Brave New World
Chapter 2: The High Road
Cosima jiggled the key in the lock of her apartment door until she heard that telltale click. She swung it open and, with a grand gesture and a silly grin, motioned for her new companion to enter. She held the door as the blonde shuffled past her and inside the humble tenement.
She followed her in, kicked the door shut behind her with her foot, and watched curiously as Delphine looked around and took in the inside of her home. As the blonde's eyes wandered, Cosima became very aware of the dirty laundry that covered the floor around her bed, the smell of her leftover Chinese that hung thickly in the air, the wallpaper that she hadn't realized until then looked like something you'd find in your grandmother's bedroom, the creak of that one floorboard near the coffee table, and the drone of the fan that blew warm air into the room from the window. It wasn't at all suitable for guests. She could have kicked herself for the mess that she'd let her apartment become. She bit her lip self-consciously, knowing that Delphine was probably kicking herself too, for agreeing to come back with her to this shithole she called a living space.
She wrung her hands and moved farther into the living room. "Sorry about the state of things in here; I haven't really had any company since I moved in. I've kind of gotten in the habit of throwing things all over the place," she apologized as she attempted to inconspicuously pick up some of the clutter. She held various items and garments behind her back and dropped them, notebooks and socks alike, into the hamper in the corner of the room.
She straightened hurriedly and tried to appear as if she hadn't just dumped an armful of her random things into the dirty laundry bin when Delphine turned back to her from the spot she'd wandered nonchalantly to as she'd visually explored the flat and hummed, "No, I love it. Your place, it's very... intime..." She waved her hands around a bit to indicate that she was looking for the right word. "It's... homey." She moseyed a couple of steps further and leaned against the curtained archway that led to Cosima's bedroom. "Most scientists I know are so obsessed with organization. Their homes are even more squared away and sterile than their laboratories." She chuckled lightly to show that she was mostly joking; Cosima was momentarily distracted by the dimples that appeared on her face.
After a few seconds, she shook herself out of it and made her way into the kitchen area. "So, can I get you something to drink?" She opened the little fridge and leaned down to examine its contents. "I've got water, apple juice..." She checked her watch. "Actually, you know what, it's past five o'clock," she pulled her head back out of the refrigerator, rested her elbow on the open door, and pointed over Delphine's shoulder, "if you're up for it, there's a bottle of wine on that shelf over there."
Delphine smirked goofily. "So now you're going to get me drunk as well as stoned? Is this some kind of plot to make me all uninhibited and take advantage of me?"
Cosima felt her cheeks flush with heat and turned around again. She reached up to open a cabinet. "Who, me? I'm as innocent as they come." She grabbed a couple of glasses and held them up with a raise of her eyebrow. "So. What are we having?"
The bottle of wine sat on the desk, now only a third full and entirely forgotten by the girls who'd opened it. The glasses sat on the nightstand, similarly drained of the majority of their contents.
Cosima and Delphine lay side-by-side on top of the blankets that covered the bed. Their shoulders just touched, and their feet hung off of opposite sides of the mattress. Cosima brought the joint they'd been sharing to her lips and sucked in a lungful before she passed it back to Delphine. She held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could, then let it out in a smooth stream of grey.
Beside her, she heard Delphine take a long hit, and she turned on her side to see her let the smoke out in a long, gentle exhalation. For someone who'd never tried it before, the way in which Delphine smoked was almost eloquent in its nature. Her face was calm, and her lips parted just so as she released the smoke that she'd taken into her body. Her chest rose and fell steadily as she breathed deeply. It was practically poetic, the way her fingers held the stick of neatly rolled pot, the manner in which the joint met her lips and she pulled the chemically charged air into her throat. Her eyes had become hooded, though she was clearly still aware. Her lips had what seemed to be a chronic lift in their corners. The twinkle in her eye hadn't extinguished in the least. If anything, it had grown.
"So, Cos-Cosime-Cosima... How do... how do you know if it... how do you know if you're gotten high?" She fell into a fit of giggles as she struggled to get the words out and rolled over onto her side and into Cosima's chest.
Cosima joined in her laughter and muttered, "I think when you start saying 'you're' instead of 'you've' and everything seems as funny as it does right now."
Delphine chuckled a bit harder and buried her face in Cosima's shoulder. "Is that, did I say that? Whoops!" she continued giggling and did a loopy hand motion to go with her exclamation. She smacked her lips a bit and Cosima could feel it vaguely as a tiny frown scrunched Delphine's forehead. "I am very thirsty all of a sudden." She lifted her head again, eyes wide and rimmed with red. "I think there still is wine left." She made to get up and get the bottle, but when she got to the edge of the bed, she lost her balance and tumbled over onto the floor.
Cosima bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing at the sight of Delphine trying to pick herself up from the floor without using the sheets hanging off the bed as leverage and consequently toppling back over. Eventually she stood and rounded the bed to help her up and sat her back on top of the bed. "Woo, okay, I don't think you need anymore wine after that display. How about some water?"
A confused expression played over her features. "Pourquoi - I mean... Why do you say that?"
Cosima bit back another chuckle. "Because, Delphine, you're getting a little sloppy."
