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When Cosima is seven years old, a new face moves in across the street.
It is, of course, attached to arms, and legs, and all the rest, a girl about her age. Her hair is blonde, her legs long, and Cosima can't stop staring, because, woah. It's different.
Through her window that night, she leans her weight on her elbows and calls through the shadows to the girl whose bedroom mirrors her own. "Did you see her?"
"Wha'?" Sarah Manning scrambles off of her bunk, a tangle of hair and an overlarge black t-shirt. The clump of blankets on the lower bunk doesn't budge; Helena is playing with a flashlight beneath her covers, making clumsy shadow animals with her hands, and doesn't bother coming out to talk to Cosima. Not a surprise. Helena almost never talks to anyone except her twin sister.
"The girl!" Cosima exclaims. "The new girl! Did you see her?"
"There's a new girl?" Sarah doesn't look half as pleased as she feels. "Terrific. Anything like that British bitch?"
If her window were facing Alison Hendrix's bedroom, Sarah's snappish, inappropriate language would earn a sneaker chucked at her face, but Cosima's parents couldn't care less about cursing, and Cosima is more than used to Sarah's out-of-the-box behavior by now. It's a perk of having grown up in this compound, half typical suburbia, half science lab. There isn't much about her classmates that shocks her.
This new girl, though...
"No, she's--I mean, she's got blonde hair, I guess. And I haven't heard her talk, so, I guess she could be British. But she doesn't walk like Rachel. And Sarah--Sarah, she looks different."
"Don't be stupid," Sarah mutters. "Nobody looks different. They don't let different past the damn gates."
She goes to bed thinking Sarah is probably right--Sarah usually is--and maybe she just dreamed the whole thing. After all, there are six of them bundled in these neat, nearly identical houses. Seven years, six shades of the same face. There's no way she saw someone new out there today.
Except, when she bounds out onto the lawn the next morning, the girl is there, shuffling boxes out of a moving van and stacking them clumsily on the porch. She looks up when Cosima hops onto the step, and her face creases in a confused smile.
"Bonjour."
"Bon-what-now?" Not English. Doesn't matter. She is so different--all curls and long nose and three inches on Cosima, at least. She's new.
Seven years old, Cosima shoves a hand under her nose, and introduces herself to Delphine Cormier.
***
Cosima is nine the first time she sneaks out of her house and over to Delphine's.
She does it mostly because Sarah's daring her. Has been daring everybody she can get near, apparently, and no one else is biting. Big shock there; Beth Childs seems made for rules, and Alison follows along with just about whatever Beth does. Rachel...
Cosima doesn't pretend to understand Rachel, who sits alone at lunch, buried in books. Rachel doesn't talk hardly at all, and when she does, her barbs are usually pretty mean--but whatever. This isn't about Rachel.
It's about Delphine.
Delphine, at eleven, looks totally flabbergasted when Cosima pops up at her window, wobbling a little in place. Her knees are locked over Sarah's shoulders, Sarah's rumpled hair tickling her belly where her shirt has ridden up, and when she hears Sarah grunt in startled protest, she clamps both hands down on the sill and leans forward.
"Stay still," she hisses down at the top of Sarah's head. One hand unwinds from its grip on her shin, middle finger flicking skyward. Cosima ignores her.
"Cosima, what are you doing?" She likes that Delphine doesn't sound particularly scandalized. Confused, yeah, but she's smiling. Cosima likes the way Delphine smiles at her, pleased with how it never seems to look the same when she smiles at Alison, or Sarah, or--gently, cautiously, nervously--Helena. Those smiles are polite. Friendly.
But not the same.
"Come out!" She's leaning all the way forward now, resting her weight upon her forearms on the sill. Beneath her, Sarah is cursing.
"Hurry it up, Jesus."
"Come out where?" Delphine wonders, but she's already fumbling around for her shoes and jacket. Cosima wiggles happily.
"She's coming!" she calls down. Sarah grunts.
"Bloody fabulous. Will you fucking stand still?"
