Rose has always had a weakness for beautiful women. When she was young, she thought perhaps it was a trait common to fashion designers: her job, after all, is to spend hours and hours imagining the bodies of models and celebrities, and how to display them to the best advantage. Clothes are an art in their own right, but they're useless without the right vehicle, and she finds a particular joy in coordinating outfits to the women who wear them, making sure that each element is in balance, none outshining the rest. For years she works with countless models who range the full spectrum from pretty to handsome, elegant to sexy, and she never thinks her appreciation of the female form is anything other than artistic.
However, she begins to suspect that her fondness for shiny hair and soft eyes, long legs and arching backs extends beyond aesthetic regard the first time she's commissioned to create a whole wardrobe for an actress. The woman is about to release a few big films expected to garner quite a lot of attention, and needs outfits for interviews, balls and—hopefully—award shows.
At twenty-five, Rose is a prodigy, the hottest thing to hit New York since Chanel. Or at least that's what the magazines say. Rose doesn't believe any of it. She's skilled, sure, and even she can admit that her designs are gorgeous. But she can't escape the thought that at heart, she will always be a poor Dubliner with crippling anxiety. She doesn't deserve to be here, meeting famous people, or walking beside them as they model her clothes; and she's terrified that soon they'll all discover she's a fraud. It's inevitable, it truly is, and she waits with bated breath.
But the actress—Helena—greets her warmly, asks about her cats and how she likes New York before she asks to see Rose's designs. She's stayed up all night for weeks working on them, and her hands tremble as she passes them over. She ducks her head, swallowing nervously, while the actress peruses them in silence.
"They're lovely, dear," she says, at last, looking at Rose with a twinkle in her eye. "For heaven's sake, stop quivering. It's all right."
Rose tries to speak, can't muster much more than a hollow "Thank you."
"Come here." She takes Rose's hand in hers, clasping it close so that Rose has to look up into her face. Excepting the models that Rose hovers over constantly, it's the closest she's been to anyone in—well—years. Since she left Ireland, and her family, and any semblance of a normal life.
"I love your work," Helena says, reassuringly. "I have complete faith in you. And I can't wait to get to know you better." She winks. "Does that help at all?"
She releases Rose's hand, and Rose gasps. A sapphire mark has bloomed on the back of her hand, bolder than any she's accrued so far in the States. Glancing up, she finds that her signature mark—the soft pink her mother named her after—has stained Helena's fingers with equal fervor.
Rose meets the woman's eyes, and feels something warm root in her belly, deep and hot and aching.
They spend three weeks together, in a small villa in the south of France. It's all the time the other woman has before jetting off to another filming, and though Rose was initially meant to stay only for a week, Helena tells her to stay as long as she wants. "We're bonded," she says in a conspiratorial whisper, pointing to their marks and winking.
In the first week, they're kept busy by fittings and adjustments, though occasionally they sneak off to go for walks in the countryside. There are meadows of wildflowers and clear rivers, and the weather is perfect, sunny and warm but not hot. They're standing by the water the first time her host kisses her, and Rose almost falls in.
"What, haven't you ever been kissed before?" Helena teases, though she looks proud.
"Not like that," Rose says breathlessly, and pulls her in again.
She takes her to bed before the end of the week, and it's then that Rose is forced to admit it. All those years of tracing models' cheekbones in magazines, of picturing women in silk and satin and lace and velvet: she's a genius designer, yes. But she's also incredibly gay.
It becomes something of a habit for her, dressing beautiful women for award shows and fashion lines and balls, then undressing them when their work is done. Now that she knows what it's like to enjoy beauty properly—physically, intimately, thoroughly—desire becomes just another aspect of her artistic sensibility, a part of how she looks at women.
She would never be inappropriate, or anything less than professional, of course. Her Irish-Catholic mother would have disapproved of her feelings, but she did teach her respect. Over time, though, Rose learns to communicate interest subtly, carefully, and a surprising number of women—famous and not, married and not—reciprocate.
