Archive of Our Own

They’ve been on a handful of first dates, depending on your definition of a “first date”.

Sasha defines them more generously than most. She’s been doing that for a while. At first to make herself feel better, and then to make herself feel worse, until it was all habit, a low-effort game. 

The first playdates they had together, barely five years old? First dates, in a literal sense. The first time they went to each other’s houses, unsupervised? First date. Choosing a place to go aside from houses? Sleepovers? Movies? Aimless wandering? All the same. 

When she first realized, (What has it been, five years since then?) Sasha started viewing certain things, certain building blocks of their friendship, in a different light. A light that served her well, with the only expense being honesty. Just the internal kind, because her friends would never need to know she was doing it. It was like an inside joke, except inside jokes are supposed to be shared with other people, so really all it accomplished was tearing her up a little whenever she thought too hard about it. 

Simply put, she wasn’t hurting anyone except herself. And when she wasn’t doing that it was fun, satisfying, to imagine they might be on the same page somewhere deep and secret. That each new step they took was an admission of what Sasha wanted to hear. 

She wanted to hear a lot of things back then. She wanted to hear cries of approval, reassurance that she was still in control, her parent’s voices behind anything more than standard greetings and small talk. 

And so she tried her hardest to hear them. As much as she manipulated others, she manipulated herself. Modifying words and actions in her mind so that what people said or did was exactly in line with what she thought they should. It was usually projection. And it was always self-serving.

Now she considers that sort of delusion, the kind that made them out to be more than they were, a lesser evil. Pretending was how she managed the emotions, maintained the order. It gave her a sense of control even if she knew it wasn’t true. She could just pretend it was. See what she wanted to see, feel what she wanted to feel, believe what she wanted to believe. 

She never actually expected the “true” part to come into play. 

Slowly but surely, it did. Something about almost ruining each other’s lives forever caused a shift. Bones snapped under the stress of losing one another and grew back wrong. Different.

Sasha feels she reserves the right to call what happened next a first of… something. Being together was tense, even unburdened by unfair dynamics or needing to save the multiverse. Relief from such things meant freedom to screw up again. It was a dangerous question of what would happen when they didn’t need to be friends to survive. 

That wasn’t the only kind of tension. She felt that second one whenever they got too close. She could’ve broken it in as little as three words. 

Anne managed in seven. 

This was never supposed to happen anywhere outside of Sasha’s head. It terrifies her. They could still fracture in the weak places. 

Barring the obvious, the night she told them she loved them definitely fit the criteria of a first date. Maybe. Sasha’s sure her concept of first dates is more than skewed by now. That’s her own fault. Most things are.

But this , this should count. Above all else, this should count if she gets it right. 

She’s standing at the bottom of Anne’s porch steps in the universally recognized initiation of teen romance. Which is both unbelievable and deeply humiliating. She worries neighbors might look too close past their notions of innocent youth and realize that Sasha is not the good Christian boy next door. That might cause problems if they know whose house she’s standing in front of, bouquet stalks digging into her shaking hands. Well, as many problems as it could somewhere like LA. But problems nonetheless. These are the parents of the people they go to school with, after all. 

Last minute, she decides to leave the flowers in the car.

There's an expectation for Anne. (There are a lot of those. Sasha can tell they weigh on her.) For being as involved in her community as she is. She’s the friendly girl down the road who didn’t deserve what happened to her. Misguided with a good heart. The most important thing is that she’s been granted a second chance. 

Sasha feels nonexistent eyes on her back. Why would Anne waste something so valuable on her ?, they must be asking. 

She shifts her weight onto the bottom step. The creak is familiar under her shoe sole. Her nerves cool. She’s just projecting, that’s what her therapist says. Projecting, projecting, projecting. She can’t deny that the word explains a lot of things. 

Still, she knows rumors travel. She better make this quick. She hops up the rest of the stairs. 

Fist poised over the door, she hesitates before knocking.

It reminds her of being a little kid again, standing at the front entrance of Anne’s house and waiting for her to answer the door so they could play together. Her foot taps an impatient rhythm on the old half-rotted porch wood. Anticipation stirs under her skin like it did back then, when she needed to worry Anne might not be home. 

She doesn’t need to anymore. Anne is here, somewhere behind that door, and she’s been waiting for Sasha ever since she sent that text ten minutes ago, the one with the heart at the end. Not that Sasha paid any special attention to the heart at the end. 

The door lock clicks. She straightens herself up and tries for a smile. It feels strained, pinching the muscles in her cheeks. There’s still no-one around, but the eyes multiply, watching. The door pulls back from its frame. Sasha leans to the side, just slightly, to try and catch a glimpse of-

Oh. Anne’s not the one behind the door. She squares her shoulders again, presses her smile into a tight line to avoid uttering the “Hi Anne’s dad,” that pops into her head on impulse. Because she’s not a six-year-old anymore and it wouldn’t be acceptable or funny, just confirmation that his daughter is into dumbasses with deteriorating social skills. 

Instead, with him peeking around the door’s edge like he’s shielding himself from her, they regard each other in silence. Sasha knows he used to not like her. He was never subtle about that, which she respects him for. She can’t exactly say he was wrong for it. 

She doesn’t know how he feels about her now, but it looks like neither does he. Not only has she changed, she’s not going to be a bad influence anymore. He knows Anne wouldn’t stand for it. 

To complicate things further, he’s seen Sasha in action, and is all too aware that she could incapacitate him if needed. When Anne does officially tell her parents about them, she doubts she’ll be subjected to the “hurt her and I’ll kick your ass” speech. The last and only person Sasha considers to have thoroughly kicked her ass was (emphasis on was) a being capable of eternal darkness with the power to tear clean through the fabric of reality. 

He turns from her and calls up the stairs for Anne. 

“In a minute!” She yells back. Something tumbles to the floor above them. 

She and Mr. Boonchuy let out a sigh at the same time, with a similar affectionate undertone. They meet eyes. Sasha notes the surprise on his face, feeling her own eyebrows raise before they break eye contact. 

“So,” he starts. She feels her stomach sink. “You and Anne are close, no?”

“I mean, yeah.” Sasha side eyes him. “We have been for, like, twelve years.”

“But now you’re… you know what I mean. Don’t you spend time with Marcy anymore?”

Sasha tilts her head at him. Anne’s parents have been a lot more perceptive than hers or Marcy’s, which is in line for them. They know something’s been up for the past month. She wouldn’t be surprised if Anne’s mom has them all figured out by now. Kind of inevitable for someone who actually pays attention to her kid. 

Anne doesn’t seem to mind. They should talk about it soon, but she doesn’t seem bothered by the idea of being found out. She hasn’t asked them to take extra precautions around her parents like Marcy did.  She’s not jumping at the chance to give them the whole, seventy-page explanation, of course, but if she ever is in the mood to explain polyamory to her mom and dad, she doesn’t have reason to worry. There wouldn’t be any question of earning their confused support. If they can accept superpowers and frog siblings, they can deal with a girlfriend or two. 

But saying anything about it is up to Anne, and it's not happening today. Sasha tries to keep her response inconspicuous. 

“Yeah, we do.” She hopes he doesn’t look too much into the smile that settles over her face. “We’re picking her up next. She’s been grounded for like a month, so we couldn’t hang out until now.”

He nods. “And, by ‘hang out,’ you m-”

And then Anne is there, pushing past him in a blur. “Hi Dad! Bye Dad!” she says, and shoves the door closed in his face. She keeps turned away from Sasha for a second after it shuts all the way, hands balling up and then unfurling on the wood surface. There’s visible tension in her arms.

“Sorry about that,” she says, embarrassed. 

“It’s no problem,” Sasha says. Anne turns around. Her skirt sways just above her knees. The strands of hair pulled from her ponytail and styled on either side of her face help frame it, bringing attention to her cheeks, her eyes, the slope of her neck. Or maybe Sasha’s been paying attention to all that from the beginning. 

She doesn’t remember what she was going to say. She swallows down… something. 

“You look, uh…”

“It looks stupid, doesn’t it?” 

Sasha gripped the edge of the changing room door. “I just came in here to see- I was just told to check on you. I don’t think-”

Anne’s smile saddened at that. “C’mon, Sash. Live a little. I know you want to make fun of this thing.” She gestured to the dress she was wearing. The one she'd been given to change into for her speech later. Apparently, it was a traditional outfit for the occasion. 

In the back of her mind, Sasha turned over the sound of her old nickname in Anne’s voice. She’d only started using it again these past two or three weeks. But she might’ve just been overworked from all her public appearances. Speeches and government affairs. Anne was the face of the reform even if Marcy did most of the work. 

