Freja and Jeanie Ch. 04

"Yeah," Jeanie sighed. "And as if things couldn't go any worse, they did. These guys were even meaner than the other dickheads. They criticized us immediately for wasting their time and not having an appointment and just insisting we be seen for our amazing opportunity. If they were that busy, they didn't have to see us at all, right?"

Mike and Karen both nodded, still listening intently. Alexa squeezed Freja's hand, feeling her friend getting angry as she listened to her wife relay the events of the previous day.

Jeanie began to blush as she talked, remembering some awful. "So after we tried to explain, we thought maybe getting interactive would help, and allowed one of the suits to apply it to my face. He tickled my nose with the brush and I... I sneezed, blasting him right in the face with almost half of our supply. He went into anthropomorphic shock. That set off a lot of panic in the board room, best believe it. One of the guys was screaming like it was a terrorist attack. I think they had to put an oxygen mask on the guy who inhaled the makeup. He's... probably also blind, too."

"Note to self, make sure makeup has labeling about being a breathing hazard if snuffed in large quantities," Karen said dryly, resting her chin on her hand and looking at the two girls steadily. Mike assured the girls that the makeup was safe, provided one did not inhale it in toxic amounts, but that was true of any makeup that wasn't organic. And kinetic makeup, by definition, was not organic.

The second round of aperitifs arrived, several of them, since Karen had to keep her husband, son, and baby sister well-fed. While they tucked in, Jeanie continued explaining the fiasco.

"So between all the cursing and the shouting and the medics running around, Fre'n'I made a hasty exit before security decided we needed to be probed. We'd already been through that once since we arrived.

"I'm sorry, Jeanie," Karen said with genuine sympathy, while Alexa put her arm around Freja and gently pressed her forehead into her best friend's temple, caressing her shoulder at the same time. "I'll be blunt; things obviously did not go your way, because that product really should have sold itself, with some proper planning."

Jeanie smiled wanly. "Don't s'pose you two'd care to invest in the kinetic makeup industry, would you?"

Karen almost snorted. "Fat chance that you two ding-dongs would ever see a penny of mine."

"Ow," the younger woman said, looking hurt. "Are we that bad?"

"You're menaces, in fact," Mike pointed out. If he was chiming in, it must be true. He was normally very jovial and full of jokes, but Jeanie doubted this was one of those times, so this was serious. "And no, Karen and I did not come down to get our finances tied up with yours. But having said that, we are absolutely determined to see this plan of yours succeed, and we will help however we can. This is still your caper, after all. We'll help you succeed, but we won't do it for you."

"Can't believe how nice you guys're bein' about this," Jeanie sighed as she noshed on a cheese plate. "We really thought you were gonna mop the floor with us. We wouldn't blame you. We've been dumb, even by my standards."

"The important thing is to be allowed to learn from your dumb moments, Jeanie, not for everyone else to look forward to punishing you," Karen said simply. "There are people out there for whom punishment is the most important thing, even if it's themselves who must be at fault. The need for repudiation and punishment is so strong in them. Do not torture yourselves when consequences are usually enough as is."

"I didn't follow all of that, but thanks," Jeanie allowed. "I just... I feel like I could cry for a whole year, y'know?"

The bronze-haired woman smiled. "Cry as much as you need to, my dear, but also try to get some sleep. We can't have that pretty face all stressed out and full of worry lines in the days to come, can we?"

The topic was finally diverted away from the girls' folly, just as dinner arrived. The women had all opted for some form of seafood, while Mike and Alex powered their way through enormous, aged porterhouse steaks. They were laughing and listening to Valentina tell them all about shenanigans the Blackwell Manor staff had been getting up to. It felt good for Freja and Jeanie to take their minds off their troubles for a while. They may have had no idea yet how their problem would be solved, but they would simply have to trust to it for now.

Before long, their desserts were served, with Freja avoiding the bananas Foster, just in case. Mike ordered their final drinks.

"Four bottles of the Krug, please," the huge man said to the waiter. Mike was almost as tall sitting down as the local man was standing up.

