[for rosie]

[daughterofawolf]

[dated sometime between Valentine's and today, we'll play it by ear!]

It's a Saturday, which generally means work, but she's the close shift today. When Eponine wakes up while it's still morning enough to feel early, it doesn't mean groaning and rushing. She wakes up feeling rested after a dream that she can't remember but that she seems to remember being pleasant, and debates staying in bed just because she can, and then gets herself up and dressed because that rarely works.

Today what it means is that she looks around her apartment, and thinks, I have so much to pack up, and not much at all, too with some bemusement and then, delightedly, Soon I'll be living with Ellie all the time! and subsequently, Dieu au paradis, what if this is a complete disaster.

She sits down on the floor of her living room. Ellie is not the one to talk to about this: for one, she's not an unbiased party, but also Eponine doesn't want to scare her into actually taking the invitation back. For she really is excited about it, so much she could burst, really, or she wouldn't be nervous.

This requires a specific sort of friend. Someone she can trust not to laugh at her for being excited or for being nervous, and someone who knows her and the sorts of reasons she has to doubt herself, and someone who won't find girl talk too frivolous -- which should by rights exclude her from the conversation. She'd never imagined she'd need or have the chance to fret over the landmarks of a relationship, and this one had started so slowly and escalated so obliquely that she'd not had to fret much over it, or rather, the major moments had been figured out on the go.

But this is a proper, silly-but-completely-serious, fret, and there's only one person for it.

Are you doing anything today, and if not, ☕️☕️? she texts Rosie.
I will admit that this is not an ENTIRELY selfish question she adds a few moments later in the interest of honesty, for I need some advice. But I'd like to see you, too. xx

Comments

[forthsofar]

The texts come when Rosie's in the middle of the grocery store, cart already half-full with the things from her list. It's no effort at all to reply, making plans for an hour from now, the question of what kind of advice Eponine's in search of already starting to turn over in her mind. They've settled into a comfortable, companionable friendship, whatever awkward or unrequited feelings they might've had now long in the past; it's the right kind of change, and one that Rosie's still glad they managed to make even after a few rocky moments in the getting there.

She unloads the groceries at home, putting away the perishables and leaving a note for Neil to please deal with the rest when he gets home. He is at Caleb's yet again, though, so it's more likely a chore for her a few hours from now. Once finished, she finds her coat and heads back out into the chill early afternoon air, heading towards the coffeeshop Eponine suggested. Pushing open the door, Rosie looks around until she sees her, slouched in a plush chair with a mug of something already in front of her.

"Let me put in an order, then I'll be right back," she says, dropping her things on the other chair and giving her a quick hug. "I can't believe how calm it is in here today."

[daughterofawolf]

An hour gives Eponine time to get showered and dressed, and grab a bite to eat so she isn't famished when she gets to the cafe, and do a little impulsive throwing in a donation box of things she's been hoarding, which at least feels a little productive.

It's pleasantly quiet for a weekend when she comes in, ordering a cappuccino and claiming a corner with antique-looking, usually-claimed, overstuffed chairs near a bookshelf full of classics that mostly post-date her. She keeps her eye on the door and brightens when she spots Rosie, getting up to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"Isn't it nice? It's usually packed," she agrees. "Take your time, I'll glower at anyone who tries to steal your seat." Which is unlikely, since it can't be dragged off and it'd take a little nerve to sit right next to Eponine, though it wouldn't be the first time.

[forthsofar]

"I've seen the way you glower, no one would dare go up against a face like that." Rosie laughs, flashing Eponine another bright grin before she goes up to the counter. The lack of crowd means it's no time at all before she's returning, carefully setting down a steaming cup of milky tea--a London Fog, they call it, which always reminds her a bit of home even if her usual tea had never been quite so decadent as this--and then going back for the rest of her order.

"They just had these delivered, so they're still warm," she says, setting down a plate with two round, sugar-coated doughnuts, a knife balanced across the plate between them. "One's got vanilla cream inside, and the other's plain. I thought we could share?"

