Chapter Text
The beauty of living with your childhood friend, bully and sweetheart was that you already knew a lot about them pre-cohabitation. Pattern recognition was kind of Joan’s thing, maybe it spawned from playing video games or maybe it was a survival tactic, but Joan was good with patterns. She knew Dean twisted his mouth a certain way before he was about to blow up, she always beat Sid in rock paper scissors because he never strayed from his ‘paper, paper, rock’ formula and Joan kind of, sort of, knew when Michelle’s period was at all times, without fail, even before dating?
It was weird, and she wasn’t trying to be weird! Or all ‘Mitch is totally wigging out because she’s PMSing’. It was a subconscious thing, her brain probably honed in so diligently on Michelle and her behaviors so she could predict what she would do next—which, as you may know, is tricky to do with Michelle Mueller.
Joan was there for the first one, not so much a pattern as it was just…obvious. The scene was set in Sellwood Junior High, hall pass in the pocket of her skirt, Joan was warned immediately by another girl outside the bathroom that Michelle was in there and kicking everyone else out. The other girl outside the bathroom asked her, in classic middle school thinking, if Joan thought that Michelle was doing drugs. Joan sighed, she really, really needed to pee, and this specific teacher was super strict about time spent out of her class, she didn’t have time to walk to the other end of the school. She would just have to take her chances being alone in a bathroom with an angry Michelle Mueller. And so she did, and found neither hide nor hair of Michelle. Joan tentatively pushed open one of the stall doors, just in case Michelle was waiting inside ready to jump out and scare her. She wasn’t. Joan remained on edge, even fearful Michelle may reach out of the bathroom mirror like a vengeful spirit. Joan quickly dried her hands and beelined for the hall, then, as she was about to leave—a whimper from the handicap stall. Joan turned, with the noise of rushing water and the hand-dyer gone she could now hear quick, panicked breathing. Joan tip-toed over to the stall in shoes that ‘made her ankles look fat’ (thanks Natalie). She could see from the gap between the stall and the floor, which was always a little too wide for her comfort and one of the biggest hurdles of public school, Michelle’s famous orange shoes, her knobby legs. She was sitting on the floor of the handicap stall, choppy brown hair falling like curtains and nearly hyperventilating.
Joan felt a pang of sympathy and a stir of affection, this whole Joan-I-hate-you-and-I’m-going-to-dedicate-my-life-to-ensuring-that-you-know-that thing from Michelle was very new, and Joan wasn’t completely adjusted to it yet. So without much other thought beyond ‘your friend’s hurt, help her’, Joan knocked on the stall door.
“Mitch–?”
“Go away,” a claw swiped out from under the door. Joan ‘eeped’ and jumped back. Michelle retracted and groaned, head thunking against the stall with a pained ‘fuuuuhuuck’ that tapered off into a little cry.
“Michelle…” Joan tried again, having not learned her lesson from the evil gap in the stall door, “are you ok? Are you hurt?”
“What do you think, Wagnerd?” Michelle spat. Joan rolled her eyes, she felt like she was shaking a Magic 8-Ball that said nothing but mean things to her. She shook it one more time.
“I’m gonna go get a teacher,” Joan said, “if you’re hurt, you need to go to the nurse.”
The stall door unlocked and like a jack in the box, Michelle shot out, grabbing Joan’s wrist and causing Joan to shriek. Michelle told her to shut up, she looked…Joan felt her own lip tremble. Michelle had clearly been crying, with eyes so bloodshot they were almost entirely pink, she was sweating, with one arm reaching out to grab Joan’s wrist and the other curled around her abdomen, hunched over to the point she was nearly Joan’s height.
“My guts are fallin’ out Joanie,” Michelle croaked, more tears spilling.
“What–“ Joan looked down and noticed that Michelle had blood under her nails, going further down the line of Michelle’s frame, she saw a nearly black bloodstain on her shorts. “–oh.”
“Don’t look at me, weirdo,” Michelle jerked her hand back and held herself as another wave of pain shuddered through her.
“Mic–Michelle,” Joan whispered, wringing her hands, she wouldn’t touch her, Michelle didn’t like for Joan to touch her, “is this your first time?”
“Dying? Yeah,” Michelle snarled.
“No, no,” Jonas shook her head, “is this your first time getting your period?”
Michelle’s eyes bugged, hair wild, her eyebrows creating a V on her forehead and her mouth falling slack. She was still holding her stomach like her guts were falling out. Joan had to wonder how long she had been in here, by herself, in pain, thinking she was literally dying. Sue had given Joan and Sid a very brief, abstinence only sex-talk at around ten. With the basic mechanisms of missionary sex added on. Which, Joan really didn’t want to hear about anything going in her anything, especially not sitting next to her brother. And just when she thought she was done, Sue held her back and gave her another, isolated talk, one that was more thorough. Periods. A transition to womanhood, cramping, mood swings, blood. Sue showed her how to work a pad in an awkward, gentle display of mothering. Joan ended up getting her first period later that year, and didn’t panic because she knew Sue put pads in the upstairs bathroom, she knew how to work them, she knew it was going to hurt a little. Had no one given Michelle this talk?
“This is what a period is?” Michelle’s voice cracked, almost comically. “My organs shooting out of my junk?”
Joan bit her lip to keep from laughing. It really wasn’t funny. Really, it wasn’t.
“It’s just blood,” Joan assured her, very Sue-like. “It’s perfectly normal, it means you’re growing up–“
“Uuughh, I’m gonna puke,” two more tears left Michelle’s brown eyes.
“You’re not gonna–“ Joan spoke too soon, Michelle lurched, swinging open the nearest stall door and vomiting half into the toilet, half on the toilet seat. Joan’s face puckered. That…was not normal, she didn’t think.
“Um, are you–“
“It hurts, Joanie,” Michelle sobbed.
“It’s ok! That’s normal, you’re alright,” Joan came up and patted Michelle’s back, the touch ghost-like, feeling the curve of her spine beneath her hand. “Can you stand up?”
After a pause, Michelle nodded feebly, making a Herculean effort to get to her feet, using the non-puked on side of the toilet for support, she wiped her mouth. Joan started to unzip the jacket she was using to hide the way her belly peeked out over her skirt (something Natalie kindly pointed out). “Here,” she extended the jacket, “put this around your waist and you can go to the nurse.”
Michelle didn’t seem to fully process what Joan said and only lifted her arms slightly higher up on herself, unobstructing Joan’s access. A little confused, Joan cautiously, oh so cautiously, reached around Michelle with the jacket, securing it by tying the arms in a little bow up front. Joan started to walk out of the stall but realized Michelle wasn’t following her, Joan silently hooked an arm around Michelle’s back and urged her along, Michelle leaned into her, throwing an arm around her shoulder. Joan moved slowly for Michelle’s sake, she wrinkled her nose at the smell of bile on her. But Michelle kind of had a smell to her anyway, one of cigarettes and mold. Joan had never brought it up before, and she sure wasn’t going to bring it up now. When they made it to the nurses office, the nurse, a stout woman with short blonde hair and rosy cheeks, wearing scrubs with teddy bears on them, escorted Joan and Michelle into her office. After ensuring Michelle loosely knew what a period was, the nurse began rummaging for something in the lost and found that she could potentially change into. Coming up with only a pair of neon basketball shorts, the nurse asked if Michelle wanted to lay down for a bit or call her mom.
“Ma…,” Michelle groaned, sitting on the little not-hospital bed. The nurse nodded and opened the door leading to the actual office.
“Ms. Mueller isn’t feeling well, call mom,” she told the secretary, who whipped out the chunky black phone.
Joan was allowed to stay in the room while they waited for Michelle’s mom. The hall pass in her pocket was heavy, but so was Michelle’s hand. Michelle was holding her wrist, not her hand, but she kept her locked there. The secretary opened the door and a woman with a pointy chin, heavy make-up and blonde highlights click-clacked into the room. She pulled Michelle into her chest, combing her nails through her hair, and Joan was overcome with the feeling she wasn’t supposed to see this, any of this. A blush burning her cheeks, Joan left Michelle and her jacket behind. The last thing she heard before the office door shut was:
“Oh my Gad, baby, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Michelle was absent for the next few days. Joan never did expect to get her jacket back, so when Dean asked about it she sheepishly told him she had lost it, leading to a lecture about all the money and time and effort it took to give them nice things. The next week, when Michelle returned, she marched up to Joan, shoving something soft against her chest. Joan took hold of it reflexively and looked down to see her jacket, folded presumably by Michelle’s mom, it smelled a little like Michelle but also a lot like lemon detergent. Joan marveled at it, she thought of it as a symbol of their comradery, of girlhood, maybe they could be friends again, maybe Michelle wasn’t mad at her anymore. Michelle didn’t share the sentiment, she turned on heel, swinging her fists by her side as she stormed away from Joan.
