"L'amour n'est pas quelque chose que vous trouvez. L'amour est quelque chose qui vous trouve." ~Jeunes de Loretta

Chemiluminescence

Delphine lets herself be dragged across the ice-slicked path leading further into the warehouse district. Even a few blocks away the heavy thud of the bass gives a heartbeat to the night. Delphine had thought she'd aged beyond her clubbing days, and raves had never really been her thing. The sorts of people that typically frequent the rave scene are not the type that would enjoy her excited explanation of the reaction between luminol and oxalate in glow sticks.

But her wrists are glowing with plastic bangles and Cosima is giggling and nodding her head as Delphine describes the time in secondary school when she and a close friend stole chemicals from the science lab to create their own test tube glow sticks and one broke staining her mother's carpet.

When they finally arrive Cosima gives the man guarding the entrance some money and they engage in some strange handshake that has Dephine furrowing her brow in bemusement. They weave between partiers like Peter Pan's lost shadows, Cosima's hand clasped tightly within her own.

The air is thick and smelling of sweat and booze. Within 15 minutes of dancing, Delphine can feel her hair sticking to the perspiration on her forehead. Cosima is grinding back against her front, and- here in the dark -Delphine's hands are freed of inhibition, grabbing at every delicious curve. Cosima spins, her dreads flying, and Delphine's breath catches in her throat.

There is such life in her, such elation, she feels drunk on it. Her collarbones glisten with sweat, a single bead sliding between the generous cleavage displayed by her midnight blue top. Delphine runs her tongue along her bottom lip, wishing to lap up the retreating drop with the flat of her tongue. Cosima's glasses keep falling onto her nose as she dances, and Delphine is entranced by the way she pushes them back up with the tip of her middle finger.

She pulls at Delphine's hips until their centres clash with heavenly friction. Cosima's line of sight keeps dropping to her mouth as they move against each other: the crowd, the beat, everything irrelevant but for the space between them and their desire to eradicate every last centimeter of it. Her spine stiffens with keen anticipation as she leans in a touch. Then a little more.

It's a simple kiss-positively chaste- and yet the breath is pulled violently from her lungs. When they pull back Cosima licks her lips like she can taste her on them before breaking into a goofy grin. Delphine feels as if she's been struck by lightning, doused in ethanol, and dropped from a 15 storey building all at once.

Merde. This was going to be a lot harder than she thought.

Observatory

"Delphine! Where are we going?" Cosima's voice comes out in a whine, her pout tempting Delphine to lean over the console and kiss it away. She yields to it; she's been doing an awful lot of that lately. It's good 20-minute drive into the countryside, but they finally arrive at a lone building at the top of a hill. She slides the key in, and pulls Cosima inside by their joined hands.

"My friend works at this facility. He owed me favor." She hears a giggle and pivots on the balls of her feet. Cosima's procerus scrunches as she wrinkles her nose. Delphine had quickly learned to identify this as the look when she says something not quite right. But Cosima rarely corrects her, Delphine thinks she finds it cute…and while in others it would irk her, with the young scientist something warm and heavy blossoms in her chest.

She is almost skipping in her excitement as they finally find themselves in a large white domed room with a giant telescope at the centre. When Cosima had lamented leaving her telescope in San Francisco, Delphine knew she had to bring her here for the next meteor shower. Which is tonight. She pushes aside the fact that she actually got the key from Aldous. Hardly a friend, more of a jailer. But what's one more lie when it brings such a brilliant smile to Cosima's face? Or so she tells herself.

Cosima's voice comes out low with something Delphine thinks might be reverence, "I forget sometimes, even though I fight it, I can be exceedingly anthropocentric. And it's cliché, but you forget how very insignificant you are, humanity is."

Delphine wishes she'd pull away from the telescope so she could see her expression, "And this depresses you?"

The sound that escapes the other woman is a mix between a laugh and a sigh, "No. On the contrary. It makes me feel real." When Cosima turns to look at her, her eyes are slightly vacant. Delphine knows she is thinking about being a clone, but she is not supposed to know this so she rubs her fingers along Cosima's spine hoping to infuse comfort from the warmth of her touch as she bites her tongue.