There's a park a block or so over, still contained within the compound. Cosima appreciates it in the daylight, tucked in a little copse of trees with a bag of chips and a book, but she's never actually visited after sunset before. It's Sarah who leads them in, one hand wrapped around Helena's (Cosima maybe sort of shrieked when Sarah let her down beside Delphine's house, because Helena definitely wasn't there when the two of them slunk over here in the first place. Helena's always sneaking up that way), and Cosima makes sure to look both ways before shimmying through the split in the fence. The last thing they need is for Mrs. S, the Mannings' strict guardian, to come after them with a searchlight mounted on her shotgun. Not that Cosima thinks she'd actually shoot a couple of nine-year-olds, but whatever, man. Not worth the risk.
"We're here," Delphine observes, peering into the shivering leaves overhead. "Now what?"
"Now we be here," Sarah says, somewhat mysteriously. She plunks herself down at the base of a tree, pulling a candy bar out of the pocket of the leather jacket she wears everywhere, the one that looks like it's meant for someone three times her size. Helena makes a low, hopeful sound in her throat, and Sarah obediently splits the bar in half and forks the bigger side over. She only ever does that for Helena, Cosima observes. Must be a twin thing.
Delphine is shuffling a little, hands behind her back. Cosima tilts a grin up at her.
"You ever do this before?"
Blonde hair flashes up and settles back down again. She looks a little embarrassed, as if admitting to a straight-edged lifestyle is on par with saying, Sure, I still wet the bed. So what? Cosima bends forward a little, lowering her voice.
"Me either. My mom says Sarah's a bad influence."
"Oi," Sarah interjects calmly. "I'm a fuckin' great influence, thanks. Not bored anymore, are ya?"
Nope, Cosima thinks happily. Not at all.
Though that might have less to do with sneaking out to the park, she thinks privately, and much more to do with the sheepish way Delphine is beaming at her under the rustle of close knit boughs.
***
She's twelve the first time she sneaks some of her dad's weed out of his secret drawer.
She's sitting in Delphine's room, cross-legged on the mattress, holding up the unlit joint. "You think it works?"
Delphine raises an eyebrow from her place at the desk. "I would not know. I've never--"
"Yeah, but you smoke," Cosima points out, not meaning it accusatorially in the least. She's grown used to seeing Delphine slipping the little red and white package out of the back pocket of her jeans, used to Delphine's furtive little smile as she tucks a butt between her teeth and scrounges around for her shiny silver Zippo. Cosima wants a Zippo, too, but her parents say she can do all the same science experiments with matches, and besides, there's no reason to light fires in your bedroom, dear. She can't very well go around telling them she wants to be like Delphine, who--at fourteen--has curves beneath the hug of her t-shirt, and jeans which clutch her backside nicely, and who never, ever has to submit to monthly medical exams for science.
"I do not think nicotine and marijuana are the same notion," Delphine tells her coolly, and rolls her desk chair over to the bed. She plucks the joint from between Cosima's fingers and studies it carefully for a moment, then shrugs. She looks very adult in the lamplight, her hair fluffy from her evening shower, her face unavoidably French in some fashion Cosima can't quite put her finger on. She's...
Pretty.
Not where Cosima ought to be looking.
"I'm gonna try it," she decides, because it's easier to commit to her first suck of smoke into carefully-maintained lungs than to get caught gaping like a moron at Delphine's hair again. "Gimme a light?"
She jams one end of the little white stick between her teeth, the way she's seen Delphine do a hundred times over. Delphine snorts, shaking her head slightly.
"I don't think that's how--"
"Hey. Professional drug enthusiast, you are not." Waggling her eyebrows, Cosima wrinkles her nose until the bow of her glasses scoots up, and leans forward. Delphine is compliant enough to bend to meet her, one hand cupped around the flame of her Zippo.
She thinks she's got a handle on this whole inhale thing, right up until the first wracking cough. Delphine reaches over, pounding her on the back, her face bound up in a grimace that is very clearly a cover for her laughter.
"I don't believe you did it right."