As the waiter hurried away, Karen smiled at her husband. "You just like ordering the Krug because it still gives me an eyebrow twitch thirty years later, don't you?"

"Does the prettiest woman anywhere in the Valley deserve anything less than the best?" he replied, smiling and stroking her cheek.

Alex, Alexa, and Freja just rolled their eyes as the older couple shared a kiss. Jeanie looked at Valentina and made a gagging gesture, poking her finger at her open mouth and throat. The servant stifled a snicker somehow. The waiter returned in short order, and popped the bottles, pouring the bubbly into elegant flutes for everyone.

"As we have already mentioned, ladies, this was just a false start for you," Karen said, smiling at them, holding up her glass. "A good night's sleep, we have some fun for a day or two, and then we take the matter in hand. You will be successful, and none of us are leaving until this goal is accomplished. Michael and I do not care if it takes until next March Break. This is happening."

They toasted to the success of the endeavour, and Mike began filling glasses again. For the first time in several days, Freja and Jeanie began to feel real hope.

"So I guess we're headin' back to L.A., hm?" Jeanie said, shaking her head as she nibbled at her pecan pie. "Even though they hate us."

"No, we should change tack," Mike said, clinking glasses with his wife. "Napa will be our base of operations, and Los Angeles is just too far to be convenient."

Freja and Jeanie both looked at him. "Then where?"

"From now on, we'll be selling your wares in San Francisco," he said simply, his laser-blue eyes leaving no doubt as to his intentions.

***

The Hotel Arquero, First Street, bedtime...

"You two sure you don't wanna come and be social for a bit?" Alexa asked, dressed in a plush robe. "Kar's already in the hot tub, and the boys've gone to check out a video arcade they noticed while we were downtown."

"Forgive me, my love, but I am thinking that Jeanette and I are just wanting to do the crashing in a comfortable bed," Freja said apologetically, smiling and holding her wife's hand while the three stood outside the door to their room. "We are simply exhausted. It is best we sleep, and if I may be honest, I think we still have more crying to do. It is not the seemly to do such a thing in a jacuzzi."

"That's fine, there's plenty of time left," Alexa said simply. She hugged them both close and gave them each a loving kiss. "This will all work out, I promise you," she said quietly. "Believe it or not, you two dodos deserve to be happy."

They watched as the blonde goddess wiggled off toward Karen's room, humming to herself and disappearing through the door, already shucking her robe. A brief glimpse of her incredible ass was all they got before the door clicked shut.

Freja and Jeanie turned and silently went into their own delightful suite, gazing about them in wonder. It was sumptuous, certainly, and they had their own hot tub sitting on a raised area and looking out a window into the night, with Napa Valley beyond. The bed was huge.

"I am thinking their will be no dead prostitutes inside this mattress, yndling," Freja mentioned, going over to the bed and sagging down onto it. She was short enough that her feet didn't quite touch the floor. "But I am so... maybe it is because I am also full, but I am so very, very tired."

Jeanie nodded as she joined her wife, sitting beside her and holding her hand. "I know, Fre. I gotta admit, once my head hits that pillow, I..."

The Danish girl smiled and pressed her forehead to her wife's. "Come," she said quietly. "Let us undress and get under these lovely covers, ja?"

Once Freja had turned out the lights, the girls undressed and slipped under the luxurious covers, quite naked. Lying on their sides, they held one another close, eyes closed and just breathing. Freja could feel Jeanie shifting around a tiny bit. She knew this meant something was on her lovely wife's mind.

"What is it, my love?" she asked, moving a strand of curly brown hair away from Jeanie's face.

Jeanie opened her eyes, and even in the dark, Freja could see that they were shining, as if they had tears in them.

"I can't believe how patient and understanding you all are with me," Jeanie murmured, sounding very small and hurt. "I do nothing but fuck up, and you... you guys just never quit giving me chances. I know I don't deserve it, Fre. Why do you love me?"

"You are not the fault-causer here, Jeanette," Freja said earnestly, her own eyes stinging. She hated that her wife felt responsible, when everything was her fault. "It is me who is so trying of everyone's patience. Why you still love me, I will never know."

