Sugar 2
Aaaaand now I’d like to wish @baeringandwells a very happy New Year! Tracy Bering, longing, and fluff: in the first part of this sweet tale, those boxes were all checked, and here in part two, they are still check, check, and checkity-check-plus-check. This concluding part got a little long... what a surprise, right? You know that once these loons get to yammering, I’m loath (or for those of you across the pond, loth) to shut them up. So it’s lengthy. And lordy is it sweet. I mean, I think so; you might not... check your pancreatic function, anyhow, just to be safe. (P.S.: ENORMOUS thanks to @kla1991 for running the holiday show this year!) (P.P.S. To anon: I do indeed have an AO3 account. I’m apparitionism there, too.) (P.P.P.S. To ants-in-Finland anon: I’m laughing, but also, thank you. Sincerely.)
Sugar 2
An enormous fir tree indeed dominated the space into which Myka and the others had been transported, or which had replaced their normal surroundings, or whatever kind of non-natural thing had happened to turn a vaguely normal Christmas Eve into... no. No, no, no.
But then Myka saw Helena. She wore a uniform of some kind, a swallowtail red coat featuring gold buttons and braid and epaulets, while on her head perched a tall black-and-gold top hat/crown thing. Her face displayed unnaturally heavy makeup that elongated her jaw in a way that seemed designed to suggest...
“No, no, no,” Myka said aloud, but she was afraid it could no longer be denied. “Somebody tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”
“What does it look like?” Helena asked. “A Christmas scene, orchestrally accompanied, in which one finds dancing toys, including toy soldiers, and... mice? And you seem to be wearing a nightgown. Charming, but not generally how I picture your sleepwear. Not that I have pictured it. Of course not. There would be no circumstance in which—” She cleared her throat. “In any case, as for myself...” She looked down at her arms, at the gold-buttoned front of her coat. Raised her hands to her head and touched her hat. “Fascinating.”
“That’s one word for it,” Pete said.
Claudia said, “I wouldn’t be pointing fingers, man. What’s with the ears and the tail?”
That made Pete whip his head around to regard his rear end, to which a tail seemed to have been tied; his ears, too, sported attachments that made them look bigger. More animal.
“Best guess,” Myka said, “given that there’s also a crown? He’s the Mouse King.”
Pete reached up, took off his crown, and held it up in front of them all. “Lookit that! Royalty! Good for me! But how do you know I’m a mouse?”
“Because,” Myka said, and she briefly entertained the idea that if she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true.. but she of all people knew that never worked. She sighed and gave up: “Helena’s the Nutcracker.”
Pete snickered. “Appropriate.”
“You should be happy that I am not in actuality such an implement,” Helena said, “given the effectivity I believe I mentioned earlier. You should also be happy that you do not have seven heads.”
Pete had nodded enthusiastically at her first statement, but in response to the second, he cocked his head in question. “Kind of a random thing to put on my ‘thrilled-about’ list.”
“The Mouse King has seven heads in the Hoffmann,” Helena informed him. “I concede that would be a difficult effect to achieve in a ballet, which I presume, given the music and the abject horror on Myka’s face, this is.” She turned to Myka and said, “My most sincere condolences.”
Claudia said, “Waitaminute. Who am I supposed to be?” She fluttered the edges of the cape that draped her shoulders.
“I think you’re Drosselmeyer,” Myka told her. “He’s Clara’s—or, I guess my—godfather. He’s the one who made all the dancing toys, and the Nutcracker too, as Clara’s Christmas present. He’s a little creepy.”
“Goals. What about Tracy? Nothing’s different about her outfit.”
Tracy stood at the side of the... was it a stage? The side of the space, whatever it was, and she said, with a hint of a pout, “No costume? I’ve got to be somebody who isn’t in the ballet.” She perked up. “Maybe I’m Balanchine! Or Tchaikovsky!” But then she pouted again. “Probably just the narrator, though. Helps the kids in the audience follow the story... because a lot of them want to, unlike Myka, who was always too busy being traumatized.”
No kidding I was traumatized, Myka thought, and then: Tracy. Oh god. “Okay,” she began, but she could barely speak; her breathing thinned and shallowed and she thought she might pass out, because what explanation would she give for this? “Tracy,” she tried, “this is a really vivid dream you’re having. You fell asleep, and that is what this is. Okay? That’s all this is.”
Tracy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say. But I’m going to assume that that’s about as true as your unconvincing story of how a tornado destroyed my nursery.”
Pete said, “But also, your pregnancy hormones made you not remember the tornado. That was an important part of the unconvincing story.”
“Right,” Tracy said, poker-faced. “I’m just saying that if this were actually a dream, I don’t think any of you would care so much about trying to figure anything out. Because I, as the one having the dream, would already know.”
Helena laughed. “Tracy, I find you to be not unlike your sister, in some rather salient respects.”
Myka said, and as she spoke she realized Tracy was saying the exact same thing with the exact same intonation, “Is that good or bad?”
Helena pronounced, “And upon this evidence, my lord, I rest my case.” Said to a presumably nonexistent judge, but Myka wasn’t feeling entirely safe about any presumptions at this point.
“The Case of the Similar Siblings,” Claudia offered.
“Hey, why are we never in an episode of Perry Mason? That’s a great show,” Pete said.
Clearly, being rodent royalty did nothing to tamp down his ability to be annoying. “What a great idea, Pete,” Myka fake-enthused. “Start throwing out suggestions of new ways to crazy up our lives. I mean, why not ask why we’re never on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick?”
“Because I don’t want to be on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick. You wouldn’t want it either. You wrote a check to some ‘save the whales’ group two weeks ago; we all saw you do it.”
