Sorry for not updating in forever, I had a family emergency that is hopefully resolved now. And a birthday, which sucked, but that happens every year.

A quick note on this chapter; I do not sign very fluently at all. So if there are any British signers out there and I've written something not quite right please let me know, because I am trying to learn to sign for professional reasons. Also Pasteurised Milk is a genuine sign language joke, it's pretty well known but I just love that there are cheesy Dad puns in sign language. Because it's the sign for 'milk' but going past-your-eyes, so it's 'Pasteurised Milk'. Language is awesome.

Also if you don't know how La Vie En Rose sounds then I highly recommend You Tubing it because it's gorgeous, especially on ukulele.

Content Warning: innuendo, social anxiety, accidental boob touching.


hey not sure if you got my last message are you coming tonight itd be cool to see you guys x x x

"Oh my God your phone is like, going mental over here. Are you just gonna ignore that or what?"

Bonnie didn't look around for a long minute. It was so much easier to pretend she hadn't heard Lydia or the insistent buzz of her phone on the coffee table and just focus on analysing her lab slides instead.

"I'm talking to you, dork face. Your phone is vibrating hard enough to break the table."

"...I know. I'm busy though and it's nobody important."

"Oh ok. I'll read it for you then."

"No! Lyds, don't-"

Too late, the curly haired girl had already swooped down and grabbed her phone from the tiny coffee table they'd crammed in front of their equally tiny sofa. She was scanning Bonnie's messages with a look of concentrated glee on her round face. Lyds held the phone close to her chest so there was no chance of its owner being able to reclaim it and Bonnie didn't even bother trying to get it back, there was no point now. Once Lydia had decided something was going to happen it did, whether Bonnie wanted it to or not. Lydia did at least know what she was doing with social situations. She probably thought she was being super helpful. Maybe she even was; Bonnie wasn't expert enough at dealing with other people to be able to tell.

"Ooh it's from your mysterious rich girl. Exciting! Ok, and …done." Lydia crowed after a moment. Bonnie heaved a long suffering sigh and let a couple of her photocopies slip into her lap from the thick sheaf of paper she was staring at, looking up pleadingly from behind her glasses.

"What's done? Lyds, what did you say to her?"

"Umm lemme see now... I said, 'Hey Marceline yeah sorry I've been out of touch been so busy nerding it up all week. I'd love to come for you tonight though just tell me when and where and I'll be there.' Then I added some kisses and a heart just in case she didn't catch my drift."

That made Bonnie forget about her slides at least. Her face burned with sudden embarrassment. Had Lydia really said that? But that sounded... Oh hell, that was definitely a dirty innuendo. It was very nearly crass.

"'Come for you tonight'? You actually said that? Oh God, Lyds! Please, just let it go! She's straight and because of you and your dirty messages she's probably freaking out that I'm gonna creep all over her tonight! If she pepper sprays me it'll be your fault! Please, just stop trying to help me and let me die miserable and alone." Bonnie moaned it around the hands she'd hidden her suddenly brightly red face behind. Mortified didn't even begin to cover it.

"Well there's two ways to look at this, dork. Either she is actually straight in which case she's probably immune to lezzer flirting anyway and thinks you're just being super nice and a really good pal. Or she's secretly way into gorgeous naked women and is imagining what your sex blush looks like and the exact shade of pink your nipples are. She's probably having to change her panties right now. Either way you come off looking good. There is literally no way this could go wrong. I mean, unless she's straight and knows you're flirting and is grossed out by the very notion. But what are the chances of that?"

Bonnie didn't reply. She was too busy hiding her entire head under the cushions on their sofa and repressing the urge to kill Lydia. First Finn and his stupid interfering and now Lyds was flirting all over the place on her behalf. She should just give up having a phone, she thought. Or friends. Or going outside ever again.

"Seriously, stop freaking out. I'm good at this." Lydia sighed with an exaggerated eye roll. "You're just scared that she's actually into you and you might actually have a shot at getting laid. Finn and I don't usually agree on stuff and we both think that this chick is hot for you so that's pretty much undeniable proof."