"Maybe... maybe we're just fuck-ups together," Jeanie sniffled, her eyes leaking. "'m sorry, Fre, I think I'm gonna cry. This has just worn me down so bad."

"You are no fuck-up, my love," Freja rasped, her voice cracking and feeling tears on her cheeks. "You are the most wonderful, loving, and caring girl. You deserve all the happiness in the world, and I am bad because I have not given it to you. I have failed."

Jeanie could no longer speak and just began crying. Freja may have wanted to console her wife, but the stress of the past few days overwhelmed her as well. They held one another tight and just cried, letting everything they'd kept in out.

What else could they do? Against all odds, the people who should have been punishing them for their stupidity were here as guardian angels, once again, and determined to see this manufactured crisis through with them. How on earth could they ever deserve to have such incredible friends?

They both finally drifted off, still sniffling, but unable to stay awake any longer. They held one another as their dreams took them and didn't let go until the following morning.

***

Roskilde, 2012...

Ada Kjaer sat beside her daughter inside the principal's office, looking at Freja, her eyebrow raised. The thirteen-year-old scowled at the floor, her arms crossed. Not surprisingly, they'd been sitting here for nearly fifteen minutes, and Freja had stubbornly refused to apologize.

"Freja, how many times have we been over this?" her mother chided. "I let you take the shop class, but it is not your place to decide what you can work on. If your teacher says you must work on the chosen subject, you cannot ignore them. And you certainly cannot get uppity with them and tell them off, young lady."

"Their projects are stupid and boring, mor," the teenager groused, not giving up. "Why should I do them?"

Ada looked at the principal, who was coolly observing the pair from behind her desk, her fingers steepled. "Freja, could you do those assignments on your own? Do you know how?"

Freja frowned as she thought about that. "I... no, I don't think so, not without instruction."

"Then why would the school let you do anything with equipment you haven't paid for if you won't do the minimum required of you?" the woman asked firmly, her green eyes hard behind her wire-rim glasses. "You have paid for none of it. It is an instructional tool. It is meant to teach our young minds the basics, and we have allowed you a lot of leeway with its use for your own experiments and projects."

The woman now leaned forward and looked directly at Freja. "Until such time as you agree to do your assignments and behave respectfully to your teachers, consider yourself removed from the classes you were allowed in to, and are also not welcome in the work shops and machine shops. Effective immediately."

Freja's eyes widened and she looked at her mother in shock and panic. "Mor! You can't let them do this!"

"Not my decision, young lady," Ada said firmly, not letting her daughter's protests hold. "If you refuse to do what they say, then the only other recourse is to send you to the trade school on the other side of town, where they also have machine shops."

Freja went pale. "But Alexandra goes to school here!"

"And she'll be bitterly disappointed if you end up going elsewhere because you think you're too good for the rules here," Ada said ruefully. She hated saying what she said next, but her daughter needed a wake-up call, as she did around once a year. "Not only will she be disappointed that you are going to another school, but she will be disappointed in you, for thinking yourself so high and mighty, too good for the opportunities given to you."

"Your mother is right, Freja," the principal piled on, not giving her time to think, although she could see the horror on Freja's face. "Miss Blackwell aces everything she touches, every course and project she sets her mind to. She has since the day she arrived, as you well know. She is, hands down, the most brilliant student in the school, and if she is not too good for the rules and structure here, what makes you think any of the rest of us are?"

Freja blushed furiously, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. The thought of being separated from Alexandra make her sick to her stomach. Her cheeks felt hot as she struggled to not squirm in her seat.

"The choice is yours, Miss Kjaer," the principal said simply, taking a form and pushing it across the desk for Ada to sign, along with a pen. "When you are ready to decide you are not better than everyone else, the shops are open to you once again. But that is predicated on you doing the assigned work in the classes as well. I am sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Kjaer."

Ada smiled as she pushed the signed paper back across the desk before standing up. "At least Kresten and Rada aren't giving you grief right now, they seem much more docile than their older sister. Come, Freja, I'd say we've bothered Miss Larsen enough for one day."