From then on, Michelle vanished for two to three days in a row every month. It was a breath of fresh air, but it got a little harder to pinpoint when these days would be during high school, because Michelle discovered and mastered the art of school-skipping. Joan noted that Michelle got really clingy maybe a week after she went missing—like, realllyyy clingy. Joan couldn't escape her, every time she turned around Michelle was there, putting her big hands in her hair, parking her skinny butt on her desk, whistling when Joan walked by in her gym shorts (thaaaanks, Michelle, she didn’t need it from Natalie, she sure didn’t need it from you) and just, overall being practically velcroed to her. Then less than a day later it seemed, she would drop Joan like a sack of potatoes, devoting all her attention to picking fights with the wrestling team, (play?)fighting with her friends more and threatening to hack Natalie’s nose job off with such venom that Joan felt her toes curl. She would also nap through Newman’s and remain posted outside smoking cigarettes for most of the day, snarking at anyone who approached her. Joan used a mental road map of these Michelle-isms to know when to really avoid her, when she absolutely couldn’t and when Michelle was too generally broody to mess with her.
It wasn’t until they were dating for a few months that Joan put the pieces together. Michelle called her one afternoon and confessed that she couldn’t make it to the movie date they had planned for that evening. She was on the rag and her cramps had her by the balls, she said. Considering this, Joan looked over to the calendar she had received during a tour of a university she had her eye on. Under a picture of a statue of the university's founder, were the X’s and to-dos of days past, she found where it said ‘Movies’ in red ink and mentally charted out a plan-B. The movie would still be showing through next week, when Michelle’s period would be over and during the brief interval of time when she would be extra doting on Joan, but before when her anger levels typically spiked over nothing and she complained about break-outs. It startled Joan, to formulate that train of thought. …Wait. Oh crap. Horrified, Joan realized that through her pattern recognition, she had been unwittingly tracking Michelle’s cycle this whole time. Menstrual, follicular, ovulationary, luteal; all the terms Sue failed to teach her (maybe because she didn’t know them). Joan told Michelle this over the phone as it happened, a sort of frantic apology for a weird invasion of privacy. But after a quick explanation of hormonal cycles, Michelle burst out laughing, only to quickly shut it up as it made her cramps and related headache a thousand times worse.
Joan started picking up gummies and little candy cigarettes for Michelle—her girlfriend liked to chew on things, evident by the hickies she had to hide with Sid’s make-up and khaki pants—delivering them to her with a favorite (non-alcoholic) drink of Michelle’s. Brian Juice, a zero-sugar energy drink designed to market the zombie movie Brain Juice, based on a comic about the chemicals in an in-world soda turning everyone into the undead, the movie probably would have fluked had the drink not become such a meme. She wrapped Michelle up in blankets, heated up water bottles for her and just…held her. Michelle didn’t like for Joan to see her cry, and would do it in the crook of her neck or in a pillow to avoid wailing openly. Joan realized that the puking and sweating and tears were standard for Michelle and that she could do very little about it. An Ibuprofen wasn’t going to cut it. Of her five-day period, the first two to three days were the worst, her mom never made her go to school on those days and she could usually tough it out for the later half of her period, but it never completely went away until the menstruation was over.
“Why do you do all this?” Michelle asked, nursing a candy cigarette.
“Because I,” love felt too rapid, pink light left her lips, “I think…I want you to feel good.”
“You make me feel plenty good,” Michelle winked at her, blowing imaginary smoke from her cigarette and then wincing as another cramp washed over her. She bit the cigarette in two, huffing through the pain with her face buried in Joan’s hair. Joan hugged her, careful not to apply any pressure to her lower abdomen. Joan felt pink, blue and a twinge of green surround them. “Goooooddamn, fuck. I can’t wait to be old and not hafta put up with this shiiiiit.”
