laces of Michaela’s day dress, listening to Michaela sigh dreamily as if she was about to fall asleep standing there with Francesca roughly working open her dress.

“You are like a wife and yet I cannot treat you as my wife. It is like torture.” Francesca swallows, her heart immediately finding an uneven rhythm at such a confession… a drunk confession. She can’t get carried away with a drunk confession.

“I thought you did not wish to have a wife.” She mumbles nervously, feeling her heart rate spike into her throat.

Michaela doesn’t answer her for a long time, just stills and lets Francesa help her out of her clothes and into her nightdress, lets Francesca wrap her hair and protect it. When she turns around finally, dressed for bed, she looks at Francesca so seriously that it makes her nearly confess her own buried emotions. “The only thing I ever seem to wish for is you.” Michaela’s eyes go starry again, touching her cheek with her warm fingertips and Francesca automatically tips into the touch.

“Perhaps you shall stop bringing women home then, if all you want is already here.” Francesca can’t really believe she utters it, like a soft confession mixed with her plea. She feels like she’s just laid every last desire bare for her to gaze upon, that the change she was so fearful of swirls in the room with such a statement and that it’s ready to consume her entirely.

Michaela is too drunk to understand her though and instead of any type of consumption, it simply fizzles out. “You are so funny.” Michaela tips up and kisses her cheek. “I so wish.” She says with a sigh so heavy that Francesca feels it strongly in her own chest.

If she was honest with herself, she has no idea quite what Michaela means by that, but before she can ask Michaela is already tripping past her and falling into her bed and struggling with the covers enough that Francesca has to bury her wonderings and thoughts in order to help her into it. Michaela makes a noise of protest when she pulls away from her after tucking her in and that noise travels into her chest, warming it entirely. “Do not worry, I am staying.” She promises, moving around the bed to climb into the other side.

Michaela slips over to her through the soft blankets so that she can lay against Francesca like she’s the pillows. She tries to steady her heartbeat at feeling Michaela’s breath against her collarbone while she tucks her face into her neck, tries to not let it stutter when she feels Michaela breathe in her scent and then brush her nose up against her skin, with her arms curling around her waist, a leg slipping against her own. “Goodnight, princess.” She utters tiredly as if she’s had the most exhausting day and only now has she found peace.

Francesca feels her heart ache almost pleasantly for once. “Goodnight.” She whispers so quietly that Michaela is likely to have not even heard, kissing her head. Her body feels too alive, her mind too full to properly fall asleep right as Michaela does. What takes Michaela no time at all abandons Francesca with the same kind of ease. But the longer she lays there with Michaela’s steady breathing and her breath against her skin the calmer she starts to feel and eventually the more tired.

She falls asleep then, wondering if she should simply just admit to Michaela how she’s been feeling, that it seems Michaela might return such affections. She is more than terrified of anything changing, of risking her life with Michaela right now because it is still the best life she could imagine after John. But perhaps there is an even better one that the both of them could have, if they wanted it bad enough.

Francesca is starting to think, there isn’t much else she could want.

Michaela doesn’t bring anyone home with her for at least two weeks after that. In fact, Michaela spends most of her time with Francesca, something reminiscent of the early days of their friendship where they’d frequent each other’s orbit so often that they both knew it couldn’t be an accident. It is such a comfort to the negative balm of emotions that had been swelling and slowly consuming Francesca previously that they finally start dimming significantly, though it doesn’t keep her from making sure Sarah’s duties aren’t to Michaela anymore.

Francesca even thinks that there isn’t much of a way that Michaela hasn’t noticed her possessiveness. If they go into town together she makes sure that no one will much look to approach them, and if she notices Michaela noticing some girl that also notices her back, she does what she can to make it clear that Michaela isn’t available to them, even though she so clearly is. The thing about it though is that Michaela, whether she’s noticed or not, doesn’t seem to mind Francesca’s sudden clinginess.

She lets Francesca be the one to put her cloak on rather than anyone else in the house doing it, she lets Francesca pour tea for her or bring her mail or even help her out of her dress and wrap her hair when it is time for bed. And most importantly, she’s been frequenting Francesca’s bed at night where she allows Francesca to pull her in and fall asleep with her arms tightly around Michaela so that no one else can have her, so that Francesca can pretend for a while that Michaela belongs to her entirely and that she won’t ever seek another woman out again.