They left the office and walked down the hall of the now empty school, everyone else having gone home. The principal had been nice enough to allow Ada to come after classes had ended, sparing her the indignity of parading her rebellious daughter past the other students. It helped that the two women had been classmates and friends many years before. Freja walked alongside her mother sullenly, knowing that her mother would say nothing. It was up to Freja to start making this right and open a dialogue. After all, she was the reason Ada had been pulled away from the house and all the work she'd been doing.

Freja finally sighed. "They really are boring projects, mor."

"Freja, who gives a damn?" her mother said somewhat curtly. "The world is full of boring, inconvenient tasks, duties and toil that people must do every day in order to make life go forward."

She looked down at her daughter as she walked now. "Do you think your father actually enjoys his work in the textile factory? No, it's boring as Hell, so he makes it tolerable for himself. What do you think would happen if he suddenly announced to his bosses that his job bored him and that he should be paid for doing whatever he liked and ignoring his assigned work?"

"They'd fire him," Freja muttered, knowing where this was going.

"Humans have been doing crap jobs on this earth for a hundred thousand years, girl," Ada pointed out. "And now, magically, you're the member of the species designated by the cosmos to be too good to do anything dull? You're the special one it all gets tossed aside for?"

"No..."

"Freja, no one can make these class assignments exciting for you," her mother said. "You either do that for yourself, or you find a way to endure it with the promise of something better to come. But as things stand, you will lose it all, because you refuse to believe the rules apply to you. And I can't protect you from yourself."

Freja winced inwardly. She hated when her mother told her that she was her own worst enemy, but she also seemed to be right. Nobody made Freja's life tougher than Freja did by acting like a stupid, stubborn cow. Alexa was going to poke fun at her for hours about this. Without access to the shops, Freja would be stuck making stupid little bottle rockets in her back yard for entertainment.

Everyone seemed to have her number, though. Apparently she was predictable. When she'd been much younger, not much more than a toddler, she'd been prone to biting her tongue in order to get attention. People had begun taking bets on it when they were around her and she was being bratty. After any incident where she felt ignored, the adults had a betting pool on how many minutes passed before Freja came running in, whining and crying that she'd bitten her tongue. She stopped after she saw them laughing and passing money back and forth.

"When will it start being fun, mor?" she asked, hoping for a little encouragement.

"It may never, I know nothing about your mechanics and engineering, my dear," Ada replied. "Maybe that's the price you pay for getting to finally do what you like once you're an adult. Doing the boring along with the fun. But what I can guarantee you is that if you don't do this boring stuff now, and do it well, nobody will give you a second look down the road when the good stuff comes along. And they'd be right not to, because other people would deserve it more. Even if they're not as talented as you, they'd still deserve it, because they were willing to try."

She looked at her daughter as they walked down the street. "Those are the engineers I want working on our future, Freja. Not snotty brats who think it's okay to walk away whenever they get bored. Who do you plan to be?"

As they walked into the house, Freja knew what the right answer was. She just needed to stop challenging the universe and daring it to prove her wrong.

This really sucked.

***

"Fre? Fre?"

The Danish girl blinked and looked up at her companions, who were all giving her curious looks from around the table. They were down in the dining room of the hotel, having their breakfast. To the delight of the men, there was a buffet, along with special breakfast items to be ordered. Everyone was having coffee and juice, but Karen and Alexa both seemed to be enjoying mimosas as well. "Hvad?"

"Y'went really far away there for a bit, I thought I'd better check on you," Jeanie said, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. "You okay?"

Freja nodded. "I am fine, yndling, I was just... remembering something from long ago."

"One of your mom's lectures?" Alexa asked, smirking across the table at her soulmate.

Freja frowned. "How were you knowing that?"

"C'mon, Fre," Alexa replied. "Even when your expression is blank, I can see the scowl in those eyes of yours, and that was always the look you had on your face after your mom told you she couldn't save you from yourself."

This earned the blonde a scowl from Freja. "This... this is why we are not married, and why I am married to Jeanette. She is nice to me."