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kieren-fucking-walker · 6 years

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If you're still taking prompts: how Farah realised she's a lesbian

Thank you for the prompt! I found writing this to be so incredibly therapeutic and I can only hope I did it justice.The Farina is mild, mostly pre-slash more than anything, this focuses on Farah first and foremost. I had to put a readmore in as this is longer than I meant it to be. A huge thank you to @softlygasping who beta’d this for me, you’re awesome

Quick warnings: Some internalised misogyny and homo/lesbophobia, and an uncomfortable scene with a creepy guy in a bar (nothing too bad though I promise!)

(Also on Ao3)

Looking back she thinks it makes sense. There are so many things laid out in her memories that point her to where she is now, what she knows now, that it’s almost laughable that she didn’t notice it before. Hindsight is everything though, and she’s already beating herself up about too many things to add this to the pile, so instead she lets it go. She knows herself now, and that’s enough.

***

Farah knows how to play with dolls, and she knows it’s different to the way the other kids play. She doesn’t use her Barbies to play house, instead she’d stolen a sword for her from one of her brothers’ old toys, and for the story’s sake she’d taken one of his dragons as well. Five years old and already obsessed with saving the world, her princess isn’t getting married like she’d seen the other girls do. Instead she’s a warrior, storming the castle in homemade armour and fighting off dragons with ease. She saves the prince from the tower, of course, but when he’s eaten rather dramatically by the dragon her princess isn’t that upset. Not when there’s a princess in the tower too, much prettier and much, much more capable of fighting the dragon herself. If only the prince had given her the chance rather than making them both wait for rescue.

“Boys are dumb,” the first princess says, and the second agrees with her wholeheartedly.

“We were going to get married,” she says, “it’s gross.” The warrior princess takes her hand, and they watch as he gets mauled by the dragon.

“That is gross. We should be best friends!”

“Best best friends!” The princesses agree between them, flying off on the magical unicorn that also breathes fire, leaving the poor prince to be eaten alive.

When her mother rolls her eyes fondly and asks what happened to them after that, Farah tells them that they lived happily ever after together. Her mother frowns, but doesn’t comment, just tells her to make sure she has her homework finished on time.

***

Farah is ten, and she has a friend. It’s rare for her. She’s found that friends are difficult to make when you’re spending all your free time training and you struggle to talk to people, but Amy seems to have taken a liking to her and will spend hours dragging her around the playground and pointing out trees. Farah hardly minds. She likes the way Amy says “cool” when she tells her all the ways trees can be integral to survival if you ever find yourself stranded in the wilderness.

She likes a lot of things about Amy. The way she tries to catch butterflies, the way she sticks her tongue out when the boys tell her she can’t play baseball. One time she gets into a fight with a girl who tells her she’s stupid, and afterwards Farah shows her how to throw a proper punch without hurting her wrist like she had before. Amy likes to ride the swing too high, and it makes Farah nervous when she lets go at the top, screaming her way down and landing, laughing, on her feet. There are red and orange ribbons tied into her hair and Farah loves the way they dance in the air when she hangs upside down from the monkey bars. She likes the way that she smiles when she drags her back to the swings and dares her to swing all the way up too.

She likes that when she admits it makes her scared, Amy doesn’t laugh. Just holds her hand and says she doesn’t have to.

Her stomach flutters with butterflies, and she wonders if Amy would try to catch them too.

***

“Distracted,” she mumbles to herself, throwing her bag off her shoulder before hanging it up in its rightful place. “Distracted! I’ll show him distracted! I can be focused. I’m always focused. I don’t have anything to be distracted over.” The muttering is for her own benefit. She would never actually talk to her father that way, but god, if it wasn’t frustrating when he implied she was anything less than completely immersed in her task. Farah is fifteen and already outperforming people twice her age in her martial arts class, not to mention at the gun range. Everyone else seems more than impressed; stunned would be a more accurate word most of the time. Everyone but her father.

