formicine | [tris]

I startle when I hear a knock at my door, not expecting anyone. I'm not doing anything special so whatever's happening isn't interrupting anything more important than lying on the couch and petting Élan's ears. She's disgruntled for half a second when I set her down but then realizes she can now make a circuit of the whole apartment and disappears quickly under the coffee table.

"Coming!" I call, swinging my legs over the back of the couch rather than walk around it. It's probably in the category of dangerous physical activity for my recently healed leg but, well, there's no one here to tell me off.

Whatever I'm expecting, this isn't it. Blue stands in front of my door with her bike, both girl and vehicle looking like they've been run over. "Oh God, what happened?" I ask, quickly gesturing her in. I reach up and touch a clean spot on her shoulder, my fingertips lingering. It's not like me, maybe, to be uncertain but even if things with her weren't so new, she's still covered in blood.

"I...sort of got hit by a car," Blue says, and feels dangerously close to tears. Crying is not her preferred reaction to anything, and she would sort of prefer it not happen now, but she's gotten here on sickly high levels of adrenaline, and now that Tris reaches for her, everything swims a little. "There's something wrong with the lights, and we all thought we had the green, and then the asshole started yelling at me. I'm sorry I didn't call...I don't know if my phone even still works..."

She's rambling, and she abandons the bike to the wall, leaning into Tris's touch. It's grounding. "I think it looks worse than it is?" The pain is really starting to set in, but she's not broken anywhere, she thinks.

"Sort of?" I don't raise my voice because Blue looks like she's on the verge of some very un-Blue-like hysterics. Not that I can blame her; I've had my share of tears when I was in enough pain. I don't cry easy and neither does she, which is why I'm so worried now. I stroke my thumb in a little circle on her shoulder and then I finally draw back.

"I've got some spare clothes. They'll be loose on you but they'll be clean," I say, trying to be practical and pragmatic and not at all shaky and uncertain. Judging by the nervous wobble in my voice, I'm not sure it works. "Do you need a shower? Pain killers?"

I waver a little and then try to smile. "A kiss?"

Tris is practical back at her, and it's good: it helps her think. If she'd let people exclaim over her on the street it wouldn't have helped anything at all.

Blue can't help but smile a little at that. "Yes?" She practically speaking, needs the shower -- or possibly just careful un-graveling, she isn't quite sure about how water hitting all these scrapes is going to feel -- much more than she needs the kiss, but it sounds extremely nice.

"I'll be okay," she promises, because Tris's tone is pragmatic but her eyes are very worried, and she doesn't like that she's the one who's done that. "I just need to -- sit. And get clean, you're right, I -- ugh. Thank you..." Blue's not exactly sure what she would have done if Tris hadn't been here, either, she just sort of headed towards what was close and felt right.

It occurs to her, a little, that she'd done the same thing when she'd discovered Gansey gone: when she's hurting and doesn't know what to do about it she comes here.

God, she's an idiot.

Given how shaken Blue is and how much I still don't know about us, if there is an us, I only lean forward to kiss Blue's forehead. It's chaste but I linger there, giving her a chance to hold onto me if she needs or wants. The moment passes and I lean back, nodding towards the bathroom. "There's plenty of clean towels in the cabinet. I'll find you some clothes. I can make some coffee if you want? Tea?"

Part of me just wants to fret and worry over her, which crosses over into the odd territory of wanting to spoil her, make her feel better. For now, I reach down and squeeze her hand.

"Take all the time you need, okay?"

It's not what she's expecting, exactly, but it's nice, more comforting than a kiss on the lips would be even if that would be nice in another way, and Blue wraps one arm around Tris' waist for the moment, taking a breath to let her body acknowledge that she's not in any danger. And hopefully to let Tris know that she appreciates it.

"You don't have to do that," Blue says in an embarrassed exhale, though tea sounds nice. Just sitting around sounds nice. She can't deny that, shaken up as she is, there's a little part of her that doesn't mind the idea of being fussed over. A much louder part of her personality wants to protest it, though: it's a thing they share, both liking to fix things and hating to be the one being fixed. "Maybe tea," she relents, and squeezes Tris' hand back. "I'll just --"

She gestures at the bathroom and wanders over. They've seen each other in various states of undress before, and slept in the same place, too, but they've never used each other's shower. It feels a little oddly invasive, despite everything: this certainly isn't how she imagined it ever happening, if it did. Blue peels off jeans and shirt, hissing a little when fabric comes unstuck from scrapes: she sits down for a second on the edge of the tub, letting the pain subside and contemplating the bending of an arm required to unlatch a bra.

