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Helen doesn’t need anyone.
She makes it a habit — not to speak too much, not to long for what she doesn’t have — and she’s okay with that. She’s thriving, even, with a good job and a nice roommate and friends for the first time in her life, and Helen doesn’t lament one single bit.
Not even when her roommate turned semi girlfriend — question marks surrounding this in Helen’s head, because they’ve never made things official but they’re dating without the official words — is asleep in her room down the hall.
Not even when Helen’s mind is racing in the dark and quiet.
And certainly not after Madeline fucks her and her mind is reeling.
“Does your brain ever shut off?”
Helen thinks this might be Madeline’s way of saying I love you, so she makes a vague sound and traces a line down Madeline’s abdomen with her fingernail. She admires the pretty pink that blooms behind her nail — a severe point and longer than they usually are, so she had to get creative with her mouth — and she presses a gentle kiss to the pale skin just millimeters from her lips.
Helen thinks she might love Madeline back.
She isn’t sure if the thought is terrifying.
“No.” Helen tries to sound monotonous, but she can’t deny the smile in her voice. “Next question.”
Madeline hums, and Helen can tell that Madeline probably isn’t well versed in rhetoric.
She strokes a hand through Helen’s hair in the way that makes Helen’s heart clench and her brain scream to run away. Helen supposes that she may truly love Madeline, because running away is a sign that she truly cares, and she thinks Madeline might love her back because she’s never taken her makeup off in front of another partner but she does around Helen.
What a tortured, tragic pair they make.
“What’s your biggest fear?” Madeline asks, her voice all soft and mushy.
Helen would tell anyone else to fuck off, but she takes her time and thinks about her answer for Madeline.
She wants to say she’s afraid of going the rest of her life with this tragic feeling in her soul, that she’s afraid of dying before she makes something of herself, that she’s afraid she’ll never live up to her mother’s expectations.
She’s afraid that she’ll never make anyone proud.
She’s afraid that she’ll be loved in spite of it all.
It’s too deep of an answer, Helen thinks, so she chooses something safe.
“Spiders.” She says, and Madeline scoffs like she expects more of Helen, so she gives it to her because she can’t deny Madeline of anything. “Also that my book will never be published.”
If her book isn’t published she’ll never prove her mom proud, so it’s kind of the truth.
“What about you?” She says, because Madeline is doing that thing where she psychoanalyses even the most innocent of sentences.
Madeline hums like she doesn’t know, but Helen knows she’s likely had her answer prepared. That’s another thing about Madeline, Helen muses, the fact that she’s always prepared for every possibility but she hesitates for just a moment so that Helen feels like she isn’t stupid.
Helen loves her for it.
“Probably snakes.” Helen wants to hit her. She kisses her jaw instead. “But if we’re getting technical, I’m afraid that no one will love me when they get to know the real me.”
It’s devastating.
It’s the most beautiful thing Helen has ever heard.
“I’ve always loved you.” Helen volunteers up, and isn’t the carefully planned thing she always dreamed it to be. It’s raw and unfiltered and unabashed and perfect. “And I’m still here, aren’t I?”
Madeline is quiet for a moment, like she isn’t sure if she should say it back, and Helen doesn’t get upset because she feels it every single day, so she taps three times on the thin skin stretched over Madeline’s collarbone in a gentle reassurance.
“I’m so in fucking love with you.”
It calms Helen, because she really was embarrassed that she may be reading the situation wrong, and it also whirls her brain around with the recent self discovery. Helen Sharp is in love and, most important of all, she is loved in spite of it all.
Helen Sharp is loved.
And just like that, her deepest fear shifts, like this tiny moment that is so monumental that she feels like she needs to dance or sing or scream loudly from the rooftops.
Helen Sharp is no longer afraid of being loved.
She’s afraid to be unloved.
Helen is loved, but still something pulls at the edge of her consciousness in a way she can’t describe.