Bonnie's phone buzzed a reply and she tried harder to stop existing. It didn't work.

"Are you gonna even look at this? No? Fine. Ok, your hot girl says... 'awesome see you there I'll text directions bring your friends too really looking forward to it kiss kiss heart heart'. Huh, she doesn't waste anyone's time with useless punctuation. That's my kinda girl."

Bonnie was saved the effort of replying by Jake's voice floating up from the hall. Lydia must have left the door unlocked again; Jake was terrible for just letting himself in without knocking.

"Hey, ladies! Your favourite boys are here! Oh, and Lady." he added sheepishly after a second. Bonnie felt certain Lady must've just punched him in the arm. Lydia let them into the lounge and from under her makeshift fortress of soft furnishing solitude Bonnie heard Jake ask, "Yo, what's up with Bon?"

"Oh just ignore her, she's being a total drama queen. Like, she's dying of embarrassment because I made her sext with that rich chick she's been mooning over all week." Lydia answered nonchalantly.

"I will cold blooded murder all of you with my bare hands, I swear to God." Bonnie muttered into her cushion, still hiding from them. Without warning someone pulled it away from her face and Bonnie glared up into the deep chestnut depths of Lady's concerned eyes.

"It is very rude not to greet your guests, Bonnibel." the tall girl admonished. "It is even ruder to threaten their lives. But, given that you live with Lydia and she's probably done something unforgivably awful yet again, I'll let you off with it this once."

"Right! Enough girly murder talk! Tonight, planning, are we going out or not?" Finn enthused, bouncing on the balls of his feet and grinning around at them all. He must be feeling better at least, Bonnie reasoned. Or he'd stolen more of her codeine.

"Apparently we're all getting dragged along to this delicious Marceline creature's show." Lydia replied, rolling her eyes theatrically. "Because Bonnie is too coward to go on her own and actually have it be, like, an actual date. Besides I want to check her out and see if she's really as thirsty for pale dork flesh as you said she was at the cafe, Finn."

Bonnie ignored the slur against her study habits with long practice and instead looked the energetic blonde boy up and down critically. Finn bounced harder and beamed around at them. Yeah, he wasn't acting anything like his sad and sulky self from the last few nights. Bonnie shot Jake a look he was more than capable of interpreting and he shook his head very minutely, making sure Finn couldn't see. So… he'd gotten hold of something stronger than codeine? Or his period had stopped already? Bonnie considered. Finn's pupils looked normal and he wasn't any more enthusiastic than his usual hyperactive self. She was gonna hedge on 'period stopped already'. That was good news, at least. It meant the testosterone was working and he wasn't in pain any more. She was glad for him.

"Is Susan gonna be joining us tonight?" she asked politely when Finn flung himself down next to her on the sofa. He nodded happily.

"Yep. And she's gonna stud it up and try to flirt with your girl! Because she's just a bastard like that. Besides she reckons there's not a woman alive who can resist Sue's sweaty charms, it'll be fun to test the theory."

"She's not my girl." Bonnie muttered darkly, blushing again and glaring at her ex. Finn beamed back at her.

"You want her to be. You want to kiss her all romantic and stuff and do cute couple things together and buy kittens with her and stare into her beautiful eyes and-"

"Shut up, you dink. Or you're not getting any pizza."

The way his eyes lit up was worth the extortionate amount she'd paid for takeout delivery. Not that she'd paid with her own money anyway. Bonnie had spent the last of the leftover cash from the cafe that Marceline had point blank refused to take back when they'd gone to dinner. She'd already ordered, knowing that Jake and Finn would be on their way over and probably hadn't thought about lunch. Bonnie was determined to share her financial good fortune with them no matter how briefly it lasted and besides eating pizza by herself was uncool even by her own dorky standards.

They spent the rest of the afternoon squished into Bonnie and Lydia's front room alternating between watching reruns of decades old sitcoms and watching Finn try to eat his own body weight in pizza.

...

"Are we not taking the Nerd Mobile?" Lydia asked slyly while Bonnie fiddled with the door lock.

