January, 2015; Graz, Austria
The snow crunched delightfully beneath their feet as they walked through the streets, hand in hand. A strong wind had started up earlier during the day and was buffeting them as they manoeuvred the long stretch of road that led to the main square, the prospect of food and a warm place to just sit and talk fuelling them on.
"Cosima, how much farther?"
"The app said we have to walk for like 400 meters, so we should be there soon. Just a few more minutes."
"You know, I spent my early years in the mountainous parts of France, and this is still really fucking cold."
"Here!"
They came to a halt at a small pub, wooden exterior, glazed windows. The snow had frozen up around the step, making it slippery as they tried to get in through the door, and were greeted by a tall woman with short black hair.
"Hallo."
"Uh, hi, do you speak English?"
"Yes, a bit," the woman answered in shaky English, smiling at Cosima and producing two menus from beneath the counter. "Table for..." she frowned, creasing her brow as she appeared to forget the word for 'two', and simply held up two fingers instead. Cosima nodded, and the woman smiled brightly back, leading them to a table and leaving them with the menus.
"How did you hear about this place?" Delphine asked as they sat down, and Cosima smiled, shrugging her coat off and grasping at a menu.
"I had a friend in high school who came here once for a week, I got in contact with him recently. He said that this place is like, the best place to come for hot soup and chicken wings in the whole city. A good home cooked meal, he said."
"Chicken wings are hardly a home cooked meal, Cosima," Delphine grinned, shaking her head slightly. Her girlfriend shrugged.
"Yeah, well, apparently they cook it really nicely here. I dunno. Let's just eat!"
-0-
July, 2015: Costa Brava, Spain
"This country is hot as balls," Cosima muttered beneath the strawhat she had bought enthusiastically just for this trip. They sat together on the large fountain they had found, amongst the throng of other white tourists snapping pictures of everything. She noticed a slew of different nationalities – Arabic vendors to the side selling leather purses and bottles of Fanta, white Europeans chatting between themselves, Spanish people roaming around them as they tried to get on with their everyday lives, teenagers trying to hit on the 'hot foreign girls'. She was pretty sure that to her right, an Italian man and Spanish woman were arguing, trying to make sense of each other's language.
"It's got a climate very similar to San Francisco, Cosima..."
"Still, hot as balls. I haven't lived in San Fran in years, I've lost the memory of what it means to feel 'hot'," she countered lamely, sticking her tongue out and regretting it immediately as it tasted salt all over her lips. "Bleugh. Sweaty taste."
"I like this country."
"You would..."
"It's very much like the South of France, where we had a home by the sea."
"Oh, there's an image I like," she grinned, gaining a small, hardly painful slap from her French lover. "No, seriously, I'm just imagining a twenty year old you in a bikini, lying on a beach in Southern France, soaking up the sun, sweat dripping down your back..."
"Are you done?" Delphine laughed, giving her another slap, harder this time.
"Mmmm...very appealing. Very hot."
"Quiet you!"
"Am I embarrassing you?" Cosima laughed, and Delphine blushed, going slightly more red around her ears than she already was (but that was because of the sun anyway).
"Let's just get off this fountain and get some lunch, near the coast."
"Well, we are in Costa Brava! Let's go."
-0-
July, 2015: Sorrento, Italy
"Three guesses why the sand is black," Cosima prompted around the 'very small ice cream' the vendor had sold her (it was made up of a cone bigger than her palm and about three different flavoured scoops, not to mention the strawberry syrup he had lathered all over it. All for a measly one Euro thirty).
Delphine was enjoying her own ice cream, just as large as Cosima's, when the question was posed and hurriedly pulled away from her treat to furrow her brow and look down at the coast below where they had stopped for a rest on the road near the small park.
"Well, isn't Vesuvius only a few miles away? The sand is probably mixed in with volcanic ash."
"Yeah, thought so too," Cosima agreed, taking another lick from her ice cream and turning to look at Delphine. "It's a nice place here, quiet."