Sasha looked down. The dress Anne was trying to goad her into trashing was really not that awful. Not her taste, but it definitely didn’t look bad on Anne. The top fit her nicely. There were no sleeves, but the powder blue fabric came up to the hollow of her neck in an attractive way that showed off her arms and shoulders. Sasha assumed the skirt was the main source of Anne’s problem with it. It did flare out a tad dramatically from the waist. 

“How many layers does that thing have?” Sasha asked, to appease her. Anne was always so stressed out, now.

She smiled. Her eyes were tired. “I know, right?” She said in her best approximation of annoyed gossip. It didn’t come naturally to her anymore. “I’d show you but they’d kill me if I messed it up again.”

“Well that’s just not fair. You wouldn’t even be able to fight back under all that.”

Anne laughed. Sasha took it as an invitation to step further into the room. 

The dresses’ underskirts made a swishing sound like running water as Anne walked the short distance to the window. Even a casual motion looked difficult under the extra weight. But somehow Anne managed to make almost stumbling over a petticoat look elegant. As over-the-top as her getup was, she pulled it off. Once she’d built that crowdspeaking confidence back up, she’d be in her element again. Unstoppable. Her sparkling white earrings, they might’ve been diamonds if those existed here, caught sunlight from outside and turned it to pinpricks of rainbow on the floor. 

Sasha came to stand next to her. The sun warmed her cheeks, soothing the sting of cold castle air. She felt Anne’s eyes on her before she turned to see them. Though not prismatic, the way they caught the sun was just as noticeable. They squinted the tiniest, most imperceptible amount as they ran across Sasha’s features. 

“What?” Sasha asked. 

“Nothing,” Anne said. She stared for a second longer, then re-aligned her gaze to the amphibians walking on the streets below. Her hand rested on the windowsill. From where Sasha was standing it looked too delicate, too soft for something that should’ve been hardened by months of farmwork. 

She felt one of her own fingers twitch, curious to know if she was right. She held onto her wrist with her other hand. Their relationship did not involve holding hands, or thinking about holding hands, or anything of the sort. They were acquaintances with an unusual history together.

Anne sighed. She pushed away from the window. Sasha decided she really didn’t understand what she was talking about. About not looking good. She looked tall and regal, her chest rising and falling with the sigh and her back straightening as she stood-

She made a very un-regal noise as she got up too fast and started to topple over. 

Luckily, Sasha was there at her side. She rushed over, grabbing onto Anne’s arms to right her. She took the support without question, holding onto Sasha’s forearms with an impressive amount of strength behind her too-soft hands.

“Thanks,” she breathed, and straightened up to her normal height. And then kept going. 

Sasha blinked… up at her. That was weird. “Did they make you wear heels?”

Anne nodded. 

“Huh.” Their height had always been a source of competition, when they were friends. Because of course it had. Marcy was easily shorter than both of them by a few inches. But Anne was close enough to argue she was actually the same height or taller (depending on how annoyed she was with Sasha at the present moment) than her. 

With her head angled just slightly to look her in the eye, Sasha thought she wouldn’t mind if Anne was right, for once. 

“Cool. It looks good,” she said. 

Anne scoffed. “You always say that. Would it kill you to be honest one time?”

Sasha winced. It really hadn’t been long enough, had it? Since they were something else. Since lies fell, fluid, from her lips. There hadn’t been any time to heal near-fatal wounds. (They knew from experience how long that took.)

“Sorry.” Sasha didn’t know why she started with that word again. She started a lot of sentences with it now, on reflex. But she wasn’t sorry. “I did mean it, though.” 

“Oh.” Anne’s anger crumbled. “Oh.” She looked guilty, and more tired. Her hands traveled down Sasha’s arms and slotted into her palms. So maybe this was allowed. 

“Sorry.” It sounded so effortless when she said it. “I’m really out of it right now. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“Th- that’s okay,” Sasha said. It was like Anne’s hands had absorbed all the warmth from those days of work, but none of the ruggedness. Sasha ran her thumb over the tiny, pale lines of scarring. She couldn’t tell they existed by touch alone. They blended smoothly into Anne’s skin. If she closed her eyes…

“Sash?”

There it was again. She looked up. And then looked up further when she remembered the extra inches Anne had on her. Temporarily.

“What are you doing?”

A look of amusement crossed her face. It looked good on her. Most everything did. 

“I’m probably a really bad person to ask for fashion advice,” Sasha mumbled. She couldn’t meet Anne’s eyes, so she looked at the dress instead. 

“That’s not…” Anne started, but her curiosity got the better of her. “What do you mean? You used to give me advice about clothes all the time. Usually when I didn’t ask for it.”

Was it wrong that she still understood why she’d done all that? Why she’d tried to morph Anne into something else? Free of Sasha’s influence, this was what she was, what she looked like. 

And Sasha couldn’t pretend to have a handle on how she felt about it. Even thinking of exerting force over something like this disheartened her. Anne was so much of herself now, so deep and true in every word. Sasha could’ve drowned in it all. She could’ve let Anne pull her close and disappeared amidst a thousand layers of sparkly blue fabric. 

That was a little terrifying, but mostly-

“You’re really beautiful,” she said.

She’d had that thought before. But she’d never said it. Keeping her mouth shut was how she kept the water from getting in. She had to stand tall, keep her head above the tide. 

“Oh,” Anne breathed. Her lips quirked up. “Thanks Sash- I mean, Sasha. I wouldn’t have expected you to say anything like that.”

It washed over her, rushed through her, surrounding her in pools and lapping playfully at her ankles. Sasha hadn’t realized how dry her throat had been. She wanted to reach down and cup it in her palms.

She reeled back, tugged her hands out of Anne’s grasp. “Ugh, whatever. It doesn’t matter. You look good in everything, so it doesn’t even matter! Don’t be stressed!” She threw her arms up. 

If anything, Anne’s smile grew wider. She reached out with an impossibly gentle hand, motioning for Sasha to calm down. “Hey, you’re allowed to say something nice, you know.”

“I don’t…” She grumbled. Because it went past “something nice.” Why couldn’t Anne and her stupid beautiful face just understand and be mad and distant with her again? Sasha could deal with anger. But this? 

“I think I’m gonna leave,” she said. “I’ll make you late for your thing.”

“Okay. That’s fine.” Anne leaned forward and laid her hand on Sasha’s shoulder. She moved it down from the top of her armor and held it against the exposed skin on her upper arm. “It was nice talking to you.”

Her touch was so light it was barely there, but Sasha could almost collapse from how dizzy it made her. 

She left the room with a simple nod goodbye, lips sealed again, before the water level could rise to cover them. 

“What was that, Sash?” Anne approaches, arms folded behind her back. In the past three years, the extra inches those heels gave her have recreated themselves without any help. Looking up comes naturally to Sasha now. She’s learned a specific way of angling her head so her chin juts out in a challenge. Anne has yet to take it.  

“You look nice,” Sasha says. There's no reason to hide it anymore. She holds out a hand. “Are we leaving?”

All of Anne seems to warm when she takes it. Though familiar, the feeling still sends excitement pacing restlessly in Sasha’s chest. She leads her down the porch steps. She’s not doing much leading, though. Anne already knows how to avoid all the spots in the wood that creak and splinter the loudest.

“Your mom’s, right?” she asks, jumping off the last step and looking at the car parked out front. 

“Yep. She won’t miss it for a day.” She has others. Sasha spins the keys around on her finger before unlocking the doors. She gets in on the driver’s side.

“Wow,” Anne tsks. “Not even gonna hold my door open for me?”

“Nope!” Sasha replies cheerfully. “Hurry up or I’ll leave you here!”

Anne obliges, and slides in on the other side. “Fine. Try not to kill me with your reckless driving.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says, winking. She gives Anne time to adjust her seat while she prods at the air conditioning settings on the dash. She moves on to fixing her clothes at around the same time Anne starts messing with the headrest. She’d buttoned the shirt all the way up to her neck when she got ready, for some reason. Maybe nerves? She undoes the top few now, so it hangs looser like she wants. She has to say she regrets the color choice, too. Salmon doesn’t match her eyes. Maybe she should’ve gone for a darker pink.

“Um, Sasha?”

She looks up at a very wide-eyed Anne. A shade like the one covering her face would’ve worked well. Pity she doesn’t own anything that bright. 

“I was just fixing it.” Sasha quirks an eyebrow at her.

Anne blushes harder, if that’s possible. “I knew that.” Obviously a lie. She crosses her arms, shifting in her seat. “You could’ve done it somewhere else,” she mumbles. 

“You could’ve looked away,” Sasha shrugs.

