Thump thump thump thump. It was a steady, droning pounding that bore right through the very structure and impeccable hardness of Cosima's skull. Thump thump thump thump. Maybe the neighbors above her were practicing Zumba, or doing hip-hop abs. How early was it? Did those people know no limits? Her brow furrowed as she squeezed her eyes shut, tighter and tighter until it seemed impossible to seal out any more light and noise. Thump thump thump thump. This time, though, there was a booming from a short ways away that carried through the the small apartment, down the hall and drilled through her ears, causing a grumble of dismay to sound lowly from her throat.
"Cosima! Open the damn door! Or answer your fuckin' phone!" Lennox's gruff tones scratched every surface it touched and again, Cosima groaned. Phone? He was calling her phone? Why wasn't it ringing? Where was it? Begrudgingly, she sat up and held her head, which throbbed slightly from the festivities of the night before.
"M'coming," she grumbled, just loudly enough to be heard from where he was in the outer hallway, or so she was hoping. Instead, she could hear his size fourteen clunky feet shuffling around outside of her door— he was repositioning whatever he was carrying to reach the spare key she had hidden inside of the ceiling tiles in the hall, which with extended arms, he was tall enough to do.
"Caw-shi-ma," he grunted once again, though his speech seemed to be severely more impared this time around. "I shwear ta' ga' I'm gonna kill ya'." She had finally pooled together enough gumption to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but he had already beat her to it. The lock on the front door wiggled and turned and Lennox pushed the door open and there he was in all of his multi-tasking glory: one hand strategically cradled a drink carrier with four coffee cups, the other still hung in place after twisting the knob and pushing the door open, and a brown paper sack was dangling dangerously from between his teeth. No wonder he sounded like an idiot.
"Mmmmorning," she grunted, rubbing at her face.
"I bring you breakfast and two cups of coffee and you can't even answer your phone to let me in. Yeesh." A sleepy smile blossomed across Cosima's lips as she slid off the end of her bed, her too-long t-shirt falling down to brush the tops of her knees. As she fumbled around for her glasses, Lennox couldn't help but take in the sight of her, the information from the night before still digesting in his skull. "Are you ever going to get rid of that thing? You wear it all the time."
Cosima glanced down at the remnants of what once was a t-shirt but had since been cut and tied to be more of a tank top— and on her, well, it was even more of a dress, given it's length. "No. I will not get rid of it. It's comfortable. And has been since the day you gave it to me." As she floated through the vast, open space of the flat, one of her arms extended, her bony fingers coiling around one of four coffee cups, the warmth instantaneously greeting her touch. There were some mornings where she may have goaded him for his constant necessity to have 'too much or nothing at all,' in regards to the double order of coffee he almost always brought for her, but he had escaped the clutches of her humor, perhaps just this once. He set about his work of releasing and preparing the bagels he had brought back with him. She plopped down onto the futon, a warm smile curling her lips at the taste of hazlenut and vanilla on her tongue, her head cocking back a bit to watch him. "Also, in response to your earlier gripe, I didn't answer my phone because I have absolutely no idea where it is. I had it last night…" her voice trailed, her mind turning circles over the last time she could clearly remember having it, but that went clear back to before they had even arrived at the party.
"Hey, it's cool. Don't hurt yourself over it. If you think any harder, you might blow a fuse or something. We can look for it later. Maybe you lost it at the after-party." Cosima gave a rather blank nod as he came around the opposite side of the couch, setting down an elongated plate with the two bagels on it; one half of each flavor for each of them; the way it had always been, at least since she had known him. He was quiet for a moment as the crunch and chew of his bagel spoke for him, but when he swallowed his bite, he asked a question that Cosima had not known that she needed to brace herself for. "Did you tell me everything?" he posed, another crunch echoing off of the walls of the studio apartment.
Cosima's head jerked to her left and her brow knit together. "Why would you ask that?"
Lenny's face split into another grin as he washed down the bagel with a long sip from his paper coffee cup. "Because I know you. And I know that when I saw you last night, you looked half a mess, but you also looked like you had something you wanted to tell me." His smile only seemed to grow as a dark shade of scarlet rolled onto her cheeks like low tide. "Alright, spill."
