A/N: Again, if you so wish, you can find a character photoset for this chapter on my tumblr (patience-elizabeth-mount). As per usual I hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks for all your lovely continued support and patience - it really is what makes me want to carry on getting these chapters out quickly!


Patsy

It was hard to think of a free evening that they didn't spend in each other's beds. Though of course, free evenings were hard to come by at uni. They both always seemed to have something on, either that or work was unbearable. It tended to be Patsy that put in late nights at the library, or couldn't be disturbed at her desk – really, there was no chance of finishing anything once Delia skulked in a twelve in the morning – and Delia who would get back too late from the gym, or would be showing her face at a club night in town. But whenever they had no obligations, whenever they could be, they were together. They had even started planning around each other – Patsy would manage her work well so it would be done, cycle just that bit faster after a late fencing meet. Delia would just have a couple of drinks out and then come home at a reasonable hour, crawling into her bed, hazy and warmed by alcohol. It was quite wonderful, really.

See, it wasn't that Patsy never thought she'd find anyone. It wasn't that she was so hopelessly pessimistic that she genuinely believed that she'd keep this part of her hidden forever, that no one would ever want – read: put up with – her. She knew that things would be okay eventually, that maybe even she'd be okay one day, but she never saw it, even in the distance, coming towards her anytime soon. Once she'd realised this part of her, once she'd realised what all of those feelings she'd had – for friends, older girls, teachers – really meant, she'd stuffed them away. It was sad really, that she'd felt freer to let herself feel those things when she was younger, not really understanding what they meant. Though she supposed on some level, she'd known it wasn't to be talked about even then. But as she'd got older, understood the implications of it, known of the fallout if anyone where to discover her, she'd compartmentalised the surges of affection she would feel, any inkling of attraction. And even now she was here, in a new place, with new people who probably wouldn't mind so much, she was still learning to just let herself feel. It helped that Delia was a good teacher.

Good things just didn't really happen to Patsy Mount. Well, she supposed some things did. She was lucky in a lot of ways – her schooling, the opportunities provided to her, had been next to none. She knew that much, and often felt guilty of it. But people like Delia didn't just walk into her life and get away with it without her questioning whether or not they'd stay, whether or not it was worth getting attached. She'd known the girl for but a couple of months, they'd been doing this…thing for about three weeks now, and she so wanted to settle into it, she so wanted to relax in the way that Delia could, for it to come naturally to her, for it to feel like it was going to last, that she could dare to be happy. Maybe Delia took a more laid back approach because there wasn't so much at stake for her, maybe it was that she didn't like her as much, that she knew she could have any girl she wanted in this university – if she hadn't already, by the sounds of things – or maybe she was pretending just as well as Patsy could that it didn't mean quite as much as it did. Oh, Patsy was a master of nonchalance.

She could never really tell if it was her or not, that aloof air she tended to give off. In a lot of ways it was. But whether she had built it up long ago so meticulously and it was being brought down, or it was intrinsic and she was learning to curb it, she supposed she'd never know. But either way it slipped, somewhat, when she was with Delia. She never laughed like she did when she was with her, never reached for someone so willingly, so unabashedly afraid of what they'd think of her neediness, her burgeoning dependency, she'd never wanted anyone to depend on full stop. She'd never been given the chance to for such a very long time.

For all her later schooling, for all the buzzing dorms and living shoulder to shoulder with other girls, she'd always felt alone – even with friends – ever since she was a little girl, ever since the life she'd known was ripped from under her feet and warped into something unrecognisable, something isolated, confusing and utterly exhausting.

Perhaps she wasn't aloof then. Perhaps she was just tired – tired and numb.