"Shove off," Cosima tries to say, but her throat is hoarse, and her mouth is has gone perfectly dry. Delphine tilts her head slightly, watching as though she sort of expects Cosima to puke on her bedspread.
"I think," she manages to say after a moment of sucking in clean air, holding the joint carefully away from her body and frowning at it, "it's acquired. Like, um. Scotch."
"Have you acquired scotch as well, then?" Delphine teases, and Cosima is this close to flipping her a playful bird when she reaches out, eases the joint out of Cosima's hand, and takes a long, clean hit. She tips her head back against her headrest, puffing out a series of short smoke rings, and grins when Cosima's jaw slackens.
"Excuse you."
"Smells like skunk," Delphine observes, handing the joint back and shrugging. "We are lucky my parents are out."
Cosima's never felt quite so foolish--or quite so amused--in her whole life.
***
She's thirteen and a half when Sarah turns up on her doorstep with a scrawny, dark-haired boy, a green backpack, and a twisted grin.
Delphine has been stretched out on her bedroom floor all afternoon, the top of her head barely brushing Cosima's shoulder, the pair of them sharing headphones and the latest Daft Punk record. Cosima likes them because they're tectonic. Delphine likes everything, as long as there's a beat involved.
("Besides," she adds, turning her head just enough to look at Cosima, "they're French."
"They're walking helmets," Cosima volleys back, laughing. Delphine shrugs and jabs her earpiece more snugly into place.
"French helmets, though. The very best kind.")
Sarah turns up with this kid, Felix, who has been just about living at the Manning household lately. Helena's on her heels, as Helena always is, but she's got her thumbnail in her mouth, and doesn't look at all happy to be there. Cosima wonders if there's actually something wrong, or if it's just Sarah hanging out with someone other than Helena herself that's got the girl all kinds of addled. She smiles gently in Helena's direction, squeezing her arm as she hunkers into the bedroom. Helena doesn't smile, but she thinks the girl's expression does lighten a bit. It's something.
"We're gonna do something fun," Sarah says brightly, with that edge she always seems to get when she gets an idea Beth Childs wouldn't approve of. Beth doesn't approve of Sarah's filching beer from Mrs. S' stash, or of Sarah sneaking out, or of Sarah's patented inability to finish a homework assignment on time. Alison and Rachel don't appreciate Sarah's finer points, either, but it's Beth who always gets that faraway look in her eyes, like she's just wishing she was a little more adult and could actually pin Sarah down.
"Fun," Helena repeats in a husky little whisper. She settles herself on the rolling chair beside Cosima's desk, right on top of a stack of notebooks, like she doesn't even notice they're there. Cosima stretches back out on the floor, liking the way Delphine pushes up against her shoulder with the crown of her head again. Like there was some space there she didn't appreciate going vacant when Cosima got up to open the door. Like it matters.
She's liking the idea of mattering to Delphine more and more lately, it seems.
"What sort of fun?" Delphine is asking, with that thin caution all intelligent people use around Sarah Manning. She's still older than all of them, and taller, but Sarah doesn't take anybody's shit. Not even when Cosima throws her the evil eye and refuses to talk to her for a whole week through the window, after she accidentally tosses a bit of gum into Delphine's hair one afternoon. Sarah doesn't like not getting her way, and she likes authority even less. There's no fixing a thing like that.
Felix holds up his bag, all bright eyes and cunning grin. "Sparklies," he says. Helena pulls her knees up to her chest and regards them all warily.
By sparklies, he means needles, Cosima notes--needles and spikes and little silver rings. Sarah is puffing out her chest with obscene pride when she regales them all with their shoplifting tale, apparently not noticing at all how Helena whines and presses her face against her bent knees.
"We swiped all the stuff," she finishes cheerfully. "And Felix is great at body mods. Come on--what've you always want a hole in?"
"I...haven't," Delphine replies, looking genuinely bewildered by the concept. Cosima sits up, thinking hard. On the one hand, putting a new hole in her body isn't exactly a thought that plagues her on a nightly basis. On the other...