It isn’t a big overwhelming feeling, not at first, but it hits her in the quietest of moments — when it’s just her and Madeline and their silly orange cat named Stefan — and she’s doing the most mundane of things. It’s these gentle waves of sadness that make her feel like she should cling tightly to the love Madeline gives so freely, like she should bottle it up in case she never experiences an ounce of this goodness ever again.
“I’m not very good at this.”
Helen murmurs it to no one in particular, maybe to Stefan the cat who is a surprisingly good listener. He cocks his head like he understands, and Helen pats him on his head up between his ears in the way that makes his eyes squint.
He’s a respectful little cat, Helen thinks, but she doesn’t have much of a basis to compare him to. He sits quietly on the arm of the couch and watches as Helen sorts the puzzle pieces on the coffee table. She’s trying to distinguish the sky bits from the ground, but they’re fairly close to the same shade and it’s proving to be a monumental task.
“Isn’t that the whole point?” Madeline says from the chair that sits adjacent to their couch. She looks ethereal like this, Helen thinks, with her reading glasses perched on her nose and a magazine in her hand and the evening sunlight framing her head like a halo. “Everyone is objectively bad at puzzles.”
Helen thinks this is objectively false.
There’s an entire Guinness World Record proving not everyone is bad at this.
“The world record for the fastest time to complete a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle is one hour and forty minutes.”
She states it matter of factly, and Madeline’s face barely even twitches in response.
Helen supposes that Madeline is used to her wealth of useless knowledge for a brain.
Madeline is silent while she thinks, and she turns the page of her magazine without even reading the page. It’s a habit when she’s thinking, Helen has known her long enough to know this, and it’s a fairly easy thing to tell because she only looks at the page for thirty six seconds before turning it again.
Madeline has never been able to lie.
“Are you going for a world record, love?” Madeline asks it in this sickly sweet tone that makes Helen feel small. It also makes her feel a little bit pampered, so she doesn’t scoff or roll her eyes. “Or are you doing your puzzle for fun?”
Helen wants to prattle off facts about how puzzles are inherently linked to cognitive enhancement and improving spatial reasoning and memory, but it dies on her tongue when she glances down at the picture of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin.
She wonders if it’s okay to do something just because she likes it.
“For fun, I suppose.”
Madeline beams at her over her magazine, all squinty eyed like Stefan the orange cat and rosy cheeked because her face is devoid of makeup after the long work day, and Helen thinks that it may be okay to just exist for a little while with no expectation of perfection.
“Then you don’t have to race, hm?”
Helen beams, a little hole in her soul feeling both validated and healed, and she goes back to her puzzle with her chest feeling warm and her head a little fuzzy — though that may be the gummy Madeline pressed between her lips when she was shaking with anxiety at the dinner table.
She isn’t sure how long she sits there — she moves the pieces around more than she places them in their correct spots, but her brain is blissfully blank and she can’t feel her feet or fingertips — but she notices Madeline yawning and her blinks getting slower, and she looks particularly soft and cozy wrapped in her blanket in a way that makes Helen yearn for something she can’t quite place her finger on.
“Mad?” Helen whispers, and Madeline makes this tired little harumph in response. “Are you tired, baby?”
Madeline glances over at her, eyelids heavy and face uncharacteristically soft, and Helen feels a tug on her heartstrings when she realizes that Madeline is staying up waiting for her to be finished.
“I’m a little bit tired.” Madeline says, like she isn’t half asleep on the couch. “I can stay up a little longer, though.”
It’s Madeline speak for ‘I love you, I don’t want you to be alone’ and it makes Helen’s heart clench. She kind of wants to run away sometimes, though, and this is one of those moments. Madeline knows her so well that it hurts, feels like she’s laid out exposed every time they’re alone together, and she supposes that is a reason to stay in and of itself.