“Wh- you’re the only person here! There’s nowhere else to look!” 

She neglects to mention the entire rest of the car. Or the windows, which give a clear view to literally all of their surroundings.

Elbows braced on the armrest between them, Sasha interlocks her hands and places them under her chin.

“You think I’m pretty,” she says, dragging out the words.

Anne’s not having it. “You’re alright,” she huffs.

Sasha chuckles lowly. “Liar.” Anne’s eyes trace her every move. They watch Sasha come closer to cup her cheek. Her lips lilt into a smile; Anne really is burning up. She’s pretty like that, all flushed and fake-mad. It’s kind of funny, the noises she makes, the barest suggestions of words dying on her tongue when she tries to form the syllables. 

“I make you so flustered, don’t I?”

Anne makes an exaggerated expression of disgust. “You make me wanna punch you in your stupid face,” she says with difficulty.

“Cute.” 

Anne rolls her eyes and brushes her off. 

Sasha sighs, dropping back into her seat. “I guess you’re right. Marcy would be mad if we were late.” She turns the key in the ignition and the car hums to life. She knows it isn’t the only reason she feels energy thrumming underneath her skin. 

They peel away from the curb, swerving, as Anne would say, recklessly. She opens her mouth to complain.

“Hey, you know the rules. I don't listen to advice from people who failed the permit test.” She slams the brakes at a corner. Anne jolts forward, but keeps her mouth shut from then on. 

Marcy is waiting for them at the end of her block. At first she’s a speck of black hair and muted, earth-toned clothes in the distance. She takes on a familiar form as they pull up closer. It’s been a while since Sasha’s seen her like this, so put-together. She's missed it.

She slows the car to a crawl and rolls down the window. 

“Need a ride, hot stuff?”

“Gross, Sash,” Anne says. But Marcy bounds forward, reaching her arms through the window and wrapping them around Sasha’s neck. Would it be weird to say she smells nice? Like sour candy and the inside of a department store. Sasha clings to her. It must be obvious they’ve spent time apart.

Anne ruins the moment. “Sasha, the car. Sasha!”

They pull apart. “Hm?”

Oh. In actuality, it had been the car pulling them apart after Sasha lost track of where she was and lifted her foot off the brake pedal. 

She eases it back on. Marcy adjusts her footing and leans inside. 

“So.” Sasha watches her put her elbows on the bottom part of the window frame and tries not to be annoyed that she isn’t hugging her again. “How’ve you been?”

“You saw me yesterday,” she laughs. 

“Oh, ew,” Anne says. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna be that couple.”

“What? Us, clingy? No way!” Sasha unlocks the doors. 

“Yeah! No way,” Marcy agrees, promptly opening the driver’s side door, hitting the button to roll up the window, and climbing into Sasha’s lap. She hugs her again, arms secure around her torso. “Hey, do you think you could still drive like this?”

Anne puts the car in park. “Let’s not find out.”

Marcy must be losing the feeling in her arms, Sasha thinks. They’re pinned behind her back, against the seat. Sasha’s mother mentioned the material once, something expensive and light-colored and uncomfortable, but she can’t remember right now, not with soft hair tickling the underside of her chin. 

Marcy turns her head to Anne and pats the half-inch sliver of seat left next to their legs. 

“Not happening.”

“Aw, c’mon! It’s been so long!” She leans back to say it. Sasha catches her by the waist so she can hold her arms out without falling. 

It’s a little bit of a joke. They see each other at school practically every day. 

But the last few weeks have been rough. They hadn’t known how much they missed each other until they started spending time together again. They hadn’t known there was so much to say until they started saying it. Sasha had to have been drowning herself, keeping it all in. 

She’d love to be “that couple.” Because she absolutely hates it when other people do it. She would love to be an obstacle. A declaration, maybe, is a better word. Something that can’t be ignored.

Marcy said that thing once, about thinking something was so cute you wanted to strangle it. It's sort of like that. Different, though. She likes them so much she wants to tear something else apart. She wants to force people to look at the broken pieces and say do you see that? I did it because I love them.

She wants them to be a destructive force, together. They deserve to ruin something, anything but themselves.

If only Anne and Marcy were worse people, if they didn’t make her want to be better, they could’ve ruled the world. Torn it down and started again. 

Anne pushes the armrests up and out of the way. She climbs over, knee on the storage container behind the cupholders. Marcy welcomes her into their hug. 

The windows are tinted dark from outside. If anyone saw, they’d have to be looking. Why should they care, anyway?

Sasha holds in a shuddering breath. She takes fistfuls of their hair and clothing. She’s gentle, but even that feels like too much. 

If anything, the past month has been proof of her needing both of them. Being alone with Anne isn’t not fun, but it’s strange. Off-balance. Over an extended period of time, it’d started to remind her of when Marcy-

Her stomach churns. Her throat closes. When Marcy hadn’t been around. 

She’d hold her tighter, just because she can, but the memories are resurfacing now, and Sasha can’t trust herself not to get lost in them. Restraining Marcy’s arms, holding them to her side to keep whatever was using her body from moving. The snap of each rib when it fought too hard against her. 

So she keeps her touch light, instead, fingers brushing skin. She feels the bones underneath. Jawbone, collarbone, shoulder. Healed, whole, unbroken. Brittle at a moment’s notice. 

Marcy whispers something. In her own voice, and close. Sasha doesn’t catch it, but it’s real. This is real. 

Being reduced to hallway glances and lunch conversations with ears on all sides had taken a greater toll than she’d hoped. If it weren’t for Anne, Sasha would have thought everything that happened another delusion of her own making. 

Marcy would have kept her window open for them to visit, but she’d gotten caught up in an argument between her parents while stuck at home. Her mother had taken issue with the suggestion of locking said window. Her father was overreacting, the girl she raised would never go so far as to sneak herself out or smuggle boyfriends in. All of which was true, but by such sheer technicality that Marcy’s logical thinking kicked in, and she decided it would be better if they stayed away. 

So they did. It hurt, but they’re nothing if not resilient. 

And she’s back, now, right where she’s supposed to be. Sasha’s insides sing with relief even as they’re crushed between her weight and the stiff car seat. She touches Marcy’s jaw again, traces the smooth, even line to the place where it meets her neck. If Marcy reads into the affection, realizes Sasha’s little finger is at the perfect position to check for a pulse, she doesn’t let on. 

She un-buries herself from Sasha’s shoulder. “You’re being quiet.”

“Sorry.” But she’s not. Old habits die hard. 

Anne’s fingers find her hair and tangle through. “We missed you, Marce.”

Shit, that’s way more romantic. It’s unfair how good Anne is at this. Even now Sasha can’t be mad at her, distracted by her hand, the pleasant tug of its weight along her scalp. 

Marcy shifts back in the seat, far enough that she can look at them, and not an inch further. “I missed you, too.” 

She must take Sasha’s hand on her neck to mean something else, then. She holds onto it, and closes the distance between them. Sasha thanks every god she knows about that her muscle memory takes over, and she doesn’t need to go through the process of remembering how to react. 

Anne is right there when they’re apart, a consistent warmth at their side. She kisses their cheeks, one after the other.

Sasha leans after her, but doesn’t make it. The side of her body collides harshly with the centerpiece Anne’s leg is on. Her arm gets trapped under Marcy while trying to move in the small space. She ends up accidentally pushing her into the steering wheel. The car horn goes off. Marcy yelps. Anne jumps up so suddenly she hits her head on the roof. 

They’re very new to this. But it’s just them. Sasha laughs easily along after seeing they’re okay. She’s not intimidated or threatened by their presence like she is with… a lot of other people’s. (She needs to work on that. Another time.) 

Even if it means being crammed against the driver’s door handle, it’s worth it. The shape of it digs into her back. Cold and unfamiliar, discomfort a dull pressure on her spine. But Anne and Marcy press into her front after they’ve recovered. It more than balances out. The hard plastic under her shoulder blade may as well be nonexistent. 

An intrinsic, unchangeable part of her knows exactly how to hold them. She’s gained the knowledge deep in her subconscious, written into every muscle, every inch of skin and bone as she grew with them. As they grew together. Knowing them is knowing herself.

Sasha’s biggest mistake would have been losing both. Luckily, she’d underestimated the willpower it would take to betray herself, to separate from something woven so deeply into her. She’d underestimated how deep the connection ran, to begin with. It wasn’t something easily forgotten. She would’ve had to rip and fight and tear to be rid of it. She did, for a while.

But healing was never impossible. Few things were.

Five months after killing King Andrias, they had a sleepover. 