Her father who assumed she was distracted by the new karate teacher.

Objectively speaking she supposes she can see why people might be. People who aren’t her, of course. She’s not like other girls, something she takes pride in, because if she doesn’t the weight of the added expectations of standard femininity will crush her, but also because she’s just not interested. Giggling over boys was for girls who weren’t focused. Perfect manicures were for girls who weren’t driven enough to complete boot camp training. Caring about dates for proms and formals was for girls who didn’t know how to subdue a group of attackers with only a pen and a piece of string. Farah was not one of those girls, and she wasn’t distracted.

Of course fighting a new person had her thrown! He was different to most of the people she’d fought with before, and while she should be good enough to adapt her style to accommodate that right away, the new experience can only be beneficial. Her father hadn’t seen it like that. The stony silence he’d brought to the car only being broken by; “You can’t let a pretty face distract you. Anyone could be a target.”

A pretty face. She hadn’t even noticed. The only thing she wanted to do to that face was put her fist through it. That would show them distracted. It’s very hard to argue that with her brother and her father, though. To explain that she’s not like those girls. She’s different, has other interests, and doesn’t rate boys as important at all. Marriage doesn’t even factor into her life plan, and if she never kisses a boy in her life it’s no loss. She’d tried explaining that before and had gotten rolled eyes, disbelief, and; “Well then, wait until you’re older.”

Being the only girl left in her family is rough, but it’s even harder when they think of her as being something she’s not. It only leaves her more determined to prove to them that nothing could be further from her mind than boys.

***

When she’s eighteen, Farah joins the Army Rangers. Her father smiles at her for that, at least.

She knows, despite everything, that he’s just trying to do his best by her. He wants her safe, wants her able to protect herself, and he wants her to be the best she can be. She knows all this but it doesn’t stop it hurting. Sometimes she wonders if the reason he’s so distant is because she looks like her mother and it hurts him to see, but not enough to push her away completely. Not enough to stop him making sure she can be strong. The Rangers though, is an experience.

The boys there aren’t at all respectful. The way they talk about her and the other women makes her uncomfortable in a way that goes beyond simple lack of professionalism. She’s used to people assuming she’s incapable, used to proving them wrong and having to do more than them to do so, but being called ‘baby girl’ by a man she’s on patrol with and twice as skilled as is a step too far. When she breaks his nose for it she can’t bring herself to be sorry, even if they make her apologise. When she’d joined they’d said they were strict on sticking to the no dating rule. Farah looks at the group of men surrounding her and wonders why they’d even have to bother; nobody was going to be jumping at the chance to date any of these people. She certainly wasn’t.

The women, though. They were different.

It’s not the first time Farah has been around capable and competent women, but it’s the first time she’s been with so many in one place. They stick together, have each others backs. It feels, for the first time in her life, like a family. A place where she’s understood. Still. She shies away from the general state of undress they like to lounge around in, a few of them laugh and call her uptight but none of them pressure her into joining. She tells them it’s a matter of being prepared for anything, and they tease her indulgently. It’s enough to make her smile, even if it’s not enough to completely relax her.

She can’t help feeling nervous around them. Farah hasn’t felt intimidated by anyone who isn’t her father wearing a disappointed face in a long time, so she doesn’t think it’s that, but there are a few who make her fumble her words. A few that she can’t look at directly no matter how she tries. A few that will make her blush when they nudge her shoulder and tell her to quit worrying.

A few she thinks about long past midnight when she should be sleeping. They stick in her head like honey, and she can’t get rid of them even when she tries to.

***

She’s twenty one the first time she hears the word gay applied to a woman. It twists her face into a frown because it’s not the way she’s used to hearing it. Not that it’s ever been said in a good way when she’s heard it mentioned, and she’s not entirely sure it’s being used positively now, but it’s something. An idea, perhaps. A consideration she hasn’t made before. The moment passes before she can make up her mind.

It’s not long after that she finds out that there’s another word.

