A thumb to her cheek. Soft. Warm. Eyes flutter. A kiss to her temple. A hushed voice reassures her. "Sleep. It's early." Fingers gently rake her hair. Eyes flutter. The voice apologises. "I have to go to work. Place is yours. So raid the cupboards and fridge if you like. Left some towels out..." Something about a note, keys. The voice is gentle. It tells her she doesn't have to leave. It tells her she knows where to find her. It withdraws. Comes back. Something about tea, cupboards and Darjeeling. A kiss to her temple. Silence and darkness and dreams of a woman whose voice she wants desperately not to forget.

When Helena awakes it is close to 2 in the afternoon. She doesn't ever remember sleeping so much in her life. She turns her face into the pillow before she reaches out for its twin. Her pillow. Where she laid her head last night. She hugs it close to her, grips it tight, and breathes in her scent. It smells of ocean spray and cloves, vanilla and jasmine, grappa and cedars. The scent of shampoo and skin. It is new. New but comforting. She thinks it smells something like home should smell like. Warmth from the afternoon sun filters through the blinds. She is cocooned in another woman's red and white polka-dot sheets and they don't feel foreign on her skin. She thinks she should feel something about this. Like the first time, like the first, eighth and thirty-fourth time she had woken in Nate's bed to Nate's scent, her presence as a foreign body, alien even. It had taken time to get used to Nate. She had rushed into his bed, his home, his life. He had thought her passionate, flattered by her ardor. But it was frenzy that drove her there, desperation that kept her those first nights. Still months after it had become their bed, she would wake up in a panic at having woken up in a strange place. She closes her eyes and shakes off the memory, anxiety rising in her chest. She clutches the pillow tight, inhaling deep a scent that frees the tightness in her ribs. She thinks of a picture perfect house, but the scene is more garish nightmare than blissful daydream. She thinks of Nate standing by her side and of Myka staring in disbelief. She reaches up and clutches her locket even tighter. Almost tight enough to draw blood. She thinks if she presses down just a little bit more she would be greeted by the scent of metal and blood. She is starting to forget what Myka smells like. She tries not to think about that. How that is one more thing slipping through her fingers. She tries not to think how that is one more thing she's violently tossed aside.

She grabs the towel and heads to shower. Her skin turns an angry red under the punishing flow of scalding water. She wishes it would dissolve her or turn her into vapor. She sinks to the tub and holds her knees close. The ache inside wants her body to break. But she does not break. She does not sob. She doesn't even cry.

There is a note, a phone number and keys. She borrows some clothes. Skin tight black yoga pants and an asymmetric zip hoody. She ties her hair up and meets a surprised reflection. She is surprised that she recognises herself. That shocks her. She takes the keys and goes for a walk. Ambling aimless she passes the college's ivy-covered halls, she passes the quad and the Neoclassical revival library. She wanders past the seminary gardens where she is sure her eyes burn holes into a woman's back. She stays 10 paces behind two figures holding hands fallen into the steeple's shadow, a tall woman with curly brown hair and a little girl maybe six or seven with darker wavy locks. She follows them as they round a corner and are lost to sight when they enter a drugstore. She loses them. She sits on a bench. She loses time.

When she returns to the red lacquer door it is hours later and night has long since fallen. She hesitates, thinks to go home. She runs her fingers through her black tresses and stares blankly at the quiet street. It is even colder out tonight. She hesitates. Where is home? The sterile townhouse she has rented? She hesitates because the red lacquer door calls to her. Invites her even as she stares at it locked before her. She holds fast to her locket and sighs. It is a door. And what lies behind it may not be home but it feels a lot like something close to it. So she stays. She enters.