All of it is comforting and she feels like Michaela likes it. She had thought Michaela liked it anyway, she was almost sure of it. She was almost sure even that Michaela had wanted her in that same starry eyed way all the girls that wanted Michaela wanted her. Every lingering touch and gentle action led to that look directed at Francesca and every time it did her heart beat so hard in her own chest she was worried Michaela would be able to see it moving inside of her own chest, it often felt as if it was working to burst itself out.

But change was a damning thing, and she was still too scared to ask for the rest or to state that she wanted it. So she didn’t. She slipped into a cuddlier routine with Michaela, one that the other woman allowed for them, and embraced every subtle possessive action she could indulge in. It didn’t satisfy the jealousy that had been coursing through her veins since she first heard that whimper, but it did ease her of acting ridiculous every time Sarah might breathe in the same room as Michaela.

And it all had been going so very well too. So she doesn’t really understand why Michaela seeks to ruin it when she does.

“I am going to be gone awhile.” Michaela had started by saying on a rather dreary Monday, drizzling rain removing them from their normal afternoon walk. The sun was already going down and it had yet to stop, and Francesca had been annoyed by that alone. She found it even more annoying that she automatically knew why Michaela would be leaving at a late hour such as this, what it meant for the last two weeks of peace she had experienced in completely clinging herself to Michaela, what it meant about Michaela’s own feelings even.

“Why?” She finds herself asking rather than pretending she is fine with it.

Michaela blushes the moment she asks, and she feels her gut turn unpleasantly. “Just, to go out for a bit, a friend’s party.” Michaela doesn’t meet her eye with the confession of her plans, won’t even look at her as if playing the part of a guilty husband.

She asks immediately, “Can I come?” thinking the only way she’s going to fend off women from trying to offer suit to Michaela is by being on her arm.

Michaela normally would never deny her such a request. It is not often that Francesca asks to go anywhere, she is averagely content to stay in her bubble without leaving for weeks on end and Michaela usually is the one to coax her out of it and guide her to some sort of event or gathering. Her effort to appeal to this dynamic does not work, however, and instead Michaela is already shaking her head with her denial of the request. “It is really not a party for a lady like yourself.” Michaela says almost sheepishly, almost guilty.

Francesca’s gut keeps turning. “But it is one for you?”

“Yes.” Michaela says immediately and doesn’t meet her eyes yet again. Instead, she’s looking down at her own hands as they suddenly nervously fiddle together. “The party is for women like me, with my peculiarity.” Her voice shakes slightly when she says it and it’s the only thing to ease the outrageous discomfort that Francesca is feeling.

She hates that she makes Michaela feel scared to be herself around her with something like this. She doesn’t know how to explain to her that she has no problem with Michaela wanting women, that the problem lies in the fact that Michaela may or may not want her. That she wants Michaela so badly it can be hard to breathe and that Michaela not wanting her back in the same way makes her feel a little out of her mind with agony. “Alright.” She concedes and lets her own gaze leave Michaela to look out at the falling rain again.

Her stomach goes back to turning violently with the thought of women touching Michaela… her Michaela. “You are okay with it, that I may go?” Michaela is asking not for permission, but to double check with her yet again about her comfort level of Michaela’s curiosity since Francesca’s discovery.

Francesca sighs. “Yes.” She lies, feeling that familiar aching of words and confessions that wish to spill from her lock themselves up in her own throat and scrap against it almost painfully.

She blinks, the prickle of water in her eyes alerting her to the general absence of control of her own emotions lately when involving Michaela and her ever consuming feelings for her. “I will be back tonight, okay?”

“Do be safe.” She feels her fingers curl into her palms again, fists forming with the will to keep in a thousand confessions that strive to release themselves from the confines of her own chest. They wish to roll off her tongue and fill the silent space between them, to keep Michaela in her grasp and assure her that she would never be lonely if she only sought touch and affection from her instead of whomever she were to find at these apparent parties.

“I always am for you.” Michaela is grinning at her, a beautiful lovely smile that Francesca feels burn itself into her mind when she looks at it, twitching fingers wishing to press into keys with the sudden beauty of it so that she might paint the image into music.

