Chapter Text
bleed into me
part 1 - if you feel it don't cage it
This is how it starts:
Mark calls her at seven to say that they can't wait for her any longer and they are going to his parents' house without her, and not to bother driving up tonight. Maybe she can use the time alone to think about her priorities.
She kicks the sanitary bin in the cubicle she's having the conversation in so that the whole fucking office doesn't know her business, yet again, and then she goes out and tells Steve that she's changed her mind about that drink.
She has three wines in the first hour and a half, and then sulks sourly as Steve chats up a girl from the table beside them, before giving Kate a thumbs up and heading off with her.
Fucking cheers, mate.
So anyway, that's how it happens. That's why she's there, alone, half way to drunk on a Friday, looking around half heartedly, wondering if this might be the night that she lets herself give in to the almost compulsive urge she's been feeling to have someone touch her who isn't her husband, who actually wants to fuck her. That's how she spots her. The woman with the softly curled hair and the nicely fitted suit, the one being yelled at by the red head who's storming out. The one who looks dejectedly into her empty wine glass, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth.
Maybe it's because she's after some solidarity for her misery. Maybe it's because right that second she hates every fucking person she knows, because she's miserable and they're not. Maybe it's because this is one of those women, the ones that Kate can't stop watching and hates herself for it. Maybe that's how she ends up next to her table when she goes to the bar.
I'm not, she lied to Steve once, way back at the start, when he asked. And really, is it a lie? She doesn't ever touch them, doesn't ever doanything about it. So maybe sometimes, when Mark isn't really getting her there, her mind might slip to that girl on reception, the one with the nose piercing, or the woman from the cafe where her and Steve get their Monday paninis. But everyone does it. She's pretty sure Mark isn't fucking her most of the time either, not in his mind.
So anyway, she's not, not really. Not the way it counts.
Not until that night.
It's not like she plans it. Wouldn't know where to start even if she wanted to. Back before Mark, whenever she wanted to shag a bloke, she'd just sidle up next to him, let him buy her a pint and then take her back to his place. Or, back in those days, his mum's place more often than not.
This is different. This is pure accident really. This is Kate ordering another bottle of wine, to drink pathetically by herself, and when she turns back some wankers have nicked her table. She faces the choice of trying to wrestle it back from ten drunk lads on a Friday bender, or...
"You can sit here, if you like?" a soft voice calls from the left. "If you share that bottle."
It's the woman, the woman with the hair and the suit, who apparently has an accent that makes Kate's toes curl, and who has shifted her handbag from the chair the redhead vacated and is gesturing to it with a smile.
"Thanks," Kate replies. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth and she wishes she hadn't had so much to drink already.
"You look as miserable as I feel." The woman holds out her glass. "I'm Jo, by the way."
"Kate." She pours them two glasses, all the way to the top. Jo raises her eyebrow but doesn't say anything.
"Why are you here drinking all by yourself, Kate?"
She feels much drunker than she is. The music is loud but Jo's smooth voice cuts through it like a knife. Her palms are sweaty. She can't stop staring at Jo's face, at the way her mascara is slightly smudged under her left eye and the fact that she seems to be wearing about ten layers to the pub and yet still looks tiny. "Why are you?" she responds, hoping it sounds funny and not defensive.
Jo takes an enormous gulp of white wine. "Well, I've just been dumped."
Kate jerks her hand so violently that wine sloshes over the side. Her heart knocks around inside her, a ball of nervous energy. Does she mean.... was that woman...
"Apparently I'm emotionally unavailable." Jo drags her voice over the 'l's in a way that tells Kate this is not her first drink of the night either.
"You don't seem that upset," Kate asks, eyebrow up.
"Probably because I'm emotionally unavailable," Jo replies dryly, mouth quirking a little. Kate has never wanted to kiss anyone so much in her entire life.
Rationally, she knows it's because she's sad, and horny. Because her husband hasn't touched her in weeks. Because three times a week she jolts awake at night from a nightmare about watching that lorry crush Tony Gates right in front of her.
For months now, she's been feeling weirdly detached from herself, like she's watching from above. Like this isn't really her, like she's playing a part in a TV show. Nothing she does matters, not really. Everything is numb. She can barely taste her wine.
But Jo is real. Jo, with her smile and her her blazer and the way she plays with the wineglass. Jo, who just had a breakup with a woman. Jo, whose eyes twinkle like they're sharing an in-joke with Kate when she smiles.
"Why are you here?" Jo asks again.
"My husband doesn't want to see me, my best friend ditched me for a shag, and I'm considering going home with some stranger just to feel something," slips out, her brain to mouth filter as drunk as she is. Fuck.
Jo's eyes widen a little, and for a moment Kate wishes the ground would swallow her up. But then she just lifts her glass as if to toast her. "To shared misery," she says, and Kate grins and clinks their glasses.
"Can we get you another?" a voice next to Kate says suddenly. Two men, suits, in their early forties, have appeared next to them. One of them gives her what he clearly thinks is a winning grin.
Her heart sinks a little, because the bubble she's in, the one where she can pretend she's not herself, and can let herself look at Jo and enjoy that for a moment, is popping.
And then Jo reaches into her pocket, without even looking at the men, and pulls out...is that a warrant card?
The men stagger back like she's brandished a cross at a pair of vampires, and Kate almost feels sorry for them. "Have a great night guys," she calls after them, looking back at Jo. She hadn't pegged her for a copper, but then this is one of the copper pubs, so she shouldn't really be surprised.
"I'm sorry, Kate," Jo says, not sounding all that sorry. "I've blown you chances there."
She looks up at Kate through her eyelashes, and something about her look makes Kate's stomach twist. Her knee judders up and down, suddenly full of an irrepressible energy.
She makes a choice.
"Not really my type," she says, looking straight at Jo. Jo smiles.
***
So, yeah. That's how it starts. An accidental meeting in a bar. A shared bottle of wine. A taxi ride in which Jo sets her hand beside Kate's so their pinkies touch.
"Can I hang up your coat?" Jo asks her when they come into her dark flat, like Kate's come over for afternoon tea and not to break her marriage vows. It's absurd, really, how turned on she already is. They haven't even kissed. Haven't done anything but touch hands, and yet Kate knows she's wet.
She aches to touch Jo. She's denied this within herself for so long, even in her own fantasies, that her hands tremble with indecision. How can she do this? How can she just give in, after all this time? What does that make her?
"Don't be nervous," Jo says softly, stepping closer.
"I'm not," Kate lies, clenching her fists to stop them shaking.
"Will you kiss me?" Jo asks, stepping up to where Kate is leaning on the arm of the sofa and between her legs.
You're married. You're married, and you're not...you're not...
She kisses her. She kisses her, closed mouth, soft and brief, and when she leans back, when she sees Jo's slightly pink cheeks and her closed eyes, when she feels her heart twist, she knows that she's going to cheat on her husband tonight.
Jo sees it too, when her eyes open. They look at each other for a moment, time suspended, and then their mouths crash together and it's nothing like Kate's ever experienced before. She's never felt like this, this desperate, like she might burn to nothing if she doesn't touch the other person. She wishes she could slow down, make it last longer. If this is the one time she gets this, she wants to savour it.
But it's like they both can't wait, because as soon as they're upstairs in Jo's bedroom they're plucking at each other's clothes, a flurry of hands and lips. Jo's so soft, everywhere. It makes her head spin, makes her want to bury herself in every part of her and never come up for air.
After so many weeks, months of numbness, feeling so much all at once is almost overwhelming.
"You're so fucking beautiful," Jo whispers in her ear as she slides her fingers gently between Kate's legs. Every part of her tingles, feels like a live wire. Jo's hot breath on her neck makes her shiver. She can feels the wetness of Jo's underwear against her thigh, and the idea that Kate did that, made Jo so wet she's grinding against her, is almost as hot as Jo's fingers on her clit.
Almost.
It takes hardly any time at all, once Jo starts properly fucking her. Once her fingers twist inside her and her thumb nudges her clit.
It's easily the best orgasm she's ever had with another person, and if she wasn't feeling so fucking incredible, that would probably worry her a lot more.
"Shit, Kate," Jo moans, like seeing her go off like that is getting her off, and then she's taking Kate's hand and pressing it against her clit through her underwear and grinding against them. The soft cotton is soaked through, warm against her fingers. Kate can't stop watching Jo's face, the way she bites her lip and squeezes her eyes shut. It takes her longer than Kate, and she's quieter, sighing softly when her finger tips get a particularly good spot, but it's the hottest thing Kate has ever witnessed. She wishes she could feel her without the fabric between them. She wishes Jo had her vest off.
"Oh!" Jo sighs, sounding almost surprised, and then her mouth opens in a silent cry as she comes, hand so tight around Kate's wrist it's almost painful.
Almost.
Jo looks at her afterwards, a look that goes under the last remains of Kate's makeup and her lightly perspiring skin right to the part of herself she doesn't even let herself see. "You can stay, if you like," she says then, soft and hesitant, so unlike the way she danced Kate into her bed.
Kate nods jerkily. Her mouth isn't working to form words. They don't snuggle or anything, but Jo falls asleep facing Kate, their knees touching, and Kate follows not long after.
In the morning, Jo makes her a strong black coffee and walks her to the door. She's in just a silk robe, and Kate tries not to notice the way her nipples are stiff under the thin fabric. She kisses Kate's cheek before she closes the door, and that, of all the things they've done in the last ten hours, is what makes Kate blush.
Kate goes home and showers, sliding her hand between her legs and rubbing roughly at her still-tender clit, the sounds of Jo coming above her still in her mind. Then she drives to Nottingham, to Mark's parents house. She hugs Josh, and kisses Mark, and says she'll be better, that she's sorry, that she missed them.
She had worried on the drive up that what she's done is going to make it harder, but for some reason, it makes the lies come easier.
This is how it starts.