“My point was that nobody wants to be in anything.”
“That’s so untrue. This time of year, I’d kill to be in Die Hard. Besides, you were pretty happy to be in that detective-noir-thingy, weren’t you? Or maybe you changed your mind, because it turned out not to be a love story after all?”
He’d moved closer, practically in her face. Why was he being so confrontational? For that matter, why was she herself being so confrontational instead of trying to figure out how to get them all out of this?
Myka opened her mouth to ask, but Helena preempted her with, “I have a different question, one that may be slightly more pertinent: am I indeed expected to lead the dancing soldiers into battle against the dancing mice? The troops seem to be looking to me for choreographical guidance.” It was true; small soldiers shuffled their tiny toy feet as they turned hopeful little faces toward their Nutcracker commander. Helena spread her palms helplessly at them, then looked to Myka and Tracy.
Tracy said, “I don’t know how ‘my’ dream is supposed to work. I’m guessing that you people are way more experienced with things like this, and tornadoes. But it does seem like a good idea to follow the plot, doesn’t it?”
“Very well,” Helena said. “Be advised, however: I cannot dance.” She proceeded to prove that. Myka wasn’t sure how she felt about dancing being the one thing Helena Wells wasn’t able to do with preternatural skill... Helena seemed to be performing some unholy cross between hopscotch and a waltz, though the hopping was mostly a product of her attempts to avoid stepping on the soldiers and mice, none of whom stayed in formation. That in turn, of course, was the fault of their respective leaders, and Myka hadn’t expected to discover, not on Christmas Eve, that neither Helena nor Pete, who now marched with the mice, was capable of guiding an army of tiny creatures in terpsichorean combat. You really did learn something new, or several somethings new, every day.
Claudia had her arms crossed, watching the mayhem. “I have a really boring part in this show,” she announced.
Myka said, “I’m wearing a nightgown.”
“I give,” Claudia said. “Your part’s worse.” Her expression changed from grumpy to thoughtful. “I really feel like this is not what was supposed to happen. Or maybe it was, but I wonder why so trippy?”
“Supposed to happen? You did this?”
“I didn’t do this. At least, I didn’t think this was what I was doing.”
Myka could not imagine that a more frustrating group of people existed. Anywhere. “Not. For. Personal. Gain. Why aren’t we all required to have that tattooed somewhere visible?”
“It isn’t for personal gain! It’s for general Warehousical gain! Well, maybe a little bit of personal gain, just as a byproduct, but I swear to you, artifact usage is not involved here.”
Pete shouted, from the battlefield, “But why would you do anything at Christmas? You know how Christmas makes the Warehouse—whoops, hey Tracy, I mean ‘some storage facility’—lose its mind.”
“The thing I did, I didn’t do it at Christmas,” Claudia said. “And I didn’t even really do it. Plus there wasn’t really a single ‘it’ that was done. By me or by anybody—I mean, anything—else.”
Tracy said, “I’m sorry to interrupt all this clearly very important dream exposition, but Pete, you need to attack Helena.”
“I what now?”
“You’re the Mouse King,” Tracy told him. “You fight the Nutcracker, and you do it now, given the music.”
He brandished the sword he was holding. “Okay by me. H.G., you game?”
“I... suppose? En garde?”
Under other circumstances, Myka would have found Helena’s puzzled regard of her sword adorable. As it was, though, she was holding the blade completely wrong, so Myka went to her and moved her arm into a slightly more appropriate position. She asked Tracy, “Why couldn’t I be one of the ones with a weapon? I’m the only one who can actually fence.”
Tracy said, “You sort of do have a weapon, and you get to use it, but you have to let go of Helena first.” Myka dropped her guilty hands. Tracy went on, “Now you hit Pete with your shoe. To distract him.”
“Well, it’s no epée, but: with pleasure.” She took off her shoe—a dainty little ballet slipper that she probably couldn’t have taken a decent fencing stance in anyway—and whacked him over the head.
“That all you got?” Pete taunted, but now he seemed more silly than annoying.
“Now, Helena, the sword!” Tracy urged.
Helena squinted at the sword again. “I would say ‘with pleasure’ as well, but I don’t actually want to hurt him. Today.”
“We’ll do the thing where you ‘stab’ between my arm and my body,” Pete suggested, “and then I can finally do the death scene that wins me the Oscar.”
“Dance it. You have to dance it,” Tracy said.
Pete looked even more excited. “Dance it? Yes ma’am. You can all thank me later for the colossal moves I’m about to bust. Best Christmas present you’ll ever get.”
The moves Pete busted were “dance moves” under only the broadest definition of the phrase, in that he was moving, and the music continued to play. He spun; he shimmied; he sashayed; he struck poses. When he started in with what Myka was pretty sure was intended to be breakdancing, Claudia groaned, “My eyes. My sad, sorry eyes.”
Helena remarked, “The Nutcracker, having done this murderous deed, would feel such remorse that he, or rather I, would naturally turn his, or rather my, eyes away. Don’t you think?”
“Coward,” Myka said. “Look on his Works, ye Mighty, and despair. I know I am.”
“You don’t appreciate anything old school,” Pete grunted out, while attempting to hop on one hand. He fell over with a crash.
“She appreciates everything old school,” Tracy corrected him.
Myka wanted to say, “Definitely one thing—one person—who is very old school.” That one person who was very old school had accepted Myka’s challenge to keep watching Pete, and Myka let herself spend a moment enjoying Helena’s face as she worked to hold back what had to be either nausea or laughter. At last Helena gave up, and once she had allowed herself several low chuckles, she caught Myka’s eye and said, “He’d have been perfectly justified to laugh at me as well. And he does at least have great enthusiasm.” Myka had to agree: Pete did always commit. No matter what...