It was simple. Too simple for what it really meant. Marcy approached her after a meeting, one Friday evening. She was walking with a lean too far to either side because she’d always been terrible at feigning casual demeanor. Her voice cracked when she asked if Sasha had free time that night. By some miracle, she did. 

Anne’s house had never looked so daunting. 

Inside it was still the same, bathed in that home-y feel Sasha’s never had. It helped that she was here for the express purpose of spending time with her friends. Nothing else. No hidden motive. Even the time they spent together before Amphibia hadn’t been free of those. 

Marcy was the one to greet her at the door and let her in. She planned this, Sasha thought. Anne was standing a few feet behind her in the entranceway. She gave Sasha a friendly nod, if Sasha was worth being friendly towards. They didn’t move for a second, tension tying knots around their limbs. 

Marcy and Anne had been talking. Sasha couldn’t begin to know what conclusion they reached. But they’d done this before over the past five months. Been doing it. Without her. Which was fine. She was thankful they wanted to have her here now. It felt bad, though, that she was something they needed to decide on together. That she was that much of an inconvenience, an effort to accept again. 

And it was strange because she wasn’t the one in charge now. None of them were. Maybe they’d figured it out, but Sasha didn’t know the rules of playing this part yet. 

She'd try her best for them. 

“Hey, girls,” she said. It might’ve been too soon for that, but she liked the way it rolled over her tongue. It was hard to say their names out loud. Surely the affection with which she always spoke them would creep into her voice. 

“Sasha,” Anne addressed her. It sounded too formal, like more politics. But there couldn’t have been an underlying meaning in organizing this, could there? They were just… friends. Or, they were just trying to be. 

Sasha might’ve been paranoid. 

It might’ve been the crush thing, too, that threw her off. She hadn’t thought about that in a while. Which meant she’d either come to terms with it or she’d been ignoring it. She glanced at her friends and imagined them her girlfriends for a half-second, to test the waters on that. She came away with several new fluttering sensations and the conclusion that she had indeed been ignoring it. So what was a little while longer, right?

Anne cleared her throat. “I’m glad you came. Really, I am.”

Huh. Anne had made a habit out of her truthfulness. Sasha took this into consideration. 

“I’m glad you invited me. I, uh, I know it’s weird, after everything,” she said, faking a laugh to gauge their reactions. 

Marcy moved to touch their shoulders together, but stopped. A fuzzy, dissatisfied sensation burrowed in Sasha. A tick of anger flared at its center. Who it was directed at, she couldn’t say. 

She kept talking. She wasn’t as good at that as she used to be, but it worked in most cases. “I appreciate it. I- I get it if it’s awkward, or it doesn’t work out with me here, or-“

Anne laughed. Actually laughed. Sasha tried not to let her awe show. It was a nice sound, that hadn’t changed either. 

“You think it isn’t awkward with just me and Marce?” she said. “Ha! I don’t think we’ve gone one night without apologizing to each other for like, literally everything we’ve ever done.”

“Oh yeah,” Marcy agreed. “We’re real bad with silence. It’s awful.”

“Okay…” That was oddly reassuring. “Well, what if we got all of the apologizing out of the way now so we don’t have to do it later? Just acknowledge we screwed up now and then move on.”

Anne and Marcy exchanged a glance. The latter of the two shrugged. 

“That might work. Should I go first?” She asked. None of them knew what to say, so she did. “Alright. Uh, sorry for trapping you in another dimension for five months and lying about it. Sorry, Anne, for never thanking you or acknowledging it when you used to watch over me. And Sasha, sorry for ruining your face.” She paused, thinking. Sasha pressed down the urge to touch a hand to the deep, wire-shaped gash across her chin. 

Marcy continued, sudden. “Oh! Yeah! Sorry for dying and getting possessed and trying to kill you both.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Sasha said. “I’ll be next.” She cracked her knuckles. “M’sorry for trying to kill your frog family. And for fighting you with a sword. And then two swords. And trying to overthrow the monarchy. And-” Her voice almost cracked, but she stayed strong. “Sorry for being a bad friend. And, like, person in general.” The monologue ended on a more dour note than she’d meant it to. 

Marcy squeezed her shoulder. Sasha wanted to put a hand on top of hers, to keep it there. But she couldn’t move. 

Anne started speaking. “Cool, um, then I guess it’s my turn.” She deliberated. “Sorry for getting mad at you and trying to kill you, Sash. And for ruining your face. I’m sorry for not trusting you, Marcy. And then I’m sorry for hurting you so bad when we had to fight you. And-” she looked at the floor “-sorry for never inviting you to these, Sasha. Marcy always wanted to, but I just didn’t know how…” She breathed, deep, then looked fully at Sasha. “It’s different when you’re really here, though. I think it can work. I think we can do this.”

The ‘I believe in you’ went unsaid. That was for the better. Sasha didn’t think she could ever accept those words again. 

“I hope it does. I’ll try, I promise.” Did ‘I promise’ hold any weight to them, anymore? Or did Sasha ruin that, too? Just how much had she broken?

Marcy linked their arms. Not as much as she could’ve. Not enough to keep them away for good. 

“If that’s settled…” Anne rocked back and forth on her feet. “Are you guys hungry? My mom started making food as soon as she heard you were coming over.”

They both nodded, and she led them into the kitchen. She didn't need to. Sasha could’ve made the walk with her eyes closed. 

Their night proceeded as usual, which was the weirdest thing in the goddamn world. They fell back into their old patterns. Like it was nothing. Like they were little kids again. They ate dinner and laughed at jokes and curled on the couch to watch movies until they got kicked out and sent upstairs to sleep. Which, of course, they didn’t. 

“Anne, if you hit me with that, I’m gonna break your arms.” The whispers they spoke in after first being corralled into her bedroom were long gone. At no point did either of Anne’s parents come in to scold them for it, like they might’ve done a long time ago. 

“Calm down, I was adjusting it.” Anne kneeled amidst the pile of blankets and pillows and other assorted cuddly things (including Domino) on her carpet floor. This would be the sleeping arrangement, she and Marcy had decided when informed Sasha didn’t bring a sleeping bag. 

“Here! I got these ones, too!” Marcy emerged from the closet, arms full of even more blankets. The edge of one dangled very close to her foot. Sasha moved to help her before she tripped. She slid her hands underneath the pile, trying to avoid contact with Marcy’s but still feeling them touch. She assumed the spark was built up static electricity. 

So maybe the crush thing was proving more difficult to ignore than she’d predicted. That was fine. Sasha could handle it. 

That was when the pillow collided with the back of her head. 

She paused, blanket cluster halfway in her arms. She let it all spill onto the floor the moment before she lunged. 

The beginning of a playful squeal built in Anne’s throat. She didn’t move, only braced herself and held open her arms to catch Sasha on impact. Her eyes gleamed. 

It occured to Sasha, when she was already running, that she hadn’t planned her next move. And then she didn’t have to. Just before she made contact, someone- it must’ve been Marcy- held her in place. Arms clutched around her stomach. She leaned them back because she needed all of her weight to keep Sasha rooted to the spot. 

Well, in the end she didn’t need much of anything. Sasha strained against her for no longer than a fraction of a second, then froze. Completely. Muscles locking up, immobile enough to have been carved from stone if her heart didn’t count. It pounded so hard it made her sick. Because Marcy was so, so close. Cheek to the small of her back. Sasha could feel the movement of her chest as she let out a small, triumphant laugh. 

She was burning, searing where their skin met. The thinnest band of it on her arm pressed to Sasha’s stomach, where her shirt had been displaced from rapid movement. She couldn’t get air into her lungs. The breaths she was able to force through her teeth were shallow. Irregular. She needed this to end. She hoped Marcy never let go. 

But she did. Stiffened and backed away with a quiet gasp. 

“Sorry! I didn’t mean to-!”

Sasha regained control over her body in slow waves. Her eyes cut across her shoulder. Marcy wrung her hands. 

Sasha cleared her throat. “It’s okay,” she said. Marcy looked more guilty, now.

“It’s my fault,” Anne chimed in. “I shouldn't have started it, you were just-”

“Seriously, guys.” Sasha made sure to put more force into her voice now that the brain fog was fading. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” They couldn’t know what she was thinking, right? How it made her feel when they held onto her? A hungry disease, an invisible discrepancy of her atoms and tissues, reared its head each time. On such a miniscule scale, they should've never needed to find out. 

Marcy edged closer. “I should have known,” she said. “I- I get all shaken when people come up from behind me, too.”

Sasha released the air held in her lungs. If Marcy had known the truth, she would’ve considered letting it suffocate her. 

“Hey,” she scolded, relieved. “What did we say about apologizing?”

“Sor- I mean-” Marcy’s head snapped up to look at Sasha, faux-angry. 

