Fic: The Best Thing (The L Word, Helena/Bette, NC-17)
Title: The Best Thing
Fandom: The L Word
Pairing: Helena Peabody/Bette Porter
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Non-canon-ness, but that's about it
Words: 4000
Summary: Helena is startled when Bette Porter turns up at her house, but she can't say she's surprised. After all that's happened, nothing can surprise her.
Notes: For aphrodite_mine, because the hair-mixing thing is really hers.

The Best Thing

Helena is startled when Bette Porter turns up at her house, but she can't say she's surprised. After all that's happened, nothing can surprise her. The last day at Whistler was blurry for her, packing and organizing and thanking people in a daze. But she was not so blurry that she ignored her friends. She hugged Kit. She started to say hello to Alice, who was in quiet, head-bowed conversation with Lara, and then turned around and walked back to the hotel foyer, knowing that the best thing she could do was leave them alone. And she tried to calm a hysterical Tina, who was hyperventilating and throwing things and clutching herself as if to hold her insides in. Helena had seen her like this once before, toward the end of her pregnancy, and the best thing Helena could do then was leave her alone. Now the best thing Helena could do was kick Henry out, politely but firmly, and put her arms around Tina and try to get her to drink some tea.

It was a good distraction, someone else's heartbreak.

But now she's back in L.A., and amid all this dazzling opulence, her house with sprawling gardens and huge windows, she can't ignore her own any longer. Tina may be missing the most important part of herself, but Helena is about to lose everything she knows, in a few days or weeks, as soon as the bills come that she won't be able to pay. She'll have to sell the house. She'll have to find a tiny flat to rent. She'll have to find a job.

Helena has always worked. She has always known from her mum's wise example that work is often something you are not paid for. But she's never had a job.

Christ.

And so she's celebrating and mourning, walking around her home, studying the view from every window and the shadow cast by every unlit antique lamp. A second, empty glass of icy Absinthe is in her hand, and she's studying the pile of tapes and documentation that Dylan left her, when she hears the familiar buzz that means she has a visitor in a car, and she walks over to the wall-mounted intercom and presses the Talk button. "Yes?"

"It's, ah, Bette Porter, here to see, uh, Helena Peabody?" Bette's voice sounds far away and uncertain. Helena wonders who Bette thinks she's talking to. A housekeeper, maybe, or a maid, all the accoutrements that Helena no longer has.

Helena enters the security code that opens the main vehicle gate, then the code that opens the gates that lead to the pavement. Then she has to go downstairs and deactivate the alarm system to open the front door, not to mention unlocking the two bolts and the chain on the door itself. The whole process strikes her as funny, suddenly. Maybe things will be less complicated when she doesn't have any money.

Bette's walking up to the front door as Helena opens it, carrying – Helena sees with immense relief – Angelica in her car seat. The baby is quiet, her eyes luminous in the glow of the lights on the front porch. "Bette," Helena says with some relief, then stops, not sure what to say. "Ah, this isn't really a good time."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," Bette says, not sounding at all sorry. She hands her bag to Helena and shoves her way inside. That actually seems rather funny to Helena, too. Maybe it's the alcohol. "Look, I didn't really know where else to go. I can't go home, I'm sure Tina's there with – with Henry, and they're – well, I'm not sure. I mean, for all I know they've got the police out looking for me, I don't know, I stopped answering my phone, and I'm sure they've checked with – with Kit and Alice and everyone, and I just – well." She stops, suddenly, and her shoulders cave in over her body, the same way Tina's did when she told Helena. "I just didn't – "

"I know." Helena plops Bette's bag on the floor. "Come on in," she says unnecessarily, setting her empty glass on a gorgeous, heavy oak cabinet that she bought in Amsterdam and had shipped to America a few years ago. "Can I get you something to drink? Where have you been?"

"All over. Everywhere. Nowhere." Bette follows Helena into the kitchen, a stark, well-lit room with plenty of cabinets and counter-space. "You've talked to Tina, I guess."

"Yes, and she's worried sick," Helena says, unable to keep the reproach from her voice. She's Tina's friend and co-worker and ex, after all, and she saw and felt every bit of Tina's heartbreak. Then she wonders if that was the way Winnie felt when Helena kept the kids for an extra hour or day, and she tries to swallow the guilt in her throat. "Tea?" she asks, trying to pretend that she's not a complete hypocrite.