She’s standing at the bar, taking her drink slowly because she knows the people she’s out with (she’s not sure enough to call them friends) will need someone with at least a relatively clear head by the end of the night. At this age she’s started to move past the ‘not like other girls’ mentality. She’s aware on some level that there’s something different about her, something that doesn’t fit with them, but she puts it down to the reserved anxiety that prohibits her from interacting with most people. Her inability to connect isn’t exclusive to women. Still, there had only so much time she could spend in the company of women without letting go of the need to differentiate herself from them. She’s seen people in six inch heels with perfectly winged eyeliner be the deadliest person in the room, which makes it hard to separate the two things the way everyone seems to want to. She’s starting to explore gaining back some of the femininity she’d rejected in a bid for her father’s approval, (because she knows now that he’ll never approve,) and while she remains steadfastly practical in her choices there’s something healing in claiming back the right to look how she wants to look without compromising her ability to perform. The worst part of it all though, is that people seem to assume it’s for anyone’s benefit but her own. It comes with side effects, and the man who positions himself next to her at the bar is certainly one of them.

“Whatcha drinking?” he’s resting on the wood top in a way she assumes is supposed to be alluring, but if anything it comes off arrogant.

“I don’t see why that’s any of your business.” She knows it’s not how people want her to respond, she’s been called rude before, but her need for privacy extends to whatever environment she’s in and this isn’t a conversation she wants to have.

“I was only asking, no need to be so defensive,” he holds up his hands and she hopes that’s the last of it. Predictably, it isn’t. “So… What’s a gorgeous girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Farah fights the urge to roll her eyes and instead tips her glass in his direction. “Drinking.”

“Alone?”

“It looks that way.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he leans in. It’s uncomfortably close and she mentally calculates all of his weaknesses, the quickest way to get him to the floor. It’s a public place though, and she’s been working on not acting unnecessarily, so for now she just takes a step back.

“My friends are here, I just prefer not to dance. I like my own company.” It gets lonely at times, she can admit that, but he’s not at all a person she wants to ease that loneliness with.

“Aw, come on now, don’t you want to have a little fun?” He moves to close the space she created, sliding his hand along the bar as he does so. “You seem tense, I’m sure we could work out a way to loosen you up.”

“I’m not interested.”

He grins at her, all teeth, and she wonders if this method ever works for him when he says, “How do you know? You haven’t even asked my name,”

“I don’t need to.” It’s cold, direct, and she picks up her glass making to move. “I said I’m not interested.”

It’s funny, really, how quickly he changes from welcoming to angry in the face of her defiance, but she’d planned for that already. Her hold on her glass tightens imperceptibly.

“What? You think you’re too good for me? You already got a man? You think you’re something special?” He’s waving his hands accusatory, jabbing fingers in an unpleasant way as he slowly turns red with anger. “You don’t like men, is that it? Are you cold? A prude? A lesbian? Because, sweetheart, you’re missing out on what I’m offering here, any other girl in this building would be happy to have me.”

“I don’t think so.” He’s taken a step too close and she doesn’t hesitate to throw her drink in his face, knocking his feet out from under him when he’s distracted and smacking his head into the bar. It’s a kindness that she doesn’t break his nose in the process. It certainly makes dealing with security easier.

The word sticks though, and while she has enough situational evidence to infer what it might mean, she still wants to be sure. There’s a curiosity there that makes her wonder far beyond what she usually would, and she resolves to ask Tricia, who she knows will be too drunk to remember as she’s helping her stumble home that night.

“It’s like… gay. But for girls. Girls with girls, you know? You gotta… guys think it’s hot. But it’s all about girls. Why? You thinking of changing teams? Don’t let that guy drag you down, he was an asshole.” Farah is saved from answering when Tricia promptly throws up on her own shoes. She would be more annoyed, but in the moment she finds herself too preoccupied to care.

Girls with girls.

There’s a thought.