“Let’s go to bed, then.” Helen suggests, and she feels a warmth bloom in her chest when Madeline stands and smiles this soft, proud thing. She studies Helen’s puzzle for a moment, like she’s admiring the half done thing, and the words spill from Helen’s mouth tinged with desperate longing before she can stop herself. “Do you like my puzzle?”
It’s a stupid thing to ask, Helen thinks, because all she’s doing is fitting together the premade picture, but somewhere deep down in her soul she craves the validation of being told that it’s worth doing.
But Madeline doesn’t ever think Helen is stupid, and she smiles this sweet thing that makes Helen’s soul feel fuzzy while she admires the puzzle. It’s one that Helen has been eyeing in their stack for a while, Christopher Robin walking hand in hand with Pooh Bear, and she only feels a little bit silly at the fact that it isn’t a mountain scape or a map of the country.
“Yes, baby, you’re doing such a good job with your puzzle.” She coos it out in a way that makes Helen’s stomach flip and her brain turn to mush, and she can feel herself smiling a little stupidly. It’s just a puzzle, but Madeline makes her feel like she’s painted the goddamn Starry Night. “I’m so proud of you.”
Proud.
It makes Helen’s head spin a little bit, the thought that Madeline is proud of her even when she does the most insignificant things, and she wants to cry and run away and be picked up and have sweet nothings cooed in her ear. Most of all, she thinks, she’d like to hear Madeline say it again.
She needs to hear Madeline say it again.
“You’re proud of me?”
Madeline answers before Helen can spiral, before her brain can go fifty different places in ten seconds, and she looks so soft and gentle wrapped in her blanket and smiling sweetly that Helen kind of wants to sob.
“Always, baby.”
Madeline is always proud of Helen.
It’s sort of maddening, Helen thinks.
She’s proud of her when the release of her second book is pushed out three months because she just can’t finish it, she’s proud of her when the adaptation gets cut from a televised series to a made for Netflix film, and she’s even proud of her when writers block strikes hard and fast and Helen doesn’t write a singular word for three full days.
Madeline never complains, either, just takes it in stride and kisses Helen with the same fervor and adoration.
She loves her like she’s infallible.
Helen wonders if Madeline realizes that she’s a failure, that she can never do anything right and that she’s sort of an awful writer who can’t even finish a goddamned book.
“I can hear your brain.” Madeline says sweetly, like she’s unfazed by Helen huffing and puffing sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table where she’s trying to beat writer's block by using a pen and paper. “You think very loudly, Helen Sharp. Has anyone ever told you that?”
Helen almost scoffs, and then she feels Madeline’s thumbs massaging deep in her shoulders and an involuntary moan leaves her lips and any protest dies on her tongue.
“I’ve been told a time or two.”
They sit in silence for a little while, Madeline massaging Helen's shoulders while she thinks. Helen can hear her thinking too, but she’s just courteous enough not to mention it.
“What are you so afraid of?”
Helen wants to tell her that she isn’t afraid of anything, but that would be a bold faced lie.
She’s afraid that Madeline will leave her one day.
She’s afraid that she’ll never amount to anything, that her book will remain unfinished and that she’ll be utterly useless.
Most of all, she’s afraid that Madeline will deem her unworthy of love.
“I keep telling you spiders, but you never listen.” Helen says, hint of a smile in her voice. Her eyes are closed, head tipped back to get closer to Madeline, and she feels a little more inclined to talk about that scared little girl hiding deep in her soul when she feels safe and loved like this, so she speaks in a watery, wavering tone that is rather un Helen-like. “I’m afraid that I’ll mess everything up.”
Madeline is silent for once in her life, like she’s digesting what Helen has said.
“And?”
Because Madeline is observant like that and Helen is guarded with her feelings, even with the love of her life.
Because Madeline cares enough to ask.
“And I’m afraid that one day I’ll wake up and I won’t be good enough for you anymore.”
It’s raw, emotion clawed out from the depths of her chest, and Helen almost doesn't recognize her voice.