"No, I don't fucking want any tea!" Bette looks like she'd rather slam something. Helena moves Angelica out of the way and then unbuckles her from her car seat, scooping her up like a wet sack of flour. She's not sure how Bette will feel about her holding Angelica, never mind digging through the cabinets for some biscuits for the baby to gum on. She does eat biscuits now, doesn't she? She's about ten months old, and Helena remembers that when Wilson was that age, he was already onto solid foods, the crunchier the better, but of course when Jun Ying was that young, she still liked a bottle of … Bette's staring at her, and Helena puts down the box of Carr's Table Water Crackers. Then she realizes that Bette probably considers Helena, not the biscuits, a threat to Angelica, so she passes the baby to Bette.

Bette cuddles her daughter gently, then settles down on a stool enxt to the counter. "Oh God," Bette says. "I've done such a stupid, stupid, stupid thing."

"I know." Helena leans across the counter on her elbows, trying to get a better look at Bette's dim, watery face. "Listen, it's going to be all right."

"It is not going to be all right! She's not going to let me adopt Angelica. She's going to marry him and she's – they're going to have – " Helena hears the start of tears in Bette's voice. "She's going to take my daughter away from me."

Helena backs away from Bette a bit and studies her disheveled curls, the twist of her mouth, the way her arms wrap around Angelica's small body. "Let's get you to bed," Helena suggests. She's not sure what else to do. She knows she should call Tina, Alice, Jenny, the police. She should make sure Tina's okay, make sure Tina sees Angelica as soon as possible. But she also knows that those would all be the best things for Tina, and those are the not the things that Bette has come here for, whatever she's come here for. Helena is not much good at being comforting, but she's good in a crisis, because a crisis is one more thing to distract her from what her life is about to become.

"Bed sounds good," Bette agrees distractedly. "Here?"

"Upstairs."

"I don't have – you know, for her – I don't have anything for her to sleep in," Bette says with a strange note in her voice as she grabs her bag and follows Helena up the imposing staircase with its wide marble steps and curled metal railing. It may be Helena's imagination, but Bette sounds almost apologetic.

"It's all right," Helena says, opening the door to the nursery, "I've got a crib," and then immediately wishes she hadn't, because of course this is the nursery she decorated for Tina last year. It's a library now, with rows and rows of maple bookshelves that match the crib, the only piece of baby paraphernalia left in the room, but the walls and windows are still draped in varying shades of green, a colour that reminds her of Tina. She wonders if green reminds Bette of Tina, too. "Ah – I mean." She shakes her head. "She doesn't, you know, have to sleep here if – "

"No. No, it's fine. She'll be fine." It sounds like Bette is trying to convince herself, but the uncertainty passes as quickly as Bette's earlier tears, and she marches Angelica over to the crib, plops her down, drops the guard rail expertly, and fishes out a bottle of juice for the baby. By the time Helena gets back with a small dustbin lined with a bin-bag, Bette has finished changing Angelica and is singing to her. Helena pauses in the doorway for a moment, wondering if she looked like that when she was just becoming a mother to Wilson and Jun Ying.

"I brought you a bin," Helena says, interrupting Bette's tune about a monkey.

"A what?"

"A bin. You know, for her nappy," Helena says, feeling rather defensive, like the first time she came to America on holiday. People turned their heads when she spoke, and whether that was because they loved or hated her accent, she never knew. The look on Bette's face suggests that she's one of the people who hates Helena's accent.

The sensible thing to do now, Helena decides, is to give them some time alone, so she goes down the hall and arbitrarily picks one of the rooms on the floor for Bette. This one is modern and spare, with lots of glass and sheer curtains that barely soften the stark lines of the wide window. She didn't think of it before, but this room reminds her of Bette, just a little. She turns down the bed, with its 300-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and wonders what she'll do when she no longer needs multiple sets of queen-sized sheets for multiple beds in multiple guest rooms.

Bette walks into the room, and now that she no longer has Angelica to cling to, the exhaustion and worry are evident in her face. "Thank you," she mumbles, not quite meeting Helena's eyes. "I just needed somewhere to go."

"Don't apologize," Helena says, and immediately that makes her feel uncomfortable too, because she remembers saying something very similar to Tina when they first met. "Can I get you anything else?"

"No thank you," Bette says. Helena turns away, feeling foolish. A year ago they were at each other's throats, and now every other sentence is sprinkled with pleasantries. "Except, uh, Helena? Maybe something to … sleep in?"

"Sleep in?"

"Like clothes."

"Oh. Of course. Clothes." Bette probably has a whole suitcase full of clothes in her car, but it's easiest if Helena just goes into her bedroom and finds some of her exercise clothes, a tank top and a pair of trousers. Athletic pants, she thinks Alice would call them. When she gets back to the guest room, Bette has stripped down to her underwear but is standing in the exact same position, staring at the wall. "Here," Helena says awkwardly, feeling a strong urge to dump the clothes in Bette's lap and go back to her own room and sleep for a week. Maybe getting involved in someone else's crisis isn't the best way to medicate her own.

