Hey everyone, sorry it took so long to get this out. My laptop broke, life happened, yada yada. You know how it is. Anyway, I felt like Cosima's sudden turn-around between those two scenes made no sense, so I wanted to make it make sense in my head. I wanted Cosima to have a reason to soften up a little, to the point where she would forgive Delphine and let her guard down around her (in a multitude of ways). Anyway, hope it was worth the wait and y'all like it.
Click. Beep.
The sound of the passcard startled her, and she straightened from where she'd been hunched over a piece of paper, turning her head toward the sound. The click of the card again. She looked down at her notes, suddenly incomprehensible squiggles as she felt her amygdala take over her frontal lobe. She took a shaky breath, the beep of rejection following almost too quietly to hear. Then, the unusual noise of knuckles rapping against the door. She managed to finish the thought she'd been writing before she'd been interrupted.
Scott looked up at her and she could feel it, the question he wasn't asking.
"Cosima? Cosima!"
She looked over her shoulder at where he was working, tossing a "hold onto your hat" as she stood. She moved to the door, pulling it open and settling her weight onto one hip.
Delphine looked good today. Well, she looked good every day, but there was something about Doctor Cormier that would always manage to surprise Cosima, even after they'd settled into this routine, this life. At the Dyad, Delphine was confident; she dressed in tight jeans, button-ups or flowing tops. She pulled her hair back tight behind her head. There was none of the student she'd thought she'd met. The gangliness of her, the giddy, excited stumbling over herself were gone and now she was suave, in her element, in control.
Cosima liked it. She more than liked it. It turned her on, it drew her eyes, made them stick.
"Hey," Delphine was confused, though they'd been through this so many times. "My passcard is not working."
"Yeah." Cosima glanced up at her briefly, the look on Delphine's face sending shocks through her system. "I locked you out." She didn't wait for her reaction, didn't feel as though she could handle it. "Is that for me?"
Delphine looked down at the package, having forgotten it. "Yeah. a package from Sarah." There was half a beat where she handed it over and Cosima focused her full attention on it before she spoke again. "Seriously? I can override this lock anytime."
"Go for it." It was time for the killing blow, the sentence she'd honed to hit Delphine in the back of her knees; the one she knew would make her buckle and suffer. "I just really don't want you here." She pushed the door shut before any more thoughts of her could cloud the judgment of her calmer self, the one that made decisions independent of Delphine's influence.
"Cosima." Her name echoed back from the door, bounced around the hallway. She let out a small breath. It was over. Her relationship, the one she'd never expected, the one that had hit her so hard it stole her breath, even before the illness ravaged her lungs and made each one feel precious.
"Wow. Girl fights are mean." For such a nerdy boy, Scott's voice was low and so different from what she was used to in this world she now inhabited. The one full of women who scraped and battled and loved so fiercely it suffocated.
She started to walk toward him, toward what her life used to be. Long days in labs with socially awkward boys and the occasional woman, all of whom laughed too loud at their own puns and spent long hours playing tabletop games instead of lounging out in the sunshine with their peers. She was used to this world, used to the rules of how to talk, what jokes to make and when. She could charm this world, could control it. But Delphine. She was a whole other ballgame.
It gave her pause. Delphine was a whole other game, yeah, but she ruled that game, too. Even when Doctor Cormier took over, there was always the slightest hesitance when it came to Cosima. She had never been much for sleeping around. It wasn't that she didn't have the opportunity, she'd simply never liked it. To her, sex was intimacy. It was sharing herself with another person. It was something sacred and wonderful and otherworldly, to be able to reach euphoria in someone else's arms.
And now? She held a beautiful, intelligent woman at her beck and call. She was living every person's fantasy, even though it hurt. Even though she hated it. She turned on her heel, suddenly.
"I'll be right back."
Delphine was disappearing into the stairway when Cosima caught sight of her, and she jogged to catch her.
"Delphine, wait."
She paused, turning with one foot on the landing and the other on the top step.
"If you've come to yell at me more, Cosima, don't bother." From so high up, with the sunlight shining bright and easy into this building with too many windows, Delphine seemed angelic and pure. It threw her off kilter.
"No." She climbed the stairs until they were face to face. "I want something else."
There was a slight pause where Delphine didn't speak, where she watched with a wary eye.
"What happened the other day, it was-"
Cosima pressed forward, forced her against the wall. "You liked it, didn't you?"
Delphine sucked in a harsh breath, shutting her eyes and turning her head away. "No."
"I think you're lying." She murmured it against her ear, pressing their hips together. "I think you want me."
Delphine pushed at Cosima's shoulders. She was easily stronger, especially now that Cosima's illness had begun to eat at her musculature. They were arms' length apart now, Delphine holding her there with furrowed brows and tears lying in wait in the wells of her eyes. "Of course I want you. I can't stop wanting you." She pushed her gently back until she was against the opposite wall and knelt down in front of her, lifting Cosima's shirt so she could press a kiss to the skin of her stomach.
"What are you doing?" Cosima's voice was hard, but her breath was trembling.
"You want control? Fine." Delphine nudged Cosima's pants down with her chin, then ran her tongue along her hipbone. "Here I am. On my knees for you." Cosima grasped her chin and tilted it up to look at her. "What do you want? I'll do anything."
Cosima took her in: panting harshly through her nose, forcing the nostrils to flare with every breath; jaw clenched tight together; tearpaths crossing her cheekbones down to her jaw.
"Shit." She turned her head to the side, looking out the large windows next to them. Control was fun, control felt good, especially when you didn't often have it. But power and control are nothing unless they're being wielded over others. "I have to go." She muttered, then stepped to the side to escape Delphine's grasp and walked back toward the stairs.
"Don't leave me like this again." She sounded insolent to her own ears, like a child begging to not be left at kindergarten. "Please, Cosima."
"I'm sorry. I just-" She turned with a hand on the rail to look at her. "I just need some time."