It isn't as if her parents will mind. And it would be nice to have something different, wouldn't it? Something that would set her apart from the others, from Beth's serious eyes and soccer-toned calf muscles, from the fence-edge of Alison's razor bangs, from Rachel's stiff shoulders. They're all different, but they are all clones, and a teenage clone really needs to work to climb the ladder.
It's just a hole. What harm could come?
She settles for the right side of her nose. It's Sarah's nose, too, and Helena's, and Alison's, and she's never once been able to spot a difference between the six of them. Sarah's nose curves the way Alison's does. Alison's angles out just as Beth's does. Beth's casts the same shadow as Helena's. It makes her head spin sometimes, how similar such different people can be. So, yes. The nose. Why not?
It doesn't hurt as much as she expects, and Delphine keeps a tight hold on her hand the whole time. Delphine's fingers are long and warm and heavy. Delphine's breath ghosts across her skin from a distance, and Cosima closes her eyes and tries not to think about anything except that breath, those fingers, the last song they heard before Sarah rang the doorbell.
It's Sarah's delighted yelp that alerts her to the whole thing being over and done with. Felix looks very proud. Delphine tips her head the way Delphine always does, and Cosima raises her eyebrows hopefully.
"How's it look?"
"Original," Delphine says at last, and her smile warms Cosima straight down to her toenails.
***
She's not quite fifteen the first time she sees Delphine kiss a boy. She doesn't know his name, or where he's from, or if he's ever watched a clone get her nose pierced by a gay boy. She doesn't know if he likes Daft Punk, or sneaking over to parks at night, or cigarettes over pot. She doesn't know anything, and really doesn't want to.
Sarah finds her, bundled moodily in her little copse of trees, on a Thursday afternoon. Just Sarah this time; Helena's been taking some remedial studies after the rest of them are set free to their own devices at three each afternoon. Cosima wonders how she feels about that, about spending time away from her sister. She keeps meaning to ask, but Helena always gives her that starry-eyed, straight through your soul gaze, and slouches away without a word. Helena, nearly fifteen, does not change.
Leaning her weight against a spindly tree, one that looks as though it might not make it through the next winter, Sarah watches her silently. Cosima's got six notebooks spread open on the grass, her elbows on her crossed knees, a pen in her mouth. Two more are tucked behind her ears, beneath the hulking headphones she swiped out of Sarah's locker in a moment of defiance. Sarah doesn't mind her bursts of mild kleptomania. It's Sarah who taught her the finer points of petty theft in the first place.
She's sinking deep into the threads of the electronic beat, vibrating with the heat of the bass, fingers clenching and twisting and clenching again. She's sinking deep, and completely misses it when Sarah opens her mouth the first time to ask if she's all right. Fine enough. Sarah doesn't like people knowing she cares about stuff like that.
When Sarah doesn't move for ten whole minutes, Cosima wrenches one ear of the headphones aside and fixes her with a hot glare. "What?"
"Nothin'." Sarah shrugs. "You look--"
"Lonely?" Cosima scoffs. Sarah grins.
"Like a bit of a mad scientist, actually. The dreads are workin', though. Maybe I ought to give it a go."
She says it like she wasn't there when Cosima made the choice to try a new hairstyle, one no one else would dare copy. She says it like she hadn't streaked her hair through with six different colors that same day, like it wasn't Felix who sat with the pair of them in Sarah's bathroom, skimming over the directions on hastily bought dyes. She says it easily, like it might somehow scrub clean the image of Delphine's mouth on some boy's.
Cosima scowls.
"It happens, yeah?" Sarah pushes off the tree, taking short, cautious steps near. She's careful to give the notebooks a wide berth, stepping around scrawls of text and graph until she's crouched on her haunches beside Cosima in the grass. Her hand is tentative on Cosima's back, patting her once, twice, and retreating again. "Doesn't mean she's gonna marry the guy, y'know. Just--"
Cosima flutters both hands at her, seeking space, and Sarah backs off an inch or two. Her gaze is fierce, scorching straight through the side of Cosima's head like she's trying to see past her skull, past her sanity, past whatever it is Cosima's got keeping the truth out.
"It's okay, if you like her, you know," she says in the same soft voice her mother will use later that year, when Cosima finally lets herself say the words out loud. "I still like you." A pause. "She'll still like you, too."
Cosima snorts, turning her face against the meat of her upper arm and closing her eyes. Sarah's hand lights once more on her shoulder, squeezing.
"Just, hey--don't go peekin' at night, yeah? I've got a hot bod. Not lookin' to share with the class just cuz you're a giant les, y'know?"
They've been laughing together for at least a full minute before Cosima realizes she's sobbing into the sleeve of Sarah's stupid old leather jacket.
***
She's been fifteen for three weeks when Delphine suggests they get tattoos.
It's a weird conversation, as conversations go, mostly because she's been trying to spend some time away from Delphine lately. They still hang out after school, watching movies or whatever, but it's always a chaperoned event. Mostly, that chaperone is Sarah, Helena nestled against her side like a quiet symbiotic growth. Sometimes, it's Beth, who gets good grades, despite her fascination with running everywhere (Cosima doesn't do the running thing, but she's cool with playing cheering squad when Alison's busy), and sometimes, it's even Rachel. Rachel, who sits with her chin propped on her hand and reads, or sends mysterious clacking text messages to no one Cosima is ever going to be introduced to. That's fine. Rachel's a bitch, but she's a quiet bitch, and Cosima sometimes deeply appreciates that quiet.
So, yeah, it's pretty weird when Delphine catches her in those cooling hours between dinner and sundown. She's sitting sprawled out on her front porch, sneakers stretched out in front of her, scribbling theories in a notebook. There's an exam on Monday, and while Cosima is literally never worried about exams--Christ, she's had the highest GPA in the county practically since she could walk--it always cools her brain off a little to sink into the studying. Her brain, which feels as though it might just rocket off into the sunset, is getting to be her absolute worst enemy lately. So not cool.
She'd like to mellow out, but mellowing means forgetting about the beautiful French girl across the street, and that's a serious case of no dice, Grandma. The studying will have to do.
Until she looks up and finds the aforementioned French girl standing, hands on her hips, right in front of the stoop, and okay, Captain Braintrust--maybe a public setting wasn't the best plan in the world.
"Tattoo," she repeats, when Delphine says it, like it's something she's been mulling over for years. "You want to get a tattoo?"
"I want us to get tattoos," Delphine corrects, smiling that crooked little smile Cosima has only ever seen tipped in her direction. "I've heard Felix is actually quite talented, and I've been thinking..."
"The same tattoo?" Cosima interrupts, brow furrowed. It's a puzzling notion. Sure, she's been following this girl around since they were kids, but tattoos are serious business. Even Sarah thinks twice before inking something super-permanent on her skin.
Delphine, to her credit, doesn't bat an eye. "I do not know if you know this," she says calmly, "but you're my best friend."
"I'm your--sorry?" She can feel the heat creeping into her cheeks, rolling its way down beneath the collar of her dress. Delphine nods sagely.
"You are. Ever since I moved here, you have always been kind to me. And with university coming up soon..."
Her heart is in her throat. She feels suddenly like throwing up, like tossing her goddamn cookies absolutely everywhere. "University?"
"Ah--um. College."
"I know what university is, Delphine." Except, duh, why has it never crossed her mind before? Delphine is seventeen. Delphine has maybe a year left, and then she's ricocheting off to God only knows where, maybe forever. Fuck. Straight and smart. You know how to pick 'em, Niehaus.
"I don't want to forget," Delphine says quietly. Cosima's eyes flick to hers, sharp and uneasy.
"Forget what?"
But Delphine doesn't answer that. She only shifts from one foot to the other, and repeats the question: "Will you get a tattoo with me?" She is chewing her lower lip, looking at Cosima from beneath eyelashes which suddenly seem too long, too dark, too sad. Cosima wishes she wouldn't. She's so damn pretty when she does stupid little things like that.