"Why would we? It's only a station away and right next to the Tube. You know I don't like driving unless I have to."

Lydia just shrugged.

"Thought it might impress your girlfriend to know you have a car." she replied.

"She's not my girlfriend, she's clearly very straight, and she's probably really rich so I doubt my crappy old Punto is going to impress her. And for the love of all things holy would you please stop calling it the Nerd Mobile?" Bonnie replied, stung. Lydia just rolled her eyes again.

They shuffled off down the street in a tight group, past plenty of other students heading out for a Saturday night in the most exciting city on earth. It was an unusually mild autumn evening and only just starting to get properly dark. The air was thick with the sounds of the nightlife warming up. There were sirens wailing off in the distance somewhere and a wide jumble of different snatches of music drifting down from the apartment blocks and terraced houses they walked past. The air hummed with a thousand different voices speaking a hundred different languages mingling together on every street in the district.

Bonnie usually disliked noise and crowds on principle but she'd always found that there was something magical in the way the city came alive in the evenings. Something about the way millions of different people all came outside to greet the night. She smiled to herself despite Lydia's earlier annoyances and the mounting social anxiety that going to a pub entailed. If it had just been a case of walking the darkening streets watching the huge variety of people hurry past she could have happily stayed there for hours.

All too soon they were at the underground station and Susan was hollering at them from across the road, dodging cyclists and the occasional taxi as she darted across to where they waited.

"Hey! You were supposed to call when you set off!" she yelled at Finn who winced and switched to rapid signing to reply. Susan's hearing aid was excellent but it had built in noise reduction and their ears didn't. When they were somewhere with a lot of background sound she didn't realise how loud she got when she spoke. Bonnie had never learned enough sign language to completely follow their conversation; she thought Finn was probably offering to buy Susan a drink to apologise for not calling though. The muscular girl nodded and pointed at the steps and they all trooped down together, caught in a press of people all trying to board the Central line at the same time.

"Where are we going?" Lady whispered to Bonnie while they waited on the tightly packed platform.

"Umm... The Fox and Hounds, Bethnal Green."

"That's not just one stop away! Bonnie!"

She just grinned sheepishly and shrugged at Lady's outrage. It wasn't all that far away really and they regularly went much further for a night out. Besides she hadn't really wanted to go anyway. She'd only agreed to be dragged along because she couldn't think of a good excuse not to go. Bonnie wanted to try to disprove Lydia and Finn's weird shared delusion that she was somehow interested in some beautiful mysterious girl who asked her to dinner and hugged her for just a couple of seconds too long and smelled like strawberries and-

She could feel her cheeks burning again. Luckily the train arrived a second later, before anyone could ask why she was standing quietly blushing to herself. Finn and Susan were still signing furiously to each other as they boarded in front of her and Bonnie was sure they were talking about her; she saw Susan sign her name repeatedly. Or at least, her sign language name which wasn't really the same thing as her spoken name. Sign names were a bit confusing for her still. She understood the principle that it took too damn long to sign every letter of someone's written name so signers usually came up with a nickname that could be flicked out quickly. But she wished Finn hadn't felt the need to name her Pink Sprinkles. It was apparently a very funny joke; Bonnie had thought she'd heard every pun about her surname that existed but no; Finn had come up with a new one. If he'd been stuck being a Sugar instead of a Mertens he'd probably be a bit more sympathetic, she thought sourly. Still it could be worse; Jake was forever going to be called Pasteurised Milk for mystifying reasons that Finn and Susan refused to divulge but which were apparently hilarious to people fluent in sign language.

They rode the Tube in silence except for Finn and Susan who conducted a rapid sign conversation for the whole journey. Finn always maintained that learning to sign was one of the best things he'd ever done. He could talk at the movies without it annoying other people, he could yell at Susan across a loud bar and insult most people right to their face without them knowing. The train was crowded and Bonnie was acutely aware that people were shooting Finn and Susan sidelong glances from the corners of their eyes, annoyed that they'd found a way around the unwritten 'no talking on the Tube' rule. She was relieved when the train pulled in at Bethnal Green station and she could get away from the large number of glaring commuters.