She goes to speak really, but nothing comes out and instead she gets stuck watching Michaela leave. And then she’s trapped for the rest of the night, mindlessly wandering the castle and trying desperately to not let her mind rest on the thought of Michaela and that girl or any other girl together. Touching and sighing and doing things that Francesca could easily do for Michaela if she were to only let her. If she were to only want her.

Maybe if Francesca were to only ask?

“Fran?” Eloise catches her on one of her pacing routes since it is well past when Francesca normally retires unless she is caught behind keys and wandering the halls of Kilmartin is decidedly not her stuck at her pianoforte.

“Eloise.” She says with just as much surprise because her sister did not quite look ready for bed herself, she looks as if maybe she had only just returned from somewhere.

“I thought you in bed.” Eloise says with an amused smile. “Wandering around like a ghost. Can you not sleep?” Her cheeks look pink with the cold wind from outside as she’s brushing damp strands of brown hair over her own shoulder, a concern for Francesca swirling in the pit of her blue eyes that normally softens Francesca right up to confessing whatever secret she has buried in her chest.

She holds onto this one though and instead focuses on a truth that Eloise is already well aware of. “Michaela is not here.” She says easily, because this isn’t the first time that if Michaela isn’t in the castle, then Francesca is wide awake. It is actually quite a common occurrence that Eloise takes no surprise in this answer.

She is more than used to the explanation even. “She is perfectly safe.” Eloise nods assuredly and then Francesca is furrowing her eyebrows at her because the way she had uttered it implied that she had seen to that herself.

Now, Francesca finds her gaze wandering down Eloise’s attire, taking in the very fabric of her clothes, decidedly damp as well from rain and a dress fit for a lovely evening party. “Did you see her?” She asks with a bit of shock entering her tone because though she had known that Michaela and Eloise did many things together, she had not exactly realized that they had such parties in common.

Perhaps she should have though, as Eloise has never once been interested in men but has always been quite close to women. “I was with her.” Eloise is tugging the strings of the tie of her baby blue cloak as she answers distractedly, letting the wet thing curl around her arms and fall off her shoulders.

Francesca blinks for what feels like several minutes and only answers when Eloise looks up after a long bout of her silence. “You go with her to such parties?” She asks for clarification she truly doesn’t need.

Eloise then looks at her almost shocked. “Such parties?” She asks carefully and Francesca immediately huffs impatiently about it.

She raises her hand to emphasize her point. “The one with all the women with a common peculiarity.”

“Oh, so you know.” Immediately, Eloise is blushing. “Yes, I have been going to them since Michaela and I first became friends.” Her gaze flits around nervously, a common thing for Eloise when revealing something deeply personal about herself that she had maybe not wanted others to quite know.

“Oh.” Francesca frowns deeply then. “And I had not noticed.” She says observationally, feeling like she might be a bad sister and a bad friend all of a sudden. First Michaela, her lovely Michaela and her desires that she had wrapped tightly behind doors closed enough for Francesca to not even see them for years… or had she simply just not been paying attention and the whole time it had been rather obvious? Because now here was Eloise with the same peculiarity as Michaela, doing the same things as Michaela and she had also not noticed, the sibling she had felt closest to all her life, that had felt practically like her twin, like her other half, and she had not seen it.

A bitter line of regret and sadness was coursing through her before she could much control it. “Of course not, I kept it from you but if you know I suppose it is fine.” Eloise gives her a gentle smile, a reassuring one and reaches with her hand to squeeze at Francesca’s own.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” Francesca says, not feeling as angry as she had upon figuring this out with Michaela, but then again, Michaela was much a different story.

“I wasn’t sure you would like it but mainly Cressida asked me not too.” Eloise is blushing deeply again as if she revealed something she hadn’t quite meant too.

“Cressida?” Eloise immediately blushes even deeper. “Oh… OH!” Francesca touches Eloise’s shoulder then. “You could have told me I would have not said a thing.” She feels that regret building, that self-doubt of her own character. Surely, she can’t have been this wrapped up in her own world all the time that she would have never noticed something like this, something as simple as her sister having found love as well.

