Based on my favorite ND head canon (143)!

You don't understand her. Why she leaves to-go boxes cluttered all over the place but always puts her clothes away. Why ten minutes after any of your arguments she finds you and kisses you and, clinging, says she loves you and tells you exactly how long she's likely to be mad at you.

And promptly runs off again.

These habits used to give you headaches, years ago, but now you've stopped trying to make sense of them.

It's too exhausting.

You still puzzle over why she's stayed this long.

On days like today, you wonder why you've stayed this long. Then a second later you remember.

How she put up with all those years you had to sell things out of your apartment to keep it. How she, naturally open and vibrant, started keeping your secrets when you told her you didn't want anyone in town to have the faintest idea. How she promises to kiss you in secret when she wants to scream it from the rooftops. How her auburn hair ends up tangled around your fingers every morning.

How she's still your little fairy wife, even after all these years.

You're rethinking the thought that San Francisco would have changed you both. Made her more ordered, made you more relaxed. It doesn't make you wish you hadn't moved here, but it does makes things a good deal harder.

You know biracial lesbian couples don't get very far in slumbering Midwestern towns. You knew before Abby did. But Abby's a special case, a boundless spot of brightness. She came out with the spring daisies, and nobody seemed to mind. Then again, that might have changed had she gotten a girlfriend and become a practicing lesbian before moving out of town.

They warned you about her, too, behind a good-natured veneer. "She might just make advances when you move out. San Francisco's a pretty easygoing place, I hear," the parents of your one-time students whispered in the theatre where you worked later. Then they looked you up and down and laughed to themselves, as if nobody that young would fall in love with someone like you.

You haven't remembered that conversation in a while, and now you feel a smug sense of satisfaction.

As for your actual relationship with her…

Not even Hannah knows.

She calls Abby "your friend."

Well, right now you don't feel very much that Abby is your friend. Not when she bailed again before you could find her and ask her to run an errand.

But maybe that's to be expected. After all, your most recent argument with her had ended an hour before.

You don't know where she's gone, but it's because she's stressed. And where really never matters anyway since she's always here every minute she can still make you grind your teeth.

And just that suddenly she's here—actually—walking quickly to you for her kiss. She frowns, as if she is on a mission.

This time, though, she doesn't kiss you—at least, not right away.

"I love you, Rose," she whispers, true to type, "but I hate these accidents."

You laugh because you have no choice. Because if you don't, you'll go insane.

Then she puts her forehead on yours mid-smile, and for that second all quarrels dissolve.

"You're spirited, and I'm no quitter," you say. "You think a couple of accidents are going to get the better of us?"

Her eyes soften at the reassurance. Then you remember, as you always forget, that your age has given you security. Somehow that gets lost amidst all the wrinkles.

And as soon as her eyes softened, they harden again, when your certainty becomes hers.

You've seen that drive many times, yet they always bring you back to the same place, preserving the moment exactly when you fell in love with her.

She steps out on stage and introduces whatever show's on tonight. For some reason you can't drag your eyes down to the Playbill to check.

The acoustics aren't great. You can barely hear her. But you don't need to. Instead you're looking. Looking at the loops of brown beads that serve as sleeves on her crimson shirt, the swish of her skirt against her thighs every time she takes a step. Then she turns 45 degrees and faces where you're sitting, and her beads catch the light. But they're only the channel, you realize in the path of her clear-white, straight teeth and eyes that shimmer at every angle under stage lights. You wonder how she could ever just let go of acting and move on to directing when she always seemed stuck in some character. You puzzled over it for a while. Then it's your first night together, an indigo room smeared blurry with her lunar incense. Of course there are cards. Of course there is a crystal ball. And maybe the predictions are the highlight of her night, but you get more predictions out of the shadows of her eyelashes. When she stares at you through several layers of ruby, the stone in the top of the purple turban you hate that you love.

She's so goddamned beautiful.

Maybe to others it is shallow love, lust, foolish love. But even though you never hear a word she says that night, you aren't only seeing her body. If she were statue beauty, standing still, open eyes sleeping, she wouldn't stand a chance against you. Not sensible, practical Rose.

But everything in her is life life life, so much of it that there's no room for anything else, so much that you're almost afraid to touch her skin in case it shatters. Saying no to life is not sensible, especially not to someone who's fifty-eight years old.

You're feeling her gravity, but for months you can't take a step.

She didn't like going on dates with you. At least, she thought that until something kept pulling her back. Abby couldn't waste time on short, dull conversations with you, but she'd spend hours sitting side-by-side with you in silence. "I grew up fifteen years in a day," you remember her saying, "because of you." Sometimes it's resentful. Sometimes, like on the days you make rent, it's joyous. Most of the time there's nothing specific behind it.

But to you it's a declaration of her substance, which you knew of since she found something in the silence with you. When you found that Abby, unlike all other thirty-somethings, wasn't blind to your middle-aged values, you believed briefly in clairvoyance—at least the clairvoyance of 30-year-old barefooted children with musty souls and grandmother eyes. The slight cynicism you'd started to acquire fell away with the back pains. Those comments from PTA meetings suddenly didn't hurt so much, all because of someone who wasn't there with you.

You wanted to change that. You brought up San Francisco.

She smiled.

You soared.

If she were flighty, you would have loved her, but you wouldn't have stayed. You couldn't have endured staying, just a little more than you couldn't have endured leaving. Some of your standards are involuntarily non-negotiable. After all, you think with a little smile, you are old and inevitably stubborn.

Gripping your plane tickets around hooked arms, you left a few hours before sunrise before anybody'd be up to say goodbye.

At the airport you looked at Abby and shared a cathartic laugh, and for once you were freer than she was.

She never had as much to fear, after all. She can still do everything she wants. You, though. You have to be sure.

Right now you cling to that certainty. Even if the mansion burns, you still have Abby. Who, for all her faults, sticks with people a hell of a lot better than she sticks with chore lists.

Who, right now, is tugging your hand in the direction of the room you share, threatening to smooth out the rocks between your shoulder blades if you don't promise to not work as hard.

She feels no shame in going ahead with the massage despite your protests that there's no time for this because she knows that even if you promise to ease up, you won't.

Her confidence simultaneously inspires and frustrates you. Abby never asks if you'll leave if she keeps bailing. She won't say a self-deprecating word—since that's negative energy—but she'll give every sign she's lazy. Stress is her own worst enemy, the pinnacle of negative energy, and she'll never let you know she hasn't conquered it.

You'll never admit it to her, that this is your favorite part of the relationship, since communication is practical to you and no communication is not. But it keeps you guessing, and you don't have secrets even if you don't talk about everything. It teaches you to use your other four senses.

Still, you don't want to encourage it to any greater degree. If she gets complacent about it, then both of you could very likely have secrets on your hands.

"You're not thinking about the accidents, are you?" Abby murmurs. You can hear the frown in her voice as she tries to unknot a particularly hard spot on your back.

You don't answer.

She rests her forehead at the top of your back and pushes air out in an irritated sigh. "I wish you'd listen to me sometimes."

There's something in her voice you hear for the first time. Something that isn't just concern for you.

Maybe she's feeling her handful of years just the same as you're feeling your swamp of them.

"I'll listen," you say. Because you don't believe you have half the answers, let alone all of them. Age only brings a little wisdom.

And for the first time in ages, you aren't worried about yours.

Suddenly you hear something.

You're back on the alert. You sit up, and a little of the tension that left your shoulders immediately returns.

Abby's fingers stiffen on your shirt fabric at the same time.

Even she's unnerved.

Considering the accidents and the other weird things…

After you both realize that the sound is the doorbell, you get up to take care of it.

Abby doesn't call you back to her.

You know she didn't want a house guest, but it's either that or losing the mansion in all probability. You suspect Abby doesn't care all that much about the mansion anymore, not after the thrill of escaping has worn off.

Then you remember the weird things, the portraits that appears to blink, the wood crane that appears to move, the flowers that keep dying. You see her last week, chasing an odd sound, her face taking on a mesmerizing mixture of awe and apprehension.

With that reassurance you continue to the front door and squint through the stained glass, trying to make out who's behind it.

Your eyes catch a dim figure with shoulder-length hair in a slight pompadour. It's at least thirty years out of fashion at this point. Even middle-aged women abandoned it after reaching a certain age.

Curiously you open the door.

The hair is reddish-blonde, you notice with surprise. Somehow you recognize the young daughter of Hannah's employer, even though she isn't at all what you expected.

"Are you Nancy?" you ask, just to confirm.

"Yes," she says with a friendly smile. "Thank you so much for having me. I can't wait to get started."

"Well, I'm happy you're here." You step aside to let her in. "Abby and I need all the help we can get."

You chat as you usher her to the Chinese room, then stand in the doorframe. "You had a long flight, so feel free to catch up on sleep," you tell her. It sounds stilted, and you try not to flinch as your mind slams on the breaks. Your shoulders tense up, missing Abby's touch, and you ache for her, even though she's only a few doors down.

"Oh, I'm not tired at all," she replies, hoisting up her suitcase and setting it down on one of the chairs with gusto. "What do you need me to start on?"

Your heart sinks. "Well, I don't know yet. Get settled in and give me some time to think about it. I'll be in the kitchen."

Her smile widens. "Thanks. I'll be down soon."

You leave and start down the hallway, walking stiffly past Abby's room toward the back stairs and thinking of how today you don't love each other in people's space because you can't. Now this all feels stilted. Only a part of you is with Abby—you're two separate individuals, after all—but it feels like all of you is lying.

Faint sounds and the smell of wood waft up from the basement as you continue to the kitchen.

Not having to hide is so new to you that sometimes you still have trouble. Even in front of Charlie and Louis you still can't bring yourself to hold Abby's hand. Soon you'll make sure you get to it. The secrecy is a habit you are determined to break. But residual fear still clings to you, and any piece of River Heights—even the sweet kid who agreed to help you out—has to be in the dark.

Even when you first told Abby about Nancy's visit, you never asked her to keep you at arm's length for the visit. You never had to. By now she knows the drill. By itself, almost like magic, "your" room becomes "Abby's" room. You don't have to move much out since you have your own space. With a lover like Abby, you need it. Still, the room transfers from a modest love nest to a hippie haven, thick with the incense you always detested, and a tiny stupid part of you is scared she'll find another hippie and leave you. You wish that telling yourself it's stupid will make it go away, but it doesn't.

You blink until the memory goes away, attempting to latch onto another. The conversation you just had with Abby returns to you. You didn't very much like seeing Abby worry about the age barrier, so why do you do it?

You don't have to worry about your age.

Quickly from there another notion forms from all the messes in your head, like your mind is hungrier than it's been in years.

There's no need to hide.

Thus it hits you, and your heart sings. All these realizations in a day, shimmering epiphanies as Abby might call them, hover around you and form a second skin. You finally understand what it feels like to want to take your lover to dinner so badly you can't not do it any longer, some upscale place where there's lots of lights and a chandelier to clone them to infinity.

You are not afraid.

Abby surges back to you. You feel her, even though she isn't here. This is what she's been feeling all these years.

Freedom.

Before you'd always say Abby "thinks it doesn't matter what other people think." You lived through the 60's. You knew better.

Tears rise to your eyes. It really doesn't matter what other people think. At worst, it gets really ugly when enough people thinking it matters and their opinions are law get together trying to shape the world into something it isn't. But it doesn't make a damned difference to the god you've been praying to all these years.

As you start remembering, your mouth curves up, revealing a white crescent through your lips.

Yours is a friendly god. One who's always listened to you without ever rebuking you. If he doesn't care, then it doesn't matter if people do.

It's beyond you how all this came so quickly, and you believe less in fate than Abby does. Something must've given you a little shove, you reason. Then your mind falls on the sole biggest change to your lives of late. For the first time in days, you don't hate the mansion. You don't even hate the accidents. For maybe both your hands will splinter after fixing yet another thing gone wrong, but they will hurt less if you clasp each other's fingers.

Maybe moving into a house together is like having a child. Maybe it brings you closer together.

You want to float up to her room and tell her you love her all over again, this time loud enough so everyone in your life can hear.

You can't, though. You told Nancy you'd meet her down here.

So instead you sit down hard on a kitchen chair, locking your feet to the floor, and send your mind up there. What Abby's kept telling you, about you having to work on your imagination, suddenly makes sense.

In a few hours, you'll go up looking however much younger you look after learning to stop worrying about your age.

She'll come to the door before you even have to knock because of that ridiculous two-way mirror in her room. You'll hug her, right there, right there in the hallway of your own house, without her asking for it.

"What's this?" Abby will ask after pulling back, a mischievous note to her voice.

"I love you," you'll say, "and now I'm ready to talk about it."

What a beautiful sun that will rise on her face. She'll pull you into the room, forgetting not to slam the door. "You really are?"

"Well," you'll whisper, "the Winter Festival is in two days. Let's go and make no bones about it."

And when everyone else is sleeping tonight, you'll indulge together in a world that isn't rigid.

Where you still aren't younger, but you're ageless.

I actually didn't start writing this in response to Pence, but I sure as hell finished it with him in mind!

Title borrowed from last three words of the poem in the Chinese room.

Why is Rose religious here? I dunno. She seems pretty old-fashioned in some regards.

My favorite quote on "practicing" gay people and lesbians, and my usage of the term in this story, comes from the 70's sitcom Soap, which portrayed the first openly gay character on TV, Jodie Campbell, played by the adorable Billy Crystal:

Social worker: "Are you a practicing homosexual?"

Jodie (heatedly): "I don't have to practice; I'm very good at it."

xD

Obviously "practicing homosexual" is an outdated and derogatory term, but since Rose is 50-60 years old and spent a good amount of time (I assume) living in a small town, I figured she'd be familiar enough with it to use it.

Also, I wanted to get into the deeper fundamentals of their love (as I generally try to do), for which I experimented with the six w's: "Who, What, When, Where, Why, How." At first this was an accident, but I noticed a pattern of using "why" in the first several consecutive sentences, then, shortly thereafter, "how." Then, I thought, I'd roll with it. The order I settled on was, as you might notice-

Why

How

When

Who

What

Where

-with each subsequent "w" going a layer deeper in their relationship.

And lastly, I've never written in future tense for longer than a few sentences before! Branching out, man.