The blonde closed her eyes and laid back down with her arms over her head. After a moment without moving, in which Cosima thought she might have fallen asleep, she sat back up, grabbed Cosima's by the elbow, and pulled her down with her as she flopped once again onto her back. "Mmm, come back and lay with me." She muttered something else after that, but it was too quiet and slurred to make out. Cosima was also slightly distracted by the fact that Delphine's lips were close enough to her face that she could feel wisps of her breath in her ear.
Cosima cleared her throat with some effort. "Uh, you know, I think this might verge on that whole 'taking advantage' thing we were talking about earlier."
The scrunch in her forehead returned. "Non, non, it's okay. I just... Je me sens... I feel as if I am dreaming."
Cosima rolled her eyes amusedly. "Well, that's flattering. And... oddly romantic."
Delphine started giggling again. "It's probably just my accent. Français is one of the romance languages, oui? So everything I say has that inflection because of that, is my theory. My hypothesis."
Cosima nodded along. "I see. So what was it that made you decide to jump the lake? To be honest, I think North America is pretty boring. I think I'd like to travel once I've got my degree."
"Oh, I came for the same reason everyone comes. The opportunités. France is a wonderful place, and I do miss it quite often, but there are just so many things here that you could never find there."
"Yeah, like what?"
Delphine stared at her for a few seconds. "I just thought something, but it even sounded bête in my head."
"Bête?"
Delphine searched for the word for a moment. "Yes, um... it's like, foolish. Silly."
"What, tell me. Come on, I promise I won't laugh or anything."
"Alright, ça va. And this may just be the marijuana clouding my brain, but... I was going to say, even though we've just met, I don't think there's a single person like you that I've met in France." Cosima felt a particularly large butterfly jump from her stomach into her chest. She opened her mouth to reply when Delphine continued, "I'm very happy to have met you. It's nice to make a friend in the brave new world."
Cosima was momentarily reduced to the likes of a teenage girl of the early 2000's. "Yeah, ditto. Obvs." Once again, she mentally kicked her own rear.
She turned more fully onto her side and leaned on her elbow. Her eyes met Delphine's, and for a moment, her breath caught in her throat. Delphine's pupils had dilated from the weed she'd smoked, but the undeniable hazel of her irises remained unobscured. They were every shade of green and brown and gold all at once, and Cosima felt as if she could have drowned in them, happily.
Cosima licked her lips unconsciously. "You know, there's this, um, there's this psychology thing that I'm just remembering, about when two people's faces are, you know, too close to just be... talking."
"Oh, I see," she said. She made no move to back away. "You know," Delphine leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, "I've never kissed a girl before."
Cosima didn't move either. "Okay, clarifying question, because I know you're like, super high right now: are you telling me this as a random observational non sequitur or are you saying it because you want me to kiss you?"
Delphine blinked rapidly and bobbed her head without opening her mouth to speak. Their eyes were locked. Electricity hummed between them. Cosima was frozen in place, afraid to move. It felt as if the moment were made of glass, and the slightest shift might shatter it, and the buzz in her fingertips along with it.
Then Delphine bit her lip.
Their lips were attached before she knew what she was doing. She must have lurched over the bed, because suddenly she was lying half on top of Delphine, who had become rather out of breath rather quickly beneath her. Their lips tangled urgently. Delphine's hands grasped at the back of her neck. Cosima's fingers buried themselves in the folds of Delphine's shirt. Her heart raced to the point where it felt more like a hummingbird in her chest. She kissed Delphine hard and without thought. She worried briefly that her lips might bruise, but it wasn't enough to stop her from continuing. She nipped lightly at Delphine's bottom lip and smirked at the quiet hiss it elicited from her. She traced her tongue along the edge of Delphine's lip until it parted from the other and she slipped it inside. It met Delphine's in a forceful, delicious collision.
It wasn't until Delphine snuck her hands under her shirt that Cosima realized what she was doing and disentangled herself from the knot she'd been weaving of herself and the girl still trapped under her body.
She rolled off of Delphine with as much grace as she could muster and stood hastily from the bed. This was certainly a compromising position in which to find herself.
"Shit. I'm so sorry about that, Delphine, I don't know what just came over me. The pot and the wine must have gone to my head or something."
Delphine sat up on her knees on the bed and watched as Cosima began to pace nervously. "Cosima. You are getting worked up over nothing."
"Nothing? No, I just completely took advantage of you! You just wanted to hang out and try weed, and I went and jumped on you like a sexually frustrated teenager!"
"Hey!" Delphine actually snapped her fingers to get Cosima to stop in her stride and look at her. "It is okay. I was the instigator here. Please stop fidgeting; I am not upset with you."
Cosima looked down at her hands and then back up to Delphine's face, which was silently pleading with her to take a breath. "Are you sure?"
Delphine sighed a little grin, relieved. "Oui, ma chérie. I am sure."
Cosima visibly relaxed and sat beside Delphine on the bed. She folded her hands in her lap. "Because, you know, we can totally chalk this all up to the drugs if you want-"
She was cut off by Delphine's burst of animated laughter. The blonde fell backward onto the bed, and Cosima ran out of words to say on the matter.