Sheepishly, Cosima hid behind the rim of her cup, doing everything she could to disguise the color on her cheeks. He had caught her and he knew it. They both did. In a motion that both happened so quickly and yet, in perceivable slow-motion, Cos fumbled her coffee cup but recovered it quickly, setting it down next to the plate of bagels on the table. She leaned back into the couch, tugging a thin fleece blanket over her bare legs, which were crossed in front of her. She took him in over the rim of her glasses, her lips pursed out slightly. "We had sex," she confessed, watching as his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Instantly, she threw her hands up, cutting him off. "Okay, not really. Kind of. I mean… Okay, I panicked. She gave me the clothes to change into and I just… didn't even think twice about stripping down and changing in front of her. She saw the scar. I stumbled… So I did the only thing I could do, and that was to shut her up." Cosima paused, chewing on her lip as her cheeks flushed once more. "It was like not a day had passed… Let alone eight years. I still knew what every gasp, every sigh, every moan meant. And I used it to make her feel a fraction of the way I feel. I let her teeter, and then I made her watch me walk away." Cosima's chin tucked in toward her chest and she cleared her throat.
"Hey," Lennox coaxed softly, touching a finger to the dreadlocked woman's chin. "What's wrong?"
Cosima managed eye contact with him and sighed softly, defeated almost. "I sound so spiteful, but… I'm not. It just hurts. And here she is, wallowing in money, lovers at her beck and call…"
"Well, she is pretty hot. I mean, I tried flirting with her, but she didn't need it." Cosima wanted to glare at him for rubbing it in, for reminding her what a catch Delphine was and how she was never going to be good enough, not anymore.
"Of course she doesn't need it. Of all the charity you offer, I think that's one head that's already too big." Lennox had this way about him, a way that not very many people understood. Most had engrained ideas of the way people should or should not be, and Lenny? Well, Cos' favorite thing about him was that he fit no mould, nor would he ever be shoved into classifications that just did not suit him. He was a charmer, an absolute flirt, but with no intentions behind it. Lenny's view of the world was quite profound, at least the way Cosima saw it.
After a year of living together, he had told Cosima about his upbringing, only before his parents had come through town to pay him a visit. They were inventive people, an artist and a librarian, and had such broad views of the world. He had explained to her that when he was in high school, he had broken down to his father about a failed attempt to have sex with a girl that had been incredibly into him, though the feelings weren't quite mutual. Instead of berating him and telling him that there was something wrong with him, his father opened up to him the possibilities of the world. His parents had affirmed from a very young age that all they ever wanted was for him to be happy, and as he got older, that meant understanding who he was as a person. Because of the constant encouragement and love, Lenny had long since accepted and embraced his lack of sexual attraction.
"Just because I lack what so many people have, it doesn't mean I have to be embarrassed by that, nor does it mean that I can't be the world's biggest flirt. I mean, who doesn't want to feel like they're beautiful every once in a while? Being the person to inspire that with a little harmless flirting is all the happiness I need." Cosima was so fascinated by his way of thinking, by his confidence and his… well, his swagger. Lennox had taught her more lessons than she could count on two hands, but each had it's own value. The most important, though, was that she didn't have to be confined by a definitive stereotype, nor did she have to be defined by the things that had happened in her past.
"So let me get this straight," he started, leaning forward a bit toward her, "You lose your high school sweetheart, find her eight years later by working her birthday celebration, and fuck her out of spite?" Cosima's hands slapped over her face, causing her to groan begrudgingly. "Good god, Cos. When you swing, you really swing for the stars, don't you?"
"Rub it in, why don't you?" she replied in a grunt, waving him off, but instead, he scooted toward her and wrapped an arm around her, pushing her loose-hanging dreads over her shoulder.
"Look, Sparky, we all do crazy things for stupid reasons. I've been there, you've been there. I'm sure everyone has. You know why you did it, and I know why you did it. That's all that's important. You weren't being some dickhead without reason, nor were you seeking revenge… at least, not all the way. Sometimes, we have to be quiet to be the loudest, to be heard."
She settled into his side, letting her head rest on his shoulder, a sigh still bubbling in her chest. He was right; she knew he was. There rarely came a time when he wasn't. He hated it when she called him her Buddha, but he seemed to have this line of sight that engulfed all and a deeper sense of wisdom on how to clearly perceive things. He always knew the right thing to say at exactly the right time. "I don't have to say it, do I?" she posed, a bemused smirk tugging on her lips.