She wants to tell her that she is incredibly real. More real, more alive, than anyone Delphine has ever met. She wonders sometimes about the others. What they are like, surely they cannot be like Cosima. Even here, utterly aware of how vast the universe truly is…there could only ever be one of her.

Silk

Delphine's fingers move with restless desperation. She'd always loved silk. When she was 13 she saved up for 6 months to buy the most luxurious silk sheets she could find. Now, however, she is certain Cosima's skin is even softer. Her hands seek out every centimeter of exposed skin, but it isn't enough, not nearly enough. She tugs the shirt over her shoulders and flings it carelessly to the side, devouring flushed skin, hands following the path of her eyes.

She wonders briefly if Cosima's skin has been altered, for surely no one else has ever felt this good. She tries to remember the specifics of her file, but her thoughts are vagabonds, unable to linger, they take off the moment they've left a shadow of an impression. Soon touching isn't enough, she needs to feel the softness of her against her own bare skin.

Cosima's eyes lock with hers. She can practically hear the click. They are so endlessly dark with a desire that sets Delphine's whole body thrumming like a freshly plucked chord. Their lips glide smoothly, taking and giving in equal measure. And Delphine is burning. That heat. That pressure. This sweetness. It feels like being born anew. Each kiss and stroke searing away what Aldous had touched, had tainted. She holds onto the kiss until her blood boils with need for oxygen.

"Jesus, you're so fucking sexy," Cosima blurts out when they separate. Delphine wants to shake her head, wants to say that Cosima is unequivocally the beautiful one, but now with these feelings with this need rising within her, vocalizing even in her native tongue feels like a feat that is beyond her. So instead she makes to show her. Their passionate embrace quickly gives way for forceful, desperate, openmouthed kisses as Delphine lifts Cosima to sit on top of her desk. She moves to stand between her knees as she undoes the clasp of her bra.

Cosima wriggles as Delphine clamps down on her right breast, the left massaged roughly under her palm. The brunette moans as she closes her soft lips around Cosima's rosy bud and grazes it between her teeth as she lets it slip out. She is captivated by the contrast of firmness against her tongue and softness against her lips, by how the tiniest movement can inspire her back to arch, by everything.

"Fuck." Delphine grins against her skin. That has always been her favourite English curse word, the gutturalness of it, and Delphine decides it sounds best falling hoarsely from Cosima's panting, passion-reddened lips. She trails openmouthed kisses down the brunette's flexing abs. The muscles fluttering with each swipe of her tongue.

She doesn't bother removing her jeans completely, choosing instead to impatiently pull them down to her knees and shove aside her boyshorts Delphine let out a low groan, if she thought her skin was like silk it is nothing when compared to being inside her.

"C'est tellement bon."

She starts thrusting with increasing vigor when she feels Cosima sneak a hand through drenched curls for she's almost gone already. She hadn't even been aware of her opening her pants.

Here now, inside her, she feels powerful yet weak. She wants to make Cosima whimper in satisfaction, buck and keen against her. And yet she's positively trembling, her nerves frayed and burned to ash. She'd blow away if it weren't for that gentle niggling weight low in her stomach that has nothing to do with her mounting arousal. Guilt. But a moment she's glad for the feeling, because surely left at the mercy of incredible woman with the endearing grin and the skillful fingers she'd explode without it.

She bites hard into her shoulder as she comes, and instantly she's aware of two things: Delphine is in trouble, and she will never again 324b21 to her. Just Cosima. She soothes the mark with her tongue, although Delphine is quickly realizing there is hardly anything just about it.

Inhalation

Cosima's bracelets glitter in the semi-lit room, and Delphine watches as they move in sweeping arcs.

"Are you even listening?" Cosima's half-amused, half exasperated tone draws Delphine's attention to her face,

"Hmm?" She cannot manage any more than that. Her tongue feels thick and glued to the roof of her mouth. She imagines she could funnel an entire dam down her throat and still not lose this thirst. She wonders why she thought of that.

