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my-meadowlark · 8 months

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Fic: Thermodynamics [Barbie/Gloria]

Title: Thermodynamics Fandom: Barbie (2023) Characters/Pairing: Barbie/Gloria Rating: T Word Count: 9,043 Summary:

Barbie has some serious trouble grasping the finer points of weather and humidity, which leads to her very first encounter with human illness. Gloria takes care of her, and some very confusing feelings accidentally come to the surface. Written for prompt #3 "Sickfic" of @tropetember

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Water is extremely complicated.

Barbie honestly doesn't think humans realize just how complicated it truly is. And she's not even just talking about its fluidity and how infuriatingly hard it can be to contain it once it's decided to go everywhere at once (she's working on her accuracy when eyeballing the volume of liquid she can pour into a glass). Oh, no. That's, like, beginner level water-handling. It's the way water affects... everything else that keeps tripping her up.

Sometimes there'll be a day when the heat is so oppressive Barbie feels like she's trying to breathe with plastic lungs. And Gloria will nod sagely and simply say "it's the humidity" right before suggesting she take a quick cool shower like that won't just add even more humidity to the mix. But it works, somehow, until it doesn't because she's out of the shower and her damp hair has gone from keeping her scalp cool to weighing her entire body down until she feels absolutely, indescribably gross.

"Yeah. It's the humidity," Sasha will say when Barbie mentions how she can't even tell where the dampness from the shower ends and her own sweat begins and are they sure she's not melting? It's the humidity but if you add more humidity by hanging a wet towel in front of the fan it helps. Yeah. Okay.

Eventually, by the end of her first Summer in the Real World, Barbie thinks she has somewhat grasped the basics of water when it comes to temperature. Water can cool you down if you drink it or pour it over yourself or blow air through it (the bowl of ice trick Sasha saw on TikTok worked even better than the wet towel one). But it will warm you up if it's naturally in the air (humidity is her least favorite word).

She can work with that.

"If you go out later you may want to wear a jacket," Gloria says over breakfast one late October morning, "it's a bit nippy outside."

Barbie likes the sound of that. Nippy. It sounds fun. Playful, even. She's nowhere near bored of the Real World yet, but she'll admit some things have become so routine by now she barely even notices them anymore, and that makes her a little sad. She misses the feeling of absolutely every experience being brand new and exciting. So, nippy weather, huh? Sounds like a good time to her!

As it turns out, she enjoys nippy. The cooler air feels so different on her skin. She gets goosebumps like when she takes too long drying off after a shower, but they're not exactly the same kind. She doesn't notice when she breathes anymore because she's been doing it for several months now, but she does notice when she breathes in the colder air. She feels it going all the way into her lungs. Through her trachea and into her bronchi and bronchioles and filling up her alveoli like tiny little balloons.

She loves Sasha's Bio textbook.

So, when a couple months later, she hears the words 'cold snap' while watching the weather report, Barbie is nothing short of delighted. Nippy was fun, so she's sure a snap can only be even better, right? A snap. Fun!

"Do you think we'll get any snow?" Sasha circles the coffee table for the third time, open backpack in her hand, like she's expecting whatever she can't find to magically appear if she looks at the exact same spot the correct number of times. "Like, not downtown obviously, but nearby? Hey Barbie, where'd you put my Chem book?"

"Oh, I left it on your desk. Thanks for letting me borrow it! I loved reading the little intro about water's specific heat capacity but I need way more information than that so I think I'll go to the library later." She feels like she's found the path to understanding water and its weird behaviors, and she can't wait to pay a visit to her favorite librarian. Sasha insists she should just Wikipedia stuff, but Barbie likes the face-to-face interaction and the fun of going from book to book like she's on a scavenger hunt.

"Okay, Nerd Barbie."

"Tone," Gloria warns, one finger pointing in Sasha's general direction in a slight sweeping motion that means she's not really in any trouble at all. You can tell a lot from the exact way Gloria points a finger at you, especially when you pay as much attention as Barbie does.

"Sorry," Sasha lies (Barbie can tell when that happens, too), already on her way to her bedroom, "but you gotta admit it is kinda nerdy."

Gloria chooses to ignore that particular comment and focus on the earlier part of the conversation instead. "I don't know about snow. Maybe. We got some nearby last year."

Barbie's been in the Real World for long enough to know even the things they do have back home, like snow, are completely different here. Because they're real. "Gloria? What does snow feel like?"

"It's like—" Gloria stops pouring coffee into her thermos to think for a moment. She can answer easy questions while doing other stuff, Barbie's found, but when it's a hard one, or when she really cares about giving a thoughtful answer, she has to fully focus on her thoughts. Watching it happen makes a very particular warmth start somewhere in the vicinity of where Barbie's heart is and then spread out towards her lungs and down to her lower abdomen where it pools like... like something both warm and fizzy, somehow. Like warm soda pop, but not nearly as disgusting as that sounds. She hasn't found an explanation to that particular phenomenon in any of the human biology books she's read so far.

"It's like a snow cone, but like, without the syrup obviously." Sasha's voice travels through the open door of her bedroom and snaps Barbie back to reality, pulling her focus away from the mysterious Gloria-related effervescence in her belly. "And it's cold. And wet. It doesn't look like it should get your clothes wet, but it totally does."

See? Water. Doing unexpected things once again, even in solid form.

"I'd love to see it. Do you think it'll happen soon?"