***

It’s a thought she comes back to plenty of times over the years, but if she’s completely honest romance had never factored high on her list regardless of gender, and not much about that changes now. She keeps busy. Training and Rangers and applications, consistently rejected applications as her father likes to remind her. She certainly has no time for distractions when she needs to dedicate her life elsewhere.

Still, sometimes she’ll look at a woman a little too long and she’ll wonder.

A lot of that wonder goes into wondering if she’s the only one. Realistically, she knows that’s not possible, the statistics don’t allow for it, but she wouldn’t have the first idea where to go seeking out other women. She doesn’t know if she’d have the confidence to try if she did know. Not knowing makes for a convenient excuse to hide her fears behind, and sometimes she thinks it’s hard to know anyway if she’s never actually tried. When she gets lonely, or wants something more than her own company, her own pressing responsibilities, boys are easier to find anyway.

It’s not bad, as such, making out with guys. The principles are much the same, and when what she’s looking for is a distraction or a reassurance, it works as good as any. She’s confident enough to feel able to leave if she wants to, and a lot of the time it’s just nice to be close to another person.

It’s different, though.

She’s never kissed a girl but she knows it’s different. There’s something missing, something a little off about the press of their bodies, the way they kiss, where they put their hands. Something different in the aftermath, the way she never wants to stay, the way that even when she knows objectively they’re attractive her eyes never linger on them for too long. It’s not bad, it’s never something she doesn’t want, but it’s never exactly what she does want either. Thinking too hard about why that might be still scares her, and she’s not ready to deal with it yet; but she’s not going to commit herself to unhappiness either, so despite everything she never sees the same guy more than twice at most. It’s easier like that, a clean, efficient break and for now, it’s good enough.

***

It stays enough for a long time. Most of the time she doesn’t bother with it at all, she has a job now, not one her father approves of, but one that has value. Protecting a millionaire’s daughter may not be the most high profile position or realistically the best use of her talents, but Farah cares for Lydia like a younger sister that she will protect with her life. It’s a hard thing to explain to her family, so for the most part she doesn’t, and she finds herself almost content with the situation she’s found herself in. It means she doesn’t go out much, but it also means she doesn’t have to overthink it when she does. No boys means no wondering about girls, and she calls that a win-win scenario.

A week before she disappears, Lydia tells Farah that she likes boys, but that she thinks she might like girls, too. She wonders later on why the overwhelming amount of acceptance and support that she feels towards her isn’t something she has towards herself. When she tells Lydia that it’s okay, that it’s good she’s comfortable being herself she isn’t lying, but when Lydia hugs her and tells her she always knew she’d understand, Farah thinks it goes deeper than being unlikely to judge. It’s not something she knows how to deal with so she pushes it out of her mind, Lydia’s safety and happiness having always been her priority, and that applies to this as well. The last thing she needs is her blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Farah listens to her talk about girls, and wonders how she finds it so easy.

***

When Farah kisses Todd it’s different, but it’s not different enough.

There’s a security there, a depth to it being someone she cares about, a friend. They’ve grown so close in these last few months out on the road, and when they end up kissing in the back end of nowhere it makes sense. Sort of. It’s good at least, a kind of familiar comfort that they both need, something reassuring to hold onto when it feels like they’re ten feet underwater and only sinking deeper. It’s safe to say the search for Dirk is not going well, and she knows sooner or later they’re going to have to talk about what to do next, and she also knows Todd won’t want to do that. They don’t purposefully seek each other out, but they fall into it anyway. One small reassurance of ‘you still have me, we’re still in this together,’ one small distraction from the creeping fear that they’ll never find him. That at some point they’ll have to give up looking, or be made to stop without ever knowing what happened. They’re both a little tipsy, and it feels safe. Like home. It’s the most connected she’s ever felt to another person because there’s no hiding when you’re on the road like they’ve been, they’ve seen the weirdest and worst of each other and still, after all that, Todd isn’t going anywhere. It’s nice.