His commitment ended with him stretched out on the “stage,” twitching to show that the last of his mousy life, or maybe the horrified spirit of Terpsichore, was leaving his body.
Tracy said, “Pete, that’s enough. Next step: Myka and Helena, get in that bed over there.”
“Tracy!” Myka yelped
“Don’t be a prude. It’s in the ballet.”
Myka said, “I’m not being a prude.” And she wasn’t, not a prude, just a person who couldn’t stand the thought of getting something she wanted but not really getting it...
“You’re always being a prude,” Tracy said. “Get in the bed. It’s totally innocent: Clara’s just sleeping with the Nutcracker.”
Pete said, “That doesn’t sound innocent. That sounds like this ballet’s about to get all—”
“Pete!” Tracy interrupted. “You are not helping.”
Claudia remarked, “It’s weird how often people named Bering say that.”
Myka heard them, but hearing was her least important sense right then; far more worthy of her attention were sight and smell and touch—and taste, she wanted that too, but she couldn’t be that bold. She settled for resting her head on Helena’s epauletted shoulder, feeling the warmth of her skin through the stiff-collared neck of the coat. She sighed.
She might have imagined it, but she thought she felt Helena’s chest rise, fall; heard a heavy exhalation: was Helena sighing too? And then she didn’t care, for a red-sleeved arm found its way around her shoulders.
“In bed with you.” The words left Myka’s mouth of their own accord.
****
“In bed with you,” Helena breathed in response to Myka’s words.
Helena closed her eyes, let the strange, wonderful sensation of bodily peace have its way with her. Oh, Myka, don’t move; don’t ever, ever move, she thought, but then: Or, better, move only to be closer to me; move only to put your mouth on mine... she felt such thoughts might become speech, might already have become speech, here in this unreal realm...
Then, though, she had a sensation of awakening... but Myka’s head was still on her shoulder... and Helena knew, then, that that sensation was perfect. The caress of her hair, the warmth of her breath. If Helena should turn her head, and if doing so should join their lips, how surprised Myka might be—but how soft her mouth. How soft and warm and wanted... and if Helena were very lucky, how wanting. Because each moment of this dream, no matter its dreamer, was leading Helena to stronger hope. If her eyes could remain closed, if she could continue holding Myka to her, perhaps she could maintain that hope—
“I can’t see,” she heard Pete complain. “Why’d it get dark?”
Tracy said, “First act curtain.”
“What happens next?” Claudia asked.
“Myka’s favorite part,” Tracy said, and in her voice was a note that reminded Helena greatly of Myka, but only at her most playful...
“Oh god,” Myka said, removing herself from Helena’s embrace, and she sounded not at all playful, “it’s the—”
“Land of Sweets!” Tracy crowed. “Is it wrong of me to be really entertained by this?”
“It’s your dream. Knock yourself out,” Myka said. She let herself fall back against Helena’s shoulder, and Helena rejoiced. Then, tragically, Myka sat up. At that point, Helena opened her eyes, just in time to see Myka stand up.
Helena reluctantly followed suit... and thus they were no longer in bed together.
“I’m in a different outfit,” Myka said.
“So you are,” Helena said, for Myka was indeed wearing not the modest, girlish nightgown of the previous act, but a more traditional ballet costume, with a silvery, bejeweled bodice and a skirt of pale pink gauze. Then Helena realized: “So am I.” Hers, too, was more obviously ballet-suitable: a rather princely doublet and breeches, all white.
“I sort of miss the uniform. You looked dashing,” Myka said.
“Do you think so?”
“I haven’t ever seen you in a uniform before. Also the hat. It really worked for you.” She turned her eyes away, as if sudden self-consciousness were the price of such statements of appreciation.
That made Helena, in turn, bold. “I shall never again go hatless,” she said, but instead of declaring it, she whispered it. Into Myka’s ear, which pinked.
Tracy said, “Interesting. Doubling the parts.” They all, Helena included, looked at her in question, and she went on, “Small companies sometimes do that.”
“I guess we’re a pretty small company,” Claudia said.
Tracy crossed her arms and regarded the new setting. “Although I’m not sure why we need anybody playing any parts, here in this dream I’m having, if mice and toy soldiers and cookies actually can dance. Those are real pieces of chocolate jumping around to the Spanish Dance, aren’t they? Maybe you crazy people are right; maybe this is a dream.”
“It. Is. A. Nightmare,” Myka said, and Helena did believe that from Myka’s perspective, that was absolutely true: candies of many sorts danced before them—some seemed a bit disappointed at the less-than-enthusiastic response they were receiving from the small Warehouse “company”—and sugar saturated the air, from which the occasional powdery granule seemed to spontaneously precipitate. Pete stuck his tongue out in an attempt to catch some as the rest of them continued to regard the dancing confections.
Claudia said, “Dream, nightmare; I think it’s none of the above. I think we’ve been put on hold, in some cosmic sense. I have never been so bored. It’s all just dancy-dance-dance.”
“Now, now.” Helena admonished. “Even if you have no appreciation for Tchaikovsky, consider the poor marzipan’s feelings.”
Pete gave up trying to catch sugar in his mouth. He complained, “What about my feelings? All I feel is hungry. Particularly since my super-aerobic dance of death. I should make workout videos.”
“I should get an insulin shot,” Myka said.