Uni had helped, shaking off friends that she'd never really sat right with helped, god knows Trixie had helped. But still, nothing had made even the slightest bit of headway into making her feel as if she wasn't deserted in this world, left out in the cold of her thoughts, like Delia had. And she did it so easily, like it was breathing to her to give life and laughter to everyone around her but most of all her. And though at times she had wondered if Delia was just like that with everyone – and really, very few were immune to her charms – by now she wasn't too insecure not to notice that she was different with Patsy. 'Why did Delia want her?' seemed like a question for another day, like so many of her doubts, stuffed to the back of her mind. Thoughts of her own awkwardness and apprehension, of Delia's past conquests, of everything better, less broken, she could have, boiled up from time to time. But she tried to keep them under control. She knew well enough that all of that wouldn't do any good to dwell on.

She was proud of herself, in a way, for not reacting to the picture that Trixie had painted of Delia. Her friend seemed to know everything about everyone – at least, where their sexploits were concerned – and it was, when Patsy could bear to find humour in it, rather funny that she didn't know what was going on right next door to her. Not that there was much, well any, sex. Another thing she had to keep telling herself not to worry about. Delia was patient, and she was kind, and she hadn't for one moment made her feel as if it was a pre-requisite to their time together. But still, she wondered how long it would be before she'd bore of her. After all, Trixie had made it seem as if there was a disorderly queue outside her room in fresher's week, but she did tend to exaggerate. One look at Delia though, and the smiles and smirks she flashed, and somehow Patsy could believe it.

Still though, none of what she had been mulling over was relevant right now. She wasn't even capable of stringing a sentence together. Not in this moment, with Delia's mouth pressed against her neck. She could barely breathe, for goodness sake, every intake of air catching in her throat as the other girl found – god, what muscle was it again? – that spot between her shoulder and neck, relieving it of all tension with her lips. Trapezius. That was it.

Fuck. She was doing that thing again.

Delia's leg slipped neatly between her thighs in a motion so smooth Patsy didn't realize what she was doing until she exhaled hard, in surprise, and into the sharp edge of Delia's jaw line, which absorbed the ensuing whimper. She felt the other girl's smirk forming against her cheek as she dotted a kiss there, chaste in comparison to the venture of her palms, descending into her waist and over the incline of her hips, closing around their sides and urging them flush to her. She felt clumsy as she moved against her, as Delia's guiding touch progressed wandering elsewhere and left her to her own devices. Patsy was used to following her lead, but she couldn't help but respond to the increasing pressure of the other girl's thigh, to garner all she could from it, to meet her kisses wanting, equal in ardour. Patsy hummed against her lips appreciatively, a hand so tangled in her hair she could still feel the cool dampness from her earlier shower under the surface – Delia never bothered to blow dry her hair – and another twisted around the fabric of her t-shirt at her back. Delia's fingers found skin beneath them, in the gap between her top and her jeans, but instead of ascending they teased the red indented line pressed into her skin by the denim waistband and Patsy faltered, recoiled. Just ever so slightly. So slightly that she wished she hadn't – but it was enough.

You're a literal joke, Patience Mount. Pull yourself together next time.

The smaller girl's hands quickly relocated to her face without hesitation, cupping her cheeks, easing off their kiss, a final nip to her bottom lip before she pulled away, her eyes searching for a few moments, looking for fear or regret or god knows what. She didn't find it though, Patsy wasn't afraid of her. If she was afraid of anything, it was herself, her potential for inadequacy that was so great it was overwhelming. She was used to being good at things, far too used to it.

"The music's stopped." Delia announced, untangling them and slipping off Patsy's bed, making a beeline for her laptop and smoothing out her clothes as she went, the redhead mourning the loss of the way her T-shirt had ridden up over her hips.

She wondered if Delia was trying to give her a little space, if she was worried too much – or just enough. It took her a little longer than usual to quip, "A bigger travesty, I couldn't think of. For you, that is."

Whatever the smaller girl had put on, thinking for some time before she did so, Patsy was enjoying it. Perhaps she was being careful not to let the disaster of the last random shuffle of her music she did repeat itself – she'd never quite forget the lyrics of that explicit nineties slow jam that had interrupted them one time, and rather killed the mood. Though it seemed nothing was better at killing the mood than Patsy and her incessant worrying about all of this.