"Maybe, yeah! You heard the weather guy." Gloria grabs Barbie's house keys instead of her own car keys, like she does nearly every morning. And like nearly every morning, Barbie notices before Gloria does and picks up the forgotten car keys, jiggling them to bring Gloria's attention to her mistake. "Shoot, thank you, Barbie. Sasha! We're gonna be late!"

"And, you know," Gloria continues, her voice down to a conversational tone once again, "even if it doesn't snow right here, we can plan a weekend getaway some time. Do some sledding, maybe skiing or even snowb—"

"I vote Switzerland," Sasha interrupts, walking past her mother towards the front door, "for the chocolate. And the cheese. Wait, do you have a passport? Can you even get a passport?"

"Right," Gloria says, "let's aim for Big Bear Lake or even Tahoe this year. I don't think we're at the international travel level just yet."

Gloria winks at Barbie like she's in on some kind of joke. Like they've just told someone Barbie's spent most of her life in Australia and that's why she's not fully confident with American money yet, and it's funny because they both know that's not the reason but it's a completely harmless fib. Barbie has no idea why Gloria is winking right now (international travel does sound complicated, and Sasha brought up a valid point about passports, whatever those are) but she smiles anyway, the kind of smile that's so wide she can feel it on her cheeks and in the crinkle of her eyes. She may not know exactly what the joke is, but whatever it is is between her and Gloria, and that's good enough for her.

"See you at lunch time?" Gloria is already halfway through the front door when she asks, like Barbie hasn't had lunch with her every single day since she arrived in the Real World. She even has a favorite taco truck that stops near the Mattel headquarters every other day.

So Barbie just lets her smile answer for her.

Later, Barbie finds out the cold snap is not fun. At all. As it turns out, there is a drastic difference between nippy and cold (Sasha's insistence that it doesn't even get really cold in LA does not help Barbie feel any better about it), and Barbie is firmly against cold as a weather concept, thank you very much.

It's interesting at first. It's like nippy, but more. Sharper against her skin and in her lungs and on the tip of her nose. But soon enough it becomes uncomfortable. Just like the heat in the Summer, it seems to permeate her clothes and then her skin and all its layers until she feels like it's inside her and there's no getting rid of it. Gloria recommends a warm shower, which helps just like the cool ones in the Summer did. Barbie figures she can let her damp hair do what it did back then and become warmer with time, but Gloria already has the blow dryer in her hand when she steps out of the bathroom, and Barbie is more than happy to let her play with her hair for as long as Gloria wants.

On the second day of the cold snap, the weather guy informs there's a low-pressure system bringing in higher humidity, and Barbie breathes a sigh of relief. Humidity makes things hotter. It makes you sweat. If heat plus humidity equals being slowly cooked in your own juices, then cold plus humidity should equal something between pleasant and slightly nippy, right?

See, she's been reading about thermodynamics. It's all about equilibrium, as it turns out.

So you can imagine her surprise (and, frankly, outrage) when she goes out in a light cardigan and finds herself standing in what can only be described as an outdoors fridge. Ridiculous. It's ridiculous and wrong and downright unfair, because the air is cold and the humidity is in there and she's been reading those books that say the heat will go from the hotter substance into the cooler one until they reach thermodynamic equilibrium so why is the moisture not heating up the cold air? Why is the air somehow even colder than yesterday?

Barbie feels her eyes sting with tears and she's not sure if they're from the sheer frustration of feeling like the laws of Physics keep tricking her, or from the cold air hitting her eyeballs. She figures it's a combination of both of those things.

All she wants is to go back into the warmth of their home, but it feels like letting the humidity win, somehow. Like going back inside is admitting defeat. And Barbara Millicent Handler may be many things (she's still figuring out which things she is, as a matter of fact) but she's absolutely not the kind of woman who gets defeated by moisture, of all things.

No way.

So, frown in place and arms tightly wrapped around herself and her puny cardigan, she marches towards the library determined to figure out this humidity nonsense before lunchtime. It can't be this hard. Everyone else seems to get it. There has to be something she's missing.

Her favorite librarian is helpful as always, even offering Barbie a cup of hot cocoa from the coffee machine when she notices the way her teeth chatter as she asks for another book on thermodynamics.

"Is there anything in particular you want to research?" She asks, and is kind enough not to mention the way Barbie's eyes water all over again when her nearly numb fingers wrap around the warm paper cup. "We may have better luck finding exactly what you're looking for if we narrow the field a bit more."

Fifteen minutes later, Barbie's sitting at her usual table with a book about weather that has her feeling so giddy she's no longer thinking about the cold. Well, she's thinking about cold as a concept. Just not about how cold she was just a moment ago. Sasha can insist all she wants: there's no way her beloved Wikipedia would've provided not only the perfect book, but also the perfect hot beverage.

Once she's finished her cocoa, Barbie opens the book and immediately realizes she's found a whole area of knowledge she didn't even know existed. Weather seems simple enough on the surface, but the more she reads, the more she realizes just how much there is to learn about it. By page four she's feeling so full of excitement about all the things she's about to discover that she actually giggles out loud. By page ten, she's wondering why the weather segment is always so short when there's so much to talk about.

"Barbara?" The librarian's soft voice pulls Barbie's attention from a two-page illustrated guide to cloud shapes. She's got to tell Gloria about lenticular clouds. "I hate to interrupt your reading, but you always leave at eleven, so—"

"Oh?" Eleven. Gloria. Lunch. "Oh! Thank you so much, Evelyn."