"Oui, not like the rest of Italy."
"Yeah, definitely not."
Cosima turned around to lean her back against the ledge separating her from the coast about 300 meters below her, and surveyed the people walking around. "Everyone's so friendly though, it's nice."
"I didn't know you know Italian," Delphine murmured, reaching for Cosima's hand and squeezing it lightly. "You surprised me."
"Surprised us both, I didn't even know I remembered all that."
"How did you learn Italian?" Delphine probed, nudging Cosima in the ribs lightly. The shorter woman laughed and gave a small shrug.
"I dated this Italian girl back when I still lived in San Francisco. I figured if we were going to communicate and she had learnt English..."
"Then you might as well learn a whole other language as well."
"Yeah, exactly," Cosima nodded, looking up at Delphine again and suppressing a laugh. "And you need to learn a few skills yourself. Like how to not smother your nose in ice cream."
Delphine blushed putting a finger up to her nose to remove the smudge, but Cosima beat her to it, leaning up and kissing her nose licking lightly to get the ice cream off.
"Mhm, lemon sorbet. Nice," she teased, grinning widely and giving a small wink. "What say we finish off these ice creams and go back to our hotel to find out what other tastes we can get, huh?"
-0-
August, 2015: Għadira Bay, Malta
"It's so hot," Cosima complained, fanning herself with the straw hat she had bought at a vendor on the way to the beach from the hotel, not having anticipated the heat of the tiny island country. "Seriously, it's way too hot!"
"Well, in my defence, I did tell you Malta suffers from heat waves in August and that we were better off coming in September," Delphine countered as she lathered another layer of sunblock on herself, tutting at her reddening skin.
"Sorry I didn't listen," Cosima murmured lamely, swatting at Deplhine with the straw hat. "Seriously though, it's like a hundred degree out here!"
"It actually is about forty degrees centigrade, so I'd say that's accurate."
Hiding her adoration behind a smirk, Cosima swatted at Delphine again. "Nerd."
"You love it."
"I do," Cosima nodded, scooting closer to her girlfriend despite the heat and placing a kiss on her shoulder, ignoring the slight taste of sweat mixed with sunblock. "It's really cute."
Just as Delphine returned the kiss with a small peck to Cosima's lips, murmuring broke up somewhere to their left. Cosima frowned, turning to look at the group of teenagers who were staring at them pointedly, some snickering, some expressing plain disgust. A boy who looked about fifteen said something to his friends in their native tongue, and the others laughed scornfully. Cosima, not one to have people laugh at her expanse, was gearing up to get up and confront them (Delphine holding her down as best as she could, trying to keep the situation calm) when they noticed the two girls walking near to the group.
They looked no older than twenty, and we were walking with food in their hands to another group of youth nearby, and Cosima watched as one of them stopped in her tracks, glared at the group laughing at them, and rolled her eyes, turning to say something to the other girl (what looked strangely like "Can you believe some douchebags?"). The other girl sighed and looked at her friend straight in the eye before looking from the group to Cosima and Delphine and then back to her friend, smiling evilly as she leant closer and kissed her, eliciting a few hisses from the group that had been jeering at the two scientists before, but much louder laughs and claps from the group they had been approaching.
They broke apart, and the second girl – the initiator of the kiss – flipped off the group who had been hissing at them before continuing on her way. The first girl, blushing and rooted in place, chanced a glance at Delphine and Cosima and smiled weakly at them, scuttling off after the other girl like a rather confused and lovesick puppy.
Laughing, Cosima shook her head and turned to Delphine, raising an eyebrow.
"I think we just witnessed the start of something beautiful," Delphine grinned back, nodding at the two girls who had sat down by now with their groups.
"Yeah, probably."
-0-
September, 2015: Amsterdam, Holland
"You know," Cosima said as she watched the lights flashing and the women standing artistically behind the glass, luring men to the proverbial time of their lives, "even though I know what this place is, I can't help but feel like I'm viewing some sort of...work of art."
"I understand, cherie," Delphine nodded, clasping Cosima's hand tighter as they walked towards one of the bridges that seemed to be situated at regular intervals throughout the whole of the picturesque city.
"You haven't spoken much since we left that cafe, love. You OK?" Cosima asked, putting a hand on Delphine's shoulder and making her look at her instead of at the inky black water beneath them. They both leaned against the bridge, Cosima's arms crossed over her chest while Delphine rested her elbows on the metal behind her.
"I'm still...reeling from all that smoke."
"Right, forgot you're not used to it."
"It's completely legal here, yes?"
"Yeah, totally."
"Cheap?"
"I wouldn't say cheap, but cheaper than the States, yeah."
Grinning wickedly, Delphine dug into her bag and brought out a fifty Euro bill, handing it to Cosima. "Then this should be enough, yes? We can buy some, take it back to the hotel, have a bit of our own fun."
"Where am I gonna find a dealer?!" Cosima laughed, not brushing off the idea in the slightest.
"We'll find one, it is Amsterdam after all," Delphine winked, grabbing Cosima's hand and dragging her across the rest of the bridge. "Time to make good on that promise of yours, cherie."
Cosima laughed and shook her head slightly. This was a good turn of events, indeed.
-0-
September, 2015; London, United Kingdom
"Hey, Sarah!" Cosima grinned, holding the phone tighter to her ear as they emerged from the entrance to the Underground, clutching at Delphine's hand protectively. "How's it going?"
"Good, yeah, where are you guys right now?"
Cosima grinned wider before looking around her and shrugging lightly to herself. "Three guesses – everyone's jostling about minding their own business, there are a bunch of tourists taking pictures everywhere, there's this huge tower with adverts flashing all over it..."
"Piccadilly?!"
"Yup!"
"Oh, nice! You're not far from where I grew up."
"Not going that way, Sarah."
"Yeah, I don't recommend it. Anyways, have fun! Just wanted to check in."
"Ciao, Sarah."
Her clone scoffed on the other side of the line. "Yeah, bye Cos."
Cosima hung up, turning to look at Delphine, who was eating everything up with her eyes, scanning the crowds hungrily and trying to take in as much as possible.
"You've never been to London before?"
"Non," she murmured, digging unconsciously into her pocket for a cigarette, her fingers completing the motion of putting on in her mouth and lighting it steadily without her actually paying attention to her hands. "Have you?"
"Yeah, family bonding time with my cousins when I was like twenty. We ended up in Soho a lot by night, but by day we were all over the place." She turned to looked at the flashing adverts, smiling softly to herself. "London's a beautiful place."
"Where do you want to go next?" Delphine asked, jerking her back to the real present, and Cosima shrugged.
"I dunno, we've been almost everywhere thanks to the very efficient underground system..."
"Then, may I suggest a place?"
Cosima nodded, turning to look better and Delphine, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her to her casually, their faces inches apart. "Name it."
"I've always wanted to see Baker Street. You know, because of Arthur Conan Doyle..." Delphine blushed, her voice trailing off to a whisper as she finished the sentence, and Cosima laughed, clasping Delphine's face with one hand and giving her a sound kiss, rubbing their noses together lightly.
"Let's go and find 221B then, m'lady," Cosima laughed, dragging her back to the underground station they had just emerged from, wanting nothing more than to make her lover happy.
-0-
September, 2015; Edinburgh, Scotland
Cosima hadn't expected to meet a friend of Delphine's slap-bang in the middle of Scotland, but then again she had never thought to ask if Delphine had any friends anywhere in Europe.
"Cosima, this is Nicholas!" Delphine had gushed, one arm around the man's neck as he hugged her to him, clearly incredibly happy to see her. His eyes were twinkling, his cheeks slightly red from the settling cold around them. He had stock black hair that stuck out awkwardly in a lot of angles, and slightly darker skin than most of the people mulling past them. He let go of Delphine to offer a hand to Cosima for a hand shake – a gloved hand, she noticed – and she realized that his smile was bright enough to make anybody fall for him, probably.