The affairs rarely last long or mean much, which suits Rose fine; her schedule is busy, and she doesn't want to risk the professional fallout that could come with being publicly queer. The marks accrue quietly. Most are faint, just dabs of color on her arms, waist and neck. A few are darker, brighter; women she spent more time with, or who she thought she might be able to fall in love with, in another world.
Eventually, inevitably, there's one that's so bright it could be a soulmark, were it pink instead of a deep, fiery orange. For a moment, looking between the mark on her hip and the woman smiling back at her, she considers running. But if there's one thing Rose knows, it's that love always catches up to you in the end.
Five years later, she's sobbing her eyes out in the apartment they shared before the other woman found her soulmate—her true love, which wasn't, and could never be, Rose—and she decides she's done with beauty. She can still be a designer, maybe, but she will never love again.
She stops sleeping with pretty women. Minimizes the touch necessary to fit a design to a body. Tries not even to look, to think, to want.
So when Debbie and Lou confront her at her awful show—and that's not just her anxiety talking, thank you kindly, she knows for a fact that her work recently has been genuinely, irrefutably awful—and offer her the chance to dress Daphne Kluger, she honestly doesn't know if she can do it.
It's a fantastic opportunity from all angles: the exposure, the money, the chance to reclaim her reputation. But all of that relies on her ability to create a truly exquisite dress—a dress to match the sheer exuberant glory of the Toussaint, and to balance the ethereal, extraordinary, earth-shaking beauty of the world's most attractive woman—and to not fall in love with said woman at the same time.
She says yes, of course. She literally cannot afford to refuse. But she worries.
And meeting Daphne does nothing to assuage her fears. She's as gorgeous and terrifying in person as she is on screen. Rose watches Debbie and Lou blow bubbles, and imagines herself in one of them, this close to having the floor drop out from under her.
Astonishingly, she gets through the meeting without messing up too badly, and it's done. She's dressing Daphne Kluger for the Met Gala.
She hasn't had an opportunity like this in years, and despite her anxiety, it invigorates her. She sketches at three a.m., eats Nutella by the jar and feels—hopeful. She has big dreams for this outfit, and they just may come true; and if they do, she won't have to go to jail. She likes Debbie and Lou, and Amita, Constance, Tammy and Nine Ball, and if she's lucky, she'll be able to stay with them for a while. Over the weeks, they come to feel like a family to her—more of a family than her blood family could ever be.
Things fall into place. She settles on a design that she thinks will work, begins buying fabric and trying different cuts. Amita and Constance exchange soulmarks, and Debbie and Lou cook up a feast to celebrate, looking smug as anything when the lovebirds stumble out of Amita's room. The crew has left bright colors on Rose, and received dark pink marks in return; and Debbie's plan is perfect.
She's going to be okay, Rose realizes one night, while stitching a new prototype around midnight. Everything is going to be okay.
Then she meets Daphne for the first fitting, and everything goes straight to hell.
It happens while she's pinning the back of the dress. She likes to leave clothes a little loose the first time so that she can make sure they fit every curve perfectly and experiment with the way they drape. She's in her head, mentally trying a hundred different possibilities at once, fingers moving without conscious thought over the material—and Daphne moves, reaches for a magazine, and Rose's fingers stutter and fall against her back. It's just a moment, a brief touch, and Rose pulls her hand away as if burned.
"Oops, sorry," Daphne says, carelessly. "Got bored."
She glances over her shoulder at Rose, who's standing there, dumbstruck.
"It's okay," she says, sounding amused. For whatever reason, she seems to find Rose's absentmindedness charming rather than annoying. "You can keep going, I'll just read."
Daphne flips open the magazine and resumes her perfect posture.
Rose doesn't move. She feels like she's just downed three shots of whiskey, neat; like she's been hit on the head with a hammer; like the world stopped turning, realigned itself, and went tumbling off in an entirely different direction.