Claudia nodded. “No lie. I feel like I’ve got sugar in my hair. Gross. Here’s hoping maple syrup shampoo never becomes a thing.”
Myka said, to her sister, “See, Claudia understands.”
Tracy was listening to the music, her head cocked. “Myka, I really hate to break this to you, but...”
“But what?” Myka asked, in the tone of one who feared that Tracy did not in fact hate the news she was about to break.
And indeed, Tracy began to laugh. “You, sister of mine, are the Sugarplum Fairy. Merry Christmas, sweetie.”
Myka began muttering, “I think you really are dreaming, and I think it’s some kind of revenge fantasy thing where you get back at me for that time I hid your toe shoes, which I apologized for, twenty-five years ago, and yet here you are, still holding it over my—”
“But in what might come as positive news,” Tracy said, in a conciliatory tone, “Helena seems to be your Cavalier.”
“That’s awesome news!” Claudia enthused. “Probably.”
“They’re going to dance a pas de deux here in a bit,” Tracy told her.
“Even. Awesomer. Again, probably. One question: is it, you know, all romantical?”
Tracy nodded. “Basically the only really romantic thing in the show.”
“Sparkly.” Claudia looked to the heavens and pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.
Helena said, “I myself am not finding fault with the situation. But is there some reason you are having such an excessively positive reaction?”
Claudia pointed her pressed hands at Helena. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve sussed out what’s happening.”
“You have determined that your function is Riemann-integrable,” Helena tried.
Tracy remarked, “And here I thought it was me, having a dream. A revenge dream.”
“It is,” Myka said, with no cheer. “And in your dream, Claudia has sussed out what’s happening and Helena’s doing a callback to something that wasn’t funny the first time. And now everybody can wake up so I can get out of this Sugarplum outfit and brush my teeth.”
“I don’t think we can wake up yet,” Claudia said. “Because here’s how I think we get out of this: you dance that dance that’s the only romantic thing in the show. And you mean it.”
“What do you mean, ‘mean it’?” Myka asked.
“What do you think ‘mean it’ means? It means mean it!”
Mean it, Helena thought, and she said, “Ah. Ha. Really?” She fought to keep her face from revealing her eagerness for that romantic dance—she would mean it; she could not help but mean it; and the extent to which she would mean it would be so readily apparent—
“H.G., you look like you’re gonna throw up,” Pete announced. “And hey, so does Myka.”
Helena noted that Myka’s face did seem to be fighting with itself, much as Helena’s own must... and she should not hope it might be for the same reason, but she did hope it all the same...
Tracy said, “That is not what Myka looks like when she’s about to throw up.”
“It’s what Myka looks like when...?” Claudia prompted.
“When it’s Christmas morning and she’s unreasonably terrified that she might get what she wants. She’s good with anticipation. Terrible with actual attainment.”
“Tracy, you should do it,” Myka said. She looked down at her body, touched the gossamer skirt. “I can’t dance. You can dance, and I can’t.”
Helena regarded that hand, resting on that skirt: it was shaking. She wanted to take it, raise it to her mouth, and kiss it. Instead, she said, “Perhaps in a dream you can.”
“But what if I can’t? What if it’s important to be able to?”
Helena tried to keep her tone light. “If that is the case, Pete and I have doomed us.”
“I don’t want to be doomed at all,” Myka said, and her voice gathered strength as she went on, “but in particular, I don’t want to be doomed by doing a dance about sugar in a ballet version of a fairy tale I don’t even like. That’s literally adding insult to injury.”
“I think you’d be doing a dance as sugar,” Tracy told her.
“Indignity to insult to injury. I really think you should do it instead.”
“There is no production of this ballet in which the narrator dances the pas de deux,” said Tracy. She could sound quite starchy when she wished to... Helena imagined that Myka must historically have responded rather poorly to that. But then Tracy’s voice softened. “Besides. There’s no reason for me to dance with Helena.”
“There’s no reason for me to either!”
“Isn’t there?” Tracy asked, and the starch was back.
“There shouldn’t be!” Now Myka’s eyes were wide, and her body seemed poised on the edge of movement, as if she might take off running, just to get away.
If only we could have stayed in bed together, Helena thought. Then she might have been able to maintain a belief that that was what they both wanted, that it was not anything from which Myka felt she needed to escape. “Perhaps there should be such a reason; perhaps there should not,” she said, then looked to Claudia. “I may be mistaken, but I believe it is time for you to make some statements that are about what they are about.”
Claudia swallowed, and possibly she was the one experiencing nausea now. “Are you sure?”
“As mentioned, I may be mistaken. So of course not,” Helena said.
“Good point.” Claudia sighed. “Okay, see, one of the things that the Caretaker’s supposed to, uh, do, which I personally did not know, prior to, you know, Caretaker Bootcamp, is to make sure that the agents... you know.” She fluttered her fingers.
“I don’t know,” Pete said, and Helena was certain that for once, he was speaking for them all.
“You know,” Claudia insisted. “Make sure they... get along. In the ways that would be best for them to... get along. But the thing about Mrs. F is, she kind of had... let’s say, some old-fashioned ideas. About who would. Or should. In what ways. And she and the... storage facility, they spent a lot of time and energy engineering... an outcome. But that was a major oops, because general wrongness. So anyhow, after some conversations about what’s what, which let me tell you I never expected to have to be the one explaining, some things got... put back. But then obviously there was, you know, another thing that needed to be addressed. So here we are.”
Myka shook her head. “That was... incomprehensible.”
Claudia shrugged. “So much for subtlety. Mrs. F thought you and Pete, right? And so she and the storage facility set up dominoes to maneuver that into happening. But obviously, big no on that, so we fixed it. But just as obviously, another... uh. Situation. Needed to. Let’s say develop? And that was my job.”