It’s also embarrassing, Helen thinks, to put her deepest fears on display like this, but she reminds herself that Madeline has a strict no secrets rule and that any mental turmoil she intends to hide is inherently a secret. And Madeline has always loved her despite the silly things she thinks up at times, so it’s safe to tell her these sorts of things, Helen supposes.
“And why wouldn’t you be good enough?”
She doesn’t immediately deny her or act incredulous, and Helen appreciates her for it. Madeline lets the cynical, critical part of Helen’s brain roam free in their conversations and she assuages the guilt and fear with gentle reassurance and love.
Always with love.
“One day you’re going to get sick of me, you know?” Helen says it like it’s true, because she really believes it is. Deep down, she can hear her mothers critical voice and see the look on her father’s face when he wouldn’t even stand up for her. “You’ll get sick of my attitude or think I’m too much of a brat. I’m more problem than I’m worth.”
After so many years of hearing it, Helen started to believe it.
Madeline doesn’t get frustrated, though, she never does. She just ghosts a hand down Helen’s arm and fiddles with her rings gently. Her engagement ring and wedding band are a beautiful stack, custom made by Madeline’s lapidarist friend because Helen rejects traditional jewelry, and it makes Helen’s heart feel all warm and fuzzy to think of.
“Do these imply that I’m leaving you any time soon?”
Helen smiles a goofy little thing even though Madeline can’t see her face.
“I don’t suppose so.”
Helen is cynical at best and pessimistic at her worst, and Madeline has learned all the ways to communicate with her that don’t involve flashy professions of love or denying every fear that pops into her anxious brain.
“Good.” Madeline says, and Helen can hear the smile in her voice. “Because those cost quite a bit of money, you know?”
Sometimes the longing comes up randomly, when Helen is in the middle of an ordinary conversation.
It hits her hard and fast, then, this gripping feeling in her chest that has her stomach sinking and her heart beating a little faster, and she wonders if she would have turned out differently if her life had been different.
“I used to have a Minnie Mouse coloring book when I was a kid.” Madeline says it as they’re looking through the books her firm is releasing in the upcoming week. Mostly children’s books with one or two erotic novels because they’re all the rage, but Madeline still looks through the list with her. “Did you have a favorite coloring book growing up?”
Madeline is like this — Helen knows this after years of being with her — never talking without asking Helen in return, because Helen is the sort of person who feels like she isn’t worth speaking about.
It’s a habit Madeline is seemingly trying to break.
“I didn’t color.”
It’s a half truth, because she did color when it came to assignments and required schoolwork, but she had to be coaxed into it by the school guidance counselor so it isn’t entirely a lie either.
“What do you mean you didn’t color?”
Madeline is in shock, her mouth agape and her eyes wide like she can’t quite process the thought.
Helen thinks about telling her the whole story, the nearly thirty year old memory that plays on loop in her head when she feels like she isn’t good at something, but it feels too sad for the moment so she lets herself think of it privately instead.
She thinks about little Helen, so young that she still had all of her baby teeth, holding a coloring page out for her mom to see with a toothy little grin. She thinks about the way her mother’s lips pressed into a thin line, the way it felt like an eternity before she spoke. And she thinks about how her mother found five areas she could improve her artwork.
Helen never colored a picture again.
“I just didn’t.” Madeline looks at her in that way she does before she pressures, so Helen gives in and elaborates. “I couldn’t keep the colors in the lines. Some of those sections were very small compared to the tip of the crayon, you know?”
Madeline nods like she does know, but she doesn’t say anything at all.
The next day, she comes in from work with a bag from Target and a grin that nearly splits her face.
“I have something for you.” She says, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Helen can’t deny her when she’s this excited — she can’t deny Madeline at all, really — so she closes her novel and sets it on the end table and gives Madeline her undivided attention. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”
Helen does, even if it feels a little bit silly.