There, on the small of Daphne's back, is the brightest, deepest shade of her pink that she's ever seen, so dusky it's almost mauve, so vibrant that it looks petal-soft. The mark is no bigger than a dime; her fingertip must have just grazed her spine.
And there, on Rose's fingertip, is the exact same color. A matching pink. A soulmark.
Rose gets through the rest of the fitting in a daze, adjusting and pinning automatically, taking notes, murmuring assent to everything Daphne says, despite the fact that she can't hear her over the roaring in her ears. For once she's grateful for her natural spaciness—Daphne doesn't seem to notice any difference in her, or maybe she's just chalking it up to her being hard at work.
At the end of the hour, Rose says her goodbyes, makes plans with Daphne's secretary to do another fitting same time next week, and goes home. On the subway, the dissociation solidifies into panic. She grips the edge of her seat and tries desperately not to cry.
Some part of her brain, the part still capable of logical thought, remembers that people are generally happy when they find their soulmates. They fall into each other's arms, kiss, promise to be together forever. Constance and Amita are barely able to be apart for more than an hour these days, and they spend half their time at Lou's place in one of their bedrooms.
"Ah, to be young and in love," Lou had said one day, after Amita and Constance arrived home from the grocery store, dropped the bags on the kitchen counter, and ran upstairs without saying a word to any of the women scattered throughout the living room. Their clothes were already partially off, Amita's bra clearly undone, Constance's hair messy and her lips swollen.
"You and Debbie are still like that," Tammy had pointed out. It was true: every one of them had caught Debbie and Lou having sex several times already, all over the house and many places outside of it. Rose wasn't sure if they had no sense of modesty or just didn't care, and she shuddered to think what Tammy had had to put up with over decades of knowing them.
"Thank god," Debbie had said with a wicked grin, walking up behind Lou and pulling her hips around so she could press her into the wall, kissing her deep and lingering. Lou made this mewling sound against Debbie's mouth, fisting one hand in Debbie's long hair and cupping her ass with the other, and Debbie's hands skimmed up Lou's sides under her blazer to her breasts; and then Tammy had grabbed the water spritzer they used to water the plants and directed it at them, yelling, "Upstairs! Upstairs!"
Rose wants something like that. Wants to love someone so completely and utterly that everything outside of them would cease to exist. Wants someone to ground her, free her, give her a home. Wants someone to love her as fiercely as she loves them.
And that's why she's crying on a subway train in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday in April: it just does not seem possible that she could ever be enough for Daphne Kluger.
Daphne is America's sweetheart, an internationally known film star, an incredibly talented, smart, skilled, beautiful and charming woman. Rose is—what? An aging fashion designer millions of dollars in debt, who has lost not only her reputation but also the creativity that once felt so innate to her. She's a failure. A train-wreck.
Even Debbie and Lou know that, she realizes with a shudder, and the shame clogs her throat, makes it hard to breathe. If she wasn't a failure, she wouldn't have been suitable for their plan; she wouldn't have needed them. Everyone else is irreplaceable. She was the bottom of the barrel.
Daphne can't possibly love her, and she can't love Daphne in the way that she deserves, can't ever be enough. And the team—she can't stay with them, either. She'll finish the job, of course—she won't let them down, not when Debbie's been planning this for years and they've all worked so hard—but after that, she'll have to go. They'll be better off without her. She's always wanted to travel. Morocco, maybe, or Croatia, or Peru. Somewhere far away from her failure and her misery, and everyone she wants to love, but doesn't deserve.
Luckily, the house is empty when she gets back. Rose locks herself in her room with a jar of Nutella, and cries herself to sleep.
They've taken to having dinner together every night, so Rose wakes up from her impromptu anxiety nap to hear Debbie yelling her name. The prospect of getting out of bed, cleaning her face, putting on proper clothes, going downstairs, and sitting through a meal with all of them talking and laughing is unbearable, though, so she just stays where she is. A few minutes later, Tammy comes up with a plate of food and asks through the door if she's all right.
"Yes, thanks, just working," Rose calls back.