You boy bad. Bonnie clumsily signed at Finn, making him laugh out loud.

"You mean 'you are the worst' or 'most bad.'" he corrected her, flicking his fingers forward to show her how to sign an approximation of worst instead of just bad. She shrugged and tried to copy his hand movements as they followed the small crowd up the steps and out onto the street. Tried hard to focus on learning the sign and not on how her stomach churned with sudden nerves now that they were almost at the venue.

...

"Big crowd out there," Mo stage whispered. He stuck his head as sneakily as possible around the door of the small store room Marceline had been given to use in lieu of a dressing room and gazed out at the noisy mob of assembled punks and bikers.

"Mo, it's a fairly small pub. There's room for maybe a hundred people, tops. That's not a big crowd." she told him gently. He just nodded and shot her a nervous smile. Kid was dying of stage fright on her behalf and he wasn't even performing; she choked back a snort of laughter because obviously Mo was taking it all terribly seriously.

"You ready to rock your roadie skills?" she asked him instead, trying to take his mind off his nerves. Mo grinned and held up a clipboard with his copy of the set list on it and a roll of silver tape. He wasn't entirely sure what the tape was for but he'd read somewhere that a real roadie wouldn't be caught dead without their trusted roll of tape. Mo was carrying it around in a death grip and glaring at anyone who looked like they might ask to borrow it. The rest of the band were already out setting up their instruments on the tiny makeshift stage and Marceline was just putting the finishing touches to her eye liner before she went and grabbed a cranberry juice from behind the small bar.

"I'm gonna check the set list is taped down properly." Mo announced proudly after a moment. She nodded as he left, unable to keep the soft smile from slanting across her face a little. Mo had just been a shy fourteen year old when he'd moved in downstairs and now he was in his last year of school. He was doing really well, really into music and video games and hopefully nearly over the awkward crush he'd had on her for a while. That had been weird for them both; Marceline saw Mo like a little brother and she'd already been nineteen when they'd met. Even two years later he was way too young for her. But lately he'd been full of enthusiasm about math, of all the bizarre things. It had transpired after some gentle probing that there was a girl in his algebra class whose smile was brighter than the moon, if Mo was to be believed. Marceline was glad for him. She hoped he could get over his clumsy teenage nerves and ask the girl out.

Marceline put down her eye liner and stared at herself in the mirror. Her reflection stared back, pale faced and sombre. She'd been playing in pubs since well before the age when she'd have been legal to drink in them if she'd ever wanted to, she wasn't usually nervous about performing. She was unaccountably jumpy tonight though. Maybe just a tiny bit anxious because she'd invited Bonnie and her gang along and she wasn't entirely sure what the redhead's intentions were; if they were hanging out as friends or… something else.

Going to dinner with cute girls was a whole new world of unknowns for Marceline. Until recently she'd been so busy making sure Simon stayed safe and fed that she hadn't had a moment to stop and think about hanging out casually with anyone. She'd never even considered that dating could be a thing that could happen to her except for the couple of occasions when Ash had needed her as a token girlfriend for various reasons and she'd agreed to go along for the sake of their decades old friendship. She was also trying hard not to feel guilty about Simon needing more care than she could give him. It had broken her heart to have to leave him and go home alone that first night. In the end she'd had to accept that he'd needed to be somewhere with twenty four hour security and specialist equipment; she'd found him wandering around the streets in the middle of the night in his pyjamas looking for Betty. Marcy had known then that no matter how much she wished he could stay at home with her she'd never forgive herself if something happened to him. Because sometimes she'd have to leave Simon alone and he might hurt himself without someone there.

