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dollsome2 become 1, or: these are totally normal roommate shenanigans - Don't Trust The B In Apartment 23 ; June/Chloe ; 3,100 words. Chloe decides to fake-seduce June in an act of vengeance. Naturally, June strikes back.
At first, June is a little nervous when Chloe doesn’t come out of her room all morning. It just seems way too likely that the reason will be something illegal, never mind how glossed over it is with Holly Golightly whimsical charm. You can’t just start a brothel or a meth lab in your bedroom, not even if it’s Dawson Leery-endorsed and your fashion sense is, okay, really adorable.
June is beginning to worry that she’s going to have to turn down an invitation to an(other) orgy when—
A sneeze!
Followed by another sneeze.
And another sneeze.
Yep, that definitely qualifies as a sneezing fit.
Chloe is sick.
June beams.
This, she can handle.
+
“She made me soup.”
“That bitch.”
“And tea.”
“That bitch.”
“She fed me strawberry sorbet while we watched Little Women. Have you ever seen Little Women?”
“Um,” James says. “Nope.”
“That shit is adorable,” Chloe says crossly. “It just wouldn’t end. June kept stealing my tissues to cry into. The whole thing was unforgivable. She’s left me no choice: I have to screw with her.”
“Because she was nice to you?” James checks.
“Duh.”
“You are such a fundamentally maladjusted individual,” James says, pretty admiringly.
“Aw, sweetie!” says Chloe, and blows him a kiss.
+
June comes home from the coffeeshop, closes the door behind her, and turns around. And, boom!, there’s Chloe, standing right there. So right there that June can’t actually … move past her.
Chloe is also stripped down to her red sexy underwear.
It is, okay, a lot more seductive than June’s red sexy underwear. She gets what Chloe was saying now. Chloe has garters and everything. Which: wow.
“Heya, roomie,” Chloe – purrs?
Oh God. What’s happening?
“Heya, roomie,” June squeaks.
She moves to the left a little bit.
So does Chloe.
“Somebody smells like coffee grounds and poor life choices,” Chloe – yep, purrs, and then … sniffs June’s hair. Wow. Okay. Wow. “Mmm.”
It somehow manages to not be super gross.
Who can pull that off?
Yep, time to put her sweet chirpy barista voice away. “Chloe, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’ve had some time to think,” Chloe says, “because, you know, I don’t clutter up my schedule with trivial nonsense like work – no offense, peaches – and I figured: it’s time. Let’s do this.”
She puts her hands on the door. On either side of June.
Oh yikes.
“Huh?” June yelps.
“Oh, come on, June, like we didn’t both know this was coming.”
“Can you please stop saying ‘come’?”
“Sure. Let’s orgasm it up, girlfriend!”
“Don’t say that either!” June cries, and fights the stupid urge to shove her hands over her ears. “And – and what do you mean this was … impending?”
“Please! You’ve been flaunting it like crazy, and just so you know, Mama’s so not into the whole look-but-don’t-touch thing. You parade around here naked all the time.”
“I was in the shower! You could have waited to talk to me until I got out, you know!”
“We pay daily tribute to Divinyls in the same bathtub—”
“I do not touch myself in the bath! Besides, you know, in an innocent way that is all about hygiene!”
“—I got nasty with your fiancé on your birthday cake that time, and I’m pretty sure there’s some, like, math thing that would basically equate that to us getting it on—”
“The transitive property is NOT R-RATED!”
“—aaaand you got all up in my dad’s business, so genetically speaking, we’ve basically done the deed. This way, there’s just not a dick in the way; am I right?”
“You are talking about your father’s penis.”
“Oh, don’t call child services yet. At least I didn’t touch it.”
“I ONLY TOUCHED IT THROUGH BIKE SHORTS.”
“Well,” Chloe breathes; she leans in, her breath hot and spearminty against June’s cheek (damn it, she’s been drinking June’s fluoride rinse again), and then – nips June’s ear, oh gosh oh gosh oh jeez what the hell, “guess who’s not wearing bike shorts now?”
“You are psychotic!” June yells.
“Psychotic with lust,” Chloe giggles, twisting June’s hair around her finger. “And, okay, in the general sense, if you ask most psychiatrists. But they’re obviously just jealous; transparent much? Never mind. I guess what I’m saying is: why delay the inevitable, sweet thing?”