She rushes out of the library with the reassurance that Evelyn will make sure nobody checks out the book before tomorrow and makes it to the bus stop with six minutes to spare (running helps with the cold, she finds) according to the clock on her phone. And she has only been waiting for a minute when she feels a drop of water on the very cold tip of her nose.

"Oh, no."

It doesn't rain often in Los Angeles, but she's already experienced a couple of rainy days and she can recognize the first sign. Rain is a lot like crying, in that you get one drop first and then a whole bunch of them with no warning at all.

By the time the bus stops in front of her, she feels like she's spent the last five minutes taking a cold shower with her clothes on.

The bus ride to the Mattel headquarters is not very long, but when she gets off at her stop Barbie feels like even her bones are soaked through. Her clothes stick to her skin, cold and heavy and wet, and (thermodynamic equilibrium!) seem to be sapping every last kilojoule of body heat out of her. She feels like there isn't an amount of hot cocoa in the world that could possibly warm her back up.

"Barbie! Oh, honey, didn't you bring— I should've told you to grab an umbrella. Why aren't you wearing your coat?" Gloria is waiting at the bus stop like always, dry under her umbrella and toasty warm inside her fleece-lined rain coat. "Why aren't you wearing your boots!?" Gloria looks at Barbie's soaked tennis shoes like the sight of wet feet is something out of her wildest nightmares.

"I just—" Barbie feels her chin tremble. It's half shivers and half wanting to cry from just how uncomfortable she feels standing in the cold (at least Gloria's pulled her under her umbrella so she's not getting rained on anymore) in soaking wet clothes. And shoes. And socks. "I just thought—" Barbie shakes her head just as the first tear falls, "I just don't get humidity, okay!?"

"Humidit—?" Gloria shakes her head slightly, like she's decided halfway through her question that she's not actually going to focus on that right now. "Oh, look at you," Gloria's fingers feel soft and warm against her skin when she gently brushes strands of wet blond hair away from her forehead, "why didn't you go back inside when you saw it was raining?"

Barbie shrugs and sniffles slightly. Sometimes being a real person is a bit much for her. There are too many things to feel all at once. And she was already close to the point of being overwhelmed by all the terrible feelings from before — cold and uncomfortable and wet and sad and confused and frustrated — but now there are all these new things added to the mix, and she doesn't even have a name for most of them. The feeling of being very close to someone under an umbrella while it rains. Is there a name for that feeling? The feeling when someone's voice is so soothing it feels like you're being wrapped up in the softest blanket in the world. The feeling when being near someone makes all the bad feelings fade into the background until they barely register anymore.

The feeling of someone catching one of your tears with the pad of her thumb and then pressing her warm palm against your cheek. Is there a name for that? Because it spreads from the point of contact between Gloria's hand and her face, filling her up with whatever the feeling is called until there's simply no room for cold anymore and all she can feel is that.

"I didn't want to miss lunch," she finally says, leaning into Gloria's touch and adding another feeling to the mix when Gloria smiles.

And for a handful of heartbeats they just stand there, Gloria's hand on her cheek, thumb brushing softly against her skin, like they're both a bit too busy feeling to do anything else.

"Let's get you home," Gloria finally says. She moves her hand away from Barbie's cheek and holds the umbrella in her direction. "Here, hold this for me for a second." And when Barbie does, Gloria quickly unbuttons her raincoat and slides it off to wrap it around Barbie's shoulders instead. "Better?"

Barbie nods. The fleece lining is warm from being wrapped around Gloria and it smells faintly of her perfume, and "home" is the closest she can get to finding a name for the feeling in her chest.

"Come on," Gloria lets Barbie hold the umbrella and loops one arm through Barbie's so they can walk close together towards the car, "I don't want you to get sick."

—-

Gloria practically shoves her into the hot shower the second they walk through the door. And if her brain felt even just a bit less foggy, Barbie would've had a thought or two about one kind of water being the cure for another kind of water, but she can't focus on that right now. She's never felt worse in all her months as a human woman. She's cold even if her skin gets warmed up by the hot water. She keeps shivering but she can feel herself sweat. She keeps sneezing, and every sneeze makes her head hurt.

"This is the worst day ever." Barbie pouts, sitting on the couch with a flannel blanket wrapped tightly around her body. The words scratch against her throat as they come out in the most annoying way.

"I know," Gloria says, tone sympathetic from the kitchen area, "I'm sorry, honey."

They've been home for a few hours now — Gloria decided Barbie's first brush with sickness was more important than the rest of her work day, and Mattel agreed — and Barbie keeps feeling steadily worse with every passing minute. At first she was just cold and wet. Now she feels like she's been run over by a cold, wet truck.

"Here," Gloria hands her a bowl of hot chicken soup and sits next to her, "it'll make you feel better. I promise."

It doesn't work right away, but it's delicious and it soothes her throat as it goes down so Barbie can't complain at all.

"How are your feet?" Gloria slips one hand under the blanket to feel around for one of Barbie's feet, both of them safely wrapped in the warmest, fluffiest socks she's ever worn. Barbie doesn't think she's ever seen Gloria look as horrified as she did when she saw Barbie's drenched socks before.

"Warm," Barbie offers, even if she's sure Gloria can tell when she lightly squeezes one of them.

"Good. That's good." Gloria lets go of her foot and fixes the blanket, tightly tucking it under Barbie's legs. "That's good," she repeats, softer this time, like she's talking to herself. She doesn't speak again until Barbie's left the nearly empty bowl on the coffee table.