[daughterofawolf]

"I'm well practiced," she parries, grinning fondly and watching for a moment as Rosie disappears back into the crowd toward the front. She's drifted off into thought, trying to figure out the least embarrassing way to broach how she's feeling, and wondering a bit if she's missed anything big on Rosie's end of things, when Rosie pops back with, first a tea, and then a plate of doughnuts.

"Ooh, you do know the way to a girl's heart," Eponine teases, and it's so easy and relieving to finally be back to a place where she can make a sort of flirty joke like she might with any similarly close friend -- Elio, maybe -- and not have it feel strange. "Are you sure? They look delicious, but I didn't mean for you to have to pay for something." Which is silly, she knows, especially when it's as little as a doughnut, but going without for half an adolescence has given her some fiddly habits around money and food.

[forthsofar]

Rosie laughs because it's a joke, and jokingly meant, but there's still the faintest twist of guilt in her stomach when Eponine says she knows the way to a girl's heart. It's hard not to think of all the ways Sabrina's hesitated around her, all the times Rosie's provoked it by pulling just slightly away from an embrace or dodging a kiss and knowing--no matter how accidental she'd hoped to make it seem--that's exactly what she was doing. She pushes it back again and settles in her chair, and when the conversation turns she's grateful for it.

"Please, I'm absolutely sure," she reassures her. "They were two-for-one anyway, and not that expensive. Well, not by Darrow standards." She gives Eponine the same look she trades with Neil on occasion, the one that acknowledges that the times they'd come from had different scales of cheap and costly, and smiles. "But if you really want to owe me for the next time we get coffee, I'm not going to stop you."

She leans forward, picking up her tea and taking a sip, her fingers curling around the glazed surface of the mug. "Now, what's happened?"

[daughterofawolf]

Rosie laughs warmly, although there's something about it that's not quite right, doesn't reach the eyes or something -- easily missed, if one wasn't so close an observer of people as Eponine is, and hadn't known Rosie for years now, some part of which she'd been a particular subject of study. So much so that Eponine thinks she might be imagining it, but she wonders if perhaps she has mistepped somehow.

She's right on to reassuring her about doughnuts, though, and Eponine puts it aside, ready to smirk conspiratorially at the extreme inflation between her time and now. She'd worked out long ago that sous are about the same thing as a nickel, in that there are 20 of them to the larger unit, but a nickel hardly buys what a sou would, nor a dollar a franc. A dollar hardly buys anything, and a cent might as well just be pretty.

"I'll buy next time, then," she agrees. They make these agreements all the time, and most of the time they forget whose turn it is, but Eponine figures she's the one to buy around as often as Rosie is, so it works out.

"Well," she says, and puts both hands around her cup, sipping it to avoid blushing. "Happened isn't quite the word for it. Or I suppose it is, everything's something that happens. But that makes it sound terrible, and it's not. It's --"

She chews on the inside of her lip a little. "On Valentine's Day, when we were all in the bunker, Ellie and I were talking, and we sort of agreed it's nonsense how often we put off the things we want to do. And -- well, anyway, she asked -- we sort of decided, if we didn't get crushed by a meteor, we might as well move in together, and stop all this back and forth. And here we are."

She slices one of the donuts in half. "I want to. I really do, I've never had anyone love me that way -- and say it -- or be patient with me like she is, even when I'm being ridiculous or. Or sort of ruining something, you know? I..." Now she is blushing. "I want that. A house in the country with my girlfriend? I just..."

Eponine looks up at Rosie helplessly, as though she ought to know exactly what comes at the end of that sentence, as though it's obvious. It feels like it is.

[forthsofar]

Before she'd even gotten to the cafe, from the instant Eponine's text had arrived, Rosie committed to listening to whatever it was that was on Eponine's mind. It could have been anything; they're at the age when plenty of things are in flux, when every day Rosie wonders if today will be the moment she hears back from Barton about the fall, or thinks that maybe she ought to set out on her own, find an apartment just for herself and figure out what it's really like to live on her own. It has to be just the same, or nearly, for Eponine.