She shook her head lightly to clear the memories then frowned at her own reflection. With her eyes so wide and innocent like that she looked entirely too much like her mother. The only real difference was the tattoos covering her shoulders and arms and that instead of inheriting her mysterious grandmother's Indian skin tone Marceline was several shades lighter. She looked more like she had a permanent deep suntan. Reluctantly she picked up the liner pencil and added much heavier lines and some extra wings tapering off from the corners of her eyes. Now she looked far too heavily made up, almost clownish, but that was preferable to anyone recognising her as her mother's daughter or the little girl from the papers. She nodded to her reflection; it would have to do for tonight. Distantly she wished she could wear something with long sleeves but even under the small stage lights of the Fox and Hounds she knew she'd be way too hot too quickly. It would absolutely have to be the slim grey vest or she'd risk fainting or freaking out under the lights. Marceline didn't deal well with overheating, just the thought of it made her panicky.

Stepping out of the small back room and nodding to the loitering crowd she pushed her way towards the bar only to trip on some idiot's badly placed foot and go flying through the air. She landed almost face first on-

Oh, on Bonnie, as it turned out.

And, argh no, she'd landed hand first too. Almost right on the danger zones of the other girl's chest just like they were in some cheesy romantic comedy. Marceline whipped her hands away as quickly as possible, flushing beetroot red under her make up and stuttering a garbled apology at the same moment Bonnie started talking entirely too fast.

"OhgodI'msorry I didn't see you there-"

"-no it's my fault I'm in your way also hi and I brought some people and-"

"-let me get you a drink to apologise, so sorry again-"

"Hi! You must be Marceline! Oh my god your makeup is awesome! I can never pull off that kinda look, I'm so jealous! We've heard so much about you, like, it's totally cool to meet you at last."

At the same moment as the enthusiastic voice interrupted them Marcy's vision was filled with a mass of tight brown curls and a smiling face coated in entirely too much purple eye shadow. A small heavily curved girl in a matching tight purple dress and ankle boots had elbowed Bonnie out of the way and commandeered Marceline's hand. She was shaking it vigorously and loudly introducing herself. Right, Lydia. Bonnie had mentioned her; the annoying roommate who wanted to be a famous fashion critic.

Jake, Finn and Susan were there too along with an extremely pretty Asian girl that Marceline didn't recognise. Jake introduced her as his long term girlfriend, Lady. Marceline murmured greetings to them all and bought a round of drinks for them, watching the way Bonnie sucked the cherry off her cocktail stick in open fascination. It seemed the redhead was completely oblivious to how borderline obscene it looked to anyone watching. When Finn helpfully pointed it out Bonnie's fierce blush was equally fascinating and thoroughly adorable. Marcy would have waved Mo over to come meet them too but when she looked up to see where he'd gotten to he was staring around worriedly from the platform. Obviously he thought she'd bailed and with a guilty glance down at her watch Marceline realised she was supposed to be on stage already.

"Listen guys, I gotta go, y'know, perform. See you later?"

They nodded and she pushed her way back to the stage through the restless crowd. She grabbed the heavy red bass guitar a relieved looking Mo handed her then remembered what she'd had planned for tonight and passed it back to him with a small shake of her head.

"Nah, fetch the ukulele instead." she muttered to him. Mo nodded and grabbed it from behind the drum kit while she flicked the microphone on and grinned out at the crowd. Her heart soared; this was what Marceline lived for. When she was on the stage with an audience before her she felt so light, like she was flying. And there was Bonnie and her friends at the back of the room. She shot an extra smile their way and felt her heart begin to soar with anticipation.

"Good evening, Bethnal Green! You guys came here for a night of hardcore punk, and that's what you're gonna get. But first I'd like to do something completely different! Prepare to get your feels on."

The small crowd were gaping at her like a group of leather jacketed fish when Mo handed her the ukulele but Marceline couldn't have cared less. She'd been practicing for ages and she really wanted to play her song. She began to strum the chords, slowly with closed eyes, feeling the music flow through her fingers as well as hearing it. Despite the completely unexpected genre she was playing the crowd watched in transfixed silence.

Finn whispered something dirty about Marceline having accidentally gotten to second base already in Bonnie's ear but she didn't really hear him or bother replying. Like almost everyone else in the room she was staring at the dark haired girl in the spotlight, mesmerised by her silky voice and enigmatic soft smile.

"Hold me close and hold me fast,

This magic spell you cast

This is La Vie En Rose."