“Oh, no,” June says, starting to feel strangely calm with hysteria. “No no no no no no. Here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to move, and I’m going to go hide in my room until you come down off whatever crazy pills you’re currently tripping on, dawg! And I don’t know why I just said ‘dawg’! It seemed like a good way to finish that sentence, but now I really regret it! And that’s not the point! The point is: STOP.”
Chloe knocks her knee against June’s, like she’s trying to encourage June’s legs to be way less together, and for a split-second June is so headily okay with that idea that she starts to imagine what might—
WHAT, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, SHUT IT DOWN.
“Oh, move!” she snaps, and shoves Chloe out of the way.
“They’re not crazy pills if they don’t make you hallucinate dancing marsupials,” Chloe says, seeming totally cool, popping another – whatever it is into her mouth. “These are basically Tic Tacs.”
“I don’t want to know!” June shouts over her shoulder, sternly reminding herself just how glad she is that Chloe is across the room from her now.
“Pussy cat got claws!” Chloe calls. “Rawr!”
“I AM REVOKING YOUR PUSSY PRIVILEGES, CHLOE!” June shouts, and then hears herself shout it; oh God, what is happening??
“I had pussy privileges?” she only just hears Chloe say before she slams her bedroom door.
“Aughhhhh!” June says, and feels thoroughly justified in throwing herself face-first down onto her bed like she just found out Nsync broke up.
+
“Whoo boy,” Chloe says to the empty room, and breathes out.
She could really use some friggin’ dancing marsupials right now.
+
“I have to move out,” June concludes the next day, after spilling the whole (miserable weird awkward not sexy at all in any way or inspiring of any totally weird [gross weird! Not nice weird!] dreams last night) story to Mark at work.
“June?”
“Mark?”
“This is Chloe, right? Like, crazy’s kind of her thing?”
“Yeahhh?”
“So she’s just doing it to mess with you.”
“But why? I haven’t done anything to her! In fact, we’ve been starting to get along really well! She was sick last week, and I made her soup and took care of her and we watched Little Women and she totally cried when Beth – you know. I mean, she said it was just snot coming out of her eyeballs, but that can’t happen! … That can’t happen, right?”
“This is Chloe,” Mark reminds her. “The same Chloe who’s basically allergic to human emotion?”
“Yeah,” June says – and then it hits her. “Oh God! That’s it! I was sweet to her, and it broke her brain! Now she’s lashing out the only way she knows how! And – and for some reason it’s super gay!”
“You could talk to her about it.”
“Please! Like that’s going to do anything. No, I’ve got to be sneaky. I’ve got to beat her at her own game! That way, she’ll realize that she’s not going to drive me away by messing with me, and finally open her heart to a genuine friendship.”
“Okay, I’m just gonna say this right now,” Mark says, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a look of Very Serious Intensity. “You guys are going to have the sex. It’s inevitable. That girl does not know how to back down.”
“Oh, she’ll back down! She’ll back all the way down!”
“When you say it like that, it just sounds dirty, somehow.”
“Shut up!” June shakes him off. “Okay, good, I have a plan. When I get home, the first thing I’m doing is making a Girly Super Seduction iTunes Playlist.”
It feels good to have a sense of purpose.
+
“Oh man,” Mark says as June bops out of the coffeeshop, on her way home to disaster. “there’s no way this is gonna end well. Hot, yes. Well, no.”
“Being nice to other humans is a dangerous game,” James says sagely. (He’s just there, giving ‘hey what’s up’ nods to giddy passersby. It’s all part of being The Beek.) “After Cruise’s Couch Jumping Incident of ’05, I went over to his place for dinner to check up on Katie. You know. Make sure she wasn’t being subjected to any brainwashing nonsense. I wound up spending three days trapped in his underground Scientology lair. I mean, Chloe got me out before any real damage set in, thank God, but it taught me a valuable lesson about compassion.”
“Like … don’t have any?” Mark isn’t so sure about this.
“You’re a quick one, bro,” James says, with somber appreciation, “and you make a mean decaf soy latte.”
Mark sighs. “You just called me ‘bro’ because you still don’t remember my name, huh?”
James lets out an ‘oh please!’ laugh that’s almost convincing. “If I didn’t remember your name, would I ask you to say it in unison with me just for kicks? One- two – three – Mmmmm—onty?—”
“So,” Mark says, “underground Scientology lair, huh?”
“Xenu’s always listening.” It’s possible James’s eyes glaze over, just a little. “He’s got space planes, and he’s coming, man.”