"All right, well, don't work too hard, okay? Eating is important too, remember." Tammy's tone is soft and motherly, and Rose fights the overwhelming urge to open the door and let Tammy hold her while she cries.
Sometimes Tammy makes tea for her when she's up late. Nine Ball does, too. Even Constance brings her snacks sometimes.
They take such good care of her, and she doesn't deserve it, doesn't deserve—
"Thanks, love," Rose calls, and waits for Tammy's footsteps to fade away before she lets the anxiety overtake her once more.
She ends up hiding in her room for a few days. Occasionally, when the house is quiet, she leaves to get food, go to the bathroom, grab more sewing supplies. Once or twice she ventures out when everyone is there, but she makes a beeline for whatever she needs, avoids people's eyes, says, "Sorry, in a hurry, love," when someone tries to talk to her. Tammy continues coming to get her for dinner, then leaving her a plate, then berating her when she doesn't eat it.
On the third night, the house quiets down around one a.m. Rose is wrapped comfortably in several blankets and beginning to consider going down to grab an apple. She doesn't remember the last time she ate, and while it's tempting to just allow herself to waste away, she has work to do.
A knock sounds at her door.
"Yes?" Rose says, not moving from her bed.
"It's Lou." Her voice is softer than Rose has ever heard it. "Can I come in?"
"Busy, love," Rose says automatically.
"I know." She sounds faintly amused. "Can you take a break?"
Rose hesitates. She doesn't want to talk about anything, unless it's logistics with the dress, and she has a feeling that Lou wouldn't be interrupting her in the middle of the night for that. But this is also Lou's house, and Lou's partner's heist, and she doesn't really feel like she can say no.
"One minute," she says. She unwraps herself from the bed and makes it haphazardly, then looks at her room. It's even messier than usual, because she's barely left it, and also because she doesn't have the energy to care about cleaning it. She picks up two pieces of trash, turns on the light, and grabs a pincushion to hold so it looks like she's been working.
She opens the door. Lou is standing there holding two mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream on top.
Lou sees her staring at the drinks, and grins.
"Cadbury drinking chocolate spiked with Bailey's. Figured us ex-pats have to stick together. Can I come in?"
They sit on the bed, and Rose sips her hot chocolate gingerly. It's delicious, and the Bailey's is both invigorating and soothing.
"I wouldn't really have pegged you as a cocoa person," Rose says.
"I'm full of surprises."
"Clearly."
For a few minutes, they just drink. But the anticipation is getting to Rose, and while she is enjoying her drink, she does have a busy night of lying in bed and worrying ahead of her.
"So," Rose says, trying to sound cheery. "What can I do for you?"
Lou looks at her, searching her face. When she speaks, it's the same soft tone she first used at the door.
"What's going on?"
"I've just had a lot of work," Rose lies. "A lot of ideas. You know how it is. Inspiration strikes, and…"
"And you're suddenly unable to come down for dinner, or look any of us in the face?"
With some effort, Rose raises her eyes to meet Lou's, and oh, there's those eyes, intent and piercing.
"I've been working," she repeats.
Lou looks at her for a moment longer, then sighs, turning her gaze on her mug. "This wouldn't have anything to do with Daphne Kluger, would it?"
"What? I—she—what?"
"You've been hiding since Tuesday, which is when you had your first fitting." Lou's voice has dropped deep in her chest, serious and firm. "Are you having second thoughts?"
The first thing Rose feels is relief. Of course: if she's acting erratically, she's a threat to the plan. She wonders briefly what would happen if she really did leave, if they thought she was going to let something slip. Would Debbie or Lou have to neutralize her? She can't imagine either of them hurting her; but they've both had long, illustrious careers in crime, and she knows they would do anything for each other. So that's that question answered, she supposes.
The second thing Rose feels is disappointment, and she doesn't really want to examine that too closely, so she laughs, as if any of this is funny.
