I made myself a little sad writing this... so I'm sorry in advance. Also bonus points for guessing what "I would miss hanging out with you" really means.

-.-.-.-

"When were you going to tell me you won a full PhD scholarship place at L'Institut de Maria Sibylla Merian?"

The question hung in the air far too long for Delphine's liking and although in the brief period of time between the question being asked and her answering she considered any multitude of lies, she finally settled on going with the truth.

"I don't know…" She whispered, wishing from the second she'd said it that she'd thought of anything else instead.

"Would you have told me?" Cosima wasn't angry, she was hurt, and Delphine now fully understood what she'd meant earlier when she'd said anger was better than being upset.

"Eventually…" She knew she should be saying more, she wished she could say more, though right now her brain had seemed to slow to a stop as she focused instead on every micro-expression of Cosima's face.

"What? A quick text before you hoped on a plane back to France?" She snapped, some of her rage seeming to finally seep through the pain.

"Cosima…"

"Right, right… sorry," the dreadlocked girl nodded, pulling the reigns back on her anger.

"Can we talk about it?" She pleaded, even though she knew right now that may be less than she deserved.

"You want to talk?" Cosima sighed while simultaneously closing over the laptop lid.

"Oui…" Delphine nodded. "Please?" She dared a glance at the empty mattress beside her and Cosima seemed to take the hint, carefully placing the laptop on the floor and crossing the room to the bed, where she sat cross legged on top of the covers.

"When'd you find out?" She questioned straight away, not really giving Delphine the time she would like to compose herself.

"Today…" She admitted truthfully. "Right before you got here with Kira… I was going to tell you, it just did not seem like the right time and we were having so much fun I…"

"I get it…" Cosima waved for her to stop explaining herself. "And you're right, it'd probably have like pissed all over my good mood earlier," she agreed, even chancing something that vaguely resembled her classic smirk.

"What're you thinking?" She asked after a brief pause – she could practically see the thoughts whizzing across the cortex of Cosima's brain and wanted more than anything for her to share them rather than bottle them up.

"What am I thinking…" Cosima huffed the question out around long breath, her fingers running slowly through her dreadlocked hair. "Honestly?"

"Honestly." It was better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie – or that's what she was telling herself anyway.

"Honestly I'm thinking long distance never works…" Delphine knew from the apologetic shrug that accompanied the comment that Cosima hadn't meant for it to be hurtful, though it still struck her somewhere deep in her chest and suddenly she felt like she was going to cry.

"You do not think we could make it if we had to?" She cursed herself for just how vulnerable her voice sounded when laced with tears.

"Well y'know…" Cosima shrugged again and her hand grasped blindly in the air for the one definite answer to their problem. "I'd rather we didn't have to…"

Not in so many words Delphine knew Cosima was making her stance on the matter very clear; stay.

She wished it were that simple too. She wished she could just nod her head right now and agree that, yes, Cosima did have a valid point so she'd just ignore the email and continue with her original plans of going to Minnesota. Life was never that simple though and as much as Delphine wanted to agree and tell Cosima she'd never leave her that just wasn't something she was able to do right now.

"If you do go…" Cosima's voice broke through her wall of thought. "When would you have to leave?"

"If…" Delphine stressed the word. "I were to go back to France, I would need to familiarise myself with the institute and find a place to live so… perhaps a few days."

Cosima nodded slowly letting the words toss over in her head. "A few days… that's not long." Her voice was finally beginning to show the same emotional strain as Delphine's and it was only making things worse.

"Non, it is not." There was no point denying it, or glorifying those few days and speaking of all the wonderful things they could do during them to distract themselves from reality.

"I suppose you're gonna say you need time to think about it?" She asked then, and Delphine could hear the lump in the back of her throat.

"Oui… I have not even gotten a chance to read the email properly, and it is not an easy decision for me to make you know? On the one hand I have my family and friends back in France who I miss, as well as the opportunity to study in a country where I have a better grasp of the language and on the other hand…" She faltered for a second and looked hard into Cosima's eyes until tears blurred her vision. "In America I have you."

Then they were both crying and after a second she felt Cosima's hand reach blindly for her own. She grabbed in and held on tight, focusing on the way their fingers entwined instead of the way her sadness burned at the back of her throat.

"How about this…" Cosima spoke up after a moment, her voice thick and heavy from crying. "We both just take all day tomorrow to think… we just… we think everything over and tomorrow night we meet somewhere and just decide what to do?"

"It seems so final," Delphine admitted, wiping stray tears from her eye.

"It is pretty final," Cosima reminded her with a sad laugh. "Not to pressure you or anything," she added hastily. "I mean I get how big a deal this is."

"It is a big deal," Delphine agreed with a sad nod. "So yes, we shall take the day to think it over… on one condition though."

"Sure, anything?" Cosima nodded absently.

"You stay tonight?" She didn't care that she sounded needy; in fact she may have added an extra vulnerable edge to her tone just to sway Cosima's decision. "You can leave tomorrow then and we can think about it I just… I don't want to spend tonight without you." Now that there was a very real chance she was going to lose Cosima she wasn't too keen on spending a single second away from her side.

"Yea…" Cosima agreed without hesitation. "Yea I can stay… course I can stay."

Delphine smiled and Cosima removed her glasses and manoeuvred herself until she was able to slip beneath the covers. They lay in silence for a while, just staring at one another whilst allowing their legs to knot together and their hands to find purchase in the cloth of one another's pyjamas.

Delphine could stay like this for days just drinking in everything that made up Cosima. She could quite happily absorb each and every characteristic and quirk, from the flare of her nostrils when she took a breath to the way her eyelashes still clumped together in wake of her tears. It was only Cosima's voice that stopped her counting details for an eternity.

"This just sucks…" She whispered, her breath tickling the corner of Delphine's cheek.

"It is an unfair position," Delphine nodded sympathetically, trying not to let emotion get the better of her again.

"No I just mean I…" Cosima paused, and for a second Delphine could see the end of the sentence in her eyes; then it was gone. "Really am going to miss hanging out with you," she chose instead, her words stilted and forced and not at all what she'd wanted to say.

"I would miss hanging out with you too," Delphine nodded earnestly. "In fact I think I would miss it more than I have ever missed hanging out with anyone in my entire life."

"Yea," Cosima murmured, burying her face into the crook of Delphine' s neck. "Yea, same."