The plastic bag is deposited into her hands, and she waits for Madeline to tell her she can open them. She takes each item from the bag carefully, almost reverently, and she tries not to cry when she lays the items out on the table. There’s an assortment of coloring books — the sorts of ones you’d get for a child, with the rough feeling brownish grey pages — and two 64 packs of crayons complete with the sharpener on the back.
It makes Helen want to sob.
She nearly does.
“I thought it would be a fun date idea, maybe. We could take a gummy and color together.” Madeline says it with this voice full of hope, like she’s trying to do that very Madeline thing she does when she replaces every bad memory with a good one. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, Hel. Just try for me?”
And how can Helen deny her when she sounds so sweet?
It’s like she’s full of hope — she is, Helen knows it, because Madeline is the optimist to her pessimist — and she can’t ever say no to her, so after dinner she bites off half of a gummy from where it sits between Madeline’s teeth and she melts into the couch as her mind begins to float and her body feels boneless.
She only feels a little bit stupid when she chooses the Strawberry Shortcake coloring book.
Madeline is sitting across from her on the couch, their legs tangled and coloring books in their laps as they pick a picture to color. Helen finds she quite likes the way the rough, textured pages smell — like an old book wrapped in nostalgia — and she holds her crayon in hand and eyes Madeline to study what she’s doing.
Madeline has always been unabashed and unafraid.
Helen wishes she could be more like her.
“It’s going to look beautiful no matter what.” Madeline reassures her, so Helen picks up a pink crayon and tentatively drags it across the paper. “I’m so proud of you for trying this.”
Madeline is proud of her.
Helen will never fully get used to the feeling.
It emboldens her a little bit, has her laying out all of the colors she’s going to use and cross referencing them with an image from Google and trying to match the shades to the best of her ability. She’ll have to mix some green and white to get the perfect shade of pale, but it’s doable if she tries.
Out of the corner of her eye, Helen sees Madeline coloring Michelangelo pink and Leonardo purple in her Ninja Turtles coloring book.
“Is there a purple Leo canonically?” Helen asks, because she’s just high enough that all of her apprehension is dripping from her body and she starts to say what’s really on her mind. “I don’t really know the Ninja Turtles.”
Madeline looks at her a little incredulously, and Helen likens it to Madeline’s deep love of all things 90s cartoons.
“There is now.” Madeline says it with a giggle, and Helen can tell that the weed is loosening her up. “You don’t have to make it look all proper, you know?”
It’s a concept that never really occurred to Helen, and she drags a purple crayon across her page experimentally. Madeline smiles, all encouraging and sweet, and it makes Helen’s stomach flip in a way that isn’t anxiety but a secret other thing that only Madeline can make her feel.
Loved, adored, wanted.
She finishes the rest of her coloring page with mismatched colors and crayon that sneaks outside the lines — the crayon tips are still too big for some of the finer details, and her head is swimming in that delicious way it always does when she takes a gummy — and she tries not to criticize it too hard or think too much about how she could improve it.
Madeline tells her it’s beautiful.
Helen kind of wants to cry.
When she sees her coloring page on the fridge the next morning — ripped carefully from the book on the perforated lines, hung by two magnets from their travels — Helen breaks down in tears. She stands in front of the fridge entirely too long, stares at her picture up there like it’s something Madeline is proud of, and she wonders if she should take a picture of it or rip it down.
Madeline comes into the kitchen then, wrapped in a fluffy pink robe with her hair on top of her head, and Helen turns to her with this floundering sort of expression. She knows she looks like a fool with her glassy, tearful eyes and her hair all messy, but Madeline wraps her in a hug and presses a gentle kiss to her temple like she knows exactly what Helen is thinking.
Helen supposes she does.
“I know, baby.” Madeline coos, soft and sweet. “I’m so proud of you.”
Helen realizes that she actually spends a stupid amount of time trying to get Madeline’s attention.