Mark frowns. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” James says smoothly. “Did you say something?”
+
June is reclining on the sofa in a pose she picked up from the Lady Marmalade music video. (She watched it a few times on youtube, for research purposes.) The only light comes from the twenty-six vanilla scented candles she’s painstakingly set up in the living room. She’s wearing her red seduction panties and – well, okay, a t-shirt, because she’s not very comfortable with the idea of just showing off everything, but the t-shirt is totally from Victoria’s Secret, so.
When she catches the dim sounds of Chloe talking to Robin in the hallway (oh God, what if she INVITES ROBIN; does that whole ‘it’s not gay if it’s in a threeway’ rule count when everyone’s a girl? Probably not; focus, Colburn, focus!), June scrambles off the couch, presses ‘play’ on her iPod, and scrambles back.
“I am a wanton sex goddess,” she chants to herself. “Wanton sex goddess.”
And, okay, it’s a phrase she got from Bridget Jones’s Diary, not the Kama Sutra or anything, but the overall sentiment is the same, right?
The door swings open.
June parts her lips a little bit because if there’s one thing the portrayal of women in the media has taught her, it’s that for some reason it is … sexy to never have your mouth closed all the way? Or something? Unless you’re eating, then it’s just rude? Probably not the time to be pondering this stuff.
Chloe takes off her sunglasses, looks at June and the candles and then the red seduction panties (she doesn’t even wrinkle her nose in disgust, which June counts as a personal triumph), and then … puts her sunglasses on again. Maybe she’s being blinded by confusion. Ha!
“Heya, roomie,” June says, Marilyn Monroe breathy.
‘Cause tonight … is the ni-ight … when two become oneeeee! contributes her iPod dock.
“Hey, June,” Chloe says suspiciously, inching in. “Hey, Spice Girls.”
“I thought about what you said,” June says, and starts to realize that it’s really hard keeping your voice Marilyn Monroe breathy for more than a couple words. “And I totally agree. I’ve also come to the conclusion that we should probably just … go to town all over each other.”
“Oh yeah?” Chloe asks. She has gone totally poker faced and inscrutable. It’s really unnerving—
And if she thinks that’s enough to shake June, well, she can just think again!
“Why not?” June says, with renewed breathy enthusiasm. “We live together. It’s like having your own personal built in sex fountain.”
Chloe slides her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and eyes June. “Sex fountain?”
“Sure,” June purrs, mostly because she needs an alternative to breathiness. “That’s totally a thing.”
“I thought you weren’t into the lady cave,” Chloe says.
“I wasn’t into a lot of things,” June sighs, “until I met you.”
Okay, whoops, that went a little bit Nicholas Sparks.
Chloe stares at her, and June is kind of relieved that she’s got sunglasses on, because she gets the sense that she does not want to see what’s going on in that girl’s eyeballs.
“Unless,” June adds, thinking WANTON SEX GODDESS, WANTON SEX GODDESS, and sort of wishing she had an ice cube to … trail across her collar bone … or … something?, “you don’t want to anymore.”
This seems to switch Chloe on.
“Oh, I want to,” she says, taking off her sunglasses and tossing them over her shoulder. “I’m the one who decided to gay this up in the first place, blondie.”
She takes her coat off, and – somehow also her dress (and … her underwear?), all in about five seconds.
Okay.
This is war.
“Oh wow,” June says, trying to sound totally turned on instead of horribly confused. “You’re suddenly naked. I totally love that.”
“Almost as much as I love your gigantic sex panties,” Chloe retorts. “They leave so much to the imagination. You could have the entire population of a small European country stashed down there.”
“I don’t,” June sexy-pants.
“Prove it,” Chloe sexy-snarls.
I need some love like I never needed love before! (Wanna make love to ya, babyyyy!) contributes the iPod dock.
Chloe kinda just jumps on top of her, and after a few moments of near-heart-attack-inducing shock, June recovers; okay, Chloe is mostly bones and angles, but not really in a bad way, none of this is really as bad as it’s supposed to be yet—
There is suddenly a thundering knock on the door.
“STOP! POLICE.”
“Police??” June cries, sitting up.
“I swear, I’m starting to think they just want an excuse to hang out here,” Chloe says, rolling her eyes.
“POLICE OF BAD SEXUAL DECISIONS, THAT IS,” adds the male voice, which suddenly becomes much more familiar.
“Mark?” June says. She wraps an afghan around herself and opens the door.