They laugh about it after, but nothing about the way she looks at him has changed. It’s just comfort, something to take the edge off and it’s a relief that she doesn’t know how to put into words that Todd thinks the same. When she looks back on this moment she’ll see it as the final push she needed, looking at Todd after all that and still only seeing a friend, not wanting to take it any further and knowing that if she tried to it wouldn’t feel right. One night stands with strangers are easy to brush off as meaningless, but making out with one of your best friends isn’t that, and she wouldn’t want it to be, but in this case it isn’t romantic, either. It isn’t anything past physical affection, and she realises that if that isn’t going to happen now; with all this set up, after all this time, then it isn’t going to happen at all. Somewhere she’s always known that really, and she knows why, but fear had always been enough to keep her from looking too far into it.

Now she has people who won’t push her away for that why, people she knows will encourage her to only ever be herself. When she ends up shedding a few tears she blames it on the whisky and Todd asks, joking, if kissing him was really that bad. When she says no she means it, but she knows it won’t happen again.

***

Tina Tevetino is a whirlwind of a person, but Farah is starting to get used to those. What she can’t quite get used to however, is the way Tina looks at her.

It’s appreciative, sometimes verging on awe when she does something Tina finds particularly impressive, but even when it’s not that there’s a weight behind it. It’s lingering. When she catches her looking she doesn’t even look away, usually just waggles her eyebrows and says something suggestive enough to send a hot flush creeping up Farah’s neck because she has no idea how to respond to that.

It shouldn’t feel any different she thinks, the next time she locks eyes with her across the station. She’s had people look at her before in that way and she’s aware that she’s not unattractive, even if she’s never thought too much on it if she can help it, so really it shouldn’t be any different at all. It is though, in a way she can’t quite quantify. There’s something that separates these looks from the way that men had looked at her over the years, and it takes her an embarrassingly long time to work out that it’s mostly because when Tina looks at her, she finds herself looking back.

It shouldn’t surprise her as much as it does, and it shouldn’t make her overcompensate by looking for every reason, purely professionally of course, to spend time with her. Tina’s flirting doesn’t make her uncomfortable, it doesn’t make her cordon off a part of herself in order to feel like it’s okay. It makes her happy and jittery and unsure what to do with her hands. When she finds herself biting at her lip and looking away so as not to smile too much it’s genuine. When their hands brush or they stand too close together, the heat that rushes through her is dizzying. Tina makes no secret of her attraction, and Farah wishes she could get a handle on hers, because if Tina smiles at her like like that one more time she thinks she might just explode.

It doesn’t take long for it all to come to a head.

Farah doesn’t know what it is that gives her the confidence to kiss Tina. Perhaps it’s the love spell, perhaps it’s the certainty that she won’t be rejected, perhaps she’s just sick of waiting for someone else to come along and drag her out of her own head. Whatever it is, she’s grateful. It seems like Tina is too, if the enthusiasm she pours into it is anything to go by, and Farah finds herself laughing against her mouth when she flails her arms for a surprised moment.

“Is this okay?” she asks, hoping it is but wanting to be sure, she’s never wanted to kiss someone quite like this before.

“Wha- okay? Okay? Why are you talking? We could be like, making out! If you wanna make out! I mean, you seemed like you wanted to, but I don’t want to make any assumptions you know? It’s totally-” Farah cuts her off with a kiss that’s more giggling than it is anything else.

“I want to,” she assures her, fingers curling through Tina’s belt loops in a bold move that she has to make quickly before she gives in to feeling too shy to make it. “You’re- This is… nice? I like it. I like you,” I like girls she thinks, but still can’t quite bring herself to say it. Now doesn’t feel like the time anyway.

“Sweet!” is apparently the end to that conversation, because Farah finds herself with her arms full of overly affectionate deputy not a second later. Not that she minds in the slightest.

