“So.”

Tina leaned back against Bette, her feet propped up on the couch. “So?”

“So, what aren’t you telling me.” Bette rubbed Tina’s arms, then moved to gently massage her back.

“This is unfair, Porter.”

“Yup, and I’m taking any advantage I can get.” Bette kissed the back of Tina’s neck. “So spill.”

“Well”

Bette wrapped her arms around Tina’s shoulders. “This was just a dream, right?”

“Right.”

“And, I’m guessing, not all a good dream.”

“Right again,” Tina admitted with a sigh.

“But it wasn’t real, T. It won’t hurt me,” Bette placed a kiss on Tina’s cheek. “It can’t hurt us.”

“Well,” Tina sucked in a deep breath. “Remember how the girls accused us of being boring.”

Bette smiled at that thought. Alice, Dana, and Shane had tried to do an ‘intervention’ one day, attempting to break her and Tina out of their happy, nesting phase. And it almost worked for a day, until Bette and Tina made a pact that they really preferred boring. They’d just be a little more closeted about how boring they really were. “Of course.”

“Well, we went off the scale for unboring.”

“We did?” Bette raised an eyebrow. “How unboring did we get?”

“You” Tina paused. “You had an affair.”

‘Oh my,’ Bette thought. Tina was so clearly tense about this, Bette wondered if she’d been judged for things that her wife had thought. “It was just a dream, babe.”

“It’s’ not that. Well, it is. I didn’t take it very well when I found out. We, umm, fought.”

“Who won?” Bette tried to keep the words light, but then, with Tina’s reaction, immediately regretted her attempt at levity.

“It was ugly. I mean, we each did such horrible things.”

Bette grabbed a tissue and dabbed at Tina’s face. “It was just a dream, T.”

“Right, but one of the reasons you had an affair, that was horrible, too.”

This time Bette waited for Tina to continue, rather than attempting to interject any comments. “I, umm, lost the baby.”

Now the floodgates opened and Tina’s tears began in earnest. So did Bette’s. “I can see why this was so upsetting.” Bette placed a reassuring hand over Tina’s, which was lightly stroking her stomach. “But it didn’t happen, right? Except in your dream?”

“Right.” Tina let herself remember that none of this was the truth. This wasn’t her reality.

“Anyway, after the fight, we split up.”

“Oh.”

“And Bette? Umm, there’s more.”

Bette contemplated if she wanted to hear it or not. While she’d prefer not to, she knew that Tina had been keeping this dream bottled up all day. How could she not help to share this burden.

“You can tell me anything, T.” Bette gave Tina’s hand another squeeze, which Tina returned.

“Ok, so I lived with Alice for a while. And got a lawyer.”

“You wanted a lawyer? For us?”

“I don’t want one, Bette, it was the dream.” Tina raised Bette’s hand to her mouth and gave it a kiss. “But the lawyer was icky.”

“Icky.”

“She ate sushi, and tried to kiss me.”

“T, did a lot of women in your dream try to kiss you?”

“No.”

Bette let out a small sigh of relief.

“Just one.”

So much for the relief. Bette could feel herself tensing again. “One that wasn’t me?”

“Sorry, babe. She was, umm, Peggy Peabody’s daughter.”

Now Bette was truly confused. “I don’t know if Peggy Peabody has a daughter.”

Tina moved so she was lying down more in Bette’s lap. “It doesn’t matter. If she did, she wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

“So, you were ‘kissing’ this Peabody, what was I doing?”

“For a while you were a mess. You kept up your affair for a while, and then the morning you kissed her good-by, you tried to get me to move home.”

“Wow. Who knew I was so insensitive.”

“You’re not insensitive, Bette.” Tina gave Bette’s knee a pat. “But you did have a rough spell.”

“How rough?” Bette rubbed at her forehead. There was a part of this dream that was inducing a headache, but another part that was like a train wreck. Now she had to hear the rest.

“Well, there was the drinking, and the smoking. At least one random hook-up at a bar.”

“And I didn’t have you?” Bette sounded truly sad.

“I think you decided you did want me. Especially because of the baby.”

“Baby?” Bette found this perplexing. “I thought you said that we”

“We did. But I really wanted us to have a baby, and I thought you did, too”

“I do, T,” Bette interrupted.

“Right, I know.” Tina reached a hand up to stroke Bette’s face. “But in the dream, I got myself inseminated without your knowledge. Without anyone’s knowledge.”

“So you were alone, and pregnant? Wait, not alone, you had whatshername.”

“I guess.” Tina tried to hedge on just how not alone she had been at times in the dream. “But I realized that as much as I tried to be mad at you, I couldn’t stay mad.”

“It sounded like you had reason.”

“True.” Tina nodded. “But only in the sense of the dream. Even then, I wanted you back, I think, wanted us to be a family. But it was all getting so complicated.”

“So what happened?”

“With?”

Bette started to work her fingers through Tina’s hair. “What happened with us, in the dream? With the baby?”

Unexpectedly, Tina began to giggle.

“What.” Bette could feel a smile growing in spite of her other concerns on this conversation.

“I don’t know.”

Bette scrunched up her nose in a look of confusion. “You don’t know?”

“That’s about when I woke up.”

Bette joined Tina’s giggles.

“And I woke up,” Tina continued, “kind of for the same reason I’m going to have to get up now.” She looked up at Bette. “Walk me to the bathroom?”

With a new understanding of all that they had, Bette couldn’t help but let her love for her wife show on her face. “It would be my boring pleasure.”

She helped Tina to her feet, and the two teetered off into the sunset. Well, into the restroom, really, but that’s not quite as poetic of a way to say THE END.


(Probably the end, anyway)