Bette changes and curls up in bed, and Helena's almost out the door when she hears the telltale noise, the sound of a sob moving against a pillow. She pauses in the light of the hallway and then closes the door against it, so the entire room is steeped in muted moonlight that the curtains don't really block. Bette's face is firm against the pillow, but she's not fooling Helena, who remembers that sound all too well from the end of her marriage, as she and Winnie lay on opposite sides of their bed pretending as hard as they could that they were somewhere else. Now she sits as close as she can to Bette without actually touching her and rubs Bette's back lightly through the covers, like she would Jun Ying when she's had a nightmare.

She knows how Bette feels. She remembers her terror when it looked like Winnie might take Wilson, and might try her damndest to take Jun Ying too, even though Winnie's solicitor friends told her that Helena could make a strong case for custody. Helena knows that her money and name are a good part of the reason that they gave her any rights at all. She doesn't want to think about what will happen to her children when she wakes up penniless.

Bette is breathing more evenly now, and she finally rolls over toward Helena and stares at the ceiling. "Oh God," she says, and that pretty much sums it up for Helena too.

"Oh God," Helena echoes, stretching out next to Bette. In the darkness they're practically the same height. For the past year or so Bette has seemed so imposing to Helena, unfurling her power over Tina like a handful of winning cards. The coming out, the house, the commitment, the baby – every element of Tina bore Bette's fingerprints. It was a bit of an adrenalin high for Helena when she knew Tina was interested in her, and she crashed surprisingly hard when Tina went back to Bette, at least temporarily. Helena spent a lot of time alone in this house, staring at the ocean and thinking about Bette Porter. Bette is two and a half centimeters taller than Helena, but those two centimeters have been awfully big centimeters for the past year. Now they're eye to eye and nose to nose, and she's close enough for Helena to kiss.

Helena doesn't. A year or two ago she might have. Would have. This year, if Dylan taught her anything, it's that just because you feel like doing something doesn't mean you should necessarily do it.

But Bette does.

And it may not be the best thing, Helena thinks, as Bette's mouth is first soft and questioning against hers, and then firmer and more decisive, but it may be what she needs.

For a second, as Helena breathes in the scent of leather car seats and apple juice and an old air freshener, she wonders what Tina would say if she knew how Bette was nibbling her lip and tasting the soft flesh on the inside of her mouth. She hasn't slept with Tina in over a year, but this feels like a betrayal in many ways. Perhaps her mother is right; perhaps she does have a kind heart, although "surprisingly kind" may be going a bit too far.

But perhaps a person with a kind heart would be doing exactly what she's doing now, which running her tongue along the points of Bette's teeth and the roof of her mouth and wiping the scattered brown curls away from Bette's cheek and neck so she can find a large enough space of skin to kiss without getting a mouthful of hair. Bette lets out a quiet "Oh," much softer than anything Helena has ever heard her say, and that's enough to start a different brand of adrenalin deep inside her stomach. The groove above Bette's collarbone fascinates her, and she licks along it, bumping her nose against the elastic strap of her own tank top on Bette's body. It's a strange sensation when she slides her hands under the shelf-bra, the same way she does when she changes after yoga class with Alice, only now Bette's breasts are under it and she makes a totally new sort of sound.

Shadows are falling across Bette's face as Helena watches her, but Bette's fingers are slender and quick and sure, undoing the row of small silver buttons down Helena's shirt and unhooking her bra easily. Helena's clothes fall off her in both directions, her shirt sliding down her back and her bra dropping between them onto Bette's stomach, and then Bette has her thumbs on Helena's nipples and her palms against the bottoms of Helena's breasts. Her movements are delicate and for a second Helena thinks of Tina, cautious and shy when she was pregnant. It's equally odd to think that Angelica is a real child now, sleeping soundly, Helena hopes, in the crib that could have been hers.

Helena feels Bette's hands wrap impatiently around her back, and before she can wonder what's going on Bette is pulling her down, far enough that her lips can close against Helena's breast. Helena leans forward so that her hair tumbles and cascades through Bette's on the pillow, and she wishes she could reach Bette better but she can't because Bette is grazing her nipple lightly with her teeth, and there's no way Helena can move and there's really no way she would if she could. She settles instead for touching Bette's body, cupping her breasts and rolling her nipples between her fingers the same way she would with her lips and tongue if she could. Her leg is between Bette's and Helena can feel the slick, growing heat through layers of fabric that she wishes weren't there.