“I know that.” Eloise smiles at her. “I was simply just respecting what she wanted. She is a bit more fearful about it then I am. But I assure you Michaela is perfectly safe and, well occupied at the moment.” The instant she says that Francesca’s distraction with Eloise’s revelations about her own life sour into something that makes her want to throw up her own dinner from hours ago.

“Oh.” She finds herself saying again, hand falling away.

Eloise is quick to notice this change in attitude. “She is not with anyone seriously.” She seems to jump forward with comfort, as if she knows something like that will help. It surprisingly does, to think that Michaela does not want someone else around in their life, though she had already known that, already been told that by Michaela herself.

“I know.” She doesn’t meet Eloise’s eyes then. “She has told me she is uninterested in courting.”

“Well, she does not need to when she has you.” Eloise says almost knowingly, ominously knowingly.

It might make her hesitate if it didn’t anger her so much to think about Michaela with someone that isn’t her right at this very moment, allowing them to touch her and be with her in ways that Francesca has never been privy to. “You say she is occupied, does this mean she won’t be coming home?” She hates the way her voice reveals every last color of her own emotions, as if she is obvious to the world for her love and devotion and absolute jealousy.

“She told me she would be as she promised you.” Eloise tips her head to the side, studying her so closely that it makes Francesca want to hide behind anything so that Eloise might not see the very obvious truth to her feelings. “You do not like her seeking companionship outside of the castle, do you?” But it is not quite the question Eloise is actually asking.

She already knows. Maybe she has always known in her own way.

Francesca’s stomach turns yet again, and she backs away from Eloise as if the distance will help obscure the obvious, the obvious that Michaela must have seen but had ignored the same way she avoided openly admitting to it. The change impending and yet too terrifying to reconcile with. “I do not see why she needs it when she, as you said, has me.” She admits softly, letting her frown grace her face openly though she still avoids Eloise’s gaze.

“Sometimes, physically, it cannot be helped.” Eloise seems as if she’s going to carry on but they both hear a door opening down the hall before a blonde head is popping around the corner.

“There you are!” Cressida looks at her sister with the same amount of starry eyes that she has always noticed her look at Eloise with but up until Michaela had upended her entire understanding of such things by allowing her to catch her with another woman, she hadn’t much noticed before.

“Just speaking with Fran, she cannot sleep.” Eloise returns it in full force, her smile dipping rather obviously that Francesca finds herself not only wondering how she had not figured it out sooner but how obvious she must be herself when around Michaela. She cannot imagine that she looks at Michaela any differently than these two seem to look at each other.

“Oh, do you need some of that flavored tea we talked about, you said it helped last time?” Cressida touches her arm affectionately once she has reached them. She does not appear as if she went to such a party as Eloise and Michaela had, she is dressed for bed and Francesca does remember her offering a goodnight earlier.

“No, I will not sleep tell Michaela is home, it is alright.” She gives Cressida a gentle smile and watches the blonde twitch as if to hold herself back from reaching for her sister, something like this makes her ache with a different kind of jealousy.

“Leave the ghost to wander.” Eloise teases her and she forces a smile out. “Goodnight. Do try and get some sleep if she does not return. She is safe.” Eloise gives her the most reassuring look she can muster.

It does little to alleviate her own anxiousness. “Right, goodnight.” She lets Eloise kiss her cheek before she’s grabbing Cressida’s arm to tug her away and down the hall, back around the corner, likely to the same room. She knew they shared a room often, but she had thought it was similar to when she and Michaela shared a room.

Well… she really wasn’t wrong about that, but Cressida and Eloise still had more than she had of Michaela. Michaela who sought comfort in the arms of other women instead of Francesca.

She felt her blood boiling again.

By the time Michaela does get back it’s so late that Francesca has nearly fallen asleep at the fireplace of the sitting room so she doesn’t hear her come in or pass the room with the woman she holds the hand of immediately, but she sees it in the way the woman, another one that looks fairly similar to the others, lingers with that starry eyed look.

It makes her huff maybe noticeably and glare into the flames so hard her vision sparks with color. She tries to control it really, tries to let it go, let them go to Michaela’s room and do what they do together while Francesca has to remain cold and alone without her, without being the cause of her little pretty whimpers. She tries to be rational even.

She fails spectacularly though.

It takes her maybe five minutes if she’s lucky after seeing them to finally move and get up, her rage, her jealousy, her pent up aggression, her love for Michaela guiding her to the door she knows she shouldn’t open and she knows she has no right to open. This isn’t like before when she had caught Michaela with a girl, this time she knows very clearly what is happening, this time she’s well aware of what’s behind it, Michaela knows she knows what’s behind it.

She opens it anyway.

She feels the white hotness of her own anger taking over every other sense she has really, every ounce of logic and rationality. It feels more like a storm than anything and it rages even as Michaela turns to her at the sound of the door. She decidedly had walked in on a far less compromising situation this time. Both aren’t even on the bed or unclothed, nor did they look in the process to it.

Francesca still feels the rage of yet another woman near Michaela eating her alive. “Fran?” Michaela asks her, concern coloring her tone immediately, the echo of it bouncing around the room. The confusion sits in her chest and spurs her on, suddenly she can’t understand why in the world Michaela would be confused in a moment like this.

She thinks Michaela should understand exactly what she’s feeling, what she has been feeling, that she should face it. “Can we speak?” Her tone is low and dangerous again, so angry that it vibrates between them with an electricity willing to shock.

The confusion on Michaela’s face seems to drain for something more fearful, something more disappointed, maybe saddened. Francesca has no idea what she’s thinking but the look only spurs her on, what feels like years of built up emotion fighting and clawing to the surface inside of her that she almost loses the control to not spill them in front of this stranger in Michaela’s room.

A stranger who’s eyebrows had tripped up her forehead so high, clearly misinformed about Michaela’s home life. About her. “Sure, okay.” Michaela’s voice cracks slightly and it should ease the tension in Francesca, but it doesn’t. Michaela turns toward the extra woman in the room and offers her one of those overly friendly smiles, those charming things that can swoon a woman even without a peculiarity for other women. “Would you mind? The sketches are there.” Michaela gestures to the desk in her room that’s littered with her art.

Michaela showing her art off isn’t entirely uncommon, but Francesca still feels the irrationality increase at thinking about her using her talents to woo women that aren’t her into her bed. She can already feel her teeth grinding, her jaw growing sore. Her fingernails dig into the skin of her palms again as they form fists.

She must look a state because when Michaela looks back at her that fearfulness returns. Normally such a look would ease Francesca’s anger so that she might comfort it away, but she can’t control it now. She thinks its been building for too long, that there is simply nowhere else to bury it, that it is overflowing out of her at an uncontrollable rate.

She turns from her and leaves the bedroom feeling only a fraction better knowing that Michaela is following her, and she will be several paces away from that woman in her room. It makes her feel better as she leads her to the music room, Francesca’s best place to tell the truth if there was one. She goes to speak the moment the door clicks shut behind Michaela, but she seems to move first in that regard.

“I am sorry if I am late. I am sorry for the way you found this out about me. But please Fran, please.” And then Michaela is clutching at her hands, a wild desperate, scared look in her eyes. “Please do not hate me. I will never look at another woman again if that will make you forgive the sins that I cannot change about myself. I will lock myself in this castle. Do not hate me.” She’s shaking, clutching onto Francesca’s hands tight enough to hurt. There is a deep imploring look in the brown of her terrified eyes, everything about her shaking as if she’s the one that’s been holding onto pent-up rage and jealousy for the past month.

Bewildered, Francesca blinks rapidly at Michaela, all of that anger swirling into something uncomfortable and something just as confusing. “I don’t- I- what?”

“You are so upset every time I am around women since you found out. I know that it is strange, I know you are trying very hard to accept it. I cannot take you being so angry and distant with me.” Tears are spilling from Michaela’s eyes now, her voice watery and near a sob. “I am so sorry I am this way, please.” And then Michaela is pulling Francesca’s hands to her chest, holding her close enough like she fears her disappearing. The moon is full and breaking through the window to rid the room of complete darkness, only emphasizing the fear and devastation that she had put on Michaela’s face. “Please.” And she has no idea what she’s asking her for, but she seems so desperate for it.

So afraid.

“God.” Francesca huffs, that anger returning, maybe at herself, maybe at the impending change, maybe at everything having to be so confusing and not at all clear in the slightest. “Michaela, Jesus.” She pulls her hands from her, from the shaking and tear stricken devastation and feels her own nerves accelerating her heart rate.

Michaela hardens her features as she pulls away from her, a reaction that Francesca isn’t quite sure about. A sniffle escapes into the room, wet eyes growing distant and colder. “You are disgusted with me, admit it.” Her tone is even harsh now, angry itself and yet still terrified, still near that sob.

“I am not!” She says abruptly, annoyed and quite enraged at the implication.

Michaela dashes at her cheeks with her fingers, angrily chasing the tears she can’t help away, looking hurt. “You are, you cannot even look at me when another woman is around. You get so angry at the mere implication of me and my curiosities.” She utters it defensively, but she defends from something that isn’t even true. A conclusion drawn for something that feels so obvious to Francesca that she is nearly baffled by Michaela’s frankly heinous suggestions. “I cannot change it. I have never wanted to change it. I still do not but I-” Michaela won’t look at her, jaw clenching, tears still breaking even as she struggles to stop them.

“You are an idiot.” Francesca says which is not exactly how she wished to confess all of the emotions that have been swirling in her chest for so very long, but she is littered with disbelief at Michaela’s less than intelligent line of thinking. She thinks she could not have been more than obvious about her own feelings in the past two weeks alone.

Michaela scoffs. “I am not blind.”

“Apparently you are!” Francesca throws her hands up. “You would rather think me hateful and unaccepting of you than see the truth.” She feels bitter at the thought, the thought that Michaela doesn’t return these affections and has wandered down such an outrageous path in an effort to dismiss them, feels nothing for her beyond the obligation of family and friendship.

“What are you talking about?” She doesn’t ask it curiously but just as defensive as she had become upon the moment that Francesca had pulled her hands from out of her own.

“You are lying if you say you do not already see it or that you have not felt it.” She can feel her own hands curling into fists again, her anger flaring. “Upon the moment we met I felt it and upon every day since I have been tormented with it and I did not know what that torment even meant until…” She looks away from Michaela’s wide imploring eyes as the images of her bare arched back grace behind her eyelids, as that little precious sound she had made swirls in the recesses of Francesca’s head, lovelier than anything she’s ever played on the pianoforte and yet the bane of her very sanity, the very thing that has been driving her near madness.

“Fran, what are you saying?” When she finds Michaela’s wide eyes, they look less defensive and more fearful again, more confused, more unsure. They brim with her shed tears still, and her pain of misunderstandings but they hold something else that Francesca can’t even be sure of.

An angry huffs leaves her, hands going up. “That I am in love with you!” She almost yells it, almost, but instead her voice cracks across the expression with every last emotion that had been burying itself for years. “I cannot stand you with other women, you are right, but it has nothing to do with being peculiar Michaela. It has everything to do with the fact that you should not need them when you can have me.” She says it as if devastated, because she is devastated at not being enough, at not being what Michaela might want, at Michaela ignoring the very obviousness of her own desires and feelings for her in order to find something darker in it all.

But there is nothing dark about what she feels for Michaela, there has never been any darkness in it at all, even as she tried to tamp it down in her own denial or confusion, even as she avoided it with fear of change. It is still the most beautiful and most divine feeling that Francesca has ever experienced in her entire life, that she will ever experience. It is one she never wishes to part with, even as it brings her such sorrow.

Michaela shakes her head suddenly, all those tears rushing back down her cheeks, her reality suddenly looks altered. It makes Francesca’s heart ache with the change that is no longer impending but is now here and unbearably able to be anywhere else. “You- you love me?” She asks with so much confusion, so much… sadness?

Francesca blinks rapidly to chase away her own tears so that she might not match the over emotional mess that Michaela is presently gracing her with, so that she might find some stability even as her rage and jealousy have led her here. “You do not love me in this way, do you? You told me that you do not court because of it, that love is not for you. But I have loved you from the moment we met, and I will love you every moment for the rest of my life, it is as easy for me to love you as it is to breathe.” When she looks at Michaela and her beautiful brown eyes, they remain wide as if in disbelief.

They do not hold the look she would expect of someone who is happy to hear of her affections. “Francesca.” Her name tumbles off of her favorite pair of plump lips with a tremble of shock. Change consumes the room like the storm that Francesca had felt in her chest not several moments earlier.

“You do not feel for me the same.” She can hear her own tone shift from stubbornness to a mere devastated wobble. She can’t look into Michaela’s eyes as she tries to battle that reality, her gaze finding the floor as she wills her eyes to not allow the tears to fall that have begun to blur her vision, even as her heart suddenly aches inside of her chest so painfully she is sure she is going to succumb to the emotion that consumes her being.

“Oh, Francesca.” When she looks up again after hearing Michaela shuffle she nearly jumps at her proximity, the scent of her filling the space between them immediately, her brown eyes still wet with tears as her hands reach for Francesca’s face, brushing back what has fallen that she can’t control. “Oh.” And then… then Michaela is kissing her, and she has never kissed another woman before but the relief of such an action feels immediate, it feels… right.

The barest brush of soft lips on her own and she is uttering the tiniest sound of a whimper of her own, all the desires and affections and aching and pining and wanting unravel her immediately and the tears she had been holding herself back from spill over into such a soft kiss, such a slow kiss that she can feel it in her very bones.

She grabs Michaela’s face back, tipping downward to press her lips more firmly against Michaela’s, making her sigh into her mouth and then they are both chasing this feeling, this spark that has always connected them and laid itself bare between them from the moment they set eyes on each other at the ball full of butterflies.

When Francesca graces her tongue against the plumpness of Michaela’s lower lip and Michaela’s mouth opens for her, that lovely beautiful sound, that whimper that she had first heard weeks ago, travels into Francesca’s own mouth from the back of Michaela’s throat and she feel’s crazed for a whole new reason. She chases the sound with a hunger in the pit of her stomach that she cannot tame, and Michaela allows herself to be consumed until there is no more air left for them to spare.

When they pull away, gasping for breath and still clutching at each other, it is Francesca that rests her forehead against Michaela’s, and Francesca that opens her eyes first to see the easiness of her beauty and the swelling of her bruised mouth. “I have loved you for so long that I do not know who I am without it.” Michaela mutters in a whisper with a heaving chest and that dazzling smile suddenly on her face, highlighting the stars in her eyes that make her so very beautiful when she finally opens them to look into Francesca’s own. “My dear Francesca, I have loved you for an eternity and I will love you for an eternity more.” She says like a promise and then she is kissing her again and finally… finally everything inside of Francesca that had been boiling over feels sated and calmed, feels… resolved.

Though the change lays between them with a terrifying new reality, Francesca cannot find it in herself to be afraid when Michaela gives her that starry eyed look, bringing to her, with yet another moment of startling clarity, that Michaela has loved her all along and for just as long. That this was always meant to happen and that nothing in her life had ever felt more right than loving Michaela Stirling and somehow… somehow Michaela loved her back just as fiercely.

She laughed suddenly and Michaela answered her with a returned giggle that sits in her chest like music. “I love you.” She says softly, sniffling softly and feeling her emotions boil over.

“Fran, I love you, I have loved you this whole time I-” Michaela backs from her only to shake her head softly, that disbelief crossing her features again. “God if I would have realized I would have… forever ago I swear.”

“It is alright, I was too terrified myself.” She pulls a hand off of Michaela enough to wipe the tears from her own cheeks. “Can you please tell that woman to leave now?” She begs softly, an aching discomfort gracing her tone that doesn’t entirely ease when Michaela starts to laugh.

“My love, she is just an artist.”

“But you were holding hands and-”

“Just friends, I truthfully could not bear the thought of being with anyone else lately that is not you. I just wanted to come home to you the moment I left. I would not have left at all if I realized that your feelings for me were that of love and not disgust.” Michaela releases another deep beautiful laugh of disbelief. “Please do say it again.”

“I love you.” A soft beautiful whimper escapes Michaela’s throat again and Francesca wants to sing with the beauty of it now that it is caused by her. She does not get the chance to say such a thing before Michaela is kissing her deeply again and consuming her own little noise of satisfaction at the press of soft lips and a wet tongue.

“I love you.” Michaela returns against her mouth just as brightly, giving Francesca the sense that her world had finally righted itself.