Madeline, for all her bravado and bitchiness outside of their home, is the perfect mix of nurturing and sweet in a way that makes Helen only crave it more.
She sits at the kitchen island plugging away at one of her complex Lego sets while Madeline cooks dinner, because there’s a new rule that has been recently been introduced — by Madeline, of course — stating that Helen must not work on anything job related when she gets home, and she finds that she quite likes the way Madeline pays attention to her out of the corner of her eye while she stirs at the pot on the stove.
“You’re doing a good job, baby.”
Helen flushes under the praise, no matter how small, and she doesn’t really see how she’s doing much of anything at all — only sorting the pieces by color and size — but Madeline looks at her like she’s hung the moon and it feels so monumental that Helen nearly tears up.
“I’m just sorting, Mad.”
She tries to come off as blasé, like she doesn’t want the attention on her.
Deep down, the little girl buried deep in her soul is screaming for more.
Madeline doesn’t touch any of the pieces she’s sorting, but her fingers walk around the pieces like an imaginary border. She looks almost lost in thought, like she’s trying to connect the dots, and Helen is swept by the sudden urge to kiss her.
She does, because they’re married now and she has the luxury of kissing Madeline whenever she damn well pleases, and Madeline hums out this pleased little sound.
“And you’re doing such a lovely job.” Madeline coos out, thumb brushing Helen’s cheek gently. “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. Can you go wash up and set the table for me?”
Something bubbles up in her chest, the desire to stomp her feet and say no and beg for five more minutes because she’s almost done sorting this bag, but she thinks that Madeline wouldn’t like it much if she were a brat. So she pouts sweetly and gives her best puppy dog eyes and holds Madeline’s hand in both of hers and whines pitifully, even if she feels a little bit stupid doing it.
“Ten more minutes, please?” She gestures to the pieces that are almost sorted, looks back up at Madeline with wide eyes. “I’m almost done sorting this bag.”
Madeline smiles the way she does when she’s proud of her — Helen’s favorite smile to be on the receiving end of — and she looks at her with this soft, familiar expression that Helen can’t quite read.
“Yeah, baby. You finish up and I’ll set the table.” Madeline presses a kiss to her forehead, soft and sweet, and she stands there watching Helen for just a moment longer. “Thank you for asking so nicely.”
It’s the same tone Madeline uses when she tells her she’s proud of her, and Helen’s head buzzes and her face flushes with the praise all the same.
“But wash up when you’re done, okay?”
Helen finds that Madeline is almost too gentle with her.
She isn’t used to being treated with so much kindness, and the fact that Madeline would rather stay in for date night as opposed to going out means the world to introverted Helen.
She often wonders how she got so lucky.
Even more than that, she wonders when she’ll be deemed too difficult and Madeline will just walk away.
“It’s my turn to pick tonight, ma’am.” Madeline argues playfully, but Helen knows that Madeline will choose from the watchlist on her Disney+ profile either way. “Go put your pajamas on while I get the movie queued up and the popcorn made.”
Madeline was already in her pajamas when Helen came home from work — she had to stay over a little later than usual, much to her chagrin — and the television was already on the Disney+ splash screen.
Madeline knows her so well.
Helen supposes that after years of marriage, she ought to.
She’s midway through changing into her pajamas when the button pulls through the buttonhole and drops to the ground. It rolls for a moment, ends up halfway across their bedroom, before the little tan colored thing clatters to the ground.
Helen’s chest feels like it’s in a vice grip, telltale signs of anxiety washing over her.
She picks the little button up, holds it in the palm of her hand and closes her fist around it, and surveys her options. She could wear a different set of pajamas, but that would be too obvious — she always loves when Madeline lays out her pajamas, and this Pooh pair is her most favorite of all — or she could pretend she didn’t notice the missing button and go back to the living room with her top gaping to show her abdomen where the button is missing.
She surveys her options for so long that Madeline is suddenly standing in the middle of the room with a concerned expression on her face.