Cosima's laughter rings mellifluously in the air as the woman sits crossed legged on the bed, "Dude, you are so baked." She pulls another long drag from her joint while grinning down at Delphine spread haphazardly across her bedspread, "Mission accomplished."

Delphine wants to hear that laughter again. She likes the way it dances down her spine. So she scrunches up her face and sticks out her tongue and is rewarded with a loud belly laugh that shakes the bed. Delphine sits up, plucking the joint from Cosima's lips and drawing it to her own.

Her eyes are restless, trying to take in everything. She wants, no needs to memorize Cosima, her scent, the curvature of her back, the pattern of her breath. Deep, shallow, shallow, deep. Gravity feels different, and she is unsure how much of that can be attributed to the marijuana and how much to the company.

She looks at the joint between her fingers for a long moment-

She puts it out, cutting off Cosima's protest as she jumps on her, shoving her down against the sheets and pushing her hands above her head. She peppers her throat with kisses, tastes the sweat in the hollow of her throat, and smells the cherry blossoms clinging to her skin.

-marijuana is fine, but Cosima makes for a far more delicious drug.

Microbiology

Delphine sighs as she makes a note in the margin. Already having a phd in the Immunology certainly makes things less difficult, but there is still a lot of lab work involved…a lot of time. She wonders if she even needs to be giving her classes her best, she's unsure if she could do anything but even given the choice. A loud groan draws her attention the only other occupant of the lab.

Cosima is pressing her palms against her closed eyelids as she releases as ragged breath, "There's only so long I can study the chemical structure of endotoxin before I get bored."

She is close enough to lean forward and snatch that pouting lower lip in between her teeth, but she resists. She's been feeling like a hormonal teenager enough lately as it is, and she knows Cosima needs to finish analyzing her slides for tomorrow.

"Aww ma biche. Are you frustrated?" She settles for pinching her cheek and grinning at the halfhearted glare her gesture incites.

"Did you just call me a bitch because I insulted your sister discipline? Uncalled for." She pauses, eyes widening before she notices the sparkle in Cosima's eyes. She sighs and shakes her head in mock annoyance as she leans forward,

"You. Are. A. Brat." Each word is punctuated by a brief pressing of lips, she refuses to linger any longer or she'll end up shoving the microscope and samples to the floor and taking the younger woman there on the lab table. "Finish your work and we'll pick up some Eskimo pies on the way to my place."

Cosima's smirk is decadent as she returns her gaze to her work, "I told you I would make a craven addict out of you."

Delphine's smile falters and she stares at Cosima for a long moment, eventually whispering under her breath, "Tu ne sais même pas a quel point."

Abracadabra

Delphine traces her fingers across the spines of the books lining Cosima's overflowing bookshelves. There's an order to it-she's certain-but she cannot for the life of her discern what it is. Cosima is changing in the bedroom, running late, but Delphine doesn't tell her that she set their reservation half an hour later than she said for this very reason. She enjoys the frazzled cursing spilling from the room. Cosima is terribly endearing when she's flustered.

If Aldous could see her he'd be telling her to use this time to pry. She tells herself it's too risky, truthfully prying is the last thing on her mind. Her current curiosity has nothing to do with clones and everything to do with the enigma that is Cosima. Her eyes fall to a magic kit placed haphazardly on top of a book on medieval weaponry.

"I was into magic as a kid." Delphine jumps and spins around, her hand coming to her mouth as she releases an embarrassing squeak of surprise. Cosima smiles bashfully as she pulls lily out from behind Delphine's ear. Delphine gapes.

"Don't look all impressed, I could have easily stashed a whole bouquet in that hair of yours and you'd never have known." Cosima bites on her lip and rubs the back of her neck. She looks embarrassed, like she's ready for Delphine to make fun of her, like she has no idea just how incredible she is and Delphine's heart leaps into her throat.

Impulsively Delphine grabs Cosima by the tails of her scarf and crashes their lips together. As Cosima's lips seal sweetly against her own, something far more dangerous than magic ignites within her. Love.