"I know, I know. I'm so very right and you love me so very much." He hissed lightly, playfully, as she dug an elbow into his ribs. "Oh, and yes, I am the best, aren't I?"
"Dear god. Maybe I'll get Delphine to flirt with you. One more compliment and your head's definitely going to explode."
"She got you out of your clothes pretty quickly, now didn't she?"
In the blink of an eye, a horrifying and annoying realization hit her like a sack of bricks. "Fuck," she hissed, gripping at her dreads in frustration. "She did. And guess what was in my pants pocket?"
"Oh shit," Lennox responded, trying not to grin. "Your phone."
Never before had the sun shining in the floor to ceiling windows of Delphine's bedroom been so ultimately and undeniably painful. It was like a shot straight to the skull, causing waves and waves of pain to radiate throughout her entire being. As her mind crawled and clawed its way to consciousness, it fought her every step of the way. Her stomach was on spin cycle, her eyes burned like dry brush in the summer, and her chest ached in a strange and unexplainable way.
As her eyes slowly lifted open beneath the weight of her hangover, Delphine gave a pained whimper, her stomach lurching upward into her chest. "Merde."
"Side of the bed, darling, there's a trashcan." Dom's voice was like velvet, gently cutting through the grinding of gears in the depths of her mind. She felt so much more than hungover; she felt hollow. Something was off, different. Before she had much time to contemplate it, she lunged forward, hanging over the side of the bed as she wretched into the awaiting trashcan. She could feel his hand on her back, rubbing it in the most soothing way he could possibly manage.
What felt like an eternity to her, but had only been a couple of minutes in reality, later, she righted herself, leaning back into the pillows that were propped up against the headboard of her bed, a low groan escaping from somewhere deep in her throat. Before she could say much else, Dominic gave her a light nudge, causing her to open her eyes. When she did, she was greeted to his sweet, smiling face as he held out a full glass of orange juice and a bottle of Tylenol. Her shoulder slouched in relief and her eyes softened, her lips curling just slightly in a smile.
"You truly are an angel, no?" she told him in a quiet tone, taking the juice and pills from him in exchange for a brief air-kiss to the cheek. If it weren't for Dom, most nights she knew that she would lose her head. She had gone on for so long burying the things that posed a threat to her current happiness, and as a result, she was shutting away the defining factors of who she truly was on the inside.
"You had a rough night. It's the least I can do." He offered his soothing, sweet smile as he rubbed her back again. "Oh, and your phone keeps buzzing, but I can't find it." She glanced to the side and what she saw caused her brow to furrow.
"It's right there," she told him, pointing to the other side of her. His brow creased and he looked toward the middle of the room, where the buzzing had started again. She leaned forward, following his gaze, and saw a heap of clothes in the middle of the room, which led to more questions. Her dress was hanging on the back of the door, and Dom's tux was slung over the back of the chair at her desk. Who's clothes, then, were in the middle of the room? "I think it's coming from there. Did I— Oh god. Who did I sleep with? You were supposed to be keeping an eye on me!" What was most frustrating was that her influx of alcohol had crowded out the space her memories took up.
"Well! Don't blame me! You came up here with the snippy waitress and—"
"Oh god. Cosima." Like a train, it struck her down, nearly knocking the wind out of her. Cosima had been at the party. She had been working the party. Delphine had even spilled wine all over her.
"You know her name? You didn't mention this last night. Way to leave a guy out of the loop." Though he was speaking in a light tone, Delphine was paying little to no attention to what he was saying. She was too stuck on thinking, on focusing, on doing everything she could to remember what had happened. There had been the wine incident. Delphine had brought her up for a change of clothes. Cosima had been bare, almost completely, and the image was suddenly sharpening in the blonde's mind. The next conscious memory came in the form of seeing Cosima above her, those dreads tied down in a tight bun to keep them tame and ruly. Like a cut scene in a movie, though, the next image of her film consisted of an unfulfilled emptiness and watching that figure, the hourglass curve, saunter off in a silhouette out the door.
"I know more than her name," Delphine admitted, the guilt writing itself over her face like an apologetic prose, citing off all of her shortcomings, especially when it came to Cosima. Slowly, she pulled herself out of bed and made her way to the center of the room, rummaging through the discarded pile of clothing that Cosima had left in her wake. After a moment of searching, she produced the phone and although it shouldn't have happened, a sense of happiness washed over her. Where did it come from? Did it root in her desire to make ammends, or did it stem from her need to see Cosima again? Regardless of where it came from, she wanted to believe that this had happened for a reason, that they were meant to meet again.