"Of course not," Rose says, as if the idea of running away from it all at the first available opportunity hadn't been front and center in her mind for the past few days. She waves her hand dramatically, for emphasis. "The fitting just gave me a lot of material to work with, so I've just been hiding out, and, well, working, you know how it—"
But Lou isn't looking at her anymore. She's looking at her hand, and its bright pink fingertip, and Rose can see the moment when it all clicks into place.
"—you know how it is," Rose finishes weakly.
"Yes," Lou says. "Fate is a funny thing. You didn't tell her, did you."
"What?"
"That's a soulmark," Lou says patiently, as if Rose didn't already know. "On your finger. I'm assuming it's Daphne's. You got it somehow, accidentally, and you didn't tell her. And now you've just been holed up in here panicking."
Slowly, shakily, Rose nods. And then all of a sudden she's sobbing into Lou's shoulder, and Lou is rubbing her back and murmuring nonsense into her hair, just "it's okay" and "let it out" and "I'm here."
It lasts only a few minutes—from having spent much of the past few days crying, she doesn't have too many tears left in her—and when she draws back, Lou offers her a tissue and her hot cocoa wordlessly.
"Thank you," Rose says, and blows her nose. "I'm sorry, I—"
"It's all right," Lou says, gently. "Why haven't you told her?"
"I can't," Rose croaks.
"Why not?"
The panic and shame and terror of the past few days rise up in her throat, and she can't speak.
After a moment, Lou nods, and sighs. She leans back on Rose's bed, and for a few minutes they're quiet. Rose sips her drink, and listens to Lou's breathing, quiet and regular.
When Lou speaks again, she's lying on her back looking up at the ceiling. Her words are measured and careful.
"Rose," she says. "Do you know why Debbie went to jail?"
It's not what she was expecting. She tries to think if she ever heard the whole story. "Something to do with—an art dealer, right?" Rose says finally. "He pinned something on her?"
"Yes. Becker. Some feds were on his trail, and he set her up to take the fall. Rookie mistake, on her part; several, in fact," she says. "However. Do you know why she was working with him in the first place?"
"No?"
She hears Lou swallow.
"About six months before Debbie was arrested, we ran a heist that went wrong," she says quietly. "I'll spare you the details, but a number of very dangerous people became very angry with us. With Debbie, specifically—she's always been the mastermind, and they knew that. They knew she had planned it all.
"My guess is some people wanted to take her out directly, but that would've been a risky move; they would've had the entire Ocean clan and all of their allies on their ass, and they weren't angry enough, or stupid enough, to incite that kind of war. They just wanted to teach her a lesson, see. Make sure she didn't mess with them again.
"By that point, we'd been together for years. Decades. Anyone who knew Debbie knew me, and knew—what we were to each other. So they decided to go after me instead."
Rose's breath catches, and Lou glances over at her. "Yeah," she says. "Long story short, they caught me alone, beat the shit out of me, and left me for dead. If a random passerby hadn't come by a few minutes after they left, I wouldn't have had a chance. When I got to the hospital, I'd lost a lot of blood, my lung had collapsed, and I had a bunch of broken bones—ribs, arm, jaw, etc.—but I was alive."
"My God, Lou," Rose breathes. "That's awful."
"It was." Lou stretches her arms out over her head casually. "When Debbie heard, she lost her shit. She came to see me, then she and Danny and Rusty and a few of the others went and—returned the favor, plus some."
"Did she—"
"Kill anyone? No. Danny might've, though. Mostly they just beat the shit out of them, then rigged the place so the guys would get picked up by the police the next day. They're all in jail now. It was a tactical error, really. They should've known better to target a soulmate, particularly one tied to a clan as protective as the Oceans. Say what you will about them, they always take care of their own."
Rose is quiet, processing the information. In a moment, Lou continues, voice steadier.
"Debbie made sure I was all right, and that I would heal properly. And then she told me she was leaving."
For a moment, Rose isn't sure she heard properly. "She—what?"
"She left me," Lou says, and her voice is calm, but Rose can just hear the sadness, the hurt, beneath it. "She said that she thought I would be better off without her. With her as my partner, I would always be vulnerable not only to the people we robbed but to all of the Oceans' enemies, and all of their allies' enemies, and so on. She blamed herself for the con going wrong, and for me getting hurt; she thought she should've somehow kept me safe. And she thought this was how she could keep me safe in the future. If she wasn't with me anymore.
"She said, and I quote: 'I love you, and I'm bad for you, and you deserve better.'"
"But that's crazy," Rose says, the words coming out before she can think about them. "You're perfect for each other, you're so—you make each other so happy."
"Yup," Lou says. "We are, and we do. But she got scared, and decided to try loving someone with lower stakes. It was stupid, and it got her ass sent to jail, and I know for a fact that there is nothing she regrets more than the fact that we spent six and a half years apart."
Lou sits up and looks Rose in the eye. "Do not mess around with living without your soulmate. I've done it, and it isn't fun. I don't care what you think of yourself, or what you think of her, or what you think either of you does or does not deserve. Daphne was born to love you and you were born to love her. You don't need to worry about being enough for her, because you already are."
Rose doesn't know what to say. The sheer amount of soul-baring that has just occurred is stunning, and from Lou of all people. But Lou seems to know she's gotten the message. She smiles.
"You probably shouldn't tell her until after the heist, anyway, just to be safe," she says. "And for god's sake, start coming to dinner again. They've been growing increasingly raucous without your calming presence."
Lou drinks the rest of her cocoa in a gulp, then holds out her hand for Rose's mug.
"Good night," she says.
"Good night," Rose replies. Lou closes the door behind herself, and then she's alone again, with her soulmark, her sewing supplies, and Lou's words burning like a lamp in her heart.
The remaining weeks pass quickly. Rose holds it together during the next few fittings, despite obsessing over whether Daphne has seen the mark. She thinks not. It's in a relatively inaccessible place, and surely Daphne would have said something, if she had thought it had anything to do with Rose. She seems forthright enough.
Rose is already dressed and made up when she goes to help Daphne into her gown. Daphne squeals when she sees her.
"Oh, you look gorgeous!" she says, kissing her on both cheeks, and touching her flower crown reverently.
"Th-thanks," Rose stutters, blushing fiercely. Daphne is wearing a sheer slip, with her hair and makeup fully done, and Rose thinks she's never seen a more beautiful sight. "I'll pale in comparison to you."
"Because you're a genius designer, yes," Daphne says, tossing her a wink over her shoulder as she goes to pick up the long, bright pink gown hanging in the closet. "Give me a hand?"
Rose helps her into the dress, then flutters around her for a minute, adjusting, laying the cloth just so. Finally, she steps back and just looks.
She has to admit it: she did a good job. Daphne looks—resplendent. Majestic. Magnificent. The dress, the Toussaint and Daphne's own classical loveliness balance perfectly, elevating each other without clashing.
If Rose hadn't already known that she was in love with Daphne—had been from the moment she saw her, confirmed by her soulmark—this would've convinced her. As it is, she just feels proud.
"You look—wonderful," Rose says, after a long moment. "There are no words."
Daphne preens. "All thanks to you," she says, turning to admire herself in the mirror.
"To be fair, I had the perfect muse."
Daphne giggles. She looks at herself for another moment, then turns back to Rose.
"I want to thank you," she says. "You've really done a beautiful job. And you know, it's not just—the dress, and the necklace, and everything; I don't just mean your work for the Gala."
She takes a step closer to Rose, and there's this look in her eye, and oh—
"I feel safe with you," Daphne says. "You make me feel—comfortable, and happy, and safe. You're—you're really—"
And she's right there, she's only an arm's reach away, it would be so easy for Rose to reach out and—
A knock sounds at the door.
"Miss Kluger?" calls one of the security guards. "Mr. Becker is here."
Daphne takes in a breath. She smiles at Rose, but her eyes are wet, