Title: On So Many Levels (1/2)

Genre: Less crackfic than the last one, but still humour, even if it's less blatant. Satirical!angst. Senseless relationship fights. Whatever covers that. Dramedy?

Rating: PG-13 ish, I think.

Summary: Jo thinks it's time for Blair to 'man up' and prove why they're right for each other.

Word Count: 9570

Disclaimer: I don't own them, I just heart them.

Author's Notes: Heh. This story makes me remember why I'm glad to be single. :P I guess you could say this is more in the style of 'Facts of Life' itself, back at the time that it's set than my last fic was, so, while it might seem like I hate Blair (I don't; I fall in love with her more and more each time I get in her head and write her), I'd say it's fairly in character, but there may be parts where it's not the case, since I haven't had time to tweak it enough to satisfy my perfectionism. I'm in kind of a rush to post this part because I go away on solo camp on Sunday (it's for a week), and I have to pack my survival gear, so I know I won't have time to finish the whole thing before then. I do intend to finish it though, but I'm really bad at that, so I can't make any promises. With any luck, the story idea won't leave me, and you'll have the resolution fairly soon after I get back. Or, at the latest, after I'm back from break. shrug

“Ninety-six percent?!” Every person within a hundred yard radius of the howling shriek cringed as their ears rang with the cacophony and they hastily scarpered away to a safe distance, all except for the girl walking alongside the source of the cry, who was immune to it, and didn’t even flinch. Hell, she was barely even listening. “Two whole fucking marks!” Blair fumed, flailing her arms erratically. “How did you beat me by two whole fucking marks?!”

“Life is cruel.” Jo responded, sympathetically, though her sarcasm should have been blatantly obvious to any onlooker – as much as, say, a Bronx girl in a ‘New England money’ factory. Frankly, she’d given up on arguing with Blair about this long before their fight had even begun. It was a waste of energy to try. There was nothing she could say to calm her down or quiet her that hadn’t already failed in earlier attempts to break through the walking emotional disaster that was Hurricane Warner. Blair had spent the whole lesson ranting and seething about ranking second, her screams flooding the small room until their teacher finally cracked and burst into tears, granting them all an early mark as he hid under the desk, a snivelling mess. This was hardly the first time this had happened, either, so she was fairly comfortable with the formula, and she’d resigned herself to enduring her girlfriend’s terrible attitude until it was all out of her system, and they were all better and back with the happy. It was a solid plan.

Hopefully, she didn’t have to wait very long to see it to fruition. Pretentious outrage seemed to have subsided, for the most part, and Blair was slowly verging on coherence, sighing and leaning back against her locker, despondent, closing her eyes to shut out the cloak of misery and failure hovering above her, threatening to close around her like theatrical curtains, signalling the end. “It’s not fair. I should have come first. I always used to come first.” She sulked, kicking the floor, weakly, squishing a fallen piece of paper (she didn’t know who it belonged to) beneath her foot. Take that, little stick figures and black ink hearts.

Jo sent her a look as she idly dialled in her combination, getting her books for English from her locker. “What marks did you usually get before?” she asked, knowing that she had effectively usurped her position at the top of essentially all their subjects since her arrival at Eastland.

Blair shrugged, staring down at her pristinely organised folder, coordinated by colour to categorise her files and sheets by area of study, class and topic, in that order. “I don’t know. I think,” she rummaged through the Mathematics section, flicking through her past tests and exams until she’d seen plenty of scores and could calculate a rough estimate, “Between ninety-two and ninety-six.”

Jo’s lips quirked, failing miserably to conceal an amused smirk. “Well there’s your problem.” She said, simply, gently tapping Blair’s backside with her ruler before she put it away along with her calculator and protractor.

“Problem?!” the blonde scoffed, her phantom feathers clearly ruffled, like someone had vigorously rubbed them with a balloon and loaded them with static charge. “I do not have a problem. I am flawless, damn it, and damn my ninety-six percent for saying otherwise!” she hissed, tossing her test down the hall…or trying to, at least – the papers scattered out of her hand and fell around her, harmlessly, in a ring that spanned no more than a few feet from the epicentre, leaving her to watch as they floated down like rotting autumn leaves, mocking her, making her feel stupid. She snatched one paper out of the air with the speed of a cobra and bent down to retrieve the rest, only vaguely humbled.

Jo sighed and shut her locker, pinching the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t in the mood for this. It was time to transform into supergirlfriend (!) and make everything better. “Look, you made some silly mistakes on a test, got one or two questions wrong and came second. It’s no big deal.” She wrapped an arm around Blair’s shoulders, a comforting gesture, which served only to taint her effort at genuine consolation with a pronouncedly condescending air. “The important thing is that you’ve maintained your average and that you understand everything new we’ve done so far.”

“No, damn it, that’s not important!” Blair grizzled, yanking herself out of Jo’s embrace, shrinking away like some bitter old miser. She still wanted to be pissed off about it, and she wasn’t about to let anybody drag her out of that funk. “I got screwed over, Jo!” she insisted, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes, not because she was upset so much as because she chose to spread her arms for emphasis at precisely the wrong moment and one of her hands collided with the ajar door to the chemistry lab, which stung her delicate fingers and further wounded her already brutally battered pride. This was definitely not her day. “I should have gotten one hundred percent.” She sniffled quietly, pouting beneath the shadows of her blonde mane, surrounding her dismally hung head.

Jo sent her a look. “A hundred percent?” she echoed, and Blair nodded, firmly committed to her beliefs. The blind faith in spite of all human logic and reason might have been admirable in different circumstances. “Even though you got some of the answers wrong?” she pointed out.

Blair gasped and recoiled in horror as if her lover had drawn a gleaming blade on her, as opposed to the dull and blunt truth. “Are you saying that…you think I’m wr-aaaahhgh…” A pathetic, broken gurgle left her lips, which trembled in time with her jaw, vibrating with enough amplitude to record seismic activity two states over. The sound she uttered was kind of like a lazy monkey impersonation, or like a recording of somebody being tickled slowed down at least threefold. “You think I’m wr-nnnanghn.” She tried again, closer to forming the correct consonant phrases overall, but her attempt had been largely feigned. She stomped her foot against the floor, as if in exasperation. “You see? I can’t even say the word, because a Warner is always right!” she declared, as if it were a fact of life.

Unimpressed, Jo continued to stare at her. “Even when you’re wrong?” she remarked, with a teasing edge to her tone. Her resolve to stick stubbornly by Blair’s side on the issue was hastily crumbling. As dearly as she loved her, she still found her sense of self-entitlement overwhelmingly irritating. Plus, it wasn’t exactly fun being the punching bag and stress ball for every little emotion her lover chose to hedonistically overindulge.

Blair shrugged and shifted her gaze around in a manner that resembled guilt, but also evasion. “So math isn’t exactly subjective. Why should I be made to suffer for that?” she argued. Yes, she couldn’t let go of her failure, nor of her paranoia, both of which bothered her. In all honesty, she wanted to be depressed about it, to let it all out and earn herself a little sympathy, then buy something to make herself feel better, and extra stuff as a way of apologising to everyone who she’d taken it out on – it was all part of the way she was, or, at least, the way she was raised – and so what if her reasons for persisting in all of this didn’t make a lick of sense? That was the point! It was irrational to begin with!

“Blair, for God’s sake,” Jo groaned, releasing a long, pained sigh, pressing her palm against her forehead in frustration, which succeeded in earning the blonde’s attention; she hadn’t intended to be annoying – heck, usually her girlfriend was the only one who could put up with her at her worst, which was, subsequently, why she saw so much more of that bad side than anybody else, “Can’t you just be happy for me?” she asked, her voice as quiet as a whisper. It was like this every single time she topped the classes (which was the case after every assessment) that she shared with Blair. More often than not, she couldn’t even be proud of her achievements because she had to comfort the girl she’d bumped down to second place and stick a bandaid on her ego.

The blonde blinked, surprised and perplexed, and neither in a pleasant sense, putting a hand on Jo’s shoulder. “Of course I’m happy for you, babe.” She assured her, gazing deeply into her eyes with only the utmost sincerity glistening in her endless, eternal expanse. “But I’m also really upset for myself!” she whined (mood breaking to the max) bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet like she was about to chuck a tantrum.

Jo rolled her eyes and put her hand on her hip, her buttons pushed to the point where they were stuck under the pad. “You know, I can’t say that you are happy for me,” she responded, accusations thinly veiled, “Because you never show it. You only show what you feel for your own sake, and half the time that’s at my expense.” And she was sick of it. Why was she the one who always had to compromise? Why did she always have to drop everything to run to Blair’s aid whenever a hair blew out of place, when she rarely did the same in return, excluding, perhaps, moments when the situation was desperate? Contrary to popular belief, those didn’t count for very much in the long run. It was the little things that were starting to get her down. “What’s more important to you?” she asked, confrontationally.

Blair took a step back, shaken right out of her complacency and left dazed and disorientated. Was this a relationship fight? One of those dreaded moments when all hell broke loose over the most minor of discrepancies? How had it come to that when she was just complaining about math? Fucking dyke drama. “Jo,” she giggled, disguising her nerves beneath a casual demeanour, which ultimately came across as suspicious, her grin pretty damn close to that of a wolf in a sheep paddock, “You top a ninety-eight percent any day.” She half-joked, throwing a loose embrace around Jo’s neck. Surely this wasn’t serious. There were no such things as consequences in her sheltered little world.

“Then prove it.” Jo challenged, folding her arms, set in her stance like she was cast in iron. She was the immovable object, and, unfortunately, Blair was a fucking weak force. “Admit you were wrong and stop bitching about it.” She turned out of Blair’s grip and began to walk to her next class.

Stunned by the sudden departure, it took her several seconds to twig that she was supposed to go after her, and she jogged to catch up, tripping over her late start, but not tumbling. “Why should I admit I’m wrong?” she shot back, defensively, once they were in step, speaking as if she was on trial and was forced to give a statement before a most unfavourable jury in order to save herself, failing miserably at accomplishing such safety. “I’ve already been marked down for it!” hadn’t she suffered enough? Why should she have to add insult to this injury? Her humiliation in front of the entire class was already complete. She was second best. She was…average! God forbid…

“It’s not about the marks.” Said Jo, eerily calm – when she wasn’t expressing her feelings externally, it had to be serious. At times like this, Blair took comfort in the infamous death stare, because it would fade, and she would eventually be forgiven, whereas this was laced with uncertainty. “This is about us.”

Oh dear. That sounded bad. This was a relationship fight now, wasn’t it? Not a random one, either; this foreboded something serious. Shit. Blair felt a bead of perspiration as heavy as dark matter itself form on her brow. Mostly, they’d managed to avoid these, fighting about little things that mattered about as much as a speck of dust in the Sahara desert instead and always getting over it by the time they went to bed (make up cuddles! Yay!) or, if not, then by the time they woke up, forgetting that they were mad over the night. She was terribly bad with these ‘couple’ issues, whenever they arose, and she didn’t quite know why, but she usually got the impression that they were her fault when one did make itself the news of the day, though she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how it could always be her why screwed up.

On this occasion, as with most, she was completely oblivious as to the source of conflict. Yet again, she got the feeling that she was going to get the blame for it pinned onto her backside like a fluoro coloured tail, making the ass out of her. Their friends didn’t like to take sides when they fought, but they fucking did, and it wasn’t often hers, which was ironic, because they heard about the specifics of their dramas through her, since Jo hadn’t come out to them to begin with. But she digressed. The point was that she hadn’t done anything wrong! Had she? Fuck, was this about something? What could it be? “Why? How is this about us?” asked Blair, her voice suddenly very high. Why hadn’t anybody told her that one of these conversations was looming? That was why people had friends! They were supposed to give her a heads up so she could throw down the big fucking shovel in her dainty little hands and stop digging her own fucking grave! Damn it, how deep was this hole? And yes, she was panicking.

Jo sighed, loosening her tie. She didn’t like these discussions either, but it was due. She needed this. They both did. And she trusted Blair to pull through in the end, which made playing her hand, which was pretty much just a bluff, a hell of a lot easier on her and her conscience. “I need you to support me, Blair. I’m alone out here, really far from the world I know, and you’re pretty much the only person here for me…only you’re not, until it suits you.” They couldn’t meet eyes during this exchange, but Jo knew her girlfriend would have stared at her in disbelief, stranded on the verge of interjecting and defending herself, but stunned into silence, mouth left agape like a carnival clown head. Sweet girl though she was, she probably didn’t realise that she’d come across that way. She was often too naïve to see deeper meanings in frivolous pursuits; she drifted through life carelessly, enjoying the simple pleasures of ‘face value’. Jo didn’t really want to change that about her. “Blair, I can’t be with you and compete against you at the same time.”

“What?” Blair laughed, nervously, failing to hide the dread that crept all over her skin, wrapping her up in a cold chill. While she wasn’t well-versed in the genre, that sounded suspiciously like a catch twenty-two situation. “You want me to drop all your classes so we never beat each other?” she didn’t really think that was what Jo wanted, since she’d never asked anything of her before, but she felt helpless, and she couldn’t think of anything else to do but be impudent, blindly flailing for some semblance of control. Had they been thrust into an environment in which they wouldn’t succeed as a couple? That wasn’t fair. They were only seventeen. It was all meant to be light-hearted affection, flirting, snuggling and fun. They couldn’t break up over this, could they?

“No, Blair. It’s not the school that’s got us in direct competition; it’s your attitude.” She said, bluntly, stopping in the middle of the hall, keeping her voice hushed so that none of the younger years passing by as they left their surrounding classrooms would overhear them; this was private, even if the talk had to be in a public setting. “If you came first in the year, I would applaud you louder than anybody else. Hell, I’ve even helped you with your work, regardless of how close you are behind me.” She thought it should have hurt to say it, but she knew what she was doing, and, once she started to give voice to her feelings, they simply rolled off of her chest and out of the recesses of her mind, flinging themselves right into Blair’s face. It was better this way. She really did need to be more conscious of what went on around her. “But you’ve never once said, ‘Good on you, Jo,’ to me, you know?”

“Lies!” Blair objected, covering her ears and hissing as if it would corrupt her. It couldn’t possibly be true. She loved Jo with everything that made her human, and it filled her heart with joy to watch her soar above the rest, excelling in spite of the odds, shining like the star she was. In hindsight, though, she couldn’t come up with an example of an occasion when she’d told her as much. That wasn’t good. She bit her fist to keep herself from uttering a long, drawn out profanity as she realised how deep this shithole had been dug.

“I would remember if you had, Blair, and it hurts, you know, that I can’t be sure whether you really love me, or if you only do until it…until I get in the way of what you want for yourself.” Jo hated how meekly those words came out, strangled by the paranoid voice in the back of her mind that posed the possibility that her girlfriend’s characteristic selfishness (a blessing and a burden) might actually trump their mutual affection, and her hubris in demanding she show otherwise would destroy their practically ideal relationship. Insecurity was hard to silence, and she could be as neurotic as they came, but, for once, it was overcome by faith; she knew how deep her lover’s purity ran, and it would be worth it to see it shine. “I shouldn’t have to ask that question at all.” And here she was, giving her the chance to prevent her from ever needing to utter the dreaded query before she had any reason to seriously entertain it in those dilapidated, dank, dark alleys in the back of her mind where those distrustful thoughts met and conspired against all that was good.

Blair’s heart missed a beat, and, when it fell into rhythm again, it was driven faster, the drumstick wielded in the ripped, bulging arms of anger. “How dare you.” She all but growled, shaking where she stood. She wasn’t a violent person; it never normally entered her consciousness to hit anyone, because she had been raised to act like a prim, proper little girl, but her knuckles went white, tremors carrying from her shoulders to her hands the urge to slap Jo, though she couldn’t bring herself to act on it – the prospect of ever hurting her made her nauseous. This was by far the worst thing anyone had ever said to her, which was saying a lot since she’d been accused of essentially every vice known to humanity at some point or another.

And it made no sense, either. How could Jo possibly claim that she hadn’t done enough to show her the depth and intensity of her devotion? Her passion? She expressed it in so many ways, showed it openly, which was no easy task considering that her girlfriend preferred to restrict their moments of intimacy to a private setting (she felt embarrassed if she showed her soft spots around others, and Blair had to wonder if Jo was comfortable with the prospect of outing their relationship to anyone else at all, since the blonde had gone behind her back to let their friends in on the secret). What’s more important was that it was true! This was an unjust denial of her feelings, stripping her of them like she couldn’t be allowed to wear them.

What gave Jo the right to throw all that away and say it wasn’t good enough, ‘get me another’? “You’re…you’re so wrong.” Did she really think so little of her?

“I’m sorry.” Jo defensively raised her hands, falling back into the casual act, keeping her tone non-judgemental and relatively blank, because she really didn’t hold it against Blair; she was just being honest, albeit in a roundabout and vaguely deceptive way. “Don’t get me wrong; I believe you when you tell me you love me, but it’s hard not to have doubts when, the next day, you’re fighting tooth and nail to creep above me without the slightest care that it’s me in your path. And it doesn’t stop once we leave the classroom,” she gestured to their surroundings, though it was pointless, since the blonde had averted her gaze to the floor like a child receiving a severe talking to from a teacher; she was being punished, and this was the best guilt trip ever given in the history of emotional blackmail, “Because every time I do well, you make me regret it, and I can’t take that; I have to know where I stand with you.”

“You’re right in front of me.” Blair grumbled, sourly, glaring at her shoes. “Not my fault you can’t see what’s fucking obvious. You can’t blame me for that.” Only she was damn sure that she could now that it was coming to that point, but she was hoping Jo didn’t know that, which would force her to give up, and, for a while longer, everything would be okay.

“Baby, I’m not blaming you.” Said Jo, instinctively placing her hands on Blair’s arms, stroking them softly, the same way she did whenever she knew her lover was straddling the border between resolve and tears, definitely leaning more to the right, and didn’t want it to show. This, however, was the first time that Blair didn’t meet her eyes when she held her that way, and it was fairly obvious why she wouldn’t; she felt betrayed, and wrongly accused. Jo wasn’t going to cave in just because it would be easier on both their hearts in the short term, though; tough love had its place, and Jo owed the fact that her life was on track, and meeting Blair in the first place to it. “All I’m sayin’ is that you might need to take a little time out to figure out what—“

“There’s nothing to figure out, damn it.” Blair all but spat, slowly bringing her gaze up from the floor, determination striking all else that could have shown through from her features like it never had before, betraying no signs of the flaky, absent-minded child, and bearing only the fierce, passionate resolution of a woman dedicated to all that kept her on the earth, and challenged to fight for it. When her fingers tangled in Jo’s tunic, it was almost as scary as it was attractive. “I love you, even if you’re too hesitant to see it, or too cold to feel it.” Usually, when they stood this near, it led to intimacy and moments of tender closeness too special to share, but, then, they were drifting apart, so fast. She would do anything that promised, however hollowly, to lessen the possibility of losing her. “Do I have to prove myself to you?” asked the blonde, somewhat sarcastically; clearly, she didn’t think she should have to, and that such a thing was out of the question.

“Yes. You do.” Said Jo before stepping back, acting as casually as if they’d been walking down the halls the same way they always did the whole time. Blair seemed as if she was about to retort or curse her cruelty, but she didn’t get the chance. “We’re not over or nothin’. I just want you to actually fuckin’ try to be there for me, the way I always am for you.” She was sick of being taken for granted. She wanted to be treated right, and feel like she was special to her, like when they first fell into this romance. It would be nice to have some of the old, late-night, post-orgasmic promises come to fruition. That seemed fair. She was just playing hard to get.

“How is that any different from how we already are?” asked Blair in exasperation as the conversation spun in chaotic circles through her head. This was such a stupid fight, and she was confused beyond belief. Were they breaking up? If so, how could Jo be so apathetic about it? If not, then why did she have to do anything? They were already together! That meant they were on a two-way street; it couldn’t all be her responsibility! “What do you want from me?”

Jo shrugged; therein lay the game. “Figure something out.” Blair ran a hand through her hair, lost for words, something inside her ready to snap. “I’m not going to give you any hints,” she smirked slightly, bordering on devious, “That would be cheating.” As harsh as it seemed, a part of her was definitely enjoying this. It was about damn time the princess found out what it was like to be what she’d dubbed ‘the boyfriend’ in the dynamics of their relationship. It was a demanding job, and Jo thought she was due for a week or two off irrespective of the circumstances. This was her chance.

Blair snorted, crossing her arms in a huff like an uncooperative teenager, which she was. “Alright, fine.” The way she said that certainly did not convey the impression that it was fine with her, but she was willing to swallow her pride if it would make her girlfriend happy. “You want me to take you out more often or something? Why didn’t you just say so? We can do something special this we—“ her half-assed attempt at reconciliation was interrupted by a chuckle, prompting her eyes to go wide and her jaw to drop. Was that wrong, too? She couldn’t win, could she? “What now?”

“That’s not it.” She half-teased in a sing-song sort of voice, wandering down the halls with a smug little spring to her step. She knew the rules to this game, and she was perfectly happy keeping them to herself until check met mate, revelling in the satisfaction of the process as a whole as she watched it unfold with a lump of popcorn in one hand and a sugary drink in the other, preferably laying back with her feet up on a table, and not with the sun in her eyes. “You need to be absolutely sure of what I mean to you.”

“I am absolutely sure!” Blair whinged, rather loudly, although she hadn’t yet given up on trailing after her girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, or whatever was happening; it wasn’t exactly clear. Why wouldn’t Jo believe her? “I’m so sure that if my sureness were on the coast it would be called the Sure Shore!”

A slight pause ensued. Obscure much? “Uh, good, but I need to be absolutely sure that you’re absolutely sure. And, until I can be sure how much you appreciate me, I’m going to make damn sure that you do.” Jo said in a manner that could have appeared nonchalant if she hadn’t seemed so purposeful and emphatic with her tone or fixed her lover with a rather foreboding inclination of her index finger. “So you’d better think fast.”

That was easier said than done whilst Blair was developing a pronounced headache simply trying to comprehend what was transpiring. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, silently damning the female gender, wishing girls would be direct and say what they wanted instead of being so passive-aggressive as to make their partners guess! …This was because she had called Jo cold, wasn’t it? Oh how she loathed revenge…specifically when she was its victim.

Jo sent her distinctly superior look. “It means that, until you’re prepared to treat me like a lover should be treated all the time – and not just when it suits you, or when we’re gettin’…you know – I’m not going to act like it.” She said, determinedly, and that most definitely was a threat. This was basically the only card she had to fall back on, and she intended to play it until it was torn and tattered worse than all the others in the deck, steadfastly holding onto her bluff until one of the players cracked. Judging by the expression of cheesy, B-movie horror that swept across her face, that would probably be Blair, and it might not take terribly long to get there, either. Sympathy prompted her to lay a hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder, a small comfort, silently uttering a whisper that told her to be strong. “I still want us to be friends, yeah? But, for now, that’s all we are.” She smiled, far too brightly, patting Blair (who was in suspended animation) on her head before walking away once again, this time not followed.

“What?” asked Blair, completely and utterly lost in the wilderness of abandonment, until the implication slowly sunk in. “Hey. You can’t do that!” she protested, calling after the retreating figure like a loudmouthed activist shouting powerlessly at a politician from behind a barricade of armed guards, her words drowned out by the crowd. “You can’t break up with me just to get your way! That is so…it’s wrong, damn it!” she said, flailing her arms in moral outrage, resembling a startled hen, earning odd and vaguely intimidated stares from passing students, who wondered if she’d lost her mind. “It’s like a hostage negotiation!”

Jo faced her, continuing to step backwards as she paused for thought, eventually shrugging her shoulders and nodding, accepting her analogy as an apt assessment. “Yeah. Pretty much. Now watch me work it.” She teased, fluttering her fingertips as she came to a corner. “Buh-bye, Blair.”

“That’s…but…!” she stammered helplessly in her wake, staring vacantly at the empty space where she used to be, her mind going blank. Apparently she could do that. She shook her head, trying to snap herself back into reality and to startle her brain back into gear. This was preposterous! Had she just been rejected? Blair Warner was never rejected! Not by anybody! Not even by Jo Polniaczek! She let out a strangled wail, somewhere between a groan and a scream, fingers raking through her hair. “This day sucks!” a loud thud resonated down the corridor as she slapped her folder against a helpless wall, creating a dent that would bug the janitor for weeks in trying to cover it up. She’d failed to top math and lost her girlfriend and all she got was a stupid chipped fingernail. But she wasn’t going to let this get her down. Jo wanted to see how she felt about her? Well she’d fucking prove it to her then! “I’ll show you! I’ll show all of you!” she theatrically declared, following up with a maniacal laugh that soon dissolved into pathetic whimpers and a meekly hung head. “I need hugs.” But no hugs were delivered.

A few hours later, Jo was doing her homework in the empty cafeteria. Or, she was trying to. An uncomfortable sensation tingling the back of her neck distracted her. She glanced up at the doorway. Tootie was hovering there, and smiling in a way that was likely supposed to be inconspicuous. Oh, that wasn’t good. She might still have qualified as a newcomer, but she’d been at Eastland long enough to develop a heightened sixth-sense that could detect meddling from a mile away. She rolled her eyes, wondering if there was some way she could make a swift escape and avoid this inconvenience. The next time she looked, she flinched hard enough to rocket her seat back three feet, scratching the floor and making a blood curdling screech; the young snoop had materialised across the table directly in front of her in that split second of preoccupation. She was even stealthier than Communism! Freaky kids. “What do you want?” she asked in a sigh, throwing down her pen in surrender – she was trapped.

“Oh, nothing.” She drawled with false sincerity, sickly sweet as she sat down opposite her. She wasn’t subtle, and she wasn’t young enough or cutesy enough to get away with it scot-free anymore. “I just wanted to have a chat.”

Jo barely managed to contain a snicker of scepticism. She’d found the good cop, now where was the bad one? Her unspoken query was answered no more than a second later with a loud FZZT! “Jesus, Natalie!” she shrieked, getting up from her seat as she was drenched in the escaping fizz from the soda bottle, which had splashed all over her lap, books and uniform when her roommate opened it inconsiderately all but on top of her. She shook her fingers, trying to fling the sticky substance off. “Watch what you’re doing!”

“Whoops! Sorry.” Natalie offered, chuckling awkwardly at her own ditziness, pretending not to be unsettled by the scary eyes staring her down into the dust. Whether it was an intentional act to spray her with the sugary soft drink or not remained a mystery for the ages. “Huh, you leave a bottle of soda out in the sun, you expect it to go flat.” She shrugged, holding the still dripping bottle away from her body. “Why does it make a difference anyway?”

“Heat upsets the carbon dioxide equilibrium.” Jo offhandedly grumbled her explanation, wringing the soggy stains out of her untucked shirt, earning blank looks from her younger friends, who had no idea what she was talking about. She shrugged; it was simple enough. “Well, the drink’s carbonated. Some of that carbon dioxide they put in exists as a gas and some dissolves in the water, but dissolving a gas in water is an exothermic process so, if you add heat, it favours the reverse reaction, stocking up more gas. Hence, voosh!” she said, illustrating her meaning with an evocative gesture, resembling the volcanic reaction from before. “That’s why you serve it cold, in a nutshell.”

Natalie blinked at her, face falling and brows knitting together. “Gee, thanks for sucking the magic out of life, Jo.” She grumbled, shaking her head and slinking towards the counter to grab herself a cup.

“Uh, you’re welcome?” she tried, uncertainly. So she was good at science; that wasn’t her fault. Hell, she wouldn’t even be there if she didn’t excel! Tipping her chair upside down, a waterfall of fizzing and bubbling mess cascading onto the floor at her feet, she sighed in frustration; she was going to have to clean that up. So much for school work.

“You know, Jo,” Tootie began, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, pretending that nothing had just happened, “Blair’s been acting really miserable since you got back from classes today.” Ah, so that was what this was about; the wily blonde had sent their friends to do the dirty work – use the kids to change her mind. Sneaky, but low.

“Yeah. She’s been sighing and snivelling to the tune of the Requiem for hours.” Natalie interjected, right as a morose wail descended from above to punctuate her statement. And she hadn’t been exaggerating, either. It made her cringe. It wasn’t that she didn’t sympathise for poor Blair, but it was hard to take her seriously when she won the Nobel Prize for Attention-Whoring thrice running. Her melodramatic method of grieving made her impossible to ignore, though, and made it quite a challenge to do any work, plus, it got annoying as hell after a few minutes, like a flickering lightbulb or a creaking, leaky pipe, hence the girls’ rush to interfere and dig in the big gay dirt; it was to preserve their sanity.

“We were wondering,” Tootie took up the questioning again – they had great rhythm after the years of practice working as a team – as Jo took up a cloth from a nearby cleaning trolley and began to swipe away at the puddles of congealing soda, “Since you’re pretty much the only thing on God’s green Earth she loves more than herself, if something might have happened between you two.” She inquired, delicately, indirectly, dancing around the subject in ballet shoes. Pretty soon, that gentle approach proved redundant.

“Blair said you broke up with her.” Natalie announced, bluntly, as she poured herself a glass of cola. Tootie growled, her head dropping onto a dry part of the table with a resounding thump. Her friend shrugged, clueless as to what she’d done wrong. “What? She did.”

“Does subtlety have no meaning to you?” she asked, waving a hand out by her side as she shot an almost incredulous glare back towards her friend, who shrunk behind the counter, like a soldier hiding in a trench. “We were supposed to let Jo tell us her side of the story!” Jo glanced between them in confusion, question marks floating around her head. “For all we know, you could have just started a fight!”

“But they’re already fighting!” Natalie insisted, pleading her case for the defence as she popped back up again like a whack-a-mole, refusing to crack under the dark, accusatory look her best friend shot in her direction. “Look, would Blair be up there in a such a mess, letting her makeup run everywhere, if there hadn’t been a shipwreck?” she pointed out, believing that there was no time to beat around the bush and let things spiral out of control the way they were, in her opinion, bound to do with this couple. The passion with which these girls loved each other was matched only by the heat of their rivalry.

“But Jo’s not even supposed to know that we know that she and Blair are in a relationship in the first place because Blair doesn’t want her to know that she let us know!” Tootie hissed across the room, prompting Natalie to place a hand across her mouth and gasp before ducking behind the bench, mortified. The youngest of the group threw her head back, defeated, praying that this hadn’t just gone horribly awry.

It was a confusing situation and, in hindsight, it was pretty easy to see how someone could get so lost in the backwash. Jo had never admitted to them that she was even gay, whereas Blair would openly discuss her relationship with giggles and grins, like any decent teenage girl, at least once a week, and frequently more, depending on what there was to be said. They were living with darkness and light there, only in terms of open and closed, gossip and silence.

So, in short, they both knew essentially everything that was going on in their friends’ relationship, whilst thinking that Jo was completely ignorant to their, well, lack of ignorance. Still, that made it hard to play dumb, and whenever the young duo were entrusted with knowledge about a fight the couple were having, they were left to pretend that their habit of ‘picking sides’ (or not picking them, which was supposed to be the rule, even though they usually ended up in Jo’s corner, much to Blair’s disdain) was just a continuation of the usual dynamics of their friendship, regardless of the fact that it was really an attempt at mediation between the lovers. It had been going on for so long that it just slipped her mind to act like they weren’t together.

“Oh, I know that you know.” Said Jo with a shrug, prompting jaws to drop. She scratched the back of her neck, awkwardly. “It’s not like we made a big secret of it or anything. Sure, I may not have said it to you, but I never hid it, did I?” Tootie and Natalie glanced at each other with mounting discomfort, averting their gazes. A beat passed, though it was too early for crickets to chirp, and too far from the desert for tumbleweeds. “You thought I was hiding it?” she inferred.

Tootie shrugged, fidgeting uncomfortably. “We assumed you were just really bad at it.” She admitted, and it was true. Although Blair and Jo weren’t, as their school would say, ‘inappropriate’ with one another in public, they were often guilty of little displays of physical intimacy that essentially broadcast their status as a couple to anybody perceptive enough to spare them a second glance. However, because there hadn’t ever been an official coming out discussion, they hadn’t been sure that they were allowed to talk to her about it like they knew. Sexuality was a sensitive issue, and Jo was frightening as hell when she was mad. “And, well, Blair said it was supposed to be ‘hush hush’.”

“Yeah,” Jo nodded, “From family and teachers who might try and put a stop to it. But it turned out the school was cooler than we thought, so we kind of phased out of that.” She said, although she still suspected it was probably more of a case of ‘we’ll keep your secrets if you keep ours’ between certain staff and the students who shared with them this particular ‘lifestyle’, as those on the outside looking in were prone to classify it. “Fuck, we even went to that party together. You didn’t think that was just as friends, did you?” she scratched her head in perplexity; what the hell did she have to do to qualify as ‘openly gay’?

“Well, it was hard for us to make a call, because we already knew.” Said Natalie, coming over to join them at the table, expression clearly showing that she didn’t yet understand why they’d been treated as if they were in the dark for so long. “So why didn’t you ever talk to us about it? You knew we chatted with Blair, right?” Jo nodded; the more hilarious or insightful parts of their conversations were frequently reported to her. “Then you knew we were cool with it, that nothing was going to be an issue. Why didn’t you come to us?” she asked, sounding a little hurt, betrayed even, like she hadn’t been invited to their wedding. “We could have helped you sort this out.”

Jo raised an eyebrow. They knew her too well for this. She didn’t normally talk about anything so easily. She didn’t like to bother people with pointless personal information that they didn’t really care about. How was this any different? “There was nothing to tell you.”

“Bullshit.” Said Tootie, firmly, staring her dead on and perching her hands on her hips. Jo looked at her as if she’d just announced that she’d dropped out of school to join the Aryan Nation. “Obviously something must be going on. You don’t just end a relationship over something that isn’t worth sharing.” She retorted. “We’re damn keen to hear this.” She folded her arms, suddenly looking about twice her actual size and, though Jo was loath to admit it, intimidating as hell.

Natalie joined her friend in the interrogation, bracing her hands on the table, which, short of holding a blinding light in her face, was disturbingly similar to the time she’d been dragged in to be ‘interviewed’ by the NYPD (without charge). “Is it true you broke up with Blair?” she asked, holding her breath.

This was why she didn’t tell them anything, Jo realised, playing with her sleeves. Like a fame of Chinese whispers, word spread fast, but it quickly became more complicated and convoluted with every addition to the chain. “Break up is a strong word.” She began with a very nervous smile, wondering if she could possibly explain her plan in a way that wouldn’t condemn her to their naughty list for all eternity.

The two friends gasped as one in shock and appal. “You did!” Tootie all but screeched, fingers flying to her mouth and teeth chomping down on her fingernails like a turbocharged woodchipper. Was this the end of Jo and Blair? She trembled like a lost child in the wild blue yonder at the prospect. She thought they would last forever, or at least be together for as long as she knew them. They were so happy together. If their love couldn’t last, what hope did she have of meeting her perfect man in the years to come? “But why?!” she practically screamed, ignoring the animated efforts Jo made to shush her as she became increasingly hysterical, making her companions flinch at the excessive decibel level.

Natalie patted her shoulder to calm her down, maintaining her senses enough to confront the friend they’d put on an impromptu trial. “Blair said it was because of a math test.” Actually, she wasn’t entirely sure what the blonde girl had said, exactly, but she’d managed to decipher a few words out of the incoherent storm of blubbering and ragged breathing that drowned the rest of them out, so she thought she’d got the gist.

“That’s just wrong, Jo.” Said Tootie, slowly shaking her head in condemnation. “I never thought you were like that.”

Jo’s head hit the table hard as she slumped into a seat, and she buried her face in her arms. No matter how well she thought she’d explained it, the wrong message had been passed on. “My girlfriend is a psycho.” She muttered under her breath, releasing a long sigh of suffering before she’d steeled herself enough to sit up straight and plead her case against a currently hostile jury. “Look, it’s nothing like how you think it is. And I haven’t broken up with Blair,” she couldn’t; she’d be ripping out her own heart in the process, killing them both, “This is just a reality check, you know?”

“No. We don’t know. Tell us.” Said Natalie, unimpressed, but listening.

“Alright. Basically, I just think it’s fair that Blair should support me when I do well, and I know she does,” she cut her friends off before they could argue as much on her lover’s behalf, “But she really doesn’t show it. Hell, she hasn’t even been showing the way she feels about me at all, compared to the way she used to.” Jo was waffling and she knew it, but she was nervous, and worried that they weren’t going to be with her on this, and that they might spoil her intentions to Blair, thereby subjecting her to humiliation and subordination for months to follow; if Blair was a sore loser, she was an even worse winner. “Sure, it’s kind of vindictive on my part, but I reckon it will work and knock her head and her heart back into line. Like how, back home, one of my friends got in real trouble with the law a few years back, and people were saying how he was bound to go to prison later on in life, so they decided to show him what it was like behind bars.” She spun her pen around in distracted circles as she spoke. “Don’t know what happened there, but he changed his ways after that, cleaned up his act. Yeah, I know, not the same, but,” Jo swallowed, feeling insecure about her abilities to phrase this the way she meant it, “Think of this as my way of scaring Blair straight.”

Her two friends snickered, because they were immature like that. Jo thought that must be a good sign, since all their fury and misery seemed to have left them. Maybe they got the point after all. “So, basically,” Natalie began, stroking her chin like a philosopher, “You’re punishing Blair for being a dick?”

That was a far less righteous way of putting it. “Pretty much. Yeah.” Jo conceded, nodding, unapologetically.

“Oooh! That sounds like fun!” said Tootie, bouncing in her seat and clapping her hands energetically, a mischievous grin spreading across her features at the thought. “Can we watch?” she asked, certain that this was going to be privately hilarious, but not entirely confident that there was anything they could do as far as participating in the minor degradation of the Warner heiress.

Jo shrugged, taken aback by their unexpected change of heart. “We live together. I can’t exactly stop you.” Huh, maybe she didn’t give them enough credit. Maybe she should have been more inclined to talk things over with these two, instead of keeping herself closed off. A smirk tugged at her lips as she hunched over, conspiratorially. “What do you reckon? You girls want to help me come up with some evil schemes that’ll drive my girlfriend insane?”

“Uh, hell yes.” Natalie replied, half-snorting. Few things in life were more satisfying or entertaining than playing tricks on Blair, particularly where Jo was involved, and she was inclined to take the side of the latter and assume that this was a deserved consequence.

“Wait, wait,” Tootie raised a hand to interrupt, remembering herself, “We weren’t kidding when we said Blair was really upset. Maybe you should say something to her. We don’t want to be mean, do we?”

“We don’t?” Natalie queried, uncertainly. She cast a look towards Jo, searching for a reaction. Apparently they didn’t want to be mean. “Oh, okay. There goes my idea.” Damn! And it had been so good too. Just when she thought she could put her wacky creativity to good use…

Jo sighed, wringing the damp cloth in her hands, starting to feel a vague shadow of guilt settling down upon her shoulders. She didn’t really want Blair to be hurt…just missing her. “Alright. I’ll go talk to her. Make her feel better.” As she stood up, she took note of the very suspicious gazes her friends sent her way, and she responded with a similar near-glare. “In a ‘just friends’ way. I have self-control.” The two friends seemed sceptical, but chose to remain silent, which, ultimately, hid nothing of what they thought. Jo glared at them, disappointedly. “You guys are sucky friends.”

“Hey! We’re on your side here.” Tootie insisted. “What more do you want?”

Jo threw down the half-soaked rag, a small splash rising from the puddle of soda that had collected on the floor upon impact. “Clean up the mess you made,” she said, pointing down at the floor, then lifting her finger to indicate herself, “And I’ll clean up mine.”

Natalie groaned. That didn’t sound like a fair trade. She glanced up at Tootie, rather shiftily. “Rock paper scissors? Loser mops up?”

Meanwhile, Jo bounded up the stairs to their bedroom at a brisk pace, leaping over the final few steps with ease, her momentum carrying her around the corner, and most of the way to her destination. “Blair?” she rapped her knuckles against the door barely lightly enough to classify as a knock, then easing it open and peeking through the crack, cautiously. She didn’t want anything, of any shape or mass, propelled in the general vicinity of her head. Blair had a mean pitching arm when she was mad. “Are you in here?” she asked, scanning the walls, floor, and ceiling. No response. Anyone else would have assumed vacancy. She knew better than that. It was not as empty as it seemed to be. “Are you hiding or just asleep?”

“Go away.” A muffled murmur emerged from a less than elegant lump of light pink and cream coloured sheets on the bed pronouncedly fancier and frillier than the rest. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Jo chuckled, shaking her head as she stepped into the room, hands instinctively going to where there should have been pockets, but finding only the school skirt there. “Bullshit. Of course you do. I know you miss me, and I happen to have things to say.”

“Haven’t you said enough?” Blair shot back, acting defensive and hurt, doing her utmost to prevent herself from bursting into tears yet again in front of their cause. “What, you want to make it even worse? Humiliate and destroy me a little more? You want to tell me that I’m not even human, and grind your steel-toed boots into what’s left of my broken heart? Is that it?”

A tense silence ensued. Jo cleared her throat, suddenly feeling very unwelcome. Well, at least Blair wasn’t bitter or anything. “Uh, no.” She said, with no shortage of awkwardness, sitting down by Blair’s feet on the perfumed bed they always used to snuggle in – there was no way the heiress would ever dream of sleeping on top of grease stains and car parts – when the urge overtook them, placing a hand on the slight hump that she guessed concealed her knees, the touch prompting her lover to pop up from beneath the covers, a red-eyed wreck. “Hi.” She said, offering a weak smile. “Not taking this too well, are you?”

Blair stared her down in a manner that made it obvious that it was too late for such niceties. “I have no coping skills. You know this. Hell, you’re the one who said as much. So, if you’re here to tell me what else is wrong with me—”

“Actually, I wanted to apologise.” Jo muttered, too shy to meet her girlfriend’s gaze (which reeked of righteous indignation at the accusations for which she had been wrongly charged and the conviction to disprove them and have them all permanently stricken from her record), appearing as though she had been humbled by the gift of hindsight, and had taken the time to rethink their earlier conflict. “I’m really sorry that I got you so upset with what I was sayin’ earlier. I guess I wasn’t thinking about the words as they were comin’ out of my big, fat mouth; I’m bad at that, you know.” She wasn’t, really, but her past, accent and upbringing led her to assume that she had the communication skills of an idiot. “I didn’t…I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

Blair sniffled and wiped the tears from her eyes with a corner of her sheet, already stained with dripping makeup and drying salt. The other shoe didn’t drop. Slowly, a smirk tugged at her previously tremor-laden lips, and her eyes were clear, and twinkling. “I should have known.” She drawled; she always got her way, if she cried hard enough over it. Everybody always caved in. “There’s no way you could have possibly been serious.” A hint of patronisation strutted into her voice as she gently grasped Jo’s hand and brought it to her cheek. After all, nobody turned down Blair Warner. “Now, if you would care to kiss me and make it better, we can put this unpleasantness behind us.” She offered, suggestively, urging her gorgeous girlfriend down towards her.

“Huh?” Jo wriggled her arm out of Blair’s clutches, accidentally whacking herself in the face with the back of her hand as a result. “Damn it!” she cursed, checking to make sure she wasn’t actually hurt, which she wasn’t. “Blair, I thought I made it clear to you that this,” she gestured between them with her fingers, “Ain’t happening until you earn it.”

The blonde narrowed her stare, puzzled and worried about what that meant. “What?” she barely did more than mouth the word. “But you just took it back!”

Suddenly, the situation made sense. “Oh, no.” Jo said, waving her hands in dismissal. “I meant what I said before, I’m just sorry about the way I said it.” The misunderstanding led her to utter a sheepish chuckle, which was poorly timed, in context. “It was kind of harsh.”

“What?” Blair’s heart sank, straining on the inside of her chest like someone had just punched it and left it struggling for breath in a back alley while they made off with its wallet. “So you’re not…We’re still not together?” was the girl that she was planning her whole life around when she drifted off into daydreams really letting her go so readily?

“Nope.” Said Jo, rather bluntly, patting her suspended girlfriend on the hand. “But I reckon you’ll come up with something to win me back. You’re always right, remember?” she said, a bright grin that would normally have classified as affectionate lighting up her beautiful features as she got up off the bed, looking down at the girl she loved as if oblivious to her steadily growing panic. “I’ll see you around, babe.” A wink was the last thing Blair saw of Jo before she disappeared out the door, leaving her bewildered and dumbly begging questions that would never be asked or answered vocally.

“I…fuuuuuuck!” she whined, collapsing in a heap on the bed. The only tactic she knew for getting what she wanted out of life had failed. That meant she’d actually have to work hard to prove how she felt about Jo, come up with some creative solution before she lost her for good and pray like the apocalypse was coming that it worked. And she was definitely willing to, but it would be hard, leaving her stranded in unfamiliar territory, clueless on how to proceed, a novice in the cockpit. Oh, she was bad at this. “I’m the worst lesbian ever.” Blair lamented, but she was determined to use every trick in the playbook (both the gay and straight sections, just to be sure) to get her beloved Jo back by her side, where she belonged.