It wasn't the be all and end all, not for her at least. Of course, she wanted Delia in that way. She could think of nothing else sometimes, which was quite something when she was supposed to be putting time in the library or midway through cooking a stir-fry with Trix. Even if she didn't know about Delia's apparent wealth of experience, she knew she'd probably still be fretting like this – it didn't help though, if she was honest with herself. She just wanted to be quite as much to Delia as she was to her, but she knew that would never be the case. She was rapidly beginning to need her far more than Delia ever would in return, and it was a hurtling terrifying feeling that rattled her heart. Delia could have anyone, and Patsy was afraid the more of herself she gave to her, the more she revealed, the less the other girl would like her and the more she would stand to loose.

"Don't give me cheek." Delia retorted, settling back down onto the bed, curling into her side in the way that Patsy loved, slinging a leg over her midriff and kissing her shoulder gently while she shifted to accommodate her, laying in silence and closing her eyes. That was until after a few minutes she announced, "Oh, I don't like this song."

"Wait, why?" Patsy reached for her, not wanting her to move again. "I just got comfortable, don't get up again." She whined.

The other girl shrugged, "I don't know. It makes me sad." Patsy frowned a little, but released her from her grip, supposing that was fair enough. Delia was always honest like that, about everything. But when those kinds of words escaped her – I'm really stressed actually, I feel a bit…just shit to be honest, I'm so exhausted – they never sounded like what they implying, never miserable. She was healthy like that, in her relationship with her emotions – she expressed them so readily, so often and easily, that they never seemed to build up enough to make her start bursting at the seams. Patsy didn't know her that well, but Delia definitely seemed to be a hell of a lot saner than her.

On her way back, she glanced over her pin board. Patsy had changed it a little recently, adding some new photos of her and the girls – she wasn't quite the Picasso that Trixie was, but then the other girl was so very creative and had an eye for those sort of things. Patsy kept it simple, lots of pictures and a few ticket stubs and wristbands, like anyone else really. Except by the way Delia was glancing over it anyone would think it was a work of art.

"What's this?" Delia asked.

Patsy sat up, crawling to the edge of her bed to see what she was pointing out. "Oh, that's the lacrosse team from school. I was in Year Nine, I think."

She smirked slightly, and then her smile grew a little softer, "That was last week. You must have gone to Snappy Snaps."

She nodded in affirmation, remembering the quick detour she'd made to the photo shop on the way to lectures last week to get some photos printed, in particular one that Trixie had taken of them unknowing, eating dinner in the kitchen, the Welsh girl mid-laugh.

"Who's that?"

Her eyes flickered to the photograph in question. She supposed she should be prepared to answer questions about, if she was going to plaster photos of her mother around, the woman who's face beamed out from various places in the collage. Her mother was a vision in jodhpurs, a polo mallet over one shoulder and a riding helmet under her arm.

"That's my mum." She answered, as nonchalantly as she could.

"Do you play polo?" Delia couldn't help the smirk that crept onto her lips every time Patsy managed to outdo her own poshness.

She shook her head, "No, I don't ride that well and I don't think I'd have the balls to be honest. It's really dangerous." Maybe she would have learned, eventually, if she'd carried on riding – her mum would have loved that. But she hadn't wanted an instructor, she'd wanted her mother. "I haven't been to the polo since I was a kid." Since before, in Singapore. Her father still went from time to time, with friends, and he'd given up inviting her along. In fact, he'd give up trying to get her to do just about anything for him.

Delia's eyes wandered over the various snaps of her mother, identifying them quickly by the eighties and nineties film quality and her striking blonde hair. There was a picture of her at Oxford, a white-tie clad friend with his arm around her, one of her when she seemed even younger, at a café somewhere in London and looking every bit the Sloane ranger that she was. And there was one of her mother, Nancy and herself, her arms wrapped around each of them, Patsy reaching for Nancy. A picture she often wished she'd just kept in that brown envelope with the many others that didn't make it onto her wall, but one so sweet, such a perfect snapshot, that she didn't want to keep it hidden.