Sure enough, there’s Mark and James Van Der Beek.
(She still hasn’t quite shaken the need to refer to him as ‘James Van Der Beek’ in her head, at least once per encounter. It’s a respect thing. Even if he doesn’t really deserve any.)
“Ooh,” James Van Der – James says. “Mood lighting.”
“’Sup, June,” Mark says. “’Sup, naked Chloe.”
“Yo,” naked Chloe says.
“So, the thing is,” Mark says, very carefully not looking at naked Chloe, “you can’t go through with this.”
“Why?” naked Chloe demands.
“Because – I’m in love with June?” Mark attempts.
June makes a face at him.
Mark shrugs. “I tried.”
“Thanks,” June deadpans.
“Okay, Monty,” James says with the great authority of a guy who owns his own Indiana Jones When He’s A Professor suit. “Let the master of the range of human emotions handle this one.”
“Master of the range of human emotions?”
“Don’t tell me you were like the only person on earth to miss my series of customized reaction gifs on the internet.” He rolls his eyes, then turns to Chloe and points sternly. “You, accept the fact that you have feelings instead of just screwing with other peoples’ psyches all the time, none of which are more fragile than your own. June likes you. She’s your friend. You’re lucky. Not as lucky as you are to be friends with me, but hey. It’s something. Got it?” Chloe nods a little sheepishly, and June is about to start smiling, when all of a sudden, she’s getting pointed at. “You, those panties are gigantic. Did the designer use a pattern for mid-nineties mom jeans by mistake?”
June huffs and wraps the afghan closer around her.
“Can we address the fact that June put the Spice Girls on her seduction playlist?” Mark says.
“Actually,” Chloe says with a dainty shrug, “it was kinda workin’ for me.”
“Thank you!” June says, and high fives her.
+
The guys wind up staying the night, to “dispel any lingering sexual awkwardness.” Pfft! Like that’s … even necessary.
+
June tiptoes out into the kitchen the next morning, and tries to pour a bowl of cereal as quietly as she can so Mark can keep on sleeping on the couch. She’s two spoonfuls into breakfast when another spoon invades her cereal bowl.
“Sharing is caring,” Chloe announces – in a whisper, which is pretty considerate behavior for her. She’s wearing a robe, too! Maybe last night will actually inspire her to act like a decent human being for a few days. A few hours, at least. “And besides, James’s sleep apnea gets totally old. Not to mention that the dude gets, like, weirdly cuddly when he’s around pillows.”
June rolls her eyes. “Fine. Please, eat my Cheerios.”
They clink spoons.
“Hey, listen,” Chloe says after a few moments of companionable, crunching silence. “I’m sorry about the whole game of lesbian chicken thing. At the time, it seemed like the only possible response to you making me watch Little Women.”
“Because it made you cry?” June says sagely.
“Because it made snot come out of my eyes,” Chloe corrects her. “That’s how much I hated it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” June says, smiling a little to herself. “And – I’m sorry, too.”
“Oh, don’t be,” Chloe insists. “The fact that you rose to the occasion like any respectable freak bitch? It only made me like you more.”
“I’m not a freak bitch,” June protests.
“You’re a little bit freak bitch,” Chloe says.
“Maybe a little,” June agrees after a minute; she’s really having trouble with this whole not-smiling thing. She tries to hide it behind a mouthful of Cheerios.
“Sure, it sent a bland, sexless shiver down my spine to find out that you’ve only been with one human being – which, for the record, is basically what I get done on a boring Tuesday morning – but it wasn’t cool of me to mess with you because of it. Whatever floats your chastity boat, Little Miss Sunshine. If you want to wait around for your knight in shining armor, then—”
The phrases WANTON SEX GODDESS and FREAK BITCH high five each other in June’s brain, and she decides, Yep.
She kisses Chloe. Chloe drops her spoon; it falls to the floor with a clatter.
Mark lets out an extra loud snore.
June pulls away just as soon as she’s sure Chloe’s been properly stunned.
Well.
Maybe just-as-soon-plus-a-few-extra-seconds-to-make-sure.
“I win,” June announces, primly victorious.
“You do not,” Chloe gasps.
“I’m pretty sure I just did. You really have to stop drinking my fluoride rinse, by the way.”
“Freak bitch,” Chloe says, firmly and (unless June’s mistaken) proudly.
This time, June lets herself smile.
“DAMMIT, XENU, NO ONE INVITED YOU!” comes a shout from Chloe's bedroom.