With that confrontation, though, Delphine knew that many things were going to bubble up to the surface, and she also knew that with that, came the risk of being vulnerable. Cosima was scorned; she had made that much painfully clear. The only way that Delphine was ever going to get her to hear her out, though, was to disarm and to lay down the shield she had been clinging to for nearly eight years. The true test was going to lie in whether or not she could find the courage she needed to do it.
It was almost questionable, the fact that she had hardly been awake ten minutes and yet, she was moving a thousand miles an hour, without having to move an inch at all. She could still recall what it soberly felt like to see the other woman, to see all that had become of her in the passing years. She was a vision of beauty, even in a button down and vest, looking like a complete penguin. It caused so many memories, so many emotions, to come hurtling back at her at break-neck speeds, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with all of them.
There was only one thing that she was entirely certain of, though, as she sat on her bed with a stranger's phone in her hands: Cosima being a stranger was not something she would be okay with, nor was it something she would permit to continue. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how hard Cosima wanted to fight her on it, she was going to fix it. She was, somehow, going to make it all right, even if it killed her.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell her. But I can tell you now, her message is going to be 'Tell her that I quit.' Alright, I'll have her call. Bye Britta!" Lennox was nearly snickering as he hung up his phone and tossed it aside, looking across the couch at Cos. "Well, that was B. She said that some woman has been calling HQ all afternoon asking for you. Says she needs to talk to you 'or whatever.'" His last two words were accentuated by a hike in his pitch as he imitated their coworker, waving his hands about like he was flipping hair he didn't have, much in the way she did with the long red hair she did have.
Cos' lips pulled apart in a grin and she shook her head, reaching back to pull up her dreads, typing them up with a bandana that had previously been tied around her wrist. "You know, it's funny," she mused aloud, adjusting her glasses as they slid down her nose.
"What is?" he posed, raising a brow in question.
"How you knew exactly what I was going to say before I had the chance to say it. Shit, do tell her that I quit. At least then, she'll stop calling." Even as she said it, Cosima knew that the words were bullshit coming out of her own mouth. She didn't believe her own facade, which was only going to make it that much more obvious to everyone else around her. She needed to get a better grip on the way she was handling the situation at hand, and she knew it. Why was it that this one woman had so much power over her? She made Cosima feel so much at once that it was nearly impossible to keep it, and quite frankly, it wore her out. Some part of her wanted to insist that it wasn't worth it, that she was just putting herself through the ringer, but the truth was that since that very first spark of a moment in the kitchen, Delphine was the only thing she could think about.
"You really know how to stick your foot in it, don't you?" he posed, lightly jabbing a finger into her ribs.
"I guess you could call it a talent," she answered back with a soft chuckle, squirming away from his touch. She was quiet for a few drawn out moments, the gears turning over and over in her mind.
"What're you thinkin', Sparky?"
Cosima snapped out of her daze, her eyes locking with Lenny's. She barked a sardonic laugh, her gaze falling to her lap. "That… For the first time in a long time, I don't really know what to do."
Lennox gave her thigh a light pat and reached up to pull something out of the pocket of his button-down. She tilted her chin up and grinned at the perfectly rolled blunt he was holding out, like he was giving her a present. "I do. You smoke this now, and worry about the heavy shit later."
The apples of Cosima's cheeks lifted her glasses as they were pushed up by the sudden grin that swept over her lips. "I really would be lost without you, you know?"
"Can I get that on paper? Signed and notari— Ow!" Before he could even finish, she landed a playful punch to his arm, rolling her eyes at him. "But really…" His words trailed slightly as he turned his focus to lighting the blunt. "You'll figure out what's best for you. Don't rush it. You rush, you panic. You panic, you make rash decisions. You make rash decisions, everyone ends up really fucking confused. Which is no fun for anyone."
"You really are my own fortune teller. Can I start renting you out to the county fair?" She took a few puffs, exhaling the smoke in small rings, smirking a bit as she admired her own work before handing the blunt back to him.
"You make it so easy to hate you, you know that?"
"Oh, if only that were true." Cosima bit back a sigh, instead replacing it with a smile. She wasn't sure what her next move was, but she knew that as long as she had her big, bearded soundingboard by her side, she'd find a way to figure it out.