Kissing Tina is like a revelation, like something in her is bubbling up and fizzing out, tingling all the way down her arms to where her hands are resting on her waist. It’s kissing, it’s just kissing, she’s done it before, but this, this is something she thinks she could do forever. She tastes different, the press of her is different, her energy is different, and it’s all so perfectly right in a way it’s never been. Something slotting into place in her head that tells her this is it, this is what’s been missing. This is what makes sense.

It’s heady and happy and perfect, and when they finally part Tina does that ridiculous eyebrow move and leans in to say, “Not bad at all, Miss Black.”

Farah finds herself grinning through the blush it brings to her cheeks, whatever heat is simmering in her stomach is background noise to the calm relief of having found the last piece of the puzzle, the delight of being able to finally see the full picture.

“Not bad at all.”

***

When life goes back to as normal as it gets for them these days, Farah feels like something has shifted. It’s nothing obvious, at least she doesn’t think so, but she feels more like herself than she has in years.

It’s not just coming to terms with her sexuality, but also learning to let go of all the expectations her father had placed on her over the years. All the ways she’d thought she’d failed him, the ways she thought she’d failed her brother, all the time wasted pretending to be something she wasn’t. That was over now, she’d decided firmly when she’d finally gotten around to visiting her father’s grave. There was a goodbye, a certain amount of grief, but no apology, and while it by no means means that she’s turned her life on its head overnight, it’s as good a place as any to start.

She has a home now, friends, a family. A place where she can be herself and still fit. People who love her for her quirks, and not in spite of them. People who appreciate her both for what she is and what she isn’t. People who are also learning to grow and forgive and move on, and they want to do it with her. It’s enough to move her to tears more than once, but she knows they feel the same way about it too. Dirk, it seems, hadn’t stopped looking misty eyed ever since they’d signed the lease on the agency, and it had surprised both of them when Todd had been the one to break first after hanging the sign up on the wall. It’s good, what she’s found for herself. People who want to know her, finding she wants to let them. There’s only really one thing left to do.

Farah realises quickly that she can’t tell both of them at once. It’s not like she doesn’t want to, but even trying to say the words to herself is daunting, she’s not sure she’s even going to be able to manage saying it to someone else, but she wants to try. It’s important.

It takes her days to work up the courage, thinking it over almost obsessively for hours at a time, and eventually she arrives at what she thinks is the most likely successful plan. What she needs realistically is for it to not be a big deal. She doesn’t want it to become a thing, and while she knows Todd would be supportive and it wouldn’t be a bad experience at all, it’s an unfortunate fact that he’s better with emotional situations than both she or Dirk, and tends to leave her feeling a little overwhelmed with his responses to important situations. It’s nice, usually a good kind of overwhelmed, but it won’t work for this, because there’s the risk of him taking too much care and then it becomes the very thing she’s trying to avoid making it. There’s also the issue of, well, they’ve never explicitly talked about it, but she thinks Todd might be drawing his own conclusions in a similar vein about himself right now. She needs someone who won’t make it a thing, but she also needs someone sure enough of that particular aspect of themselves to know how not to make it one.

She only really has one other option.

***

Dirk is delighted to be invited for pancakes the way he’s delighted by just about anything that involves doing things with other people. He’s quick to assure her that she’s paying, and Farah absently wonders if he’s aware that would be true either way considering she’s the one paying him. She doesn’t point it out.

“Is there a reason Todd isn’t here?” he asks, setting his menu aside after ordering what Farah is sure is going to be a bad idea when he’s bouncing off the walls in a few hours’ time. “You waited until he’d gone before you asked, which isn’t like you.” Even Farah sometimes falls into the trap of forgetting Dirk is, in fact, a detective.

“I… wanted to talk to you. Without Todd. Well, no, I’ll tell him later, or I’ll talk to him later I just- I wanted to talk to you first.” Dirk looks like he’s torn between being excited about being the first to be let in on a secret, and worried about it being something serious. Farah starts systematically shredding her napkin, and wondering if this was even a good idea.