"Y-yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Why not?"
Got it bad, sister-clone, Sarah chortles in her head. Cosima closes her eyes for a moment, willing her sanity to return.
"What did you have in mind?"
***
She's swallowing hard when Felix's hands close around her forearm, turning it over and swiping a gloved finger across the inner expanse of her wrist.
"First?" he asks. She shrugs, trying to look cool. Sarah is propped on the edge of the desk she shares with Helena, watching them with a hooded, hawk's glare expression.
"Go easy, Fe."
"She will be fine," Delphine assures her, and Cosima thinks it maybe says a lot about Sarah's growth as a person, that she doesn't launch herself right off that desk and swing a rocket punch into Delphine's perfect nose. She only grunts, making a fist and slowly letting it roll loose again.
They're on the bottom bunk, Delphine leaning back against the wall with Cosima resting back between her splayed legs. Helena's boots dangle over the edge of the top bunk, thwacking against the metal frame in a jouncing rhythm that sets Cosima's teeth on edge. Felix fires a disgruntled glare upward.
"Sarah."
"Can't control her," Sarah says, hardly sounding as if she cares at all. Her gaze never leaves Cosima, who is trying her best to regulate the erratic thump-thud of her heart. Her back is resting against the soft, steady plane of Delphine's chest, and she is certain the other girl can feel her pulse racing through two very thin layers of clothing. Summer nights, she thinks wildly. And best decisions made.
Delphine is holding out her arm for Felix to inspect, her skin soft where it brushes Cosima's. It makes sense this way, she supposes, as much as allowing a sixteen-year-old orphan to ink her skin in a bedroom belonging to a pair of her clones could ever make sense. With Delphine's arm beside her own, Felix can do a solid copy-job. He is talented with a pen, she's noticed. Deeply talented.
Still sort of hurts, though.
She's hissing breath through her teeth in jagged pulses when Delphine slides her free arm gently around her midsection. "Lean back," she murmurs against Cosima's ear. "Lean back, it's okay to trust me."
A silly thing to say, but Cosima does as she's told anyway, careful not to jostle her arm as Felix etches a series of birds into virgin skin. She doesn't look at the work he's doing; when it was Delphine's skin, blooming with rich blacks of the birds and the vivid colors of the sunset-burn behind them, she was fascinated, but this is different. This is a burning pain, yes, but there is something stranger about it. Something about letting someone mark her, something about knowing she is unequivocally different from her sisters now, in a permanent, unnatural sense. It feels huge. It feels...terrifying.
So she does not look. Instead, she lets her eyes sink shut, resting her full weight against the push and pull of Delphine's chest. The arm around her middle is strong and soothing; Delphine tucks her chin atop her shoulder, cheek searing against the slope of Cosima's neck. For this evening alone, she allows herself to imagine what it would be like, to be in that boy's place: holding and being held, treasuring the pliant stroke of Delphine's lips on her own, letting herself drown in Delphine's beauty. It's not a forever thing, being cradled against Delphine's body this way, but the tattoo...
She doesn't want to forget, Cosima thinks dizzily, and can't bring herself to ask, Forget what? It's too deep a well. This whole idea is just...
Delphine is different. Hasn't she always known that? Hasn't she always loved that?
When Felix finally sits back, mopping his brow, Cosima opens her eyes. Her skin is vivid with color, with the strain of needlework, and with the freshness of ink. She turns her head, meeting Delphine's eyes from mere inches away, and chances a half-smile.
"How's it look?"
"Beautiful," Delphine assures her, except she doesn't even glance at Cosima's arm as she says it. Cosima's heart thumps up hard into her throat, colliding with the boulder that's been wedged there ever since seeing that stupid boy on Delphine's lawn. She inhales, holds the breath in swelling, burning lungs, does not dare move.
"My turn!" Helena has come crashing down, landing in a languid crouch and tossing herself carelessly backward onto her bed. Her shoulder comes down hard on Cosima's, jostling her back to reality.