Anne had her own workaround. “I hope you’re okay,” she said. She held the real apology in her eyes. That was cheating, but Sasha decided not to bring it up.

“I am,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you?” Anne echoed. “Don’t go changing on us too fast.”

“Yeah, now you have to say something mean. To keep it balanced,” Marcy teased. 

“Uh…” Sasha looked them over. She felt dizzy again. “I can’t come up with anything.”

Anne tossed a pillow at her. “Nah, you’ve known us way too long to not think of anything.”

She caught it. Held it out in defense. “I’m serious! I can’t. You guys are, like, really good.” With the words out to shield her, she brought the pillow down and hugged it. It was still warm from when Anne had done the same, seconds earlier. 

“Aw, Sash...” Marcy said. She hid her smile in her hand. Sasha swore she was blushing behind it. 

“You are such a liar!” Anne said. The malice and worry with which she used to speak these kinds of words had vanished, not even an echo of it left in the heat of the moment. She came closer, arms folded. Her eyes dropped to the pillow. “You’re totally kissing up to us.”

As soon as Sasha’s brain stopped getting caught on her use of the word “kissing,” she was mulling over this breakthrough. That she and Anne were allowed to act like this so painlessly. Being conscious of it didn’t stop the reply escaping her on instinct. Snarky. Teasing. “And why would I do that?”

“Hell if I know!” Anne’s tone was happy, on the precipice of laughter. She looked around the room. Searching for ideas on how to best poke fun at her, Sasha realized. She didn’t understand why that was so appealing. To pay acknowledgment to what they wished had never happened. To see every awful thing they’d done in hindsight from a place of comfort. 

It was better than pretending it didn’t exist. That never worked out well for them. 

And hey, the way Anne took a step closer into her space every time she delivered a punch in their mock-arguments wasn’t a downside. 

Sasha watched with something like interest as the beginnings of a smile lighted her friend’s face, a mere half-foot away. Up close, Sasha could see the shadows under her eyes. How late was it, again?

“Maybe you want us to let you be in the middle.” Anne said. 

“Excuse me?” 

“When we go to sleep.” At the mention of sleep, Anne stifled a yawn. “On top of all the blankets. You wanna be between us. Sounds nice, right?”

Had Sasha known the term “projection” right then, she would’ve wasted no time in calling Anne out. As it were, embarrassment took hold of her vocal cords, leaving her defenseless. 

Marcy cooed. “Wouldn’t that be adorable? If our Sash was secretly all cuddly?”

Our. Sasha could’ve fainted right then and there. 

Cool as ever, she kept her composure. “I, uh… I… um, no.”

She saw a reaction in Marcy first. Wide-eyed thrill broke through her casual smile. “Oh my frog, Sasha, are you serious?”

“I didn’t say anything!”

Marcy, evidently, did not care. She pressed her palms to her chest, over her heart. “You wanna cuddle with us,” she stated, as if this was irrefutable fact. 

Sasha paled. She didn’t know if it was. She felt sick thinking of their hands on her, so soft it was disgusting, but the specific kind of stomach sickness that comes when you remember you haven’t eaten all day. Dull, disconnected from the body. Maybe if she let them do what they wanted, she’d be back in her head one way or another. 

“I’m gonna hug you,” Marcy said. It wasn’t a question.

Anne was getting more tired by the second. She sagged against Marcy, leaning her head to the side so it rested atop hers. “C’mon Mar-mar, she wants both of us. She said so.”

“I literally did not say that.”

“Sh.” Anne put her index finger to her own lips, reconsidered, then moved it forward and put it on Sasha’s. 

Marcy giggled at the face she must’ve made. “Sorry, Sash. You’re not getting out of this.”

Sasha caught herself before telling her not to apologize. 

Because then Marcy was hugging her. And Anne was hugging her, too. And Sasha wasn’t doing anything, because she couldn’t do anything, because she couldn’t even move. Her limbs locked up. She paid special attention to her breathing because if she didn’t it might stop, too.

It had been so, so long since she was hugged like this. 

The last time, it had still been Anne and Marcy (who else?) but they’d been too battle-weary to feel it. There had been no time to dwell on anything before they were whisked away in their victory. There hadn’t been much to dwell on, anyway, it was nothing more than symbolic. That they’d won, that they were alive, that they weren’t enemies. Them, together, debris at their feet, clear sky above. It had been a starting point.

This, now, was worlds different. A lot could change in five months. 

It wasn’t starting over, like they’d thought. If it were, it wouldn’t have been so natural. Sasha wouldn’t have been able to find the contours of their bodies with the ease she did. She wouldn’t have remembered how to position herself to fit, how to apply pressure and weight without hurting. 

Anne drew a hand up her arm, wrist to shoulder. The trail she left burned white-hot, but it made the surrounding air colder. 

Whatever this feeling was, it was disproving itself. Paradoxical. She was empty and full. Overwhelmed to the point her mind went blank. 

Marcy’s curled, loose fist draped over the center of Sasha’s back. Anne’s hand was at the base of her neck, where it connected with the rest of her. Her fingers splayed out over something delicate, vulnerable. 

Sasha knew the human body. Well, she knew the anthropomorphic amphibian body, and they were similar enough. The same basic respiratory system. Only a toad’s neck was thick, guarded with flesh and knotted muscle. Sasha’s wasn’t. Pale and slender, it wouldn’t have taken much repositioning for Anne and Marcy to have her down. Dig their fingers into skin, cut off her airflow. Two against one. If they tried, she might’ve let them. 

Marcy stirred. “Let’s sit down, okay?” Sasha’s legs were on the verge of giving out anyway. On her other side, Anne agreed. 

‘Sitting down’ quickly turned to lying down. And it continued to devolve from there. In their sleep-drunk state, they reached for anything they could get. Blankets and pillows and bodies warm from the surrounding pile. Anne and Marcy kept up with their strange promise to keep Sasha between them. But they also wanted to be close, touching each other, so they reached over top of her and tangled their limbs across her chest, their legs around hers. 

They could’ve killed her. This was a thought Sasha would never have had during sleepovers of years past. But she had it now, over and over and she couldn’t stop it. They could’ve killed her and they didn’t.

She tucked her head into Marcy’s shoulder. She welcomed Anne, who turned into her, hugging her waist. It was hard. She almost wished they’d get it over with. Sit up and snap her neck. 

But they didn't. They didn’t. If they kept this up, she’d start believing they never would. 

Marcy was rubbing her back. Up and down or in circles or however else she wanted. The rigid muscles there loosened without Sasha’s permission. She shivered, felt tears prick the back of her eyes. She thought nobody saw until Anne hugged her a little tighter, and that only made the constricted feeling in her throat catch more. 

She’d be damned if they couldn’t fix this. Their will was a powerful thing. 

The places where it goes wrong are easy fixes. 

Anne and Marcy insist on sitting in the back seat together, like they always do, so Sasha isn’t surprised. The only unexpected part is that they find her discarded bouquet on the floorboards a minute into driving. She’d forgotten about that. 

It’s a shallow dent to her pride. Nothing requiring a real “fix.”

But Anne and Marcy smooth it over without even knowing it’s there. They fawn over their loser romantic of a girlfriend for a short-lived second, before sliding the flowers from their plastic casing and weaving them into each other’s hair. Sasha stares from the rear-view mirror. Marcy undoes Anne's carefully-crafted ponytail so they fit. Her hair is thick enough to support the stems of the bigger varieties, blossoming yellow and orange. In return, she arranges the more lightweight white flowers, the ones used to fill the bouquet’s empty spaces, around Marcy’s head. Behind her ears and fastened with her hairclips. The white makes a nice contrast in her dark hair, like constellations. The car beside Sasha sounds its horn and curses at her to stay in her lane. 

“Yeah, eyes on the road, Sash.” Anne picks through the remains of the floral arrangement. Only the pink ones are left. She makes Sasha pull over into the first gas station parking lot they see, just so she can safely lean into the front and braid one through her hair. The stem is thick, and it doesn’t look great, but she leaves it in. Anne tucks another one into her shirt pocket before letting her drive again. 

Per Marcy’s directions, they end up at a very empty and very cheap parking venue, near what she ensures them is a section of the boardwalk “highly specified to their interests.”

“God, you’re a nerd.” Sasha turns the key, and the engine dies. She keeps the sunroof open to regulate heat inside the car while they’re gone. Through it she can hear the rustle of palm tree leaves, and farther back, the rush of ocean waves.

“What would you have done if you were stuck in the house for a month? Was I supposed to not think this through?” 