“Night terrors,” Chloe explains, unimpressed. “So boring, right?”
“Yikes,” June says.
At first, June is a little nervous when Chloe doesn’t come out of her room all morning. It just seems way too likely that the reason will be something illegal, never mind how glossed over it is with Holly Golightly whimsical charm. You can’t just start a brothel or a meth lab in your bedroom, not even if it’s Dawson Leery-endorsed and your fashion sense is, okay, really adorable.
June is beginning to worry that she’s going to have to turn down an invitation to an(other) orgy when—
A sneeze!
Followed by another sneeze.
And another sneeze.
Yep, that definitely qualifies as a sneezing fit.
Chloe is sick.
June beams.
This, she can handle.
+
“She made me soup.”
“That bitch.”
“And tea.”
“That bitch.”
“She fed me strawberry sorbet while we watched Little Women. Have you ever seen Little Women?”
“Um,” James says. “Nope.”
“That shit is adorable,” Chloe says crossly. “It just wouldn’t end. June kept stealing my tissues to cry into. The whole thing was unforgivable. She’s left me no choice: I have to screw with her.”
“Because she was nice to you?” James checks.
“Duh.”
“You are such a fundamentally maladjusted individual,” James says, pretty admiringly.
“Aw, sweetie!” says Chloe, and blows him a kiss.
+
June comes home from the coffeeshop, closes the door behind her, and turns around. And, boom!, there’s Chloe, standing right there. So right there that June can’t actually … move past her.
Chloe is also stripped down to her red sexy underwear.
It is, okay, a lot more seductive than June’s red sexy underwear. She gets what Chloe was saying now. Chloe has garters and everything. Which: wow.
“Heya, roomie,” Chloe – purrs?
Oh God. What’s happening?
“Heya, roomie,” June squeaks.
She moves to the left a little bit.
So does Chloe.
“Somebody smells like coffee grounds and poor life choices,” Chloe – yep, purrs, and then … sniffs June’s hair. Wow. Okay. Wow. “Mmm.”
It somehow manages to not be super gross.
Who can pull that off?
Yep, time to put her sweet chirpy barista voice away. “Chloe, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’ve had some time to think,” Chloe says, “because, you know, I don’t clutter up my schedule with trivial nonsense like work – no offense, peaches – and I figured: it’s time. Let’s do this.”
She puts her hands on the door. On either side of June.
Oh yikes.
“Huh?” June yelps.
“Oh, come on, June, like we didn’t both know this was coming.”
“Can you please stop saying ‘come’?”
“Sure. Let’s orgasm it up, girlfriend!”
“Don’t say that either!” June cries, and fights the stupid urge to shove her hands over her ears. “And – and what do you mean this was … impending?”
“Please! You’ve been flaunting it like crazy, and just so you know, Mama’s so not into the whole look-but-don’t-touch thing. You parade around here naked all the time.”
“I was in the shower! You could have waited to talk to me until I got out, you know!”
“We pay daily tribute to Divinyls in the same bathtub—”
“I do not touch myself in the bath! Besides, you know, in an innocent way that is all about hygiene!”
“—I got nasty with your fiancé on your birthday cake that time, and I’m pretty sure there’s some, like, math thing that would basically equate that to us getting it on—”
“The transitive property is NOT R-RATED!”
“—aaaand you got all up in my dad’s business, so genetically speaking, we’ve basically done the deed. This way, there’s just not a dick in the way; am I right?”
“You are talking about your father’s penis.”
“Oh, don’t call child services yet. At least I didn’t touch it.”
“I ONLY TOUCHED IT THROUGH BIKE SHORTS.”
“Well,” Chloe breathes; she leans in, her breath hot and spearminty against June’s cheek (damn it, she’s been drinking June’s fluoride rinse again), and then – nips June’s ear, oh gosh oh gosh oh jeez what the hell, “guess who’s not wearing bike shorts now?”
“You are psychotic!” June yells.
“Psychotic with lust,” Chloe giggles, twisting June’s hair around her finger. “And, okay, in the general sense, if you ask most psychiatrists. But they’re obviously just jealous; transparent much? Never mind. I guess what I’m saying is: why delay the inevitable, sweet thing?”
“Oh, no,” June says, starting to feel strangely calm with hysteria. “No no no no no no. Here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to move, and I’m going to go hide in my room until you come down off whatever crazy pills you’re currently tripping on, dawg! And I don’t know why I just said ‘dawg’! It seemed like a good way to finish that sentence, but now I really regret it! And that’s not the point! The point is: STOP.”