“Hey babe, what’s taking you so long?”
Her voice is soft in the way that it gets when she’s alone with Helen, and her hand is up like she wants to pry Helen’s closed fist open.
Helen shrinks away anxiously.
There’s this moment where she’s afraid that Madeline will yell at her for tearing the button off — the same way her mother did when she was in first grade and her coat button got snagged on the fence at recess and tore off — but she breaks through the brain fog when she reminds herself that this is Madeline who will never be angry with her.
She uncurls her fist slowly.
“I didn’t mean to.” She rushes it out, and her voice wavers just a bit. “I’m sorry.”
Madeline makes this noncommittal sound, takes the button from Helen’s palm gently. She rustles around the bedroom for a moment, pulls something from her bedside table with a triumphant grin.
“Don’t apologize, baby. It happens.” She pulls a needle and thread from the sewing kit she’s procured, threads it before kneeling in front of Helen. “Besides, it’s just a button. Nothing I can’t fix!”
Helen sort of zones out while Madeline fixes the button — her mind goes from racing to blank as she watches Madeline pull the needle in and out of the fabric — and suddenly she’s snipping the thread with the tiny scissors from the kit, pulling the button through the hole with extra care.
“There we go!” Madeline says, kisses Helen on the temple the way she does when they have a moment like this. It makes Helen feel especially small, even though their height difference isn’t that much at all. “Thank you for letting me fix your button, baby.”
It sounds an awful lot like an ‘I’m proud of you’.
Helen sinks into the floaty feeling it gives her.
“Thank you, Mad.” She murmurs, almost embarrassed. “I’m sorry I ripped the button off, though.”
Madeline isn’t fazed by it — is this woman ever affected by anything, Helen wonders — and she just shakes her head with a fond smile like it truly doesn’t matter to her.
She’s strange like that.
“It’s not a big deal.” She says, like it explains something. “I’d fix all of your buttons any day.”
Sometimes Helen feels too old to chase affection the way she does.
She feels particularly too old when they’re on vacation, though, because they’re the token child free adults in Disney World and Helen doesn’t think any of this should appeal to her, but Madeline asks so nicely if they can go and she can never seem to deny her Maddie of anything.
Not even this.
Madeline has a pair of rose gold Minnie Mouse ears perched atop her head, and Helen eyes the display of all of the different ears and hats in the gift shop before politely declining.
She’s too old for this, she tells herself, and she’d look rather silly.
“Are you sure?” Madeline asks, her voice soft in the way it is when she’s trying to convince Helen to do something. “You don’t have to wear them all day.”
Helen glances back at the wall of ear headbands, eyes each option carefully. If she were to pick a pair — not that she wants to, of course, because she’s entirely too old and will look foolish — she wouldn’t pick a glittery pair like Madeline had chosen.
“No, I don’t need them.”
Madeline’s brow furrows like she wants to argue, but her face softens like she’s chosen her battles to fight and this is not one of them. Instead, she takes Helen’s hand in hers and admires her nails — she had let Madeline talk her into a few black Mickey heads on her ring finger, only because it was on theme — and she looks at Helen like she’s something pitiful and tragic.
Helen can’t decide if she hates the attention when it comes in this form.
“I didn’t ask if you needed them.” Madeline says, two fingers scratching idly at the inside of Helen’s wrist. “I asked if you wanted them.”
Helen doesn’t quite know the answer to that question — she isn’t used to feeling that tug of want in her chest towards particularly useless items — so she shrugs her shoulder half heartedly and trudges out of the gift shop before her mood sours.
It isn’t until hours later — they’re sitting on a bench outside of a ride so that Helen can right her equilibrium — that Madeline pulls a small plastic bag from her larger bag and hands it over to Helen.
“It’s for you.” She says, like it’s an explanation. “Go ahead and open it.”