Anne unbuckles her seatbelt and wraps herself around Marcy’s shoulders. “Well I think it's thoughtful.” Her eyes dart to Sasha, then back.

“Uh-huh.” Marcy shrugs her off. She opens the door. “You know this isn’t a competition, right?”

“If it was I’d be winning.”

She shakes her head. “I’d have to disagree on that one, sorry Anne.” They shuffle out of their seats together. Sasha follows them out and shuts both doors behind her. 

“Oh?” Anne prompts.

“Yep. I’m winning. A hundred percent.” Marcy offers up her other hand. 

Sasha takes it, curious. “How’s that?” 

“I mean, I’ve gotta be, right? I have the two best girlfriends in the entire world,” Marcy answers simply. 

“D’aww,” Anne leans into her side.

“Wow…” Sasha says. “That was horrendous. I’m embarrassed to be seen in public with you.”

Anne looks far more offended than Marcy, who only laughs and squeezes Sasha’s hand. She brings it up in front of her face. Her breath tickles the back of it, like she might touch it to her lips, or her cheek. But she freezes before she makes any sort of contact. Her eyebrows lower, her smile fades. They’ve stopped walking.

“In public, huh?” She says. 

“N-not really,” Sasha sighs. “We don’t need to do anything like-” She shifts her fingers around in Marcy’s grasp “ -that.” 

“Hey, yeah,” Anne says, leaning down to look Marcy in the eye. “It doesn’t have to be something you don’t want.” She nudges against her.

“But I do want it.” Marcy frowns. “It’s everyone else who doesn’t.”

Sometimes, Sasha understands why she did it. It was wrong, but the appeal of a non judgemental world is always present. A world that could be shaped by their actions instead of confining them. The slightly worse person in her wouldn’t care about ruling through fear as long as they were happy.

If she could’ve done the tearing down, Marcy could’ve done the building anew, she decides. 

Not that it matters. They’ll never get the chance. 

Doesn’t mean they can’t work with what they have now.

“Everyone else is stupid,” Sasha says. “And I mean that.”

“Y’know, it’d be great if you could find ways to reassure us that don’t involve insulting the entire rest of the human population,” Anne says. 

“It’d be great if you let me finish. People are idiots. I bet we could start making out in front of some of them and they’d be like ‘wow, you guys are really good friends.’”

“We are really good friends, though,” Anne says. 

“See Marce? Even Anne doesn’t know the difference. 

Marcy chuckles under her breath, keeping her eyes down. She takes a tentative step forward. Sasha and Anne follow, and soon they’re walking again. Hand in hand, the true nature of the gesture hidden in the hollow places between their palms. 

“You’re one to talk, Sash.” Marcy steps over a curb. “It took until the day after I asked to kiss you for you to realize I liked you.”

“So? It took you the same amount of time!” Sasha had watched it happen before her eyes, amazed at being the most self-aware of them for the time. Then again, she’d spent five years doubting their feelings beforehand. “Maybe we’re all idiots, too.”

Anne shrugs. “I mean, yeah. We’re people, aren’t we?”

“Huh. I guess so.” Sasha forgets sometimes. 

“Mostly,” Marcy says. 

“You don’t count.” Anne presses the crosswalk button for them. 

Out in the street, cars peter to a stop. The sun sits at just the right angle, low in the sky, to reflect blindingly off of their hoods. Loud conversation and general bustle filters across the street, from the boardwalk. 

Marcy rocks back and forth. “Maybe we should’ve gone somewhere with less people.”

“Nah, look,” Sasha points to the space between two buildings. “People are leaving, see?” A line of them trickle out, toting various beach supplies. 

“And walking right towards us,” Anne adds. She glances over the surrounding area. “Uh, hey, what if we got something to eat now and came back out later? Would that be better?” She acts like she’s trying to reassure Marcy, but Sasha hears how her voice goes thin. She doubts hers would be any better. 

“That sounds good.” Marcy nods and forces a smile. 

“Good. I saw some places on another street we passed. Let’s go back there.” They backtrack more quickly than necessary, breath held tight in their chests until they can’t see any of the swell of people leaving the beach. 

The street Anne takes them to is better in terms of crowd. Sasha considers the line of restaurants. She’s reminded of skipping meals earlier in the day out of nervousness. 

They wander for a while, not paying attention to any specific restaurant. Mostly they walk slow, to let themselves cool off and breathe for a minute. On occasion one of them might mention a name of a place they pass, but no decisions are made.

Eventually Anne takes her phone from her pocket and brings up a map listing everything nearby. She reads off the descriptions and ratings and prices. Sasha leans into her, looking over her shoulder at the screen. She very helpfully calls out and nitpicks every single option. 

“They barely even tried with that one. It looks like… McDonalds but blue.”

“No.” Anne shakes her head. Free from the updo, her hair hits Sasha’s face. Twice. A petal falls on her shoulder. “See that?” She tilts the screen like Sasha isn’t looking at it already. “They made the logo a fish. It’s innovative,” she says, pointing to what is very clearly a whale. 

“Anne…” Sasha waits to hear the light laughter and the following gentle yet in-depth description of what constitutes a whale versus a fish. She waits to feel more hair in her face for whenever Anne remembers she’s supposed to be listening to the monologue instead of staring, and shakes her head like she does when she stares at either one of them too long. 

It doesn’t come. Sasha tears her eyes off of the phone and herself from Anne. They’ve walked so far, lost in the decision-making, that the length of street they’re at is empty save for the two of them. 

Two of them.

“Anne?”

“Mm-hm?”  She’s gone back to reading.

“Where’s Marcy?”

“She’s right-” Anne looks up, swivels around. “Oh.”

They both kind of stand there, waiting for the other to do something. Marcy is… probably okay. Probably. She’s… 

“Oh my god. Anne, we lost her. We misplaced our f- our goddamn girlfriend .” 

“Hey, hey, you don’t have get all worked up, I’m sure she’s-” 

“I’m not ,” Sasha snaps. Anne’s eyes widen, but she tries to cover up the response. A well-known guilt pools in Sasha. “Sh- no, I am. I am. I’m sorry.” Sasha smooths her hair back, breathing deep. “Okay. Let’s… she’s probably somewhere on the street, right?”

Anne nods. “Behind us, yeah. Probably got held up by something. C’mon.” She offers her hand up for Sasha.. It’ll be okay. 

They pick through the people on the street, avoiding larger crowds. They keep their eyes along the sidewalks. They find her quickly, that way. Anne nudges Sasha and points, not yelling or calling out as to not draw attention. Their girlfriend is standing on the sidewalk and gazing into a window on one of the buildings. 

Sasha addresses her when they’re within a few feet. Marcy’s entire body gives a jolt when her name is called.

“Yes?” she asks. The startled twinge hasn’t left her voice, yet. 

“Geez, Marce, don’t scare us like that.” Anne bridges the gap and gives her a hug. 

Marcy returns it. “W-what did I do?” 

“You’ve been standing here for a couple minutes. Like ten. We were all the way down there.” Sasha points to the end of the block. “Anne got worried.”

An “oh” and a distant look are all Marcy has to say about that. 

Anne backs off of her, keeping hands on her shoulders. “What were you doing?” She’s inspecting the storefront window Marcy was gazing into, now. Sasha follows along. 

The window glass gives a clear view into an aquarium stretched across the building’s front. Silvery fish dart in and out of rock structures. The plants ripple in a pulsating rhythm. Sasha understands how it could be mesmerizing. Through the watery blue tint, she can see restaurant tables. It appears mostly empty. 

“Uh, yeah,” Marcy says, prying herself away. “Sorry.”

“S’okay,” Sasha says. “Still surprised you can look at those things without… uh…”

Marcy smiles. “It does remind me of that, actually. I think I like it, somehow. It’s peaceful.”

“Weird,” Sasha is only half-listening. Marcy’s fascination with aquariums has come up before, and it’s always been strange under the circumstances. Nothing new. But over her shoulder, Anne is holding up her phone with the restaurant’s page and making motions with her hands that mean nothing to Sasha. What she can glean from any of it is the price. To Anne, she shrugs. Money won’t be an issue. 

“Do you wanna go in?” She asks Marcy.  

She blinks at Sasha. “Are you sure?” She scuffs the sole of her boot on the sidewalk. “We can find somewhere else.”

“We’ve been at this for like thirty minutes. Obviously we can’t.”

“Yeah!” Anne puts her phone away. “You just made the choice a lot easier, Mar-mar.” She hugs her from the back, around her shoulders. Marcy’s hands find her arms and come up to hold them. 

Anne comes dangerously close to her cheek, before she remembers where they are. She moves away and settles for whispering. 

“Sorry,” she chuckles. “I wasn’t thinking.” 

