A/N: Submit story prompts to my tumblr page demenafanfic.

Airport

The hard chair underneath me becomes uncomfortable, quickly. The setting, despite the considerable amount of effort made to appear warm and inviting, is dreary and unsettling. Distinct images of my father leaving flicker through my mind. Imaginary images, of course. Ones that, despite my best efforts, I've never been able to completely erase, regardless of their falsehood.

The early hour is painted on my face in creases, blotchy red skin, and frightening dark grey bags. The people around me, an older man at the counter, a couple in their fourty-somethings, and the stone-faced waitress, mind their own business, as if I wasn't there at all.

The café is in the crappy terminal of the airport, a fact that is clear from its inadequate upkeep. I click a button on my phone, watching it light up hopefully, no new messages to display, with another five minutes past the meeting time. What did I expect? She likes to make an entrance.

The waitress, who is sitting behind the counter, systematically looks up from the book in her lap towards my table, which is empty except for a small glass of water. My eyes flicker from her to the door-less entrance. I almost wish it had a door with one of those chimes on it so that I wouldn't have to keep staring, it would certainly fit the style of the place.

An anxious feeling grows tighter in my stomach at the thought that she won't show up, precisely the reason why I hadn't ordered anything yet. Or perhaps, more accurately, that she will show up and I'd be stuck with something that would hold me back from scuffling away quickly.

xxx

After several more minutes of restless waiting, she breezes in through the entrance, a mini suitcase dutifully following her. I wonder if she's finally going away, and that's why she's called, but that still doesn't explain why she called after all this time.

The little café is disrupted by her appearance, as if their eyes are magnetized to her every movement. Her smiles always were addicting, it would be almost impossible to ignore her presence, even in a room full of people. Even the waitress, so obviously unhappy with her job, looks up to stare, and smiles back at the girl who is in front of me pulling off her official-looking blazer.

My face remains droopy; despite the grin she shoots me from across the small table. Before we get the chance to exchange formalities, the waitress quite literally bounces up to our table, forgetting her initial annoyance with me, and asks our order.

"A coffee for me, please, black, thanks." She says with a smile as sweet as I'd seen, her voice slightly higher than I'd remember it to be, much more awake than mine would surely sound. The waitress writes down her order without glancing away from her, only when she turns to look at me expectantly do my eyes narrow in thought. I bring up my earlier debate about whether it would be better to order anything, or nothing at all. Before I can shake my head, Demi speaks up, "she'll have the same."

My lip curls up when she refers to me but she keeps her attention on the waitress and gives the girl yet another flirtatious smile before walking away. My eyes roll of their own accord.

I decide to get straight to the point, before she gets the idea that this encounter will be anything close to friendly, "what do you want Demi?"

She smiles, and I almost think she'll completely brush off my question until, "no hello's? How are you's? Going right to the point are we?"

I sigh in defeat, "What are we doing at an airport café at 3 in the morning?" I ask, my voice stone cold.

"It was the only place I was completely sure would be open…" Her smile, by the end of the sentence, drops to a frown, but quickly bounces back up when the waitress appears with two mugs and a coffee pot.

Our conversation halts as Demi speaks to the waitress in front of me. By this point the time has caught up to me and instead of exclusively eavesdropping on the conversation I zone in and out, focusing on the different things in the shop. Like, the way the older man up at the counter keeps swirling the coffee in his mug without making a move to drink it. Or the way the couple keeps anxiously looking at each other, as if a mini in-country vacation will fix their marriage.

My vision blurs slightly before my eyes curiously sweep the rest of the room to land on the waitress leaning on the edge of the booth, her elbow resting right next to Demi's animated face. She's looking up at her and talking wildly with grand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions.

xxx

"The Eiffel tower? No, there's this villa just outside the city that has the most glorious view over everything. It's slightly removed, in it's own little world, but when you're standing high enough, you really get to see the lights of the city, tower and all." She pauses, waiting for her words to sink in as the waitresses face fills with glee, and then she drops the H-bomb.

"But you really haven't seen beauty until you've seen the South of France." She leans forward in the booth, uncomfortably close to the superficial waitress. "There's a breathtaking canyon, Les Gorges du Tarn that goes on for 53 km. I stayed in a cottage just on the edge of the cliff, and I wouldn't be able to explain the exhilarating feeling of being that close to death." She gestures the amount with her fingers, only a centimeter of space between them.

"But of course," she continues, "if that isn't enough, there's always the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world. And if you ask me –"

I clear my throat loudly, effectively unclinging Demi from her grandiose story about her trip to Paris, somewhere I'm quite certain she'd never been. But by the sparkle in the waitress' eyes, I'm not sure that would even matter.

It's then that the waitress notices she'd filled Demi's mug nearly to the rim and a blush spreads harshly up her neck, coating her face up until the tip of her nice. She sputters quick apologies before Demi smiles and says thanks. The waitress takes that as her cue to go.

