Work Text:
gemma never remembers her dreams
---
There is someone new in the dentist’s office. It should set her on edge, but she can only feel relieved.
He has kind eyes.
"You're...not...?" she starts.
"Oh, no, sorry. I'm the new hygienist. Well, not new, don't worry. I've been doing this for a few years now, but I started about a month ago. Take a seat."
She doesn’t want to take a seat. She’s always taking a seat, this seat. Sometimes it feels like her whole life is that fucking chair and the way it’s still the most uncomfortable chair she’s ever sit in despite the fact it feels like the curves of her body have been worn into the cushions.
The hygienist sees her hesitation. She braces herself for his eyes to grown unkind, his tone to harden, as he politely asks her to take a seat again, that she’s just prolonging the inevitable and that no matter what she has to get into the chair if she wants to leave as if she’s ever going to be able to FUCKING LEAVE THIS FUCKING PLACE -
"Here," the hygienist stands and gestures at his stool. "You can take my seat for a second. I know people get kind of blergh ," he makes a funny face to accompany the sound. She feels her lips twitch into a smile. "About the dentist."
She’s never felt like this before.
She takes his seat. He leans against hers the chair.
He pulls a penlight out of his pocket and clicks it on. “This will just take a second.” He says. She finds herself believing him even though every time the doctor’s said it, it’s been a lie. His other hand reaches up as if to cup her cheek, but stops before he touches her face. His hands are trembling. She would have bitten the doctor if he had tried that again, but now? She has no reason to now. “If you could just…?”
She opens her mouth.
"Perfect." He breathes. He clears his throat and pulls away. "You have the cleanest set of teeth I've ever seen, miss. Textbook stuff, really."
"Well," she says. "I would hope so. I'm here often enough."
He chuckles, the laughter does not reach his kind eyes. "Well, I'm thinking you're going to be here less often. You're recovering nicely from the surgery so we can reduce your visits from every six weeks to every six months. How does that sound?"
Incredible. Impossible. Too good to be true.
"R-really?"
"Yep! The doctor signed off on it, so just make an appointment with the nice ladies out front and you're all set."
"I can-I can just...go?" Already she's standing up, making her way to the door before.. she doesn't know. Before he changes her mind? "I'm not going to see the doctor?"
He shakes his head. "No, he, um, got caught up with another patient. Whole bottom row of teeth needs fillings, real...gross. So, yeah, you're free to go." He waves his hand towards the door.
He doesn't need to tell her twice.
"Oh, wait!" He says. Her heart sinks. She closes her eyes. Too good to be true.
But when she turns to look at him and he's holding out a red lollipop. "I won't tell if you don't."
She's never tasted something so sweet.
---
gemma never remembers her dreams
but
---
She’s going to die here. She feels this with an icy cold certainty that rushed through her veins and has now settled in her bones.
What is she supposed to do? She doesn’t remember the in-flight safety video. The oxygen mask hasn’t deployed and there isn’t a single life vest under any of the seats in her empty row, which surely is illegal. Is she supposed to curl up into a ball? She feels like she’s heard that somewhere, but maybe that’s for when the Soviets come to bomb them?
She’s going to die here, from the impact or her heart beating out of her chest or from, she doesn’t know, an ice-pick she found in first-class that she’s going to jam into her skull because she just wants to get this over with.
“Holy shit!”
There's a man stumbling down the aisles, gaudy suit jacket and equally terrible tie. Brown hair begging for a hair cut or maybe some product or any kind of care, hair or otherwise.
But he has kind eyes so maybe that's why, when he reaches for her hand, she reaches back.
He makes his way to the seat next to her. He holds both ends of the seatbelt in his hands and seems to ask with his eyes Should I even bother?
She hopes her shrug says Who even fucking knows?
But he puts on the seatbelt anyway.
"Picked the wrong time to go to the bathroom."
She laughs and the sound shocks her as much as it seems to shock him. She feels her heart settle in her chest, where it's supposed to be and not in her stomach or in her throat. "Picked the wrong time to get on a plane."