"Come on, Sargent," she mutters to herself, and does the rest in one go, stepping in and bracing a little as the water hits.

It's funny. By now, I've known Blue for years. I know how to maneuver around her, her physical boundaries, where not to push. I've just never applied them like this and now it all feels new where it should be familiar. She hugs me and I hug her back gently.

I nod when Blue goes to the bathroom and let go of her hand. "There's also a first aid kit in there if you want it." A well-stocked one too, given who I am and who I entertain, more often than not. I say 'want' and not 'need' because it's obvious she does. For all that she's upright and coherent, I can't deny being worried about her. I don't want to overdo it and get in her way except for the fact that I do.

I make tea, listening to the water running. Unhelpfully, my mind fills up with the thought that Blue is in my bathroom and undressed and I struggle to crush the idea down. Even if we're at that point, she's still injured and upset. Not the time.

It's strange, being fully aware of the fact that she's totally undressed in Tris' bathroom and also very much not in a position to linger on it: it's definitely not aligning with some of the ideas Blue's had (scarcely allowed herself to consider, for a long time) about being undressed around Tris.

She finds herself thankful for the first aid kit; the gravel and dust comes off her arms and legs with not too much coaxing, but it reopens a lot of the scraping. A little voice that sounds suspiciously like her mother, or Calla maybe, reminds her to let it bleed, that bleeding serves a purpose, and she swears through it for a moment or two, turning the water to cold, before stepping out and finding the first aid kit.

It looks like it might bandage up an army's worth of field injuries -- of course it does. It's a little bit endearing, how thoroughly Tris is stocked, and Blue pulls out gauze and big bandages and tape and ponders things like antibiotic ointment. It's not terribly hard to pat her elbows and forearms dry and get them bandaided, her knees, to make executive decisions about scrapes that don't need covering, but as she twists to examine herself, her shoulder and hip where she skidded on the asphalt are raw and twisting to try and get everything proves impossible.

"Um," she calls, clutching the towel to herself embarrassedly. "Tris. Can I ask you for a favor?"

I hear what sounds like muffled cursing through the door but I make myself wait. I know that, in her place, I wouldn't want to be seen like that, vulnerable and hurting and naked on top of that. Which is the other problem. This is definitely not the time or the sort of way I'd want someone seeing me like that for the first time. I need to stop thinking about that.

I'm so caught up in not thinking that I almost don't hear her call my name.

"Coming," I say, knocking on the closed door even though she's the one that called me over. When there's no protest, I let myself in. It's hard not to wince at her catalog of injuries. None of them are life threatening but they all look like hell and there are definitely a few places that, no matter how flexible, would be hard to reach.

"What should I do?"

Blue can feel her face heat when Tris comes in; her presence is welcome, but also this is absolutely not the way she'd wanted to be barely dressed in front of Tris for the first time. Or the first time since they'd kissed, anyway. Despite how much she's hurting, it rolls around her mind, and she tries to shut it down in favor of practicality.

"I can't reach everything," she says, making an annoyed, helpless face. "Could you maybe just get some gauze over the worst of it?" She twists her head around to nod at her back, and manages a wry smile. "Last thing I need is an infection I can't even see."

Somehow, it's easier like this. This isn't the first time I've had to bandage up one of my friends and it's likely not to be the last. I can put that at the front of my mind rather than think about how Blue is only in a towel. Blue is only in a towel, yes, but she also needs help and I'm careful as I apply the gauze piece by piece.

"Well," I start, wondering if it's flirtatious or just awkward. "I can always check for you." I wince, smiling at her apologetically in the mirror.

I feel like I'm holding my breath and it makes my throat tight until I finally decide I'd rather stop walking around it. "Sorry. I'm not really sure what we do now. As...about us?" I don't want to pretend it away but I'm still at a loss.