“Has he done something?” He seems to have settled on confused but intrigued, a look that’s incredibly familiar for how often he wears it. “Is it the shredder again? Because I told him that cheese should be grated not shredded, and honestly I’m not sure how he thinks it’s at all hygienic. Not that I’ve caught him doing it, mind you, but the shredder keeps breaking and there’s only one way to shred cheese, if you think about it the clue is in the name.”

“What? I- no? The shredd- He’s not shredding cheese in the shredder, Dirk. It keeps breaking because you keep putting unopened letters in there and they’ve got staples in them. It’s the metal, they can’t-” she realises abruptly that the conversation is getting away from her and shakes her head. “Look. Never mind, we can talk about that later.”

“So it’s not about the shredder. Is it-”

“It’s not about the filing cabinet either!”

“Oh,” he narrows his eyes at her. “You knew what I was going to say before I said it. You’re getting very good at this.”

“It’s personal,” she says before she can stop herself, hoping to call off any more office related worries before he thinks of them. “What I want to talk about. It’s more of a personal nature. I want to talk to you as a friend.” Not that there’s much professional about their relationship in any way, but it’s a clear divide from work concerns.

“Oh,” Dirk repeats, looking a little dumbfounded as if this is a situation he’d never thought he’d find himself in. “Well. In that case, please, continue.” And just like that Farah’s mouth dries up.

She drops her gaze to the table, organising the remains of the napkin into neat little piles to distract herself. “That last case was… crazy.” It’s as good of a place to start as any, she supposes. “So much stuff happened, everything happened and I know we were all running around trying to save the world and stay alive but-” she takes a steading breath, finding she needs it. “Something else happened too, something to me I mean. Or, for me, I suppose. Something that… it’s been a long time coming, I just tried not to think about it before, and then something happened, and now I can’t stop thinking about it and… I think I’m finally okay with it, but I thought- It feels important to tell someone, and I wanted to tell you because, well, I think you’ll… understand.” It’s more than she’s meant to say, but still hasn’t cut to the point of it and it’s starting to frustrate her that it’s not as easy as she thinks it should be.

For his part, Dirk looks concerned but ultimately confused, and he seems to take a moment to pick over his words before he speaks again. “I’m not sure I understand much,” is what he ends up saying, “about this situation, or in fact at all, but I’ll try my best.” It’s the hopeful smile he gives her that helps settle her nerves, if anyone in the world is going to judge her then it’s not going to be Dirk Gently. She finds the thought comforting.

“Okay,” she nods, determined. “Okay. I can- this won’t be so hard.” She’s psyched herself up this way a thousand times before now, thinking about it like a battle plan is only going to help. She knows how to tackle those. “So. Something happened, and I realised… well, no I think I realised a long time ago actually, the more I think about it the more sense it makes in some kind of weird… anyway. Not the point. The point is I’m…” she can’t stop now, not this close. Farah Black does not get to the finish line and quit.

“I like girls. I’m a lesbian.” There. Done. And, god, were her palms always that sweaty? Was her heart beating that fast when she sat down? Had she really just said that? Her thoughts are starting to take on a mind of their own and she’s at risk of working herself up if something doesn’t-

“Oh, thank god!”

It’s enough to pull her out of her head for long enough to look over at Dirk, who looks about as relieved as she’s ever seen him with his hand pressed dramatically to his chest. “What-”

“For one horrible, terrible moment there I thought you were going to say you were pregnant!”

“What? I- no. God no!”

“I know nothing about infant care! And I thought, why on earth would that be something you tell me? Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t support you, because of course I would, and I’m sure babies are lovely when they’re not screaming or dribbling or… anything else that babies do, but surely that’s the kind of thing you’d talk to Amanda about? Or Todd! At least we know Todd has been around a child before!”

Somehow Dirk’s rambling had managed to take away her worry. The fact that she’d gotten such a normal response, for him at least, had deflated the balloon that had filled up with anxiety inside of her and felt just about ready to burst. Suddenly the words didn’t seem as intimidating as before.