The apartment is so quiet. She makes her way to the bedroom where she finds Giselle curled up with a book in a semi-darkness that is punctuated by the gleam of a nightlight on the side table. And seeing her there, hair pulled up in a messy knot. Blue eyes grown wide and happy with recognition. Between softly spoken hellos and "You came back." At the voice mirroring the softness of such dark blue eyes, at the promise of jasmine and grappa and crashing waves, Helena does not hesitate, not now. Giselle's lips part as her gaze steady and admiring registers a note of confusion at what transpires. Between a softly spoken "I did darling" and "Sorry I didn't mean to come back so late," Helena strips herself of borrowed clothes. Strips herself until she is almost entirely bare save for her underthings and the locket around her neck. Giselle's face is unreadable as Helena takes the book gently away from her and places it to the side. It is unreadable as Helena straddles her thighs and dips her head for a kiss that tastes like too many things all at once. But feels mostly like it's exorcising pain. Giselle's eyes cannot be read as they close entirely, her lips already parted accept Helena's seeking tongue. She accepts the deepening kiss, the fingers tugging at her hair, loosening it in cascades. She accepts and she gives back until they part for air.

Helena does not hesitate at all as she unclasps her bra and drops it to the floor. She makes sure Giselle's eyes are open and seeing before she pins her down to find reddened lips once more. But this time Giselle does not accept. She hesitates. Mumbling against teeth biting her lower lip, "Helena don't. I don't-" And she must see it then, read the utter rejection in those dark brown eyes. Because she doesn't hesitate in this, as she grabs Helena's bare thighs tight, as she steadies her there so she can't wriggle free. "Stop, just stop okay." Brown hands firmly grasp pale flesh as she props herself up. "Just wait." Honeyed brown fingers thread themselves in the shiny blackness of her hair, again grounding her. It's not that I don't want to. I do." But the hurt, the abject mortification in Helena's eyes is not tempered and Giselle can read that. "Here feel. See. You are ridiculously hot and I am completely turned on right now," She says as she unthreads her fingers from Helena's hair and grabs her hand to guide it underneath her nightshirt to meet a pebbled nipple. She does not hesitate to prove it more convincingly as she leans into Helena, warm hands on her hips pulling her closer as she captures her mouth in a searing kiss. Helena's mouth burns with the taste of tea and sweet mint on her tongue.

"It's not that I don't want to. Okay? It's just. Helena, I don't take things that aren't mine."

The words tug at something inside of her, like nimble fingers undoing a tangled web of knots. Helena's eyes well up to overflow, "You're not. I'm not-I want this." A sob escapes as she struggles to speak, "I need this. I need you like this, Giselle. Please." And Giselle accepts that but still hesitates. She wraps her close to her, bare breasts pressed flush against her, coaxing her on to her side. She drags the pillow and arranges it carefully under Helena's head. She swipes gently at Helena's locket, touching it questioningly, reverently before pressing her warm hand against her back drawing her close to her, into her, accepting her. She wipes still flowing tears from Helena's cheeks, "I don't want to hurt you. With this. I don't want this to hurt you more. I don't know. I don't know what's going on with you but you're hurting and I don't want to hurt you more." She breathes deep her voice small but certain, "It's not that I don't want you. I do." Helena wipes at her eyes, gazing into the face of undeserved kindness, this strange grace, and her chocolate eyes grow soft, "You won't. You could never hurt me." But what Helena wants to say, what Helena wants desperately to be true, is that she won't hurt her. That she herself would never cause pain to rise in bottomless blue eyes. And all Giselle can do is nod, caress her cheek and nod, "Okay, okay. But promise me one thing first." Helena nods, "Anything darling." Giselle tilts her head and reads that maybe Helena would agree to anything just then. Make any vow to have her like this. "In the morning we talk. You talk to me okay? Cause I can't do that right now, with you all glorious and naked and pressed up against me. I'm not a statue you know." She smirks then. She reads her well, all her pages open. And Helena laughs lightly, her hands placed flat on a warm abdomen, she laughs turning to her shoulder. There is no hesitation then, no more hesitation from either of them that night. And she crashes into her like she's wanted to, she crashes into this girl, this woman with changeable blue eyes, darkening with the tides. She loses herself in the scent of her, in her warm hands. She crashes an ocean, submerges in waves. She dulls the ache. She quells it. She drowns the ache in the deep.

TBC

NOTE: So next chapter there will be some talking. Maybe lots of talking. Some planning on Giselle's side. Some getting Myka closer. But yeah, that's coming up. It will. Myka will. Hopefully soon. This isn't destined to be a long fic so the road there might be bumpy but not too long. I just never understood what they did post Instinct and season 5 in general. This is my way of making sense of things. I mean granted it might not make a whole lot of sense to any of y'all. But yeah. This.