(That didn't stop a pang of jealousy course through her.)
"Nicholas and I met in Paris when I was still studying there," Delphine explained, and Cosima nodded, giving a soft 'Mmm'. Nicholas let go of her hand and looked at Delphine, still smiling.
"Long time that's been, huh?" He wasn't Scottish, but definitely not French either. His accent sounded Latin, but had a certain lilt to it...
"Where are you from, Nicholas?"
"Italy," he answered Cosima, shrugging slightly. "I prefer it here, I like the cold. So, what brings you here, Delfie?"
Cosima seethed silently. Only she could call her that...
"Well, Cosima and I are just going around Europe, visiting popular places, that sort of thing," she breathed out, waving her hand around airily. Nicholas nodded and snuck a glance at Cosima.
"So two friends on a trip?"
"Actually..." Cosima made to interject, but Delphine beat her to it, shaking her rapidly.
"Oh, no no, she's my girlfriend. Well, future wife, possibly," she corrected Nicholas gently, whose eyes widened as his smile grew larger and he patted Delphine on the back.
"Seriously?! That's great, Delphine! Happy for you both," he continued, nodding at Cosima and grabbing her hand to shake again. "You know, I always knew you were like us," he said to Delphine, who blushed.
"Wait, like us?" Cosima asked, but he didn't hear her as he was whipping out his phone and dailling in a number.
"I must call Kyle and tell him to get his ass over here so we can celebrate. Coffee at the Elephant House? The four of us?"
"Who's Kyle?!" Cosima asked, more urgently than her first question, but her words fell on deaf ears. "Will someone please pay attention to me?!"
It wasn't long before a young man with dreadlocks (much shorter than hers) joined them, rushing up to Nicholas and pecking him on the cheek lovingly, shaking Delphine's hand and murmuring a 'long time no see' at her, introducing himself to Cosima as Kyle.
Oh.
"So, coffee at the Elephant House, on me!" Nicholas grinned, motioning for them to follow him. "As a 'welcome to the rainbow party' celebration for Delphine!" He clicked his fingers and they were off, strutting down the streets, and Cosima grabbed onto Delphine's hand and pulled her closer to Kyle, asking excitedly, "Isn't that the place where JK Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potters?!"
-0-
November, 2015; Paris, France
"Dinner with your parents was nice."
"Mm...," Delphine nodded as they walked hand in hand down the street to their hotel, the stars above them shining brightly despite it being a cold winter's night. They had been around most of Europe in the past year, and Delphine felt a sense of accomplishment that their last stop had been her home town.
"It was great meeting them."
"I'm glad you did," Delphine smiled, and led Cosima across the road so that they could walk towards her final location, the square right in front of the Eiffel Tower.
"We've already been here, Delfie, earlier today, remember?"
"Yes, well, the Eiffel Tower is much more beautiful at night. Look."
So Cosima did look, and stared at the lit up structure, her eyes craning up to look at the ironwork properly, almost falling back as she tried to take it all in in one glance. Delphine steadied her, and put a hand into her pocket, smiling at her.
"You like?"
"Yeah, definitely."
"Good, then this is the perfect moment."
"For what?"
Delphine didn't answer immediately, but instead opted to pull Cosima to her, pull out a small black box from her pocket and hand it to her girlfriend, smiling widely at her as they huddled in the chill November wind.
"Marry me, Cosima Niehaus."
For a few seconds, everything was silent. The whole world seemed to have stopped turning just to let Cosima stare at the diamond ring and let the words ring in her ears.
"Marry...you..."
"Yes. Please. Nothing would make me happier."
"I...uh..." Cosima shook her head, laughing before wrapping her arms around Delphine's neck and pulling her into a bone crushing embrace, murmuring 'yes' over and over into her ears, peppering the side of her face with kisses.
"Yes, I will marry you, Delphine Cormier."