Madeline does things like this often, Helen muses, surprises her with the most random things. She isn’t even sure when Madeline had the time to go off and buy anything, but she isn’t questioning it because Madeline always finds a way to surprise her. She opens the bag slowly, closes her eyes so she won’t peek, and she pulls the item out into both of her hands and opens her eyes.
It’s a pair of black leather Minnie Mouse ears.
“Mad…”
She doesn’t quite know what to say, stuck between being elated to be forced into wearing a pair and nervous because she fears judgement, and she bites her bottom lip tightly to keep from crying.
It’s the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for her.
“Will you wear them for me? Please?”
Helen doesn’t have the heart to say no to Madeline — and she does want to wear them, even if it makes her a little bit nervous because she thinks she’ll look stupid — so she puts them on her head and flushes when Madeline taps on her nose with her pointer finger.
“That’s my girl!” Madeline coos, presses a feather light kiss to the corner of her mouth because neither of them are big on public displays of affection. “Thank you for wearing them for me.”
Helen only scrunches her nose in response — she’s too overwhelmed to say anything out loud — and she sticks her tongue out when Madeline tries to take a picture of her.
Later that night, in the privacy of their hotel room, Helen shyly asks Madeline to send the picture to her.
It quickly becomes her new favorite.
The longing abates ever so slightly at times, but it rears its head full force when she fucks Madeline.
After years and years together, she knows what Madeline likes, but she still finds the niggling feeling of insecurity creep up in her chest, all desperate for praise and gentle reassurance.
She just wants to be good enough.
She just wants to be loved.
“Right there, Hel.” Madeline moans, her eyes screwed shut and her head tipped back into the pillows.
She looks ethereal like this, Helen thinks, with her golden blonde hair fanned around her head like a halo and her chest all flushed and splotchy. She’s close, Helen can tell already, her breath coming in little pants and her tone a little whinier than usual, and her hips keep rolling up into Helen’s mouth.
“Please.” Madeline whimpers, cards her hand through Helen’s hair reverently. “Good girl. So, so good for me.”
Helen feels like she’s going to sob.
Her cunt clenches desperately.
She focuses on Madeline’s face as she fucks into her, watches her muscles twitch involuntarily when she scissors two fingers deep in her cunt and flattens her tongue over her clit. She’s fueled by Madeline’s praise, her own cunt dripping with arousal from her words alone, and she wishes that she had the words to beg her for what she so desperately needs.
Their eyes make contact, Madeline’s pretty blue eyes blown with arousal, and Helen nods softly in encouragement.
“My pretty Helen.” Madeline whines, her cunt fluttering around Helen’s fingers. She’s so fucking close, Helen can tell, and she just wants to make her feel good. “I’m going to come for you, baby, you’re so fucking good.”
Helen’s brain goes blank as Madeline tugs gently at her hair, riding her orgasm out with her hips rolling into Helen’s mouth and her cunt clenching around her fingers.
She comes for what feels like an eternity to Helen — it may be, Helen’s brain blissfully blank as Madeline coos out nonsensical praise — and she slumps into the mattress when she’s finally spent, her legs falling closed as she tugs Helen up, up, up into her arms.
“My good, sweet girl.” Madeline coos, like she doesn’t know what it does to Helen.
Maybe she doesn’t.
“I like it when you call me that.” Helen says, her voice barely a whisper.
It feels a little bit too heavy to dive into in the moment — with her head tucked into the space between Madeline's shoulder and neck — so she traces the constellation of freckles on Madeline’s shoulder and she lets herself be held.
“I’m so proud of you, baby."
Madeline says it soft and sweet like she always is when she tells Helen she’s proud of her..
Helen begins to think that Madeline truly is.
“Really?”
She can’t help the insecurity that laces its way into her tone — all watery and wavering and too small to be Helen Sharp — but she supposes that here with Madeline she can be just Helen.
“Yes, baby.” Madeline coos, finger twirling a lock of red hair. “Always.”