“Yeah, here’s hoping menopause is kinder to you,” Joan kissed Michelle’s throat, where she felt a raspy giggle.
“Yer gonna be such a sexy grandma, babe,” Michelle was still taking hissing, labored breaths. “Won’t be able to take my eyes off ya, hip replacement and all,” Michelle squeezed Joan’s hand so hard Joan felt static, she was about to ask if she needed the trash can stationed near the bed as a puke bucket.
”I’ve got you,” Joan said instead.
Joan never really said anything about the unusual level of pain Michelle experienced on her period. And despite years of dedicated study of Michelle, Joan didn’t get the full scope of it until they started living together in their dinky apartment in Cruceo. One day she found Michelle on the floor of the bathroom, kneeling at the toilet like an altar, Buddy sitting by her leg like he was guarding her. Michelle had taken off of work because of the pain that morning. Joan worried about her all day while going through files at work and then later during her classes. Joan put a Brain Juice in the fridge and a pack of sour gummies on the kitchen table before calling out to her girlfriend. Michelle explained she had been sitting there for hours, that she had tried to take a bath to relax her muscles but it had surged on her all at once—a story backed by the fact Michelle was butt naked and there was a tub of cold bath water. Joan laid a fluffy robe of hers over Michelle’s back. The sight of Michelle looming over the toilet made her squirmy, it scared her. She remembered the helplessness she felt in face of Michelle’s eating disorder. Joan read article after article on how to help loved ones with bulimia and anorexia, because she knew putting Michelle under the pressure of ‘eat’ and pleading with her with big doe eyes to stop purging would be about as effective as Ibuprofen. It would just make Michelle feel guilty. The disorder wasn’t completely gone, even after they started dating, even after they beat the evil lab guys, even now that she had Michelle’s promise ring on a chain and a fish tank in the living room. Michelle couldn’t just save the day, get the girl and presto-changeo, all better! Like the roots of her trauma were snapped off. But she had made so, so much progress, and it showed. Her hair was fuller, the previously shaved underside grown out into a thick, choppy bob under the rest of her hair, the front pieces giving the illusion of sideburns. Her hips were always going to be pretty square but her thighs had filled out just a bit, making her huff when she put her jeans on and Joan could only watch and sip her coffee because damn, what a woman. Her boobs were a little bigger and her arms were thicker, the muscle there—oh Joan could just bite into it. It was surface-level attraction on Joan’s part, but it was a sign of Michelle’s hard work and Joan loved it with all her heart.
So the sight of Michelle like this, shivering, bleeding, last night's lasagna swirling in the toilet, pushed the next sentence out of her mouth.
“I think you should see a gynecologist about this,” Joan said, kneeling next to Buddy and scratching behind his ears to keep the green lights a bay. “This isn’t normal, Mitch.”
“What’re they gonna do? Shove a microscope up my pussy?” Michelle said sardonically. Joan frowned, even in unbearable pain Michelle Mueller could still muster the strength to be the most difficult person she knew.
“I’m serious, this could be an underlying medical issue. Have you,” Joan adjusted her glasses, “have you ever been to the doctor about this?”
“No, Joanie,” Michelle pinched her brow, bracing for another cramp, the toothbrushes in a cup on the sink started to rattle, “I ain’t.”
“I think you should see one, I can call and set up an appointment–“ Joan stood up, nervous energy already guiding her to the cellphone in her bag, green lights following her out. She missed the way Michelle’s brow twitched, the same way it did when she recommended a counselor at Sellwood’s free women’s health clinic.
“Hey,” Michelle called her back, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we ain’t got doctor money.”
“Mitch,” Joan had her phone in her hand, “you–“
“I’ll fuckin’ live,” Michelle snapped, “we got bills to pay. And the fuckin’ check engine light is on again and I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it and maybe I can have Bite take a look at it, but yer classes ain’t payin’ fer much, so it’s–I’ll deal with it.”
Eye widened in sudden hurt, Joan pressed the corner of the phone to her chest, a jolt of red jumping up from her skin at the contact. “So this is my fault?”