"I'm sorry you're not feeling well." In her time in the Real World, Barbie's learned people often say things like 'I'm sorry' without really meaning them. Just because it's polite. But she can tell Gloria means it in the most literal, true sense of the words. She can see the sorrow in dark brown eyes, in the worry lines on her face, in the way she moves around Barbie, like she used to be made of the most delicate porcelain instead of plastic. "I wish I had a magic cure."

Barbie can tell she means that, too.

What Barbie can't do is understand why the thought of Gloria snapping her fingers and making it all go back to normal doesn't sound nearly as appealing as it probably should. She wouldn't miss the shivers or the sneezing, but she thinks she'd miss the way Gloria's stayed close all afternoon, making sure she's okay.

"You should go to bed. Chicken soup and rest is the best remedy for the sniffles."

Barbie nods. She's not exactly tired, but she doesn't feel like being awake either. Being sick, unsurprisingly, is no fun at all.

"Shouldn't Sasha be home already?" Barbie stands up from the couch, bringing the blanket along like a long, fluffy dress. "It's Wednesday so she doesn't have practice."

Gloria smiles the specific smile she reserves for moments when Barbie remembers details about her or Sasha. She's noticed.

"She's staying over at Mei's to finish a project. She asked for permission in the car this morning." Gloria watches Barbie take the first few steps away from the couch like she's not sure she'll manage without falling over, and breathes a sigh that sounds a lot like relief when Barbie manages to stay upright. "I'm here if you need me, okay?"

Barbie smiles, because she already knows.

—-

"Hey." Gloria's voice is barely above a whisper. Barbie's bedroom is dark except for the warm light sneaking in from the hallway through the halfway open door. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

Barbie has never had as much trouble figuring out whether she's awake or still fast asleep as she does right now, with Gloria sitting on the edge of her bed and tucking Barbie's hair behind her ear.

"How are you feeling?"

Barbie wants to answer. She wants to say she's not sure, because she isn't even sure this is really real or just a warm, hazy dream. But Gloria's fingertips brush against Barbie's warm skin as she moves her hand from Barbie's ear to her temple, and then Gloria's slightly cooler palm presses against Barbie's forehead, and all she can do is breathe.

"Oh, that's too warm." Gloria sighs, and Barbie feels the soft whoosh of the air leaving Gloria's lungs and hitting her skin as Gloria leans in to press her lips against her forehead.

It's not a kiss. It's just a press. The softest ghost of a touch. And Barbie realizes in that very moment that she's forgotten how to breathe, but her heart seems to have decided to beat twice as fast to make up for it so she figures she'll be fine.

Gloria remains so close when she pulls away that Barbie can't really tell if she's hearing her or just feeling the words against her skin when she speaks again. "Family trick. You can tell if there's a fever easier with your lips than with your hand."

Barbie nods, maybe a little dumbly. She's never had a fever, but she knows the concept of it. And she definitely feels like her body temperature is much higher than just a few seconds ago.

"Can you sit up?" Gloria turns towards the side table while Barbie rearranges herself against the headboard. The light from the hallway is enough for Barbie to make out a water bottle and a glass, and she watches with fascination as Gloria carefully pours some water and then shakes a little packet of something and adds its contents to the glass. "Here. Take this. If the fever hasn't budged by tomorrow we'll call the doctor, okay?"

Barbie nods again. She's never tried drinking water in bed — that seems, frankly, like the sort of advanced fluid dynamics she should not be trusted with just yet — but Gloria seems very sure of this whole process and Barbie doesn't think she can speak right now, let alone argue with Gloria's instructions.

As it turns out, she shouldn't have worried at all. Because Gloria's hands don't leave hers when she hands Barbie the glass. One warm hand remains covering Barbie's, steadying her fingers around the cool glass, and the other rests gently on the back of her head. It feels like a reminder that Gloria will catch her if she falls.

"I'm not gonna lie to you, it doesn't taste good at all, but I don't think this is the time to learn how to swallow pills," Gloria says, and Barbie looks into the glass even if she can't really see what the liquid looks like with such little light. She can hear it fizzling, louder and faster than any soda she's tried so far (and she's tried a few). It smells oddly... synthetic. Like it doesn't belong in the Real World. "It'll make you feel better. I promise."

It tastes even worse than she imagined. It tastes like nothing she's ever tasted in her short human life. It tastes like something not meant to go inside or even near a human body at all. It tastes so bad she lets out a horrified gasp at the end because she's honestly a bit surprised the awful taste didn't kill her.

"That was—" Barbie struggles to form the words around the lingering taste coating her tongue.

"I know." There's the slightest bit of amusement in Gloria's voice, even if she still mostly sounds concerned. "I know, honey, I'm sorry. Here, have some water. Wash off the taste."

Water only really helps a little bit. The aftertaste remains, gross and bitter and metallic— no. Not metallic. Plasticky. She wonders if her face will ever go back to normal again or it will simply remain in a slight grimace forever.

Barbie rests against her pillow once again with a sigh. She's oddly tired but in a nebulous sort of way, not in the same way she's tired after a long day or after a trip to the mall with Sasha.

"I hate being sick," she says, bottom lip jutting out in a slight pout. She hates that it makes everything she's slowly gotten used to about being human feel just off enough to keep her constantly uncomfortable. She hates that her thoughts feel fuzzy (not in a good way) and slow. She hates everything about it.