“You’ve been trying to get Myka and H.G. together,” Pete said.
“Right.”
But why take such a long way round?, Helena wondered. She did not have to ask aloud, however, for Pete saved her the trouble. He scratched his head in puzzlement and said, “In the weirdest way possible? Was that part of the bootcamp? ‘Whatever you do, do it weird’?”
Waving her hands at him, Claudia shouted, “If the whole thing happened to be entirely up to me, I’d just hang some mistletoe and say ‘Now smooch!’ Actually I wouldn’t even bother with the mistletoe, because why wait? But I’m pretty sure you know just as well as I do, bootcamp aside, that if it’s the storage facility running the show, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than just turn around three times and spit. Also I might not have full control of the dominoes yet, okay? Do you have any idea the kind of inbox situation I’m dealing with here?” Her gestures had escalated in intensity throughout this recitation, leaving her panting as she finished.
“But what if this is wrong,” Myka said, and Helena ached to think that she did believe it to be wrong. “It was wrong with Pete; I knew it was wrong.”
Claudia said, “I told you, Mrs. F blew that one. It was wrong.”
That did nothing to lessen Myka’s evident despair. Helena could not stand to let her think that Helena herself harbored any reservations, regardless, so she said, “I don’t want anyone, least of all myself, forced into anything. Having already been placed into many circumstances not of my choosing. But—”
“See?” Myka said.
“But I don’t care. I do want you.”
“And I want you, but—”
“You do?” Helena could scarce believe her ears; if that were true, then why the despair?
“Of course I do. Wait—you want me?”
“Of course I do.” She had never said anything more true.
“But what if this isn’t even what we want? What if it’s just what the Warehouse wants us to want?”
“I could not possibly care less,” Helena said, and she meant it. “What I do care about are the fascinating ways in which articulating the words ‘what’ and ‘want’ make your mouth move.”
“Don’t charm me. I don’t know what to do when you charm me. And I told you, I can’t dance. I can’t.”
Helena said, “Then don’t think of it as dancing. Tracy, tell us what narrative purpose this interlude serves in this ballet.”
“The Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier... it’s generally thought of as a way of modeling romance for the young Clara, or if the same ballerina’s dancing both parts, letting her experience romance in its most perfect form. An ideal representation.”
Helena turned to Myka. She said, as gently as she could, “Providing an ideal representation of romance—that, we can do. Can’t we?”
Myka didn’t immediately answer.
And now Helena did not intend to sound desperate, but she knew she would... “Please say yes. I don’t care about the Warehouse and what it does or doesn’t want. Please say yes.”
Myka did not say yes. But she did take a step toward Helena, and Helena’s heart leapt. But then: “I don’t know what to do,” Myka said.
“You might swoon for me,” Helena suggested lightly.
“I’m not much of a swooner,” Myka said back, not quite as lightly.
“It’s true that your spine and shoulders are somewhat rigid.” Helena put her hands on those rigid shoulders, as if to test them. But instead she let her warm hands rest on Myka’s nearly bare, yet incongruously warm, skin.
Myka gave a small shrug to her shoulders, and Helena tensed; did Myka want to shake her hands away? But Myka said, “Then again you could swoon for me.” And she moved her own hands to Helena’s waist, seemingly to support her, should her body indeed collapse.
“I fear it would seem overly theatrical,” Helena said, as a tease.
Myka smiled. “We’re in the middle of a fake Warehouse-contrived ballet, and you’re worried about seeming overly theatrical.”
This smile was one more of play than of joy, but Helena found it transporting all the same. She leaned close to Myka, so close, such that she was once again speaking directly into her ear. “What about this,” she said. “I want to kiss down and up again the length of that straight, strong spine.”
Myka’s hands tightened on Helena’s body. “You win. That might make me swoon.”
“And then breathe against the nape of your neck,” Helena said, for good measure.
And now into Helena’s ear, so close as to make Helena’s very skin vibrate, Myka said, “If we were not in the presence of witnesses, so help me god.”
Helena said, after a throat-clear, “And yet I have heard that you are always a prude.”
Myka shrugged again under Helena’s hands. “Tracy and I did grow up together, and she does know some things about me. But she doesn’t know everything.”
“No one knows everything,” Helena said, with an intentionally casual answering shrug. “So it should be hardly surprising that we two extremely intelligent, well-educated women might not be able to execute a perfect pas de deux. But... shall we make some attempt?” And now she did remove her hands from Myka’s shoulders and instead raised her arms, offering them as if to lead one of the partnered dances her parents had insisted she at least attempt to learn as a girl: right hand at waist level, left hand raised to receive the lady’s right. The gentleman’s role had seemed so much more compelling then, and was doubly so now, as Myka, despite her protests that she knew nothing, moved into the hold as if she, too, had been subjected to such lessons. “All I can remember, even vaguely, are the waltz and the polka,” Helena said. “Is this a waltz?”
“It’s probably not a polka, and I know in a waltz you count to three. Let’s give it a try.”
Surprisingly, then, they began to waltz. Their slow three-count had nothing to do with the music, as far as Helena could tell, but that could not matter. Mean it, Claudia had said. An ideal representation of romance, Tracy had said. At this moment, Helena had never meant anything like she meant her heartfelt hold of Myka’s body, and she could think of no model for romance more perfect than herself and Myka, counting to three in unison, trying unsuccessfully to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, looking down at their feet, looking back up again into each other’s eyes, smiling, looking away...
Helena heard Claudia say, “They really can’t dance.”