Demi widens her eyes at me comically as she dumps at least a tablespoon or two of sugar when the waitress isn't looking. I suppose drinking black coffee seems more mysterious, and it's all in perception after all.

"Shame, she seemed nice," I comment before take a sip of my coffee that's only ¾ full.

Demi stirs the sugar in, hot liquid spilling over the edges, staining the napkin on top of the saucer. She lifts the mug from the rim, her knuckles facing upwards like a cone, as if a string were pulling her hand up towards the ceiling. She tilts the hot liquid into her mouth without a flinch and purses her lips at the taste before settling the mug back down, the black liquid now at the same level as mine.

Once I'm sure the waitress is out of earshot I raise my eyebrows at the grinning girl, "Paris, huh?"

"Yeah, Paris." She affirms with a smirk.

The skeptical look on my face doesn't waver as she leans into the table, a mischievous grin on her face,she leans forward, looking around to make sure nobody could hear her, "you'd be surprised what you can find on the internet about different places!" She exclaims, "There's a whole world out there!" She gestures wildly around her, trying to emphasizes the things she sees that I clearly do not.

"Oh? So where are you off to this time?" I decide to play along with her game, unsure whether it's because I'm genuinely curious or because I really missed these playful and carefree moments between us, something that had not been present for months before the inevitable end of our relationship.

"Well, Amsterdam if I'm lucky. The land of the free – sex booze, weed. We're talking high class love affair, the best of the best."

A snort escapes me before I can hold it back and my composure crumbles as laughter flows from my mouth. "Are you high already?"

The look on her face, accomplished and sincere, tapers off my laughter, but holds the smile on my face, one that I would not have been able to stifle otherwise.

She takes another big gulp of her coffee, keeping her eyes trained on mine.

"Seriously though, where are you going?" I ask.

She raises her eyebrows, her coffee mug concealing the smile on her face, an action I'm sure was done purposely to make her look more mysterious. She leans forward and motions for me to do so as well. I hesitantly lean in as the small island between us lessens only acting as the tiniest of barriers.

"Everywhere." She replies, a smart look of conviction glued to her face, only lessened by the devious and utterly joyful look in her eye.

"It's…" she continued, "marvelous to be whoever you want to be, whenever. It's addicting. Absolutely exhilarating." She pauses in thought, probably on whether she wants to tell me exactly what she's feeling. "People, they look at you different after they know you've seen the world. And it's all in the way that you act."

She says all this sincerely, as if she swears by it with absolute certainty, that this is the way people should live their lives.

"And, you know, I was never like that when we were together. I was an absolute mess. Lost and weary. But now, it's like, I've got the world right here," She points to her upturned palm, "and I can escape this silly little place we live in. This tiny fucking shack with closed doors and barred windows."

Her revelation stirs something within me. The view she has of our world hits me hard, and the simplicity of it rings true, its limitations, its size in comparison to what we could have. She continues to speak about all the places she's seen, as if she'd actually seen them, and all the others she wants to see. At the very least, her outlook on her new lifestyle makes me happy, enough to want to chip a tiny piece off and carry it around with me as a souvenir.

The girl in front of me, despite having the same appearance as before, is distinctly different, livelier, worldlier, important. And it's addicting.

She continues, "And I want to do this with you. I want to take you everywhere you want to go and I want to be an us again. A new us. Better. Enchanted. With each other and the things around us. Not like before, when we were stuck.

I interrupt her, because it almost seems as if her words are too good to be true.

"Is that why we didn't work out last time?"

And she gives me this look as a response, that's all.

A look that says, 'last time? What last time? I'm talking about now.'

She looks at me with so much hope and splendor and passion. I fear that she'll eat me all up, just with that look, and something inside me catches fire as she pulls out two plane tickets, sliding over the table until they rest just in front of me.

The time, 6 am, jumps out at me, and I realize that she planned this perfectly. I choke on my words, questions, concerns. My goddamn obligations. But her face remains beaming as my vision flickers between her and her ticket.

"I've got everything packed, ready to go, I even talked to your Mom and lifted your passport before I came. Sel, the thing is, all you have to do is say yes."

Her eyes are big, wide, and sincere, "say yes."


A/N: This is the original prompt: "The girls unexpectedly run into each other. Feelings of jealousy, driving anger, sprout. Self-sacrifice. Airport setting."

To whoever sent this prompt, I didn't follow it for a number of reasons:

a) It wasn't a one-word prompt

b) I wasn't exactly sure what you wanted me to write about.

As soon as I saw "self-sacrificing" the classicist in me immediately jumped to Greek cults (specifically Euripedes' Bacchants) and I was quite close to writing about that. What I'm trying to say is that you're lucky this didn't turn into a modern lesbian Bacchic cult set in an airport (full self-sacrifice and all).