It's not an effort to hold very still as Tris applies gauze. She's careful and methodical, and it stings, yes, but Blue can also feel herself teetering on one of those curious edges that she'd so often felt around Gansey. Moments in the car, sometimes, where the line between friendship-love and romantic-love frayed. She's not even sure she knows the difference or where that edge is: she's worked so hard at not falling in love, and she always does anyway, only it's with the friendship of people far before she ever feels anything more than that.

Tris' joke is actually welcome, and she grins, even at the awkwardness. Not only because it's a terrible flirtation, but because it is one, and because she doesn't doubt Tris would worry enough to check these things.

Blue turns, as Tris finishes up with the gauze and confesses what both of them have been thinking. "I'm not either," she says, and chews on her lip. "I know I should be, because I kissed you, only..." She reaches out to push a lock of hair away from Tris' face. It feels awful for them to be strange with each other. That's not the point of this at all. "I don't know what you want, for one."

Tea whistles in the other room and she blinks at it. "Do you want to go sit down and we can talk it out?"

I'm so absorbed in looking at Blue, trying to find an answer in what she says, that the kettle going off startles me. I have to laugh at myself because we both know that this isn't like me. It's been a long time since I got flustered by someone touching my hair, just brushing it into place. I've always relied on instinct to guide me but I have no instinct for this.

"I don't know what I want," I admit. Except that I want to keep close to Blue. I want to keep our friendship. I want to not be so lost. "But tea would be a good place to start."

I stand up, catching my index finger around Blue's as if that alone can pull her to her feet. "Do you want to borrow some clothes?"

It's an unnerving answer: I don't know what I want. It's fair: Blue knows that. If she had to say specifically what she wants with Tris, she'd be hard pressed to put it into words. It's not words, it's a lot of feelings in her veins, the way that this place feels like home and she's also prickly-aware of her skin bare under Tris' fingers, even in pain.

But having been the one to kiss Tris first, she feels unreasonably nervous about what not knowing means. Should she never have done anything? Has she changed their friendship forever? She doesn't -- she can't lose that.

Tris's finger linked into hers feels good in the face of that uncertainty, solid, and she closes the circle, keeping her hand close as she gets up. "That'd be nice, if you don't mind."

Edited 2018-10-29 04:06 (UTC)

There's a play of emotions on Blue's face and I'm not perceptive enough to name all of them but I change the grasp of my hand and squeeze Blue's. I don't know what it is that I want but I know that she's part of it and I want her to know that, in some small way, before I let go of her hand. I'm gone only long enough to slip away and get some clothes, loose workout pants and a long-sleeved shirt, for Blue to put on.

"I can make tea while you get dressed. Is there any kind you want?"

A stray piece of Blue's hair is loose. I tuck it behind her ear now.

Tris might not know all of what Blue’s thinking, but that she knows well enough to know to give her hand that extra, solid squeeze — and wants to — is both comforting and one of the reasons all this felt so inexorable in the first place.

Some people, Blue is almost sure, have a distinct difference between the way they feel about the friends they love and the people they want to kiss. For Blue it’s all woven in together like the threads of a bracelet: not everyone falls in both categories, maybe hardly anyone, but one is very much a part of the other.

She smiles, glancing down, shyly selfaware of the new, niceness of that particular little intimacy from Tris, and takes the clothes gratefully. Being fussed over feels really relieving right now in a way she doesn’t often let people. “Um. Something sweet, maybe? Fruit?”

It takes me a second to find something that matches her request but I do find it. At some point, I'd acquired some hibiscus tea. It's more floral than fruity but I hope it will do. I also make some mint tea. Nominally, the cup is mine but I'll also gladly switch if Blue would rather have it. At the corner of my vision, I see a small black lump and smile as Élan moves to put herself in front of the bathroom door.

"Look out for the bunny," I say, when I see the door start to open.

Blue changes into Tris' clothes carefully. They're well chosen, not too clingy or tight, just a little big where Tris is taller than she is. It's nice in an unexpectedly comforting way, curling into her clothes after the shock and pain of the crash. It makes this next part easier feeling. Tris's meaningful squeeze of her hand had felt like permission to breathe, acknowledgement that she isn't the only one always wanting, wanting something more and stubbornly clinging to what she already has. But -- even though she's pretty sure Tris would offer any of her close friends extra clothes if they needed them -- it still feels as though it's a private thing she wouldn't be invited to do if this was going to be a bad conversation.

(Also, Tris' shirt smells like her, in a skin and clean laundry sort of way. Blue is absolutely not plotting a way to hang on to it.)

"Oh!" She smiles, pausing in the doorway, and bends to scoop Elan up. "Hey there, bun bun, how about we don't step on each other." Elan flails a little and sniffs Blue with her soft nose before stilling: Blue sets her back down with a scritch to her ears and pads over to the kitchen.

"Hey."

I shouldn't like it so much, the way Blue looks in my shirt. It's just a piece of fabric and I know that the skin beneath it, though clean, is still raw and tender. And yet, it's too easy to imagine her walking through the bedroom door, wearing those clothes for a different reason. While Blue's distracted by Élan, I try to make my face be neutral.

It's hard when she gives the bunny a little pat and I know I'm smiling a bit foolishly.

"Hey," I say, pushing the mug toward her. "It's hibiscus. Is that okay?"

Blue glances up and catches Tris smiling in her direction, and she smiles back softly, a little knowingly. It makes her feel, if not possible to be sexy all scraped up and in oversized clothes, at least a little confident, a little flirty. Glad to be able to evoke that sort of look. It's not one she's gotten so often as to be used to it, and certainly not in a way that feels returned.

Hell, she's only ever even kissed two people before Tris. One of them was dead at the time.

She blinks at the tea, because: "Hibiscus is actually perfect." She hadn't known exactly what she wanted, but that particular blend of sweetness and tangy was what she was trying to describe, one only a few other things like raspberry or passionfruit offer. She wraps her hands around it and takes a sip. "It's great." She chews on her lip a little as they both sort of hover, there, in that space.

"So....us," Blue blurts after another sip, and huffs a laugh, embarrassed, at herself.

"You're my best friend," she starts: she has other best friends, but it seems incomplete to say "one of". "I've known you as long as ...anyone here." She's known Tris as long as she'd known any of the Raven Boys, certainly by the time she got here, and given when they disappeared and the year that's passed, possibly longer than she got a chance to. "And I love that. I love you and I love what we are, like this. That I can come here out of nowhere, even before all this, and it's not weird. I don't -- if we messed that up, I don't know what I'd do."

She takes a breath, tipping her head up at Tris. "But I want...more than that too. I mean, kissing," she grins, "but not just the kissing part."

"Us..." I agree, unable to hide my nerves. I don't like feeling quite so exposed like this. I'm used to facing problems with closed fists and a blank expression but neither of those are appropriate for a moment like this. So I listen to Blue, really listen, and try to consider what it is I want or why it is that my heart jumps just a little at the word love.

"I...did like the kissing." I smile and try not to look embarrassed. That seems like the important thing to say, since I haven't actually up to this point. I think that, at least, was the most evident part. "It's stupid but I kind of...Every person I've been with. We knew each other and then we were together."

I raise my eyes to Blue, whom I've known for so long now. This is such a different thing entirely. "I'm not sure I know exactly how to know the difference between a friend and someone more works."

She probably shouldn't have said love, Blue reflects, anxiously, only after she's said it. It's not that she doesn't mean it, but what if it's too much? Or if she doesn't mean it yet in the way she's supposed to mean it when you're talking to someone who you want to kiss and it's the wrong thing to say?

That's always the trouble, isn't it? She loves Beth, and Olive, too, but she doesn't want to curl up with them the way she does with Tris. She hadn't been to saying I love you to Ellie as a friend when they first started dating, so it hadn't ever come up until she realized she did love her. If there's a solid construction between loving someone and being in love with them, Blue isn't sure she knows where it is.

Mostly Tris looks about as vulnerable as Blue feels and she doesn't like causing that.

"I mean, me too," Blue admits. "I...really didn't want to be with anyone for a lot of being a teenager, either. You know, being told you're going to kill someone by kissing them takes a lot of the fun out of high school dating." She huffs a wry laugh. "But sometimes it just sort of ...turned into something else." She's not entirely certain it didn't turn into something else with almost all the boys, in one way or another, it's just that some of them she wanted to kiss and some of them she didn't. Or she didn't want to kiss when they did, or whatever it was.

She presses her lips together. "I'm not sure I do either, to be honest?" Blue ruffles her hair. "I mean. I know what it looks like on screen, but that's not exactly what I mean, either. I guess...wanting to kiss you is a big part of it. And ..." She catches herself almost saying more than that and gives herself a Look internally. "Sex... If you wanted to do that. But it's not just that, because if you don't ever want to, I'd still want to be with you more."

Blue frowns over what she thinks more means. "I like holding your hand," she tries, and stretches hers out, a sort of offering. It feels like it'll feel better, too, than just standing close and negotiating.

"I don't know. Everyone was trying to kill me and I still found time to date," I say. I can feel the wry crookedness of my own smile. Tobias and I hadn't formally dated by any means at all. We'd climbed into one another's worst and darkest fears and figured out our terrible secrets and that had bound us together. Thomas and I were so careful as to feel like we never got anywhere. Everyone else? It was sex. It was me being stupid and lonely. I don't want to just be stupid or lonely with Blue.

Right now, is the least lonely I've felt in a long time. Blue offers me a hand and I take it, lacing our fingers. "I like this too," I say. I think about what it might mean to be Blue's girlfriend. In some ways, it doesn't seem different. We already spend a lot of time together, physically and emotionally close, but there's something different about the thought of curling up on the couch with my friend Blue versus my girlfriend Blue. The second words put a feeling of butterflies in my stomach that make me think this is about so much more than just kissing.

"I hadn't thought about you that way before," I say. "Mostly because I don't think I'd realized I could be." I've known for a while, in Darrow, that I'm not attracted only to men and I think Blue knows that's not what I'm referring to. It's just that I had never considered what it could mean for some of my current friends, for the people that I love and could fall in love with.

"I have no idea what I'm doing but I think I do want to be with you. I'm not sure I'd realized I could do that. I wouldn't if you hadn't kissed me."

"But were they trying to kill you by dating you," Blue says, putting up a finger in faux-protest, but she's smiling.

"Well, that's one thing," Blue says, curling her fingers around Tris, and she can tell her smile is going a little soft and goofy. She's used to being practical, tough Blue and right now she feels soft and open and a little in need of care, but it doesn't feel unsafe, around Tris. They're both confused, but they're lost in the same part of the map, at least.

"I didn't really think I could be, either. First because I wasn't sure if I liked you or just thought you were cool," she laughs. "And then there was Gansey, and Ellie, and you were with Thomas for a while, and ..." she shrugs expansively. "It sort of wasn't, or it was but in the background, and then it was. I thought you didn't feel that way at all." She can tell she's flushing.

"I'm glad I kissed you, then," Blue replies softly, with a little smirk. "I don't know if we have to know what we're doing. We can figure out what we want." She tips her head. "Can I kiss you again?"

"Semantics," I say, trying to sound officious and practical. It doesn't quite work when I know my cheeks are going warm and I can't stop smiling. My heart squeezes but it's not in an uncomfortable way. It's exciting and strange, like jumping through the hole and falling into that net.

Exhilarating.

What Blue says makes sense. There had always been other things going on, other people, but through all of them Blue has been a solid presence. We've called on one another for just about everything this city has thrown at us and it's like looking through a window that was smudged and is now clean. The stuff on the other side was always there, but now I can see it.

"I'm glad you kissed me. I think you should kiss me again too."

Tris is smiling, cheeks pink, and if anything it just stokes that nervous-excited feeling in Blue, watching her own emotions played out in measure across Tris’ face. Maybe she should have expected it: half of her adventures with Tris have been a little bit dazzling and a little bit terrifying. Literally throwing herself off ledges.

This is a different sort of ledge.

Blue smiles, and leans up to kiss Tris. This time it’s less urgent, less abrupt. Softer, gently exploring.

It's strange how different it is to kiss Blue. The last few men I've kissed were all about need and the promise of satisfaction. With Sweeney, it had almost been like sparring, in an enjoyable way. This kiss feels like I'm being figured out, explored. It's all too easy to lean into it and let my eyes close. Behind my eyelids, I remember flashes of the party, dark and colorful, but it's not that kind of kiss either.

It's nice.

Blue is easy to kiss back, wanting but not demanding.