“It… might be alright. Just this once.” Marcy sways to either side. Or that might be Anne, behind her, swaying them both. Sasha stands guard, using herself to shield them from passersby as Anne quickly kisses Marcy’s cheek, then lets go. 

“You guys are too nice to me,” Marcy sighs. 

“We are a very reasonable amount of nice to you,” Sasha says. “Now let’s please go inside and eat before it gets dark.” The horizon pulls at the sun, releasing gold and pink into the sky, the way it always happens before everything blends to grey and then black. 

Marcy takes one of each of their hands, and nods her agreement. “If we could I wouldn’t mind staying out late,” she comments. “Especially not with you two.”

Marcy was never allowed to stay out this late. That must’ve been why. 

In the dead of night, Sasha felt anticipation wound tight into the grip on her hand. 

“Hurry up, you two!” Marcy whisper-yelled, so as to not wake anyone else in the household. The Plantars were light sleepers. They’d had a lot of close calls ever since the girls started insisting on sharing the basement-turned-bedroom whenever they came over. For convenience's sake. 

Sasha stretched. “Come on, Anne.” She reached down and poked their half-asleep friend’s shoulder. 

“Mm,” Anne hummed.  The sound was muffled. “Ten more minutes.”

Marcy shook her head. “No can do, Anna-banana. You set yourself up for this.”

All it had taken was Anne offhandedly mentioning she’d never seen a meteor shower in Amphibia, in response to Marcy’s offhanded mentioning of there being one tonight. Now, she was being poked and shaken and roused from her sleep just to watch. Sasha used it as an excuse for revenge, for inadvertently making her get up, too. 

In honesty, she wanted this to be over with, and if luck would have it, by the end maybe her friends would be too tired to care if they all flopped down into the same bed. And when Anne was tired she got weirdly… open. (Seeing the annoyed faces she made was just an added bonus.)

“I’ll carry you,” Sasha said. 

Anne rolled over, just to sneer at her. “Don’t patronize me.” She stayed rocklike and glued to the mattress.

Sasha nudged Marcy and jerked her head at the bed in a manner that distinctly said: You try something. 

“Oh, um. I’ll carry you?” Her words, though the same technically, were honest in a way Sasha’s were not. 

Anne’s eyes opened wider. “Really?”

“Sure?” She looked at Sasha, who only raised an eyebrow at her. She was staying out of this. 

Anne sat up and held her arms out. “I’ll go on your back.” 

Marcy wasted no time crouching down and hoisting Anne into place before either of them could go back on it. They maneuvered around and held tight for stability. When they’d gotten situated, there was not an inch of space between Marcy’s back and Anne’s front. Woven around each other’s shoulders and legs. They had asked, and it had been so. 

Sasha tried to put aside her envy, but like all her emotions, it persisted. She no longer feared drowning or other harm at their touches, it’d been over a year since she’d felt like that. But it was unfair that she still had to sneak her way into getting close, and they didn’t. It came, spontaneous, to them, to share something Sasha’s apprehensions would not let her. 

“Alright!” Marcy said. “Let’s go.”

“Where exactly are we going?” Sasha asked, following her. 

“We can get onto the roof from the attic, right Anne?”

Anne buried her face in Marcy’s neck, so all Sasha could see was her mass of hair. It bounced up and down, which she thought meant Anne was nodding. “We gotta be extra careful not to wake up Sprig and Polly if we go that way.”

Marcy gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “We will be.”

They were not the least bit careful. Marcy almost fell on both staircases, ran into a table in the upstairs hallway, and actually lost balance on flat ground, too, veering off course and running Anne’s shoulder into Polly’s door. If either of her siblings woke up, which they definitely did, they decided not to say anything. 

They were granted one blessing in the padlock on the attic window being open. Anne got off of Marcy’s back, so they could climb through one by one. Sasha went last. 

As long as she made such frequent trips back to Earth, she’d never get over the night sky here. 

Right away, before she even sat down on the slanted roof, Marcy started pointing out the different star formations. She held her finger up and traced the imaginary lines of the ones that were most prominent. Sasha could never pick them out against the slew of shining light, swirled in the dark, a path across the void. 

She sat down. Anne watched her a moment, then found her place at the crook of Marcy’s neck again. 

A frustrating, impassible centimeter of space remained between Marcy’s other side and Sasha’s. 

They waited no longer than five minutes before Marcy jumped up, her arm straightening to full length to guide their eyes to the sky, to the lights speeding across, hotter and brighter than the rest. They drew attention in the stillness, popping up and shifting and disappearing all within a second. So why were they so hard to look at? Sasha’s gaze kept slipping to the side.

Anne yawned. She sank into Marcy. And Sasha watched. 

“Shooting stars,” Anne clarified for them, already slurring her words. “What’re you gonna wish for?” 

Sasha knew. She’d known for a while. Next to them it was easy to know, and harder to think about, even as she watched a star streak into a thin bright line and thought about nothing but taking them in her arms. It wasn’t the kind of wish she could just say out loud, though, so it festered in her chest and melted with the heat of her heart and dripped down from rib to rib. 

“I don’t know,” Marcy said. She turned to Sasha. “Do you have anything?”

Save for the strictly forbidden, molten thing encasing her to her core, she didn’t. She shook her head.

“Hm.” Marcy went on. “Does that mean we have everything we want already, or are we just bad at wanting things?”

The fast-moving star trails were barely visible as reflected hairline fractures, lightning in her eyes, dark and expansive. Marcy’s eyes never stopped looking like they held a secret knowledge. There was something in them now that led Sasha to believe she did have a wish, a want buried deep inside. Maybe so deep Marcy didn’t know it was there. 

Sasha allowed herself consideration, for one moment, that it might be anything like hers. 

There was evidence that they felt the same way. Sasha wasn’t blind. On those hot days when she opted for sleeveless shirts during their training, it was clear that neither were they. Her physical prowess and numerous murder atempts also did not lend themselves to any touch aversion from her friends. And then there were a million other things she was sure she’d misinterpreted half of, but kept in her memories all the same.

There was never a way to be sure. Sasha’s plans, especially the ones that involved predicting what those two did or said or felt, had a habit of falling apart. 

The last thing she wanted was to scare them off. Or worse, to force them into something they didn’t want. She saw proof of their reciprocation scattered about, but if it meant anything, she’d let one of them make the first move. It would be their choice. 

That was her reasoning, anyway.

A few feet to her right, Anne snored. Loud. She’d fallen back asleep, and into Marcy’s lap. It could not have been a comfortable position, what with the angle of the roof and protruding bones in Marcy’s knees. But they stayed like that.

A breeze sent the loose sleeve of Marcy’s t-shirt brushing Sasha’s arm. And apparently, that was the final straw. Her mind went blank at the almost-touch. She could make it real if she broke the rules. 

“It is pretty late, isn’t it?” Marcy said. 

“Yeah…” Sasha vaguely agreed. Her thoughts were somewhere else, six layers from reality. “Marcy?” 

“Yes?”

“Can I hug you?” She cleared her throat. “Please?”

Marcy looked just as stunned as Sasha felt. She froze up, but remembered how to smile at least. The little crease between her eyebrows made it look fake. Sasha berated herself for her lapse in memory. This was why she couldn’t take initiative. The fake-ness in Marcy’s response made her gut twist, because the show was being put on for her benefit. Just like before.

“You can say no,” Sasha said, moving to separate them. “I won’t be mad. I was just asking.”

Marcy blinked at her, incredulous. “What? No!” 

“Well you don’t have to sound so excited about it.”

“That’s not what-” She softened. “Of course you can, Sasha.” The anxiousness dispersed, turning her smile unmistakably genuine. A rarely-heard, gentle timbre entered her voice, rounding out sharp, scratchy consonant edges. She shifted, hovering an arm over Sasha’s shoulders. “You- surprised me. That’s all. You really never ask for that stuff.”

“I don’t know how,” Sasha told her.

The arm came around her then, and Sasha kept the tension in her body for one more moment, to pretend her resolve wasn’t shattering with the effort it took not to lean in. Marcy put her chin on Sasha’s shoulder, looking up at her, listening. 

“I don’t wanna make you feel like you need to do what I want,” Sasha whispered.

“I don’t feel like that,” Marcy said. She was whispering, too, but with her proximity, it could’ve been shouting. 

“How can you know for certain? If- if manipulating comes so easily to me then maybe-”

“It doesn’t. You’re trying to be different. And if it didn’t, and if you weren’t, you’d still be far from the worst.”

Sasha despised the heaviness in her voice, like clotting tears. “How? How the hell can you know?”