She nods when Eponine mentions the bunker, thinking back to the strangeness of that night. She'd wanted to give Sabrina and Charlie their space because it was Valentine's Day, feeling as she had that was theirs and not hers. It hadn't even been hers the year before, Sabrina stealing Nick away for Lupercalia and Rosie agreeing in her infinite goodness, her perpetual state as our Rosie, that it was fine with her to have a mortal Valentine's some other night. Though that was neither here nor there, maybe, with Nick gone from both of them for good. But she'd tried at the bunker, so hard, and still Sabrina had sought her out, taking her to the bunker roof to see the stars--and yes, it had been lovely, but that wasn't the point.

She's not sure any more what the point ought to be, but thinking about it means she isn't listening. With a faint shake of her head, she focuses back on Eponine, taking half the donut when it's cut and meeting the girl's helpless look with a sympathetic one of her own. "It's just...so much," she suggests. "The thought of it, lovely as it is. Moving in, and being together, and all of that."

[daughterofawolf]

Rosie's eyes go a little distant as she listens, and Eponine wonders what she's thinking. That wonder doesn't shake, entirely, at her suggestion. She's not wrong, but she's not entirely right, either. It's the inclusion of being together that catches her instinct to notice and store details.

For all she can often question how worth it being with her is, being with Ellie isn't something she wants to change. It makes her content in a way she's always wanted but never expected that she was allowed. Being together, that's not a part that's too much for Eponine, even if she's pretty sure there's still a reasonable chance of her messing it all up.

But she hasn't forgotten the conversation she and Rosie had in Kagura, either: Rosie feeling trapped enough to want to sneak out without telling the people in her life. And she doesn't want to end up gushing about how her girlfriend is all right with her having killed a man or patient through her being a proper basket case about sex, if there's something there Rosie needs to talk about, too.

"It's a lot," she agrees, which is honest; she's not going to not say what she's here to. "I think ...I might be too much of a disaster for something lovely like that."

She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and tears off a piece of donut, glancing at Rosie questioningly, and keeping her voice low. "Things sound like they might be a lot for you, too?"

[forthsofar]

"You're not a disaster," she says automatically, loyally, even as she's simultaneously aware of what Eponine means by it. "At least no more of one than the rest of us, even if the particulars are different."

She looks up from her mug, smiling a little, but the question Eponine asks hits home in a way she'd been half-expecting. There was a canniness to the other girl, an awareness Rosie had learned to trust as much as Eponine had learned it to survive in the first place, and when it was turned on you there wasn't a good deal of space to hide.

"Sabrina keeps calling me her girlfriend," she says, and it's a relief, shamefully deep and complete, to say it out loud to someone at last. "And I don't...know if I can say it back."

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine smiles a little, at the quick fierce loyalty of the response. It feels a little biased, but Rosie knows her, and she thinks she'd be candid. The second part of it makes her feel a little better about that, the admission that yes, Eponine is a little bit different than everyone.

She'd tried to ask the question gently, and now as Rosie glances up from her tea she takes a sip of her own, purposefully not looking too expecting. She's surprised, and not surprised, in equal measure, at what ends up admitted.

She realizes, belatedly, that she's been thinking of them a bit as girlfriends for a while, too, even though she was barely aware of it herself. She doesn't actually know the particulars of the whole arrangement, especially now Nick's gone, and she's never had to work out titles with more than one person or even figure out how all that would work -- though it wasn't by any means uncommon even back home. And she's not even sure what she means by it. It's just that because she doesn't know, and all she has to go on is the soft touches and time spent together that she sees, it's safer in her mind to presume an attachment than not to.

"Oh, that is a lot," she says in genuine sympathy. "That's -- ugh. It gets all tangled with not wanting to hurt someone you care for, but you -- can't just be someone's girlfriend because they decide you are." It sounds like a horrifying prospect, stated like that, but that's what it is, if Rosie doesn't say anything, isn't it? She tips her head.

"Do you mean because you don't -- feel romantically about her at all, or because you don't want it to be as serious as that? As much, like you were saying?"

[forthsofar]

That Eponine isn't surprised, or is only briefly, is a little unusual in itself, but Rosie's glad of her evenness in the face of what she's just said. It makes her wonder if it's been too clear, if her reluctance and resistance has been obvious to more than just herself or Sabrina or maybe even Charlie. But maybe that wasn't such an awful thing, either.