There's definitely an element of need that could be there; probably has been there, at the party, will be there almost certainly, if Blue knows herself, but right now there's no rush. After the adrenaline rush of maybe sort of not quite ending up in the hospital, and the smaller one of actually talking, it's nice and a little comforting. to just take things slow.

It's nice to feel like they have time too.

Blue can feel Tris lean in, and she presses close. One of the few advantages of her height is that kisses tend to mean she's leaning up towards her partner, and the extra contact feels good. Finding a place that doesn't hurt to put her hands, her fingers discover the little gap between shirt and waistband, and she stretches her hand out against Tris' skin and under her shirt just a little. "What about this, can I do this?" It's half a tease, half literal. There's something a little exciting about asking about everything, and something reassuring about it too.

Edited 2018-12-07 08:08 (UTC)

It's a sweet kiss and there's a lack of familiarity to it that reminds me, again, of how long it's been since the last time I had the simple pleasure of this sort of kiss. There's no rush to it because we have so much time, though that doesn't mean there's a lack of urgency. It's easy to lean in, to deepen the kiss, to want to be closer, especially when Blue's hand is warm against my skin. My heart jumps, remembering that she's in my clothes.

And then is slows, remembering she's injured. "It is," I says, pulling back and biting my lip a little. "I just want to be careful." I trace my fingertips over a sleeve, conscious of the road rash beneath.

Tris deepens the kiss in a slow, wanting way that lets something uncoil under Blue's skin, and she sighs a little when she pulls back.

"That's probably a good idea," Blue says, though the conviction isn't quite in it; right now, buzzy with adrenaline and being kissed, she isn't hurting terribly. It might not be wise, but she's alive and unhospitalized and Tris is happily kissing her back, and it all feels encouraging and warm.

She chews on the inside of her lip and smiles a little. "I'm not going to break, I promise." She glances around. "Just, we could...on the couch, or..." Or the bed, but that seems presumptuous, even if the times she's messed around in a bed haven't always led to more than kissing.

Edited 2018-12-24 03:05 (UTC)

"Or..." I agree, understanding the way she trails off. My stomach does a nervous butterfly swoop at the implications there but I determinedly push that down. This is barely beginning and, more importantly, it won't go away. We can afford to wait. I haven't been with another girl; I don't want to rush clumsily in. "Your call."

But I do want to kiss her again, pull her body flush against mine with careful hands that avoid the raw, injured places on her skin.

Blue's stomach is not bereft of butterflies. She's only ever been with one other person: the fact that it was a girl just makes the various possibilities a little more dizzyingly forward in her mind. It doesn't really matter, anyway, how many people she's been with: she's never been with Tris. The butterflies are there.

And, equally: she wants it to be good when and if and however they do.

"The bed sounds a little more comfortable," she says, but ever conscious of being transparent and unpushy, she adds, "I don't mean anything else by that."

Edited 2018-12-27 04:39 (UTC)

I lift my eyes to meet Blue's and I hope she can see both my understanding and relief. This isn't like the hookups I've had in the recent past. It's closer to the kind of thing I used to want and used to think I'd have with Tobias. Not that there's any real comparison between them, just a similar sense of wanting. Permanence.

"It would be," I say. Reaching down, I take both of her hands and intertwine our fingers, squeezing her hands. Then I step backward, tugging her along the short distance to my bed.

Tris's gaze is warm and a little relaxed, and Blue smiles, a little of the anxiety about what to do or say to make sure everything's okay draining away. It's not that she and Tris have ever had trouble getting their meaning across to each other, particularly, but she keeps expecting things to be tense, possibly because they always have been for one reason or another.

This doesn't feel tense. There's a sort of rush to all of it, a nervousness, but it's the sort of nervousness that comes before good things.

She grins when Tris tugs her back into her bedroom and closes the space to kiss her against the edge of the bed before realizing she can't just flop them both onto it dramatically, much as she might like to. There'll be time for that sort of stuff later.

Blue takes a breath and sits next to her. "Hey," she says, running a hand up along Tris' arm. "So..." She feels very stupid. More kissing, less talking. But it catches in her chest, flutters bird-like. "Do I get to call you my girlfriend, or are we not there?"

Edited 2018-12-30 07:08 (UTC)

There's a second where I consider falling backward and letting Blue collapse on top of me before remembering why we can't. I know Blue said she won't break and I believe that she won't but that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to be handled carefully, gently. No matter the angle we look at it, her day hasn't been easy, so I let her press me to the edge of the bed and then I sit down slowly, giving her plenty of space to join me, to hold one another.