"You--your turn?"
Helena is wriggling free of her sweater, revealing a near full-sleeve of ink on her left arm. In the glaring lamplight, Cosima can make out entwined symbols--the Gemini horoscope sign, she thinks, and a series of graceful, dissolving feathers. Sarah, still propped on the desk, clasps her hands together and shrugs.
"She likes tats."
Helena's lips wrinkle back in a mad, though not entirely charmless, grin. Cosima shakes her head, nudging her glasses up on her nose, and pats her thigh.
"All yours, sister."
***
When the window slides open at midnight on her sixteenth birthday, Cosima just about swings a baseball bat into the side of Delphine's pretty head.
"Holy fuckballs!" she gasps, planting a hand to her heaving chest and letting the ash handle knock loosely against her bed frame. "You nearly gave me a--what are you doing?"
"Sneaking in," Delphine says, a little sheepishly. When Sarah creeps through the window, there is a solid finesse to the action, as if Sarah was meant to be a cat all along, and just took a wrong left in the moments before reincarnation kicked in. Delphine is bumbling. Delphine is, in fact, rubbing her knee where it collided--rather loudly--with the outside sill, and flushing straight to the roots of her blonde hair.
"You're sneaking in at midnight on a Tuesday?" Cosima repeats, amused. She leans the bat into its appointed place in the corner and lets her arms hang loose at her sides, abundantly aware that she is braless, tank-top clad, and wearing pajama pants that really would be better suited to Delphine's extra inches of height. But, in all fairness, this is her bedroom, and she was asleep. Any awkwardness here is entirely on Delphine's plate.
"I thought I would surprise you," Delphine says, still pink-cheeked, but smiling. "Sneaky, you know? Like a spy."
"You make a terrible spy," Cosima laughs. Delphine shoves her hands into the pockets of her blue jeans and tries to look ashamed of herself. It comes off about as well as it might on Sarah, who couldn't look shamefaced if it would get her out of a court date with the devil.
"I think the party is supposed to be later," Cosima adds, noticing the package resting on the sill where Delphine nearly blackened her own kneecap. "Didn't Sarah send the invite?"
"Yes, but I--" She hesitates, looking utterly embarrassed. "I thought this would be nice."
"You thought it would be nice to...sneak in through my bedroom window at the asscrack of midnight and scare the crap out of me?" It's probably wrong to be so delighted. Delphine is biting her lip again.
"In hindsight, perhaps not my greatest endeavor."
"No, no, it's excellent." She grins. "Best plan ever. What'd you get me?"
She plunks herself down on the bed, patting the space next to her. Retrieving the gift from its place on the window, Delphine hesitates, and then sits. Her thigh bumps lightly against Cosima's, her arms wonderfully bare and moonlit. It's warm, for March. Warm, and clear, and still, a very strange time for a woman to come careening through her bedroom window.
The box is light in her hands. Small. She weighs it carefully, giving it an experimental shake, turning it over and over to inspect its angles from all sides. Delphine swallows a giggle.
"What?"
"It's just--I've never seen anyone inspect a gift that way."
Cosima shrugs, tapping her index finger against the package's lid. "Inspection's half the fun. Don't wanna go tearing into it like the Mannings do. Couple of animals."
She waits, disorientated by her own delight, by the thin paranoia that sounds like Sarah's voice in her head--Oi! I fuckin' heard that, geekface! It never comes. Sarah is sound asleep in the next house over, and Delphine...
Is biting her lip, and God, does she have to look so damn pretty all the time?
Sliding a finger beneath a line of clear tape, Cosima works it free and unwraps the pale blue paper. Delphine is watching her with a curiously studied expression, as if she is half-mortified to be sitting here at all, but too invested to walk away. Cosima pauses, laying a hand gently over her knee.
"Thank you."
Delphine nods distractedly, and then the paper is off and on the floor, the box sliding open. Cosima tips its contents out onto her palm, and regards it, puzzled.
"You gave me a key?"