Chloe knocks her knee against June’s, like she’s trying to encourage June’s legs to be way less together, and for a split-second June is so headily okay with that idea that she starts to imagine what might—
WHAT, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, SHUT IT DOWN.
“Oh, move!” she snaps, and shoves Chloe out of the way.
“They’re not crazy pills if they don’t make you hallucinate dancing marsupials,” Chloe says, seeming totally cool, popping another – whatever it is into her mouth. “These are basically Tic Tacs.”
“I don’t want to know!” June shouts over her shoulder, sternly reminding herself just how glad she is that Chloe is across the room from her now.
“Pussy cat got claws!” Chloe calls. “Rawr!”
“I AM REVOKING YOUR PUSSY PRIVILEGES, CHLOE!” June shouts, and then hears herself shout it; oh God, what is happening??
“I had pussy privileges?” she only just hears Chloe say before she slams her bedroom door.
“Aughhhhh!” June says, and feels thoroughly justified in throwing herself face-first down onto her bed like she just found out Nsync broke up.
+
“Whoo boy,” Chloe says to the empty room, and breathes out.
She could really use some friggin’ dancing marsupials right now.
+
“I have to move out,” June concludes the next day, after spilling the whole (miserable weird awkward not sexy at all in any way or inspiring of any totally weird [gross weird! Not nice weird!] dreams last night) story to Mark at work.
“June?”
“Mark?”
“This is Chloe, right? Like, crazy’s kind of her thing?”
“Yeahhh?”
“So she’s just doing it to mess with you.”
“But why? I haven’t done anything to her! In fact, we’ve been starting to get along really well! She was sick last week, and I made her soup and took care of her and we watched Little Women and she totally cried when Beth – you know. I mean, she said it was just snot coming out of her eyeballs, but that can’t happen! … That can’t happen, right?”
“This is Chloe,” Mark reminds her. “The same Chloe who’s basically allergic to human emotion?”
“Yeah,” June says – and then it hits her. “Oh God! That’s it! I was sweet to her, and it broke her brain! Now she’s lashing out the only way she knows how! And – and for some reason it’s super gay!”
“You could talk to her about it.”
“Please! Like that’s going to do anything. No, I’ve got to be sneaky. I’ve got to beat her at her own game! That way, she’ll realize that she’s not going to drive me away by messing with me, and finally open her heart to a genuine friendship.”
“Okay, I’m just gonna say this right now,” Mark says, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a look of Very Serious Intensity. “You guys are going to have the sex. It’s inevitable. That girl does not know how to back down.”
“Oh, she’ll back down! She’ll back all the way down!”
“When you say it like that, it just sounds dirty, somehow.”
“Shut up!” June shakes him off. “Okay, good, I have a plan. When I get home, the first thing I’m doing is making a Girly Super Seduction iTunes Playlist.”
It feels good to have a sense of purpose.
+
“Oh man,” Mark says as June bops out of the coffeeshop, on her way home to disaster. “there’s no way this is gonna end well. Hot, yes. Well, no.”
“Being nice to other humans is a dangerous game,” James says sagely. (He’s just there, giving ‘hey what’s up’ nods to giddy passersby. It’s all part of being The Beek.) “After Cruise’s Couch Jumping Incident of ’05, I went over to his place for dinner to check up on Katie. You know. Make sure she wasn’t being subjected to any brainwashing nonsense. I wound up spending three days trapped in his underground Scientology lair. I mean, Chloe got me out before any real damage set in, thank God, but it taught me a valuable lesson about compassion.”
“Like … don’t have any?” Mark isn’t so sure about this.
“You’re a quick one, bro,” James says, with somber appreciation, “and you make a mean decaf soy latte.”
Mark sighs. “You just called me ‘bro’ because you still don’t remember my name, huh?”
James lets out an ‘oh please!’ laugh that’s almost convincing. “If I didn’t remember your name, would I ask you to say it in unison with me just for kicks? One- two – three – Mmmmm—onty?—”
“So,” Mark says, “underground Scientology lair, huh?”
“Xenu’s always listening.” It’s possible James’s eyes glaze over, just a little. “He’s got space planes, and he’s coming, man.”
Mark frowns. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” James says smoothly. “Did you say something?”