“Not at all,” Tracy agreed. “And yet...”
Helena did not dare break her count, or her concentration, but she suspected Claudia was nodding her own agreement with Tracy’s implication.
Myka was the one to break, though, for she said, “Did you hear Claudia? She said we can’t dance. I told you—”
“Then stop trying, and kiss me instead.” Helena had thought to say that as a tease. An absurdity: of course Myka would not kiss her, not here, not now.
But Myka did not hear it that way, and the way Myka heard it? That was how Helena had indeed meant it, and she understood Myka’s anxious words in response: “I thought we were supposed to dance. Besides, this shouldn’t be how we—our first—”
“First doesn’t matter.” So now, now, let the first be now... “No one kiss will matter—all of them will.”
“All of them...”
“Yes,” Helena said, with conviction. “All of them. The entire... what should the collective noun be? An osculation, perhaps?” She could do this, could give Myka a moment to think, to consider, to decide—to remember—that any first need not, and in the case of their own interactions, had not, set the tone and tenor of all that would come after.
Myka took that moment. Then she smiled and said, “A canoodle.”
Helena countered with, “A prurience.”
“That’s a little too lascivious. And don’t say ‘a lascivity,’” Myka added quickly. Then she tried, “An amatorium?”
Helena considered. “Not quite. I propose that we continue these attempts presently. At which time, I will emerge victorious.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself. What if I come up with the winner?”
Tracy asked, seemingly of no one in particular, “Is this part of their representation of ideal romance? Or are they like this all the time?”
Pete said, “They do not know how to shut up about this kind of thing. Never have. Storage facility didn’t maneuver ’em into that. Then again that’s probably what they think romance is.”
“I don’t have to bother figuring out what a storage facility called ‘the Warehouse’ has to do with anything, do I, because at some point I’ll ‘wake up,’” Tracy said. “Right?”
“Or something about hormones,” Pete assured her.
“Fantastic. Look, just tell me Helena isn’t going to hurt my sister.”
Helena tensed, waiting for Pete’s response. Pete took his time in answering, but he finally said, “I don’t think I can tell you that. I mean, she did before.”
Points for honesty, at least. Helena looked to Tracy, Pete, and Claudia and said, “Never again. I swear, never again.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tracy warned, and Helena did not doubt her intent.
“Hey,” Myka said, “I think that should be my line. But I’ve got a revised version: don’t make promises if you don’t intend to keep them. I know there’s no knowing what will happen.”
Helena said, “There is indeed no knowing. For I would have wished—but would not have dared—to consider a Christmas Eve on which I would be dancing with you.”
“We’re not even dancing,” Myka said, and it was, as far as it went, the truth. They were no longer moving, and Helena’s arms around Myka were no longer positioned with any formality.
But as far as it went, it did not go far enough. Helena said, “It is the oldest dance imaginable. And we are beginning it.” She paused. “Are we not?”
Myka said, simply, “Yes. We are.”
The kiss was surely no revolution in the art: their mouths moved together with a gentle yet intensifying pressure, and what innovation could she and Myka bring to such an old, simple action? Well, one at least, for what other perfect match of lovers could lay claim to having been separated by a century—then, after closing that gap, having waited still more years for the match to be made?
Such an old, simple action, and yet it carried such meaning, serving as both a culmination and a beginning... once begun, though, they did not stop, until they had kissed again, and again, and again, and once more. Helena drew back a bit and breathed out, “Five.”
That made Myka draw back slightly too. Puzzled: “That’s not a very creative collective noun.”
“But it is more than four.” Helena did not intend to brag, but it was objectively the case that five was more than four.
Myka laughed a small laugh, one that said she understood. “Okay. Six,” she said, and made it true.
“Seven,” Helena sighed, after she had made that true as well.
They were engaged in eight when Helena heard Pete say, “I think it’s working. Are we waking up?”
A veil fell again, a slow darkening followed by a slow brightening. And there they all were again, back in their old familiar living room, but in a newly familiar position: Helena’s arms were still around Myka, and Myka’s mouth had just left hers, and Helena tried to tell herself that waking up would be all right, that they would make the best of whatever happened; but she could not now imagine being satisfied to return to that stasis that had been not quite enough.
The floodgates had failed.
****
Should I move? Myka asked herself. She and Helena were locked in an embrace, and Myka felt her pulse in her suddenly lonely lips, felt it as a beat that wanted to push her forward to meet Helena’s mouth again. But they were in the real world now, and what if waking up again, here, meant that nothing had changed?
Tracy, as if she had read Myka’s thoughts, said, “It is all a dream of course.”
Myka stepped away from Helena’s arms. She didn’t look at Helena’s face. “Of course,” she said. “Of course it is. I mean, I’m so glad you think so.”
“I mean in the ballet, you idiot,” Tracy said. “That whole second part, about the Land of Sweets: Clara dreams it.”
Now Myka did look at Helena. Bleak, soft, sad: her eyes reminded Myka of her haunted hologram gaze, that gaze that knew so deeply how punitive her unreal body was. A constant “look but don’t touch” taunt... and Myka did not know if Helena understood that Myka, too, had felt it as punishment.
But a real body stood here now. “Then I don’t see why she—I mean I—would ever want to wake up,” Myka said. She took Helena’s right hand in both of hers, raised it to her mouth, and kissed it.
Helena made a small noise—disbelief?—but she put an arm around Myka’s hips and looked a question at her. Myka nodded. Helena said, “Then you should not have to. Wake up, that is.”
“Even though it’s too sweet for you?” Tracy asked, and her skeptical tone was clear. “In all the ways, I would’ve thought. Based on your... history.”