Bette's mouth is warm on her other breast now, and her hands are lazy, slowly creeping across Helena's bare back and ribs and stomach, then settling at the buttons on her jeans. Because of the way Helena is crouched over her, there's very little give in the material, and Bette has a hard time with the buttons. The noises Bette is making are so impatient that Helena can't help but laugh and take the opportunity to scoot down the bed and first kiss, then suck, Bette's nipples, hard peaks that grow pebbly between Helena's tongue and teeth. The trousers that Bette is wearing come off much more easily than Helena's, and she slides them down Bette's body and legs along with her knickers.

"That's not fair," Bette manages.

Her tone is firm, and Helena feels the centimeters between them grow again. "And why not?"

"Because it's not." Bette's hands at her stomach stop moving, and Helena watches a familiar grit-toothed expression appear on Bette's face, the one attached to things like Tina seeing Helena and Franklin firing Bette. Of course, Helena probably wore a pretty similar expression when Tina said she'd like to see other people. Helena isn't convinced that she and Bette need to be fair for this to happen, but she's also not ready to give up the curve of Bette's breast under her lips, so reluctantly she kisses the warm spread of skin and unfastens her jeans herself, kicking them to floor. She makes sure Bette's eyes are on her before she also removes her sheer black panties, more slowly this time.

"Please," Bette says, her eyes still strong on Helena's, and this please has nothing to do with being polite or uncomfortable. In fact, as Helena moves her hand down Bette's body, centimeter upon centimeter of skin uninterrupted by clothes, she can almost pretend that the discomfort between them hasn't been there the past year and a half. She sinks two fingers inside Bette and watches as Bette's head tips back and her mouth opens, making a soft O in the filtered moonlight, while she finds the circle of Bette's clit with her thumb.

She thinks about her first time with Dylan often, unwrapping the memory like a gift at night to drag her into sleep. Dylan lied about so many things that it's hard to separate the fiction from the truth, but Helena thinks, at least, that Dylan was honest about the sex. "I've never done this before," she said, her eyes dark and glittering, and Helena kissed her and slid her hand against the untouched tight places and watched Dylan's face change.

Bette doesn't look quite the way Dylan did, but it's rather gratifying to see someone with whom Helena went head to head all last year gasp and arch and reach for whatever she can grab – which, it turns out, is a chunk of blanket and Helena's hair.

She'd be content to stay like this, focusing on every millimeter of movement inside Bette and every new ridge she fingers with the pad of her finger, but Bette is remarkably insistent on fairness tonight, and she tugs at Helena – her hair again, ouch – to get her to move up just enough that Bette can reach her. It seems to take an awfully long time for Bette to find her fingering, but when she does, Helena can feel every thrust and stroke that she makes inside Bette, mirrored inside her own body. Helena watches Bette's eyes flutter, then close, and she mumbles something. "What?" Helena asks. She'd lean forward to hear better, the same way she does when talking to someone in a meeting or on the phone or in video conferencing, but their current position makes it rather impossible.

"I want," Bette says, low, and Helena moves her thumb in a quicker circle around Bette's clit, trying to match the tone of Bette's words. "I want, I want, please, I need, oh God …"

Helena feels the tension of Bette's orgasm around her fingers, but it takes a long time before she realizes that she's coming too.

* * *
"You realize I'm going to have to tell Tina," Helena says, staring up at the patches of white and shadow on the ceiling. She thinks there's a crack over there, by the closet. She knows that this is California and there are earthquakes all the time, but really, she paid millions for this house. There should be no cracks in the ceiling.

"Tell – Tina?" Bette says. She's lying on her side, facing away from Helena. Her voice is startled, but not surprised.

"About Angelica," Helena clarifies, turning her head to look at Bette. "That Angelica's here, that she's okay. That you're okay."

Bette laughs shortly. "Tina doesn't care if I'm okay or not."

"She does, Bette."

There is a long pause, in which Helena hears Bette take in a breath, let it out, and suck in some air again. "I know. She's worried, I know. I'll call her. That's … best for Angelica."

"It's going to be okay," Helena says confidently, not at all sure that it's going to be okay.

Apparently Bette can tell that Helena's confidence is all a big Peabody act, because she laughs again. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Helena says. She can hear the edge of politeness in their voices, and for a second it's tempting to sink back into the status quo of their interactions over the past year and a half. Helena wants desperately to be the person she was two days ago, and facing off against Bette Porter again seems like a good enough way to start.

But she also remembers being eight years old and sitting on her bed with her hands tucked under her thighs, watched her mum put on a suit and some very sparkly jewelry and a pair of court shoes that matched her handbag. "Darling, I'm sorry to run, but I'm late," Mummy said, kissing her goodnight. "You know, dear girl, a job ends at five o'clock, but our work is never done."

Her mother is often right.

And so she rolls over, putting her arm around Bette, and tastes the sleepy scent of her hair.

end.