+
June is reclining on the sofa in a pose she picked up from the Lady Marmalade music video. (She watched it a few times on youtube, for research purposes.) The only light comes from the twenty-six vanilla scented candles she’s painstakingly set up in the living room. She’s wearing her red seduction panties and – well, okay, a t-shirt, because she’s not very comfortable with the idea of just showing off everything, but the t-shirt is totally from Victoria’s Secret, so.
When she catches the dim sounds of Chloe talking to Robin in the hallway (oh God, what if she INVITES ROBIN; does that whole ‘it’s not gay if it’s in a threeway’ rule count when everyone’s a girl? Probably not; focus, Colburn, focus!), June scrambles off the couch, presses ‘play’ on her iPod, and scrambles back.
“I am a wanton sex goddess,” she chants to herself. “Wanton sex goddess.”
And, okay, it’s a phrase she got from Bridget Jones’s Diary, not the Kama Sutra or anything, but the overall sentiment is the same, right?
The door swings open.
June parts her lips a little bit because if there’s one thing the portrayal of women in the media has taught her, it’s that for some reason it is … sexy to never have your mouth closed all the way? Or something? Unless you’re eating, then it’s just rude? Probably not the time to be pondering this stuff.
Chloe takes off her sunglasses, looks at June and the candles and then the red seduction panties (she doesn’t even wrinkle her nose in disgust, which June counts as a personal triumph), and then … puts her sunglasses on again. Maybe she’s being blinded by confusion. Ha!
“Heya, roomie,” June says, Marilyn Monroe breathy.
‘Cause tonight … is the ni-ight … when two become oneeeee! contributes her iPod dock.
“Hey, June,” Chloe says suspiciously, inching in. “Hey, Spice Girls.”
“I thought about what you said,” June says, and starts to realize that it’s really hard keeping your voice Marilyn Monroe breathy for more than a couple words. “And I totally agree. I’ve also come to the conclusion that we should probably just … go to town all over each other.”
“Oh yeah?” Chloe asks. She has gone totally poker faced and inscrutable. It’s really unnerving—
And if she thinks that’s enough to shake June, well, she can just think again!
“Why not?” June says, with renewed breathy enthusiasm. “We live together. It’s like having your own personal built in sex fountain.”
Chloe slides her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and eyes June. “Sex fountain?”
“Sure,” June purrs, mostly because she needs an alternative to breathiness. “That’s totally a thing.”
“I thought you weren’t into the lady cave,” Chloe says.
“I wasn’t into a lot of things,” June sighs, “until I met you.”
Okay, whoops, that went a little bit Nicholas Sparks.
Chloe stares at her, and June is kind of relieved that she’s got sunglasses on, because she gets the sense that she does not want to see what’s going on in that girl’s eyeballs.
“Unless,” June adds, thinking WANTON SEX GODDESS, WANTON SEX GODDESS, and sort of wishing she had an ice cube to … trail across her collar bone … or … something?, “you don’t want to anymore.”
This seems to switch Chloe on.
“Oh, I want to,” she says, taking off her sunglasses and tossing them over her shoulder. “I’m the one who decided to gay this up in the first place, blondie.”
She takes her coat off, and – somehow also her dress (and … her underwear?), all in about five seconds.
Okay.
This is war.
“Oh wow,” June says, trying to sound totally turned on instead of horribly confused. “You’re suddenly naked. I totally love that.”
“Almost as much as I love your gigantic sex panties,” Chloe retorts. “They leave so much to the imagination. You could have the entire population of a small European country stashed down there.”
“I don’t,” June sexy-pants.
“Prove it,” Chloe sexy-snarls.
I need some love like I never needed love before! (Wanna make love to ya, babyyyy!) contributes the iPod dock.
Chloe kinda just jumps on top of her, and after a few moments of near-heart-attack-inducing shock, June recovers; okay, Chloe is mostly bones and angles, but not really in a bad way, none of this is really as bad as it’s supposed to be yet—
There is suddenly a thundering knock on the door.
“STOP! POLICE.”
“Police??” June cries, sitting up.
“I swear, I’m starting to think they just want an excuse to hang out here,” Chloe says, rolling her eyes.
“POLICE OF BAD SEXUAL DECISIONS, THAT IS,” adds the male voice, which suddenly becomes much more familiar.
“Mark?” June says. She wraps an afghan around herself and opens the door.
Sure enough, there’s Mark and James Van Der Beek.