Helena, obviously emboldened by the location of her arm, exclaimed, “Tracy Bering, are you attempting to talk your sister out of this? Or are you simply making certain?”
“Trying to make certain. I’m getting that it’s important. I’d like things to work out the way they should, because I’m betting that if they do, I get to go home and everything will turn out okay. It’s like with Dad and that haunted book or whatever it was.”
Myka blanched. “How do you know about that?”
Tracy rolled her eyes and said, “Because I talk to our parents, Myka. You should try it sometime when nobody’s about to die.” Her tone became nonchalant. “You might want to try it sometime soon, in fact, because I bet you’d prefer to be the one to tell them about Helena... and you know bad I am at keeping a secret...”
Helena, exclaiming again: “Tracy Bering, are you now attempting to blackmail your sister into visiting your parents?”
“I’m just making statements that are true. What Myka does with them is up to her.”
And now Helena was laughing. “Tracy Bering. You are a Christmas gift I did not expect.”
“Hey! What am I exactly?” Myka said, and she hadn’t expected to be possessive, but: she put her own arm around Helena. And pulled her close.
Helena’s smile turned incandescent, but her voice was familiarly sly as she said, “If recent events are to be believed, you are my sugarplum. And/or fairy.”
Claudia spoke for the first time, as if she were trying out her voice to make sure it still worked. “H.G.,” she said, and coughed, “if you don’t make the dingy-ding-ding part of that song your ringtone for her, I will lose all respect for you.”
Pete chimed in with, “We all should have that as our Myka ringtone. ‘Is the Sugarplum Fairy calling you, Pete?’ ‘Yes. Yes she is.’”
“I’m strangely comforted by all of this,” Myka said.
“Are you really?” asked Helena.
“Well. It pretty much shows that nothing’s going to change.”
“Nothing?” Sly again.
“One thing. A very important thing.” She leaned her head against Helena’s neck.
“Two things,” Tracy said. “Don’t forget about Helena meeting the parents.”
“The parents of Myka and Tracy Bering,” Helena said, and her tone was one of “what manner of creatures are these.” “Hm. These parents, who named their older child Myka Ophelia Bering, and their younger, Tracy... Desdemona Bering?”
Tracy laughed. “Oh, good guess. But no.”
“Portia?” Helena tried, and Tracy shook her head. “Bianca?” Another negative. Helena twisted her lips one way, then the other. “Surely it couldn’t be Cleopatra.”
“I wish,” Tracy said.
“Why couldn’t mine be Cleopatra?” Myka griped. “Do you know how many times people have told me ‘get thee to a nunnery’?”
“Please don’t,” Helena said. “For I would be obliged now to come and liberate you from it, and I really don’t need to add to my offenses against religion. And the religious.” She turned back to Tracy. “It certainly can’t be Helena.”
“No, but you’re getting warm,” Tracy said.
“Hermia?”
“Still warm...” Tracy said, and she winked at Myka.
“Here it comes,” Myka agreed.
Helena pounced. “Ha! In the fairy realm, one Bering a sugarplum, the other a queen: Tracy Titania Bering. Observe you.”
“H.G.,” Claudia said, “it’s ‘look at you.’ Or ‘get you.’ ‘Observe you’ sounds weird.”
Tracy said, “I like her version. In fact I like her.”
“So the Wells mojo works on all the Berings,” Pete said, but he didn’t sound completely like himself. Myka put a mental post-it flag on that so she would not just not forget it, but also come back to it.
“If there is any such thing as Wells mojo, I would much prefer it work only on one particular Bering.” Helena emphasized her point by kissing Myka’s cheek. Myka reciprocated. It was ridiculously satisfying.
“That’s okay by me,” Tracy said. “If I’m lucky, Kevin will remember that he likes one particular Bering too.”
That made Claudia say, quickly, “I’m sorry, Tracy.” She put her hands in her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders; she might as well have been captioned “embarrassment.” “The whole thing, all the straight-up lunatic reasons for it all... I’m also sorry that I’m technically not supposed to explain why I’m sorry, but I’m really really sorry. If it helps, I think if you’re not mad at your husband anymore, he might not have much of an idea that you ever were.”
Tracy waved the apology away. “Myka’s involved, so the reasons can’t help but be lunatic, and it’s not like I’ve never been furious at Kevin before today. But no matter how my little not-exactly-breakup works out, it does bring up one thing that our ideal lovebirds over there need to remember: the honeymoon ends.”
Claudia said, “I guess not today, though. Gotta say I’m a little surprised how strong the ‘mean it’ mojo carried over.”
Helena had been nosing against Myka’s neck, but now she raised her head and asked, “And how are you finding this part, Claudia? That is, if I have interpreted your previous metaphor correctly.”
“Don’t get yourself carbonite-frozen, is all I ask,” Claudia said.
“I have had enough of enforced immobility, thank you.”
Tracy said, “Then I think you should try movement instead.”
Myka was not particularly proud of how quickly her mind took that and went south—and then she was further flustered by Helena’s saying “What?” with a level of startlement that suggested she’d had the same thought.
Tracy started laughing. “Good god, your faces. I meant you should take a dance class.”
****
The entire rest of the evening, Myka let go of Helena only once: she went to the kitchen, where Pete was hunting through the refrigerator for food he hadn’t yet introduced himself to. She said, “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” he asked, his head still inside the appliance.
“Don’t play dumb.”
“Mrs. F should apologize. We were both bystanders.”
“Not innocent, though,” she said, to the back of his head. “You committed. I didn’t.”
He didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.
“You’re going to freeze your face,” she told him.
“I’m not in the freezer,” he said, but he did stand up and close the door. “I’m sorry too.”
“What for?”
“I committed. You didn’t. Should’ve told me something, right?”
“I don’t know what should’ve told either of us anything.”
He turned to face her then. “You and H.G.” He puffed out a breath. “You look good together. I don’t just mean you’re both pretty—I mean you are—but you look good together. You look right. Sound right, too. You did, even before. That should’ve told everybody everything they needed to know.”
“Nobody here seems very good at paying attention,” Myka said.
“Well, Claudia is. Mostly. And Steve. Abigail too.” He sighed. “The newbies. Maybe the rest of us have been here too long.”
“‘The rest of us’? We just spent Christmas Eve in a ballet because ‘the rest of us’ apparently can’t be trusted to run our own lives,” she told him, and he huffed the start of a laugh. That seemed like a good sign, so she went on, “What I’m really saying is, you better stick around, because I need your help.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and he turned back to the refrigerator.
“No, I mean I need your help right now. Helena and Claudia are explaining to each other why the Warehouse database should be made out of blockchain. Or something. And if they run off to the storage facility tonight to make that dream a reality, I’m holding you responsible.”
“You got some other plans?” he asked. And then he waggled his eyebrows.
It was all going to be all right. They’d probably still have a hiccup or two or several, but it was all going to be all right. “I didn’t spend Christmas Eve in some stupid ballet for no payoff, Lattimer.”
****
A year ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve this way.
Pete and Claudia were still engaged in their video-game duel, although at considerably reduced volume... Tracy Bering had retired to the guest room after a long telephone conversation with her husband, whom she still loved, and who still loved her...
As for herself and Myka: alone now, in a darkened room, in a bed, continuing their dance...
There was no suggestion, on either of their parts, that they “take it slow”; no angst-ridden worries as to what the morning would bring; no hesitation at all—and if that was due to holiday disinhibition or the knowledge that there truly was no time like the present or even just the flat simplicity of two eager, tender adults willing and able to indulge their bodies with what was wanted, Helena could not have said.
What she did say, in a dark quiet moment right as Christmas Eve was becoming Christmas morning, came in response to Myka’s whispered, post-indulgence question, “And we’re sure this is real?”
“I hope so,” she said. Then, “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t expect an act curtain to fall, but your sister is right, of course: the honeymoon does end.”
Myka stretched her straight, strong spine—the length down and up of which Helena had indeed kissed. She said, “If it does, then we’ll just have to have a second one.”
“I had no idea you would be so romantic,” Helena told her. For Myka had indeed been romantic—she had said unabashed words of love, and of want, and Helena had answered them in rapturous kind.
“I didn’t either. Maybe it’s some aftereffect—excessive sweetness. It’ll probably wear off.”
“I suspect we’re likely to have more problems if it doesn’t wear off than if it does. As you’ve no doubt noted, I’m not especially sweet myself.”
Myka said, “I beg to differ,” and she kissed Helena again and again and again, as if she had found a secret fount of edulcoration, as if she could not get enough of all that her mouth encountered...
Much later, Helena murmured, “Torturous journey,” as she let her fingers trace an easier, smoother one across Myka’s collarbones.
“And we didn’t even know it was one. Not while we were on it.”
Helena sighed. “Blame the storage facility.” She paused. “Not a sentence one expects to utter.”
“Do you care? If we’ve been... nudged? Pushed?” Myka’s hands had been moving too, over Helena’s back, sliding over scapulae, then moving to Helena’s shoulders, down her arms. Now they stilled, waiting.
Helena sighed again. “Nudged, pushed. Flung? Away from each other, now toward each other. I care only that it took so long for the storage facility to get it right. I don’t appreciate the detours.”
“For my sanity, I’m just going to pretend that the storage facility isn’t as influential in everyone’s business as it apparently is. But I have to say, I think my parents are going to wake up tomorrow morning pretty confused about why they booked themselves on a cruise.”
“And yet they might enjoy it. Opinions can change, in the event. For example, how do you feel about The Nutcracker now?”
“I don’t want to tell you.” She shifted a bit, abruptly awkward under Helena’s weight. “You’ll take it the wrong way.”
Helena slid fully off of Myka’s body, turned on her side, and propped herself on her elbow. “You continue to find it your worst nightmare,” she guessed, though it seemed more a certainty.
“I can’t help it. I still can’t stand it—and I don’t understand why the storage facility had to stick us in that sugary horror show anyway.”
“Hm,” Helena said.
Myka said, with apology, “You’re thinking the honeymoon’s over right about now, aren’t you?”
“That is not at all what I am thinking. I am considering two questions. First, which of us, you or myself, has no objection, philosophical or otherwise, to the consumption of sweets?”
“You...” Myka said, but now with suspicion.
Helena chuckled. “And second, which of us was cast as the Sugarplum Fairy... the one who, we might say, is made of sugar?”
Myka closed her eyes. She made the same hand-to-forehead gesture she had, so much earlier in the evening, with Pete: as if she were attempting to ensure that her brain remained in place.
Helena, greatly satisfied, continued, “Thus I am thinking that the storage facility stuck us in that sugary horror show in order to indicate that I should—”
The hand that had been at Myka’s forehead moved swiftly to cover Helena’s mouth... but Myka smiled.
****
No, a year ago, even a day ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve–become–Christmas morning this way. Even if she had, she would have told herself that such satiety could never be more than the stuff of fantasy... the stuff of sweet dreams.
But even the sweetest of dreams sometimes come true.
END