"That's a very human emotion, if it helps you feel better at all."

Barbie's never been to the desert. She doesn't know what a glass of water may feel like under those circumstances. But she thinks it must feel similar to hearing Gloria's soft voice right now. Like the one thing that feels good when everything else sucks.

"You help me feel better."

It's not the first time she's said something similar to Gloria. Barbie appreciates everything Gloria's done for her since coming to live in the Real World, and she makes sure to be very vocal with that appreciation. But it feels a little different when she says it right now. Like there's something extra weighing down the words.

"Yeah?" Gloria smiles, Barbie thinks, but there's not enough light to be sure. She thinks she hears it in her voice anyway.

Barbie nods and reaches for Gloria's hand. It's warm against her own even if it felt cool against her forehead before, and Barbie briefly wonders whether Gloria's lips would feel different against her hand, too. What they'd feel against her—

"That's good," Gloria says, soft and quiet like a secret, fingers squeezing Barbie's, "I want you to feel good."

And it feels like there's a weight to Gloria's words, too. It feels like the air around them is thick with things they both mean but neither say. And then Gloria leans in and Barbie thinks maybe she's going to check her temperature with her lips again, or maybe she's going to do something else entirely, and maybe Barbie's human body picks up on things her brain can't quite grasp just yet because she feels herself... react. Her skin tingles and her stomach flip-flops and her lips part because her breaths are just a little bit shallower and her heart beats just a little bit faster and she's fairly sure her entire nervous system has been rerouted to her hand and her fingers as they slot in the spaces between Gloria's and whatever Gloria is going to do Barbie just knows she wants it to happen, and then—

Nothing.

Nothing happens.

Gloria sits up straight once again and Barbie can tell what she feels is loss even if she still doesn't know what was going to happen.

"You should go back to sleep," Gloria says, a little breathless, fingers still tangled with Barbie's, "get some rest."

But Gloria doesn't stand up or let go of Barbie's hand, and honestly the thought of that happening — the thought of Gloria leaving her right now — makes something twist uncomfortably in Barbie's chest, so she decides to say something before Gloria can change her mind.

"Can you stay with me?"

Gloria doesn't answer right away. Her thumb rubs gently against Barbie's knuckles, and the air fills up with unsaid things once again, only this time it's uncomfortable and a little oppressive. It reminds Barbie of the humidity on hot summer days.

"I don't—"

"You don't have to." Barbie quickly clarifies, because something about this situation has clearly made Gloria uncomfortable, and that's the last thing Barbie wants. "Of course you don't have to, I'm sorry." But when she lets go and pulls her hand away, Gloria's hand chases it and holds it once again.

"It's not— that."

Is this conversation particularly cryptic and heavy on subtext, or is it normal and Barbie's cold-impaired brain is just a bit too slow to follow it like it normally would?

"I want to stay with you. I just wonder—" Barbie hears a sigh, and it's not an exasperated one or a tired one or even a sad one. It's a different kind of sigh. Barbie doesn't think she's ever heard Gloria let out that kind of sigh before. "Because you don't have all the context for this stuff, right?"

Barbie feels herself nod even if she honestly, truly has no idea what Gloria is even referring to. Maybe that's the lack of context she means.

"So I'm not sure if we're looking at things the same way or if you even— if you know what's happening sometimes. You know?"

Barbie is nearly sure this has something to do with before. With the moment Gloria leaned in and something almost happened but didn't.

"The last thing I want to do is hurt you. And if I cross a line and then you didn't want to or— God, or you didn't even know there was a line, I just—" Gloria shakes her head and squeezes Barbie's fingers for just a second, and Barbie still doesn't know exactly what they're talking about but she knows she wants Gloria to not be upset.

"I trust you."

Barbie's words are soft and quiet but there's nothing unsure or tentative about them and she thinks maybe that's why Gloria seems to snap out of her previous thoughts as quickly as she does.

"What? What do you—?"

"I trust you," she says again, "so I'm not worried."

It's not that simple, she knows. She knows almost nothing in the Real World is ever simple or easy, and especially not things involving feelings and worries and potential hurt. But she thinks maybe knowing Barbie feels like she's in excellent hands, like she has nothing to worry about as long as Gloria is with her, will help. Maybe it can be enough for now.

And it looks like it may be, for a while. Gloria doesn't speak for a few moments, and the silence that settles around them is comfortable and light to the point where Barbie feels herself relax into the pillows as her body grows heavier with sleep. She's tired but she's not as achy anymore, and the room is mostly dark and her hand is warm and safe in Gloria's. It would be so easy to just fall asleep.

"I just—" Gloria's voice is softer than before. So soft, actually, that Barbie doesn't feel like she's expected to make an effort to stay awake. "I don't want to ruin things. I don't want this to change."

Barbie isn't sure Gloria is actually talking to her. She sounds a bit like she's talking to herself, like when she's going through the shopping list in her head to make sure it's all in there before she leaves the house. But Barbie feels like maybe this is a rare moment where she knows something Gloria doesn't. Or, more accurately, she knows something Gloria knows, but isn't thinking about right now.

"But that's life," Barbie says, and even she can tell her words sound a bit muffled by sleep, "it's all change."

Her eyelids are so heavy. The room is mostly dark anyway, so she can't see Gloria but she hears a huff of something that sounds almost like laughter, but not quite.