"She's beautiful." Delia remarked.

Patsy nodded in agreement, "I know." She thought it was a pity sometimes, that she didn't resemble her mother more.

"Pats…" Delia started, turning to her. Patsy gazed up in intrigue; the other girl rarely said her name with that much weight hanging from it. She couldn't help but feel dread creeping up on her. "I don't want you to think I've been…dishonest." She paused for a moment, realising that Patsy wasn't going to say anything – that she didn't have anything to say to that. All she could do was fret in the confines of her head. "It's just, I feel bad. Trixie told me about your mam."

Patsy stared blankly at her for a few seconds – her heart didn't lurch, but twisted slowly, agonisingly. She took the time to understand why it did so, to quickly gather some semblance of rationalisation for the reaction that was boiling up in her, to at least justify it slightly. "What did she tell you?" She asked flatly.

She was angry with Trixie, and she was angry with Delia for keeping her insider knowledge from her, for going about everything as normal when she'd been talking about this behind her back. It wasn't that she planned to keep every aspect of her life a mystery where Delia was concerned, it was just that she wanted to explain things to her as and when she felt able to, as and when she wasn't worried that the unknown extent of her ridiculous problems would be too much for Delia to handle, too much to bother with and to care about.

Delia faltered for a moment, "Just that she'd passed away." She said softly. "Patsy…I only wanted you to know that I knew."

"She shouldn't have told you." She stated, through a clenched jaw. She knew that Trixie only knew that her mother was dead, and nothing else, so she couldn't fear what it was exactly that Delia knew, but it still sat at such an odd angle with her. She was terrified she wasn't good enough for the other girl, that she was far too messed up, but so far she'd done a pretty good job at curbing that side of herself, so much so that at times she even let herself think that things could go right. "You want more details, is that it?"

"Patsy, no." She spoke so gently Patsy wanted to be infuriated by it.

"Well, good. It's absolutely none of anyone's business." She said harshly.

Delia reached for her arm, "Of cou-", but she flinched away.

"Just don't, Delia. I don't want to talk about it." That was plain enough, she supposed.

"Let's not leave things like this, Pats. We're going home for Christmas in a few days." Delia urged.

Patsy buried her face in her hands, running her fingers through her hair in exasperation and messing it beyond repair. "You're going home for Christmas. I'm staying here, as it happens. And no, I don't want to talk about that either." She heard the scathing in her tone and knew she would regret it later, but she didn't regret it now. "And what does it matter about the Christmas holidays? You're seriously suggesting that you're going to wait for me."

The other girl frowned then, "Why wouldn't I? Patsy, I really like you."

"So you won't be sleeping with every girl back home just like you have done here?" There it was, the latent insecurity about Delia's alleged track record boiling to the surface – it was overdue really, it had been a miracle she'd kept it under control for so long. She just wished it wasn't coming out like this.

Delia looked hurt then, "What's that supposed to mean? I think you're severely over-estimating the amount of lesbians in rural Wales."

"I see. It's just that there's a lack of them." She retorted.

Delia looked like she was struggling not to snap at her, but somehow she managed it – probably only because she felt sorry for her about her mum, which Patsy hated. Or maybe Delia was just an infinitely better person than she was. "No. Did I not just tell you that I liked you? God, if you'd just asked me yourself then you wouldn't be sitting here thinking that I'm some sort of womanizer. Really, you're giving me far too much credit. I'd be flattered if you weren't being so unreasonable about this."

That was it, she was unreasonable, irrational, and an absolute idiot. She hated her temper, and she hated herself. "I can't talk anymore. Can you just go?" She could have perhaps tried to make amends, she could have apologized or explained that she was quick to anger when people brought up things like that. She could have even gone as far to tell her everything. Well, not everything, but enough for her to understand why she would want to be private about it, why it was far more complicated that it could ever seem on the surface. But no, she hadn't done any of that. She'd sent her out of her sight, and likely out of her life now, because who on earth would want to deal with this mess?