“I’m not pregnant, Dirk. I’m just… gay.” Just like that. It’s easy.

“Farah that’s wonderful! Congratulations!” There’s nothing but sincerity in his smile, and she finds herself smiling back, relaxing against the leather seating. “Can I ask, what was it that happened exactly?”

Farah flounders with that question for a moment before admitting somewhat weakly, “Tina.”

“Ah ha! I knew it! I was a little distracted myself at the time but I told Todd you seemed happier, and it’s not like Tina ever took her eyes off you.”

“Shut up.” It’s not as harsh as it could have been; the way she blushes gives her away.

Dirk holds his hands up placatingly, but his smile turns a little more sly when he says, “Did you get her number?”

“Yes.”

“And?” It’s conspiratorial, and she manages to stare him down for a good minute before looking away.

“And… I’m going to call her.”

Dirk’s response is cut off by the arrival of their pancakes, but he beams at her as he pours an ungodly amount of syrup over his stack.

“I really am pleased for you, Farah.” It’s soft, kind, and sincere, not at all something she’s used to yet. She thinks she’ll have chance to get used to it now they’re going to spend so much time together. The thought wells up some unknown emotion in her chest and she smiles, happy and open in a way she hasn’t felt in years.

“Thanks, Dirk.”

***

Later that night when things have settled down and Todd has stopped jokingly offering to coach her in how to talk to women in a show of solidarity, mostly because he’d been shot down by both Farah and Dirk, and had taken instead to sulking on the sofa with his headphones, she takes out her phone. It’s not exactly true to her word, she can’t quite bring herself to call Tina, but she can text. Texting is good. Right now with her palms as sweaty as they are, texting is perfect.

Texting is also difficult. It takes her almost twenty tries to settle on something she thinks sounds good enough to send.

‘Hi, Tina. I was just thinking about you and I was wondering if you would like to go out sometime?’

In the five whole minutes it takes Tina to reply, Farah berates herself for the use of every single word, considers throwing her phone out of the window, and wishes she’d never dared send the message in the first place. When her phone pings with the sound of an incoming message she scrambles for it, thumbs shaking as she reads the reply.

‘Hell yeah!’ is followed by three other messages.‘Go out get drunk?’‘or go out as buddies?’‘orrrr go out on a date?’

There’s a moment where she stares at the screen, wondering if she’d possibly said the wrong thing, or if Tina is just doing what she’d been trying to do and cover all of her bases. She takes a deep breath and types:

‘On a date. If you want?’ This time the reply is almost instant.

‘Yes!!!!!!!!’‘I mean, that’d be cool.’‘Sure thing.’‘Awesome.’

It settles her nerves to know Tina is just as flustered as she is, and the thought of being the person who makes her flustered is enough to give her butterflies in the best possible way. Her grin is illuminated by the light of the screen when she sends off:

‘Great. We can make plans in the morning?’ she feels giddy and silly at the prospect, and Tina doesn’t help that much.

‘Works for me! Sweet dreams, hot stuff xxx’

She hides her face into the pillow for a moment, feeling far far more childish than she thinks she should be at this age. Still, given the circumstances it seems permissible.

‘Goodnight, Tina.’ She sets her phone down, picking it up again quickly to add a hurried follow up ‘x’.

The winky face she gets in reply makes her groan, and she knows she’s going to be harassed into sharing that she went through with it in the morning, but for now she lets herself smile and feel the way her stomach flutters with excitement at the thought of making plans with Tina.

She feels like a teenager, but that hardly matters. Not when she finally feels at home. Not when she feels like she’s finally starting to learn how to be happy.

Not now she knows who she is.

#my writing #prompt fill #this got long #farah black #tina tevetino #farina #dghda #dirk gently's holistic detective agency #coming out fic #this was honestly so therapeutic to write #farah black is a lesbian #i hope i did this justice #I fucking gave up with the breaks because they all align so weird on my theme so they're on the left now #imagine they're central #or read it on ao3

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