"You were right, you know," Gloria whispers, like it's a secret, "it is terrifying."

It could be the disgusting powder in the water from before muddling her thoughts. It could be the fever, or the cold, or really just being so close to asleep that her brain isn't working right. But Barbie feels like it's been years and decades and centuries since she was sitting on that patch of plastic grass, fighting against the notion of change and imperfection and the unknown.

She was right, like Gloria says, in some ways. The cold is awful. She could do without humidity as a concept. Being sick? She would not recommend it. Pockets weren't really a thing in Barbieland but they're a basic necessity in the Real World and there seems to be a global plot to not put any in clothes marketed towards women. And you do not want to know what happens to milk when you forget it on the counter overnight in the Summer.

But now she knows what it feels like to drink a glass of water when you wake up parched in the middle of the night. She knows what it feels like to bite into a blueberry muffin and get that perfect spot of soft, warm, blueberry-infused cake. She knows the feeling of freshly washed sheets against her skin after a long day. She knows the smell of Gloria's hair when it's late at night and they stay up too late watching old films Barbie's never even heard of but Gloria insists they are a 'must watch' but then she falls asleep halfway through and Barbie pays more attention to the weight of Gloria's head on her shoulder than whatever cinematic masterpiece is playing in front of her.

"Yeah," she finally agrees, because she'd be lying if she said she's not scared at all about all the bad feelings she's sure she'll inevitably discover in her years as a human woman, "but it's worth it."

She thinks she sees Gloria nod right before she finally gives in and closes her eyes. A little later, she thinks she feels Gloria's lips against her temple once again, but she's nearly sure it was the start of a dream.

—-

Barbie's cold lasts less than twenty-four hours.

She's fine the next morning. A little groggy from sleeping twelve hours straight, but all her body parts feel fine and free from aches, there isn't a shiver in sight, and if Gloria hadn't made her promise she'd stay in the house just to make sure she's fully recovered, she would have happily taken the bus and joined her for lunch.

It's one of the most boring days she remembers, but she's fine.

She's fine the day after that, too, when she returns to the library and to her Weather Encyclopedia. She's fine when the cold snap officially ends and the weather goes back to a very boring yet pleasant "mild". She's fine! She's fine.

It's just—

Sometimes she thinks about those few hours between getting home soaking wet and miserable after her mishap in the rain and feeling (or imagining?) Gloria's lips against her temple. And the memories are just hazy enough that she wouldn't be able to say what exactly she and Gloria said, or what she did beyond sleeping and drinking the most vile — yet effective — medicine in the world, but the feelings.

The feelings are so clear in her mind she feels like her brain is taunting her by interrupting her normal thoughts with flashes of Gloria's hand around hers and Gloria's lips against her skin and a moment when Gloria leaned in and then nothing happened. And that moment haunts her in a way that has her unable to fully focus on things like dew point and wet bulb temperature and tsunamis. Her brain keeps circling back to it over and over and over again and she keeps hearing Gloria's words — words about missing context and lines that may or may not exist — and it's driving her a little insane.

She could ask Evelyn, of course. The librarian is so smart, Barbie's sure she could explain or at least point her in the direction of the right book to research it, but it feels... it feels...

It feels hers. Theirs, maybe. Hers and Gloria's. It feels like something she doesn't want to share with anyone else. And a few times she considers asking Gloria herself. Asking her for context or an explanation or even just asking her if she's aware that something almost happened, too. But it's scary in a way she can't exactly pinpoint, and though so far all the risks she's taken since this whole humanity adventure started have worked out for her, there's something about this particular one that gives her pause.

So she doesn't ask. And she's fine. Kind of. Mostly.

Until she suddenly has an epiphany. She's watching daytime television, which may not be the pinnacle of cinematic arts but has its charm. Soap operas feel like crash courses in human emotions, and Barbie likes to indulge from time to time. And she's doing just that when she witnesses a scene that makes her understand why light bulbs are used as metaphors for having ideas. Because she sees a very beautiful woman about to die in a hospital bed, and she sees the Ken-like man standing by her with tastefully glistening eyes, and she sees him confess his secret love for her. And it all makes sense.

This isn't her first 'deathbed confessions' scene, but she hadn't made the connection until now: people say things when other people are dying. Things they may not say when nobody is about to die. And it doesn't even have to be something as drastic as dying, actually. When she was sick, Gloria talked about lines and context, about changes and being terrified. Barbie didn't have to ask, Gloria just talked about them on her own.

Clearly, the way to get the answers she desperately needs is to recreate the exact situation once again. It's a foolproof plan.

So she... lies.

Okay, calling it a lie may be a bit of an exaggeration. It's playing pretend. A fib, at most. It's nothing, in the grand scheme of things. She feels suitably guilty, if that helps her case at all. And when she calls Gloria to tell her she won't be joining her for lunch because she has a bit of a cold, she makes sure Gloria understands it's nothing serious and she doesn't need to take the afternoon off.

She thinks that's just about as ethically sound as she can make this whole plan.

"Hey," Gloria says when she walks into Barbie's room, quiet and soft like last time, "how are you feeling?"

And then Gloria does it again. She presses her palm against Barbie's forehead, and Barbie's eyes flutter closed because when you don't actually have a cold everything feels a little crisper and sharper than when you do.

"I don't think you have a fever. You don't feel too warm."

Barbie's not proud of herself for what she does next. She just wants to make that clear. She's not proud at all but she does it anyway because there are some weaknesses that come with being a human, and this is clearly hers.