“Well, you don’t like doing it. Making me feel like I need to listen. That’s more than I can say for my parents. Or-” She laughed, soft. “-Sash, you’re worried about getting me to do what you want after I was possessed , for frog’s sake. Think about that. It made me try to kill you and you’re all concerned over a hug.”

It did sound silly, when she said it like that. A nightmare, blown out of proportion. “I’m sorry.”

Marcy squeezed tighter. “Don’t apologize. You apologize too much.” 

“Well what do you want me to do?”

“Right now?” Marcy said. “Hug me back. I know you want to, and if you don’t pull me up soon I might fall off the roof and take Anne with me.”

So she did. Arms around her waist, mouth and nose buried in her hair, Sasha hugged her. 

Another hand tugged on her forearm. Anne, eyes puffy with sleep and reduced to drowsy slits, must’ve felt their movement, or sensed it, or something. She pulled one of Sasha’s hands down by the wrist and held it to her chest. She swore she felt lips brush across the back of her fingers as it went.

Finally, Sasha relaxed. She fell upon them, relief down to her bones, aching and tired.  She allowed herself weakness, admitting to her codependence. Sasha held onto them like she was holding onto the last two humans in the world. In a sense, she was. 

“We’re up there, y’know,” Marcy nodded to the sky. The stars had long since finished their paths across it. “Somewhere. Three stars.”

“No.” Sasha didn’t know where it came from, or what it meant, but she felt it was true. “We’re not. We’re right here.”

If there’s one thing this planet does have on Amphibia, it’s beaches. All the frogs have in comparison are thin strips of sand and pebbles before stagnant water. And maybe those are less commercialized, but Earth beaches deserve the commercialization. Such a vast view of the ocean can make Sasha feel small and insignificant, which is not an easy feat. 

She doesn’t know if she likes the feeling. The only other things that make her feel like that are her girlfriends, and she likes them, so she supposes she must. It might be just because they’re here with her now, legs hanging through the railing over the boardwalk edge, that she enjoys the sight. 

The vast majority of the daytime crowd has left, with only a spare person or two, usually workers, passing them every couple minutes since the shops in this area closed. Maybe it also has something to do with the fliers she’d seen advertising some concert a few blocks away from them. Knowing Marcy, she’d planned it that way. 

For all intents and purposes, it’s just the three of them. The stretch of wood behind and the stretch of sand and water in front.

Dusk deepens their surroundings to dark blue. It’d been searing orange when they left the restaurant earlier. The food was alright, but they were distracted while eating, so who could say, really? The place was more high-class than they’d been led to believe from the online description and outside appearance. Walking to and from their booth, they tried to ignore snide glances from adults in suits and ballgown-adjacent dresses. And they’d all felt especially awkward, thanking Sasha for paying in the money she’d gotten pawning what the shop owner agreed appeared to be real gold coins the week before, while other patrons handed over credit cards with the authority of something that contained funds their great-grandparents had earned. 

They can laugh about it now. They’re good with that. There will be more chances and less judgy restaurants in their future.

Anne ducks down and kisses Marcy’s cheek for the eighteenth time in the past ten minutes, and the twenty-ninth time tonight. She’s getting less and less discreet, but it works out, since the people around are getting fewer and fewer. 

“You did a good job planning,” she says. “I had fun.”

“We barely did anything.” Marcy turns to her. She scans around them before kissing the top of Anne’s head, strategic in her avoidance of plant life. Anne’s hair is still adorned and tangled with the petals, though most have fallen out. “But thank you. I had fun, too. I hope we get to do it again soon.”

Anne nods. She leans to one side, looking around Marcy. “What about you, Sash? Feeling up to driving us home?”

Sasha looks away. Her finger runs along the gap in the wood panels they’re sitting on. Here goes. “There’s, um, actually something I wanted to show you before we leave.” She gets up, and moves to help them stand, too. 

Anne and Marcy exchange glances. They each take one of her hands, silent, and concede to being pulled onto their feet. 

Sasha draws up the mental image from her research. 

She puts Anne in front, facing her, and Marcy behind. The decision is subconscious. She places her left hand on Anne’s upper arm, and using her right, places Marcy’s on her forearm so their hands are layered like a staircase. She tells Anne to reach under their arms and hold Marcy’s waist, and then to interlock her free hand with Marcy’s. Sasha arranges her right to rest at Anne’s waist, completing the circle. 

“Aw, Sasha…” Marcy picks up on what she’s doing as they’re drawn into position. “You figured it out.”

“It wasn’t hard,” she says, pushing down the heat in her face. “I just looked it up and clicked on the first video.” She tries to look away, but they’re too close, and they’re all she can see, around her from every angle. Marcy tucks her head into Sasha’s shoulder. “P- plus we still have to start moving. That’s the hard part.”

“Lead the way,” Anne whispers. 

“Actually, you’re the lead.” Sasha struggles to look her in the eyes. “So I think you step and we follow.”

“Oh.” Anne takes a step directly onto her foot. “Ah, sorry!” She tries again, going further out to the side. Sasha motions Marcy to move her legs back so they can both turn. They do so out of sync. That’s how they operate for the remainder of the dance, stumbling around over each other while Sasha desperately tries to recall how the people in the video moved so gracefully around their partners. 

But this has a grace to it, too. Soft and forgiving. Mistakes are part of the process. 

“Hey, wouldn’t it make more sense for Sasha to lead, since she’s the one who knows how to do it?”

Knows how is a gracious overstatement, Sasha thinks. Anne answers for her. 

“C’mon Marce, you know she likes being in the middle,” she says. She moves them all closer by tugging on Marcy’s waist so she presses into Sasha’s back. 

“I’m not responding to that,” Sasha says. 

Anne kisses her cheek. “You don’t have to,” she mumbles against it. 

Marcy turns into her, lips brushing the side of her neck. Sasha feels the sudden need to practice every breathing exercise she knows. 

It’s a good thing she doesn’t start. Anne would’ve made immediate work of nullifying any progress, leaning down and kissing her like that. They fall into a pattern they’ve learned well over the past month. Sasha pushes her hand through Anne’s hair. Her ring finger slides up next to a buried flower stem. 

She breaks off after a second and Marcy is there at the soft place below her jawbone. She moves up, touching her lips lightly and erratically over the entire left side of Sasha’s face. Anne catches on, and takes the right side where she can’t reach. They smile and breathe laughter in between what must be a hundred tiny kisses. 

Anne and Marcy move off of her. Sasha catches her wayward breath. Embraces the warmth in her cheeks. The words tumble out as soon as they’re given the chance. “I love you.”

She doesn’t think she’s ever seen a more honest smile out of Anne than when she clicks her tongue and says, “On the first date? Really? You have no tact.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“I love you, too.” It’s unclear which statement this is a response to. 

“I always feel weird going last,” Marcy says. She rejoins her hand with Anne’s, sighing. “But I guess I will. I love both of you.”

They’ve given up on proper ballroom dance technique for now, but Anne sways them gently back and forth. Sasha rests her head on her chest, and Marcy rests hers on Sasha’s back, and they move together. Rising and falling, pushing and pulling to the tune of crashing waves. White noise over their minds. 

“Sash, in the thing you watched, how’d they do the, uh…” Anne pauses. ”The spinny thing.”

“You have to be more specific, Anne.”

“Y’know. When people are dancing and one of them spins the other under their arm. How’d they do that with three people?”

Sasha thinks back on it. “I can’t remember. Do you wanna try?”

“Sure.” Anne backs away, hands gliding over her girlfriends’ arms. She lifts her left arm first, for Marcy to duck under. She clutches Sasha to her side, and they watch. Marcy twirls, wind whips through her hair. Her and Anne’s arms outstretch. And then she’s back, literally crashing into their embrace. 

Sasha is up next. Anne loosens her hold, sends her off. She doesn’t know what possesses her to look up as she’s spun around, but she does. 

So early in dusk, the California sky houses very few stars. Nothing like Amphibia, but Sasha thinks she realizes what she meant. They’re not up there, not on any world. No matter how many times their existence was prophesied, their fate is not predetermined. The people in the books, the constellations named in their honor, are not them. They are far more complicated and yet far simpler. 

If there ever was a path they were set to follow, a life cycle they needed to attune to, it doesn’t matter anymore. They stopped paying attention to it a long time ago. 

She finishes her turn. Through the whole thing Anne never lets go of her hand. She’s on the other end of their arms with Marcy, and she’s pulling Sasha back to be near them. Dull stars and city lights blur together in her peripherals, miles higher than she can comprehend. Miles that ambitious heroes of myth would seek to cross.

But here on the ground with the people she loves, Sasha doesn’t plan on leaving.