“No! Just–don’t be up there actin’ all high n’ mighty. Oh, you should see a doctor, Mitch. This ain’t normal, Mitch. There’s so much wrong with you, Mitch,” Michelle said in a high voice into the toilet, her usual growl slipping in on ‘wrong’. Joan’s face burned once she realized that was supposed to be an impression of her. She also realized it was a bad idea to argue with her girlfriend when she was hurting like this, but the anger boiled up anyway.
“Dude,” Joan said, hot lights and tears stinging her eyes.
“Babydoll, I’m not payin’ fer some cooch doctor to tell me there ain’t nothin’ they can do and send me on my way with a fat, six hundred dollar bill.”
Something went off in Joan like a cooking timer. “I don’t understand why you are so dedicated to suffering.”
That struck a nerve, Joan watched Michelle’s shoulders flinch under the robe. Immediately she knew that was the wrong thing to say. Joan understood, vaguely, that Michelle’s disorder had no one place of origin, but that it was primarily a punishment, an intentional act of self-harm, a form of control. The same way fighting guys too big for her and punching things till her knuckles split and doing hard hard drugs was. But Michelle didn’t choose this pain, she did everything she could to mitigate it, she had drawn herself a fricking bubble bath for Christ’s sake.
“Mitch–“ Joan felt the hot wave of guilt hit her, a cool blue light soothing the heat.
“When’s it enough fer you?” Michelle stood up shakily, putting her hand on the sink, Buddy scurried off past Joan’s feet, a shampoo bottle scooted off its ledge and fell into the cold bath water with a kasplunk. “When’s it gonna be enough, Joanie? You don’t like me smokin’? Fine, no smokin’.” There’s a line of blood dripping down her leg, she’s facing her completely, frontally nude. “Ya don’t want me hackin’ my guts up? I’ll work on it, I’ll get a goddamn therapist, I’ll go see Kimberly.” Joan’s breath hitched, all these years and she wasn’t aware Michelle actually went to the clinic. “But ya can’t ask me to spend money we don’t have to try and fix a problem I’ve already dealt with. Fuck,” Michelle grit her teeth, jabbing a finger at her stomach, “this? This is just somethin’ I deal with. There’s no pill or weed that can take this away. It’s me, it hurts.”
“That’s the thing, Mitch,” Joan’s voice pitched, “I’m tired of seeing you in pain.”
“Then look away,” Michelle swiped a hand through the air, Joan felt the ring on her necklace slide across her chest, mimicking the motion, following Michelle’s hand.
Joan left, she had just got home from a night class and she left pretty much immediately. She and Michelle never fought like this, and not about anything like this. If anything it was petty squabbles about dishes and Michelle leaving her toenail clippings on the couch. She started the car she and Mitch made payments on together and sobbed when she saw the yellow check engine light on. She cried at the wheel until she couldn’t. It was totally dark by the time she managed to turn her brain back on. She was still in the complex parking lot, car shut off, shoulders slumped and bursting with blue and green lights, forehead against the wheel, she felt her eyes crust up with sleep and puffiness. With a weighted sigh she returned to the apartment, climbing the stairs felt like crawling up to her room after being ruthlessly chewed into and spat back out, grounded. The house was dark, she could hear the filter running from inside the goldfish tank, a gentle caress of water, the sour gummies had vanished from the table, Buddy’s eyes reflected in the ball of light she manifested into her hand, she no longer jumped when she saw him skittering across the floor.
She clicked the lights off on the goldfish tank and padded into the bedroom. Joan saw Michelle was compacted up on her side of the bed, hugging Joan’s pillow to her, an empty Brain Juice can on her nightstand. Joan’s chest ached, they weren’t a strictly ‘never go to bed angry’ couple, but fights usually resulted in impassioned French kissing and rigorous eating-out to soothe flared tempers. Mirthlessly Joan thought: don’t fight with Mitch on her period, you can’t tongue-fuck her to apologize. This felt all too reminiscent of Michelle pushing her away after the arcade. Michelle didn’t need her, she didn’t want her. But if Joan knew anything about Michelle by now, that was projection at its finest. Joan wiggled off her pants and unclipped her bra with a sigh, deciding to just sleep in her dress shirt and sat down on her side of the bed. She wasn’t going to wrestle the pillow out of Michelle’s arms, so she put her glasses on the nightstand and laid on the mattress, pulling the unused covers over her. She turned to Michelle’s back, and in the blue light, pressed a kiss to her warm shoulder blade.