"Are you sure?" Did she just infuse her voice with just a hint of a pained tone? Perhaps.

"Well, I don't know," Gloria concedes, and then she leans in and presses her lips against Barbie's forehead and her hair smells like her conditioner but not exactly like it does when it's in the bottle (Barbie's smelled it). It's an entirely different, unique smell that's a mixture of conditioner and Gloria filling Barbie's lungs, and she decides a fib can be worth it sometimes.

"No fever." Barbie can hear the smile in Gloria's voice. "Looks like you're already on the mend. I'll make you some soup for dinner and you'll be just fine in the morning."

And Gloria is already turning to walk out of the room, clearly relieved and happy to see Barbie's sickness was nothing serious. And it's not that Barbie wants her to worry. She doesn't. Not at all. She just feels like she's missing her chance to finally know the answers to all the questions in her head.

"Wait! Wait, I—" She what? She's not going to fake a serious illness, that would be just plain mean. But she needs Gloria to stay. "I think you need to double check."

Barbie sees the second Gloria figures it out, because her entire stance changes. She flicks the light on and looks at Barbie with a slightly raised eyebrow that reminds her of the look she gives Sasha when she says there is no homework on a Friday afternoon.

"Are you faking a cold?"

Barbie feels her blood immediately rush to her cheeks. They feel so warm she's sure Gloria would believe she has a fever if she checked right now. And she's bracing herself for a lecture like the ones Sasha gets when she's far from honest about her school obligations, but Gloria sighs and comes closer instead.

"Why are you faking a cold?" Gloria sits on the edge of the bed, close to Barbie, both hands resting on her lap.

Barbie shrugs. This is a new feeling, actually. She doesn't think she's ever felt it, but it's one of those she's heard about enough to be able to name it. She thinks it's shame. It makes her eyes prickle with tears that fall as soon as she blinks twice.

"Hey. Honey, I'm not mad. Please don't—" Gloria brushes tears away with her thumbs and Barbie doesn't know what she's feeling anymore. Shame and something else, something warm, something big. Shame and too many things at the same time. "What is it?"

"I just—" Barbie's chin trembles, and she's trying not to let this turn into actual crying because she's really not very good at sobbing and talking at the same time, but she's a bit overwhelmed by it all. By her feelings and the things she doesn't know and doesn't even know how to ask about. "I just wanted you to talk to me again."

"But we talk all the time," Gloria says, brows furrowed even if her voice remains gentle, "like, literally all the time I'm not at work."

Barbie shakes her head. "Not like that. Not like— like the other night. When I had the cold."

"I don't know—"

"When you said I didn't have the context." Barbie watches as realization washes over Gloria. As brown eyes round and cheeks darken and she stands a little straighter. "When you said there were lines. That you might cross."

Gloria nods, slowly. Barbie lets the silence settle between them for a few moments, because she figures maybe Gloria needs some time to figure out what to say. But she doesn't. And Barbie's not about to let this conversation end here so she can go back to thinking about it constantly for another week, so she decides to press on herself.

"You leaned in, and then nothing happened." The moment is so vivid in her mind she doesn't feel the need to clarify further. Surely Gloria knows exactly what she's talking about. "Was that a line you didn't cross?"

"Yeah, I—" Gloria looks down at her hands, and then at the coffee table, and Barbie wonders if she's just doing whatever she can to avoid looking at her, "I'd say that's right."

Barbie sighs, relieved to finally have at least one answer. That moment did happen, and it was significant, and it wasn't just her own inexperienced human brain making it bigger than it actually was.

"What was the context?"

"What?"

"The context," Barbie folds her legs under the covers and wraps her arms around her knees, settling in for what she hopes will be an enlightening lesson, "you said I don't have all the context, so I want to know what it is. What the line was and why you didn't cross it. You know. Context."

"Well, I just—" Gloria looks at one of the flowers on Barbie's bedding, and then at her left foot, and at one of the pictures on Barbie's wall, and the more she looks away the more flushed her cheeks look. "There was— I mean I—" Eventually after a few more failed attempts to get out a full sentence, Gloria shakes her head and looks at Barbie once again. "You can't just ask that. I can't just answer that. That's not—"

"See? That's why I had to fake a cold!" Barbie just cannot believe Gloria would simply refuse to answer a question. She doesn't think that's ever happened before. And it really only serves to fuel her belief that whatever it was had a lot to do with her being sick and a milder version of deathbed confessions. "You talked about it then, kind of, so why won't you just tell me now?"

"Because!"

"That's not a real answer!"

"Well, it's the only answer I have!"

Barbie could just cry again from the sheer frustration of knowing there's this apparently essential bit of knowledge she doesn't have and is also not allowed to learn. It's like the freaking humidity all over again. Obvious for everyone except for her. Because she doesn't have the context. And for the first time since she met her, Gloria is not willing to help.

She's watched enough movies (and soap opera episodes) by now to know she probably should say something right now. It's an emotionally charged moment. An argument. She's angry at Gloria for the first time in her life. But she can't come up with anything to say, so instead Barbie shifts under the covers and slips out of her bed. Gloria can stay seated on it for as long as she wants. She just needs to not be with her right now.

But when she's walking around the bed to leave the room, she feels Gloria's fingers wrapping around her wrist. Lightly. Light enough that Barbie could easily keep walking and they would do nothing to stop her. The touch feels like being asked to stay.