(She still hasn’t quite shaken the need to refer to him as ‘James Van Der Beek’ in her head, at least once per encounter. It’s a respect thing. Even if he doesn’t really deserve any.)
“Ooh,” James Van Der – James says. “Mood lighting.”
“’Sup, June,” Mark says. “’Sup, naked Chloe.”
“Yo,” naked Chloe says.
“So, the thing is,” Mark says, very carefully not looking at naked Chloe, “you can’t go through with this.”
“Why?” naked Chloe demands.
“Because – I’m in love with June?” Mark attempts.
June makes a face at him.
Mark shrugs. “I tried.”
“Thanks,” June deadpans.
“Okay, Monty,” James says with the great authority of a guy who owns his own Indiana Jones When He’s A Professor suit. “Let the master of the range of human emotions handle this one.”
“Master of the range of human emotions?”
“Don’t tell me you were like the only person on earth to miss my series of customized reaction gifs on the internet.” He rolls his eyes, then turns to Chloe and points sternly. “You, accept the fact that you have feelings instead of just screwing with other peoples’ psyches all the time, none of which are more fragile than your own. June likes you. She’s your friend. You’re lucky. Not as lucky as you are to be friends with me, but hey. It’s something. Got it?” Chloe nods a little sheepishly, and June is about to start smiling, when all of a sudden, she’s getting pointed at. “You, those panties are gigantic. Did the designer use a pattern for mid-nineties mom jeans by mistake?”
June huffs and wraps the afghan closer around her.
“Can we address the fact that June put the Spice Girls on her seduction playlist?” Mark says.
“Actually,” Chloe says with a dainty shrug, “it was kinda workin’ for me.”
“Thank you!” June says, and high fives her.
+
The guys wind up staying the night, to “dispel any lingering sexual awkwardness.” Pfft! Like that’s … even necessary.
+
June tiptoes out into the kitchen the next morning, and tries to pour a bowl of cereal as quietly as she can so Mark can keep on sleeping on the couch. She’s two spoonfuls into breakfast when another spoon invades her cereal bowl.
“Sharing is caring,” Chloe announces – in a whisper, which is pretty considerate behavior for her. She’s wearing a robe, too! Maybe last night will actually inspire her to act like a decent human being for a few days. A few hours, at least. “And besides, James’s sleep apnea gets totally old. Not to mention that the dude gets, like, weirdly cuddly when he’s around pillows.”
June rolls her eyes. “Fine. Please, eat my Cheerios.”
They clink spoons.
“Hey, listen,” Chloe says after a few moments of companionable, crunching silence. “I’m sorry about the whole game of lesbian chicken thing. At the time, it seemed like the only possible response to you making me watch Little Women.”
“Because it made you cry?” June says sagely.
“Because it made snot come out of my eyes,” Chloe corrects her. “That’s how much I hated it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” June says, smiling a little to herself. “And – I’m sorry, too.”
“Oh, don’t be,” Chloe insists. “The fact that you rose to the occasion like any respectable freak bitch? It only made me like you more.”
“I’m not a freak bitch,” June protests.
“You’re a little bit freak bitch,” Chloe says.
“Maybe a little,” June agrees after a minute; she’s really having trouble with this whole not-smiling thing. She tries to hide it behind a mouthful of Cheerios.
“Sure, it sent a bland, sexless shiver down my spine to find out that you’ve only been with one human being – which, for the record, is basically what I get done on a boring Tuesday morning – but it wasn’t cool of me to mess with you because of it. Whatever floats your chastity boat, Little Miss Sunshine. If you want to wait around for your knight in shining armor, then—”
The phrases WANTON SEX GODDESS and FREAK BITCH high five each other in June’s brain, and she decides, Yep.
She kisses Chloe. Chloe drops her spoon; it falls to the floor with a clatter.
Mark lets out an extra loud snore.
June pulls away just as soon as she’s sure Chloe’s been properly stunned.
Well.
Maybe just-as-soon-plus-a-few-extra-seconds-to-make-sure.
“I win,” June announces, primly victorious.
“You do not,” Chloe gasps.
“I’m pretty sure I just did. You really have to stop drinking my fluoride rinse, by the way.”
“Freak bitch,” Chloe says, firmly and (unless June’s mistaken) proudly.
This time, June lets herself smile.
“DAMMIT, XENU, NO ONE INVITED YOU!” comes a shout from Chloe's bedroom.
“Night terrors,” Chloe explains, unimpressed. “So boring, right?”
“Yikes,” June says.
