Chapter Text
Prologue: Laundry-verse
"Where the fuck are those receipts??"
Dani silently cursed inside her head as she rummaged through her desk. She wasn’t a disorganized person and neither was her wife. Yet for some reason, she could not find all the documentation they needed to put together for the tax office.
She rifled through multiple cabinets and shelves, and had even taken to crouching on the floor, looking underneath all their furniture in case any receipts had fallen down there. The sound of her slamming drawers shut got louder and louder the longer the search went.
From downstairs, Gigi could hear just how much her wife’s patience was wearing thin. She put on a polite smile as a customer at their laundromat glanced at the ceiling and back at her, clearly wondering what the commotion was all about. Gigi walked over to the customer and offered them a discount voucher on their next visit to the laundromat, hoping they wouldn’t be put off from being a regular by the ruckus Dani was causing above.
The customer tentatively took the voucher, looking at Gigi almost with pity. Gigi held steady with her polite smile and assured the customer that she would make sure their load of washing would not be disturbed by other customers and would still be waiting for them in 30 minutes when the machine was due to finish its cycle. The customer nodded and made a beeline for the door. After it shut behind them, Gigi hastily flipped the sign on the glass door to “Closed” and added a “back in 30 minutes” sign to let customers know the closure was temporary.
She climbed up the stairs to the cosy apartment above the laundromat. She walked into the spare bedroom that she and Dani had turned into their makeshift office and found her wife flipping through various bundles of paper.
Gigi cleared her throat and carefully asked, “Hey love, everything okay in here?”.
Dani looked up and saw her wife standing by the doorway with a concerned expression. Dani huffed and pointed at the piles of paper. “I’m trying to get our shit together for our IRS audit. I can’t seem to find all the receipts we need to give as proof that we're not committing tax fraud or laundering money through our business”.
At this, Gigi cracked a smile and said “Heh, laundering money through a laundromat… Who would think that?”.
Dani didn’t laugh. She gave Gigi a sharp look and said, “Bette Porter would! You know everyone says she’s the toughest IRS inspector around”.
Gigi bit back a retort because she knew that Dani was already under a lot of stress. They had both met with Bette before, and from the woman's brusque and condescending demeanour, of course Gigi knew that they were both going to get grilled at the audit.
Gigi quietly moved around the room, helping Dani search for the needed paperwork and tidy up mess along the way. She stopped by a small cabinet that Dani had missed in her search. Gigi looked behind her and saw that Dani had her back turned to her and was still frantically rummaging through a particularly big pile of papers.
Gigi took a small key out of her pocket and opened the cabinet. Her heart tightened in her chest when she saw the adoption papers that they were in the middle of working on before. It had been left abandoned inside the drawer for more than a year. Before they got married, she and Dani had talked at length about wanting the same things. To raise children and grow their family. At some point, they stopped being on the same page. Dani’s energy started to go more and more towards trying to expand their business.
They were doing okay, Gigi had thought. Certainly making enough money to be able to raise a child or two like they had always planned. But definitely nowhere near the level of success in the business world that Dani’s father had hoped his daughter would achieve. Gigi had agreed to postpone the adoption process when Dani asked. It had seemed sensible at the time to wait and grow the business so they could have a bigger financial cushion.
But the more their business grew, the more Dani grew distant as well. She kept finding ways to avoid giving a clear answer whenever Gigi asked when she would feel ready to start the adoption process again. She had known how much Gigi had longed to be a mother. How much Gigi had believed Dani when she said she wanted to share this life with her. And now, she wasn't sure what Dani really wanted anymore.
A tear fell onto the page in front of her. Gigi snapped out of the stupor she was in when she heard the sound of a water drop hitting paper. Her hand reached up to touch her own cheek and she realized that the teardrop had come from her. Her vision was starting to blur as more tears threatened to burst forth. She hastily wiped them away with her sleeve, swallowing back a sob. She quietly shut and locked the drawer before Dani could notice.
She reached into her pocket for a tissue and found folded pieces of paper instead. She unfolded it carefully to look at it again, knowing exactly what it said, having read and re-read it several times in the last few weeks.
Form FL-100: Petition — Marriage/Domestic Partnership. The first document required to be filled out when filing for divorce in their state. A form that was a mere 3 pages long could begin the process of dissolving something that had taken years to build.
Gigi looked behind her again and saw that Dani was still busy compiling together the documents required for the IRS audit. Gigi decided that now was not yet the time yet to bring up the topic of divorce with her. Not when Dani was already stressed out with their tax audit. It didn’t help that Dani’s father was also planning to drop by for a visit tonight. His presence always escalated Dani’s stress levels even more.
“Is that one of the invoices we need to take with us to the audit?,” Dani piped up from behind her. She must have seen Gigi staring at the piece of paper in front of her.
“Uh no, no it’s not,” Gigi answered back with a strained voice. She put the folded form back into her pocket. The time to bring up the divorce may not be now but it was coming. Soon.
To be continued…