Her question makes me laugh, a light giggle that hardly sounds like me, even though I'm sure Blue has made me laugh like that before.

The question of being her girlfriend seems both weighty and obvious at the same time and I second-guess myself before nodding. "I'd like to be your girlfriend."

Blue is sure she's blushing when Tris laughs, but it's a good laugh, a giggly one that she files away as wanting to cause more often, even if it's at her own expense. "I'd like that too," she says, leaning into Tris' shoulder and tucking her head down against it. Honestly, she's 20 years old, she really needs to stop being such a fluttery chaotic mess about this stuff, but her heartbeat refuses to obey. "I'd really like that."

She scoots back on the bed, carefully, and tilts her head. "C'mere?"

Edited 2019-01-01 03:06 (UTC)

Blue fits perfectly against me and I briefly rest the crown of my head on top of hers before letting her scoot away. I'm already halfway to joining her when she asks me to come over and I grin. It's easy to get comfortable, rest my head on my pillow and drape my arm across her.

"Does that mean you're my girlfriend?"

It feels nice, fitting so closely against someone, and she'd hang onto it a little longer if she didn't think, miraculously enough, it was going to be available again when she wants it.

Tris's bed is soft and the pillows smell like her, and Blue smiles at her when she sidles close. The air feels warm and buzzy between them like even the atoms of her skin are reaching for Tris's. "Yeah," she says with a little grin. "I think it does."

"I mean, if you want."

Edited 2019-01-03 04:18 (UTC)

As a child, I never had a sleepover. My only knowledge of them is from the occasional Darrow TV show and I have no idea how the real thing measures up but there's an element of it here. I feel light and easy, despite the weight of the confessions we've made, ready to kiss and laugh and relax until Blue's skin hurts a little less.

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want that," I point out, letting myself smile. "But I'm kind of new at this."

Blue grins. It's silly, of course: they're being silly and that feels as good as anything. But it's also nice to have these questions answered, to say Tris is my girlfriend in her head.

It's more than nice. It feels amazing.

"At having a girlfriend or at being one?" she asks, sort of teasing, sort of just fond, and pauses. "I mean, I'm not exactly a pro." Blue exhales a laugh. She's like the opposite of a pro girlfriend: between lack of interest, being in love with too many people, and outright being cursed to kill someone, she historically might rank as one of the worst choices in romantic interest ever. "I've dated one ...and a ...half people."

She's still not exactly sure if what she and Adam did was dating or just a small exercise in misidentifying love.

"At being your girlfriend," I say. "But also at having anyone for a girlfriend." Much less someone like Blue as my first. She's so important to me as a friend already that I don't want to screw things up romantically. The way things have been in Darrow, at this point I've slept with more people than I've loved and, maybe, I should be ashamed of that but right now, it's simply a ratio.

I could love Blue.

"My track record isn't exactly much better," I point out. "I'm...okay with learning on my feet."

"Oh," Blue realizes, and smiles, because it just really does sound wonderful. She feels silly, but it feels good, a rollercoaster climbing so slowly that it wasn't even noticably moving now cresting its hill, with all the exhilaration and relief, too, that imparts.

And a little bit of fear. Her last couple of relationships haven't exactly ended well, and both of them have said it, but she can't lose Tris. She can't screw this one up. It matters too much.

Somehow she doesn't think she will, though.

"You do have a history of being good at that," Blue says with a little smirk, and nods. "There aren't -- rules to this, you know? I want to be with you because it already felt good. Safe, you know? And -- yeah," she adds, flushing a little and grinning at herself, "maybe I want you, too, but that's too, not just. I want to figure it out with you."

Blue smiles and I feel my own face echoing her expression. Safety, affection, desire. I understand those things and now that Blue says them in connection with me, I don't know how I never realized I could find them in her too. My stomach flutters in a way I'm no longer used to and I can't help nudging forward on the bed until we're as close as we can be and still be two separate people. "I don't know what I'm doing," I say again. "But I like the idea of figuring it out with you."

I kiss her and drape a hand across her waist and decide that the only thing to do is be close to her.

[tris]

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