"It gets so tangled," she agrees. "And it's not that I think she's...forced this without my agreeing to it, exactly. And it's not that I don't care about her, or love her, or..." She sighs, and shakes her head. "Calling it being girlfriends feels like deciding something. More than when we were both with Nick and sort of with each other too."

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine realizes, as she sips her tea and listens, that she's missed a very big step in this whole thing. Perhaps it's because she had to reckon with it herself so much earlier, coming to terms with how she felt about Rosie (and not just Rosie, for that matter -- she'd noticed herself noticing girls long before that, she'd even kissed some, she'd just run out of excuses to herself with her). Perhaps it's because everyone in Darrow is so open and accepting that she's almost grown to assume everyone might like everyone else. Perhaps it goes even further back: in Paris, being what they'd call queer here in Darrow wasn't seen as proper or recognized, but a lot of things were known and not spoken about: Eponine is pretty sure she was much more exposed to the idea of it growing up, and in things like without any expectation of being society.

She could be wrong about what Rosie means. But she chews on her lip, nodding, because even if she is wrong, Rosie's not wrong that it's a big word.

"Do you mean," she clarifies quietly and without any judgement, "that it's deciding something about you. About -- you know, the kind of people you love and want to be with. That it means you want to have a girlfriend, saying it back?"

[forthsofar]

"Yes," says Rosie. Something about it, about the simplicity of the answer or the gentle way Eponine asked the question, the immediacy of her response, feels like letting go of something. It's hard to tell, in the moment, whether it's a relief or not.

"It isn't as if I had lots of boyfriends before, just Nick, since we both know what David thought of our time together." She pulls a face, a quick flash of exaggerated disgust. "And I've certainly thought girls are pretty, and you and I had our whole..." With a faint, lopsided smile, she gestures vaguely at the space between them. Whatever they'd had, it had been too uncertain to define, lost and grown out of before either of them had known what to do with it. "But boyfriends are the only things I've had, and..."

Trailing off again, she looks down at the table, away from Eponine's patient and waiting expression. "I don't know if it makes a liar of me then, or a liar of me now, but either way I haven't been honest with someone."

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine winces, nodding in understanding. She wishes, just then, that they weren't in such oversized chairs, that they'd chosen a seat with a sofa instead, so she could lean into Rosie in support. It'd been hard for her to wrap her own head around, and yet she thinks it might have been easier for her than it is for Rosie. Back home, she'd already been used to being not a proper sort in so many ways. And it was all less of an identity, too, the way it's seen here. Rosie's from an older time too, but one where loving another woman is, as she understands it, both outside the norm and a little more definitive.

She smiles a little at Rosie's little gesture, even as she makes a similar face about David. Eponine frowns, though, as she goes on.

"Rosie," she says, and then she really does put her tea down and reach across the table to catch Rosie's hands in hers and squeeze them. "Dieu. You're not a liar for not knowing something."

"For one thing," she says, practically, drawing her hands back a little so she's not foisting touch on Rosie if she might not want it, "You can have both, you know. I mean -- not have, though I suppose you can, at that. But love both women and men, and you don't have to always have known or have dated everyone you've ever thought was pretty. I loved Marius, as much as I could love anyone then, but I'd never dated anyone at all until Ellie."

Slept with isn't the same as dating. There's a lot she has misgivings about, but between her friends and her therapist, she's been assured that quite a lot of things get to not count in her life.

"And if you do end up preferring one or the other, what happened in the past -- whether it was with Nick or David, or Sabrina -- that's not a lie. You're not tricking someone."

She takes a sip of her tea. "What matters is what makes you feel happy, no matter what anyone thinks or how long it takes you to figure out. You get to have that."

[forthsofar]

She laughs a little, the sound strained, when Eponine's fingers thread with hers. She returns the squeeze, taking reassurance from it--even when everything Eponine actually says sounds almost too simple to be believable. Not a lie, any of it, just far too neat.

"Feels like I should have known before now," she murmurs, letting Eponine pull back again and picking up her drink. She takes a sip, fingers wrapping around the cup. "But I'm...I am happy with her. Being with her, all the ways that's changed with Nick being gone. I love that."