"Wait," Gloria finally says when Barbie stops walking, and her voice sounds quiet and almost small and Barbie feels the anger melting away, "I'm sorry."

Barbie has already forgiven Gloria by the time she looks at her. Because she knows she really is sorry, and she knows she never wants to hurt her. Because Gloria's fingers are so soft and warm around her wrist, and there's something in Gloria's eyes that feels nearly as big as the feeling that lodges itself between her ribcage and her heart when she thinks about whatever almost happened when Gloria leaned in.

"I'll tell you. I just need to—" Gloria stands up without letting go of Barbie's wrist, and she reaches for the light switch to make the room mostly dark once again. "It's easier like this."

Barbie nods. Maybe it wasn't her illness making Gloria want to open up. Maybe it was just the lack of light.

"There was a line." Gloria's thumb presses against Barbie's pulse and Barbie doesn't tell her she's read you're not supposed to take someone's pulse with your thumb because you'll feel your own pulse instead. She just stays quiet and imagines the sound of both of their heartbeats at the same time. "When I leaned in." Gloria moves her hand, thumb sliding from Barbie's wrist to her palm, and Barbie's fingers wrap around Gloria's almost on instinct. "And what I nearly did— what I wanted to do," Gloria swallows and squeezes Barbie's fingers like she's keeping herself from running away, "was kiss you."

"Oh."

Barbie knows what a kiss is. She's never experienced a kiss — not a real kiss — but she knows what they are. And she wants one. It surprises even herself because if she's perfectly honest she doesn't know exactly what a kiss entails beyond lips touching lips (which really doesn't sound appealing at all out of context) but right now she wants Gloria to kiss her more than she's ever wanted anything in her life. It's a want that comes from somewhere she doesn't control, somewhere that's definitely not her brain because there's nothing rational about what she's feeling right now. All she knows is she wants the kiss that nearly happened that other night.

"I'm sorry if you—"

"Kiss me now."

"What?"

Barbie takes one step forward, closer to Gloria, and she feels like maybe she's stepped over one of those invisible lines herself. Because they've been physically close a million times before. They've hugged and held hands and fell asleep on each other's shoulders while watching movies. But this feels different. This jump-starts something, makes her feel like one of those magic balls that make your hair stand up when you touch them, gives name to a bunch of different feelings she hadn't been able to categorize before.

"Please," Barbie says, and she's so close now she can feel Gloria's breath against her lips, "kiss me now."

Gloria's lips feel soft and gentle and real. Barbie doesn't think she's ever felt anything as real as a kiss. It's short but it lingers, and when Barbie thinks it's over Gloria presses another, quicker, softer kiss to her lips that makes Barbie smile around a sigh.

"Good?" Gloria asks, still so close and so warm and making Barbie feel all kinds of things she now thinks are different flavors of want.

"Mhmm," Barbie manages, licking her lips and feeling a sudden urge to do the same to Gloria's, "again?"

She feels Gloria's silent chuckle against her skin just before she feels Gloria's lips again. And this time it lasts longer. Barbie's free hand moves to rest on Gloria's waist, to keep her close, and Gloria's lips part to suck on her bottom lip as Gloria's fingers slide into Barbie's hair, and Barbie feels like her world has changed completely once again and there's no going back from this.

She doesn't ever want to go back from this.

"Still good?" Gloria's whispered words come out muffled against Barbie's lips, and all Barbie can manage is an affirmative (she hopes) sound as she chases Gloria's mouth to kiss her once again, bolder this time, tongue nudging Gloria's lips apart and then sliding inside her mouth and feeling a new wave of want build up low in her belly at the sound of Gloria's moan.

They kiss for a long time. Barbie doesn't know how much time passes. She knows they go back to the bed eventually, sitting first and then Gloria is on her back and Barbie is on top of her and their bodies are pressed together, legs tangled and hands exploring warm skin under a work blouse and a sleep shirt and Barbie can't remember ever pondering the actual meaning of life, but she's pretty sure this is it.

Hours or days or weeks (under an hour, realistically) later, their kisses become less hurried. Less hungry. There's less urgency and more warmth, and they're back to just soft lips meeting soft lips until they're both smiling a bit too much to go on.

"Are you okay?" Gloria reaches up and tucks a wisp of blond hair behind Barbie's ear, her other hand still busy under Barbie's night shirt as her fingertips slowly trace the line of Barbie's spine.

"Yeah," Barbie's voice comes out low and breaks halfway through the word, and it makes her smile even more. "I'm very okay."

"We'll have to talk about all this," Gloria says, thumb brushing against Barbie's tingling bottom lip, "about—"

"The context?" Barbie offers right before she presses a kiss to the pad of Gloria's thumb. She's not sure whether Gloria laughs at the kiss or at Barbie's suggestion, and she's not sure she cares.

"Yeah. The context. We'll have to talk about that."

Barbie nods. She has a feeling kisses are like water, in that they're seemingly straightforward but there's a lot going on under the surface. She wonders, briefly, if there's an encyclopedia of kisses at the library, but then decides she'd rather learn from Gloria than read about it anyway.

"Will I have to fake a cold again so you'll talk to me about it?" She teases, and she feels Gloria's laughter under the hand she has pressed against Gloria's ribcage.

"No more faking, please."

Barbie nods and kisses her again. Just because there's nothing less fake than that.

#glorbie #barbie 2023 #barbie fic #barbie x gloria #femslash #fanfic #tropetember #my fic

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