"That too." He has a nice smile. "I'm-" but the sound is cut off by another crash or explosion from somewhere. "Are you coming or going?"
"Sorry?"
"Are you headed home or just visiting?"
"I-" Her head is fuzzy. There's a lot going on right now. "Um- I'm trying to get home, I think."
"Me too," he says quiet enough to be heard underneath the cacophony. She leans closer. She doesn't want to miss another word. "I hope we both get there."
She’s never wanted anything more. Before she stops herself, she asks, “Could I ask you for a favor?”
“Anything.” And maybe she should find the intensity that he said those two syllables with strange, but all she feels when she looks at him is…
Is?
She reaches for him. “Could you hold my hand?”
His hands are warm and familiar? soft. She can't bring herself to look at him for some reason, embarrassed by her request, but something about him tells her that she won't find any judgement there. He brings her hands to his lips and for the first time she can remember, she feels...
Safe.
---
gemma never remembers her dreams
but if she did
---
"Jeeze, did you do all of these by yourself?" He comes back into the room with two warm mugs of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies. He places a kiss in her hair and sits next to her at the table. He takes her cramping hand and starts to massage it. "Save some for me, will you?"
"I-uh," she blinks the fog out of her eyes. Why was she doing all of this by herself? She hates writing thank you notes. "I just wanted to get these over with."
"I know it's not your favorite thing in the world, but I saved the best for last." He gets up to look for something and she needs to stop herself from saying no, wait, come back. He returns with something held behind his back and presents it with a flourish " Ta-da!"
"The You You Are," she reads the cover of the book incredulously. The face of a kindly-looking man taking whatever this is way too seriously stares back at her. "This is..."
"Ridiculous, I know." He sits back down next to her and holds a cookie up to her mouth. She manages to take a bite before he pops the rest of it in his mouth. "But there is some value to my brother-in-law's magna carta"
"Magnum opus." She corrects, licks some crumbs off of the corner of her mouth.
"That's not the word he used." He opens the book with one hand and takes her left hand with his other one. "You've got better handwriting than me so you're going to have to write this last one."
"I thought you said you were helping me." She complains, but she's smiling. She twirls her pen in her right hand in the way that always makes him envious and sets pen to paper.
"I am helping! I'm dictating!"
"More like dictator-ing." She pokes his cheek with the pen. His beard is growing in and she's thinking of all the different ways she can convince him to keep it like this. He's about to do his annual clean shave for the New Year and no amount of begging after all these years has stopped him thus far.
He playfully bites the pen, winking at her, and returns to his brother-in-law's book. Where are this man's priorities?
"Dear Ricken," he starts. She still finds herself writing the thank you note, but it's so much easier. Maybe the thought of it really being the last one has given her one final burst of energy. "We were delighted to see your book underneath the Christmas tree. It truly is a life-changing work and you're right, the person who stole this off of our front porch surely must have turned him or herself in after reading the whole thing. It is that transformative.” She rolls her eyes. “We've only read the first chapter, but we can scarcely remember what our lives were like before we read the sacred words 'Bullies are nothing but 'bull and lies.'"
"It does not say that!" She shrieks in her laughter and grabs the book from him.
It does say that and so. much. more.
"This had to get past editors!" She breathes, enraptured by the words on the page. "He has a publishing deal for ten books."
"Meanwhile my book is languishing away-"
"On your typewriter." She teases, dotting her i's and crossing her t's on the very last thank you card.
"Well, when that book needs to have actual coherent thoughts, they’re a lot harder to write," he pouts. It's cute, like a puppy.
"'Dear Ricken,'" she reads out what she wrote. "Thank you for the book. We loved it and we can't wait to read more. Love-"
"Add that reading his book made me a better man and lover!"
"Mark, stop." She laughs and laughs and laughs. She never wants to stop feeling like this. "This is getting mean."
He kisses her like he can't help himself anymore.
She's never tasted something so sweet.
---
gemma never remembers her dreams
but if she did
it would only make the yearning sharper and more sweet