“Hey Joanie,” said Michelle, she wasn’t asleep, because of course she wasn’t. Michelle had a distinct rhythm to her breath when sleeping, and at least one of her legs was always bent at the knee. When Joan didn’t respond, Michelle turned on her back, hugging the pillow to her stomach and facing Joan. She had a pair of her boxers on and nothing else, and for Michelle, having to keep clothes on near constantly was probably the most irritating thing about her period. Michelle looked at her with bleary eyes. “Where’d ya go?”
“Outside,” Joan opened her eyes, she had debated pretending to be asleep, but that wouldn’t work and they probably needed to talk about this. Even if Joan really, really didn’t want to right now.
“Aw, Joanie, shit,” Michelle’s voice was hoarse, “shoulda’ just come back in here. I didn’t—I didn’t mean ta’ run ya off.”
“I think we both needed a breather,” Joan clutched the blanket. “I’m sorry, Mitch.”
“Don’t be–“
“No, I, I can’t push these things,” Joan stammered, “I'm pushy, and controlling—I can’t expect you to just be perfect. I don’t think anything’s wrong with you, Mitch, you’re human, and I have my things too. I’m sorry, I just,” I love you was cliché at this point, “I can’t stop your hurts. And that makes me feel weak. And mad. And I don’t mean to take that out on you. I don’t mean to make you feel like you have to fix everything, even stuff that’s an us problem. Like the car.”
“I didn’t mean to say–I didn’t mean ta put words in yer mouth,” Michelle sighed through her nose. “That’s just bratty teenage me crawlin’ up my tongue and sayin’ shit.”
“I hurt your feelings,” Joan sniffled. Understatement of the year, Joan, she thought.
“Hey, hey..” Michelle handed Joan her pillow back, the soothing tone of her voice made Joan want to dry it up and sob harder.
“Yer…a little wound up is all,” Michelle said, petting her hair clumsily, “I like windin’ ya up, and I like windin’ ya down,” Michelle drawled, Joan hiccuped into the pillow. “And, ta be fair, ya didn’t really rag on me fer smokin’. I just, I knew it bugged ya. I knew if I was gonna live in a house with ya, I couldn’t smoke in there. I told you I’d quit. And I saw Kimberly because I wanted to, I was curious, I wanted to push her limits, honestly, tell ‘er all the nasty shit and have her tell me that I’m a lost cause. I wanted to hear it from someone else, unbiased source. But she didn’t, and she didn’t tell me to ‘fuck off’ even after I threw her smiley face mug at the wall cuz I got so pissed at what she was tellin’ me. Which was that I was, tch, strong, for bein’ there. I didn’t go back till the next month, because no one tells you that when ya actually are. They tell you that when yer…sick, weak. I don’t like to be fucked up in ways that make me squishy.” Joan yawned, reaching over and laying a hand over Michelle’s heart, slowly sliding it down to her stomach. “But I wanted ta be in good shape for ya, Joanie. Cuz, ya take such good care of me, seems shitty to let it go to waste. And I promise, promise, promise,” Michelle grabbed that hand and kissed it hard, “I’ll go see the lady doctor, soon as we have the loose change.”
“I don’t think you’re weak, Mitch,” Joan touched Michelle’s face, she roved a soft thumb over her chin, feeling the stray whisker there Michelle sometimes let her pluck with tweezers. “Not for looking out for us—financially, in this case. And not for,” Joan grinned, “not for talking at little sense into teenage Michelle.”
“…It’s just that, ain’t it?” Michelle snickered. “Eat yer damn vegetables, get outta bed, you any idea what those’ll do to yer lungs, young lady?”
Joan laughed, yellow lights bubbling up over the blue, she felt Michelle’s hand over hers.
“I don’t think yer weak for carin’,” Michelle was nearly asleep, her leg was hitching up subconsciously, “yer hardwired like that, Joanie. I gotta help myself, and I want to do it my damn self. But yer a big help, can’t fault a woman for wantin’ to help. But I don’t feel like I’m ever doin’ anythin’ alone. You got my back, Joanie.”
Joan wiggled closer to her like a caterpillar. Michelle slung a nearly dead arm over her.
“I’ve got your back, Mitch,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”