Delphine nods again, more abruptly this time. Cosima weighs the small silver object, studying its teeth with the flat of her thumbnail.
"Again, I say--thank you. Very much. But, uh... Little lost? It being midnight, and me having been in a dead sleep, and all that, I just--"
"It's for my, um." Delphine clears her throat, rustling the hair back from her forehead with the heel of one hand. "My apartment."
Cosima meets her gaze, heart pattering hard in her chest. "Apartment? You have a--"
"For university," Delphine supplies, the syllables all bumping and jolting against one another like train cars jumping the track. "I have an apartment all signed for, and that is my key. My spare. I wanted you to..."
She trails off, looking more embarrassed than ever, and when Cosima continues to stare at her with a perplexed little smile, she sucks in a breath. Steels herself. And moves in.
Her lips are far softer than Cosima could ever have imagined, though slightly chapped in that singular spot where her teeth constantly worry over the pink skin. She kisses like she's done it a hundred times, and never in her life, and like she would be bothered by neither fact, if it were true. Her hand skids up the side of Cosima's neck, all cradling palm and searching fingers, and when Cosima leans back slightly for breath--her head is a blur of black dots, spinning her higher than that first evening struggling to get high on Delphine's bedspread--those fingers close over a rogue dreadlock and run down its length as if testing its texture for the first time.
"I don't understand," Cosima murmurs, though she thinks she does. "You're straight. You--I saw you with a boy, I--"
Delphine's brow furrows, and then clears. "That is why you stopped--oh, dear." It sounds so prim, so startlingly gentle and pleased at the same time. "He was no one. No one at all. I was...I was proving a point."
"To whom?" Her voice has never sounded quite so thick before, tumbling over itself until the syllables feel more like ice cubes bundled up against her teeth. Delphine's shoulders raise and lower, knocking into hers carelessly on the way down.
"To myself, I suppose. I did not think I...but everyone is different, I suppose. Life is a spectrum. And I...I believe I like you quite a lot more than originally intended." Her smile, sheepish and hopeful, is still not one Cosima has ever seen pointed toward anyone else. She closes her hand around the key, squeezing hard enough to indent its ridges into her palm.
"You kissed me," she points out, trying to stall the spread of her own deliriously stupid grin. "You--you came into my room on my birthday, and you kissed me, Delphine Cormier."
"You agreed to get my tattoo," Delphine observes in return, almost indignantly. She thinks Cosima is mocking her, Cosima realizes, and stutters out a laugh against the back of her hand as she does. Oh, fuck, this is all too good. I must be dreaming.
"You're still a terrible spy," she murmurs. "Just want you to know that." And then, before Delphine can take this as a blow to her pride, she winds a hand loosely around the base of Delphine's neck and surges up to meet her, grinning too hard to be anything but sloppy. Delphine is just so damn pretty, kissing her with slow, tentative sweeps of her pink tongue, kissing her with one hand anchored to her jawline, kissing her with breathy, happy sounds that curl Cosima's bare toes beneath the hem of her too-long flannel pants.
Delphine is pretty, with her blonde curls, with the strap of a black bra peeking out from under her white tank, with her forehead bumping against Cosima's in pleasant wonder. Delphine, leaning forward until Cosima is on her back, one leg tented, the other curling lightly around Delphine's, is so very pretty.
And different. So gorgeously different, from all the faces she's grown up surrounded by, all the science, all the sisters. Delphine is different the way she'd never dared to hope, before her seventh year. Delphine is...
"Sixteen barely half a bloody hour, and already you're getting yourself laid," Sarah Manning calls in a husky whisper. Cosima jerks a glance toward the window, amused and horrified to see Sarah leaning halfway out in a sports bra and a smirk. Over her shoulder, Helena is waving.
"Happy birthday, Cosima!"
Delphine gazes down at her, clearly bemused. Cosima shakes her head, turning her face against the pillow, and laughing until her stomach hurts.
She was seven years old the day a new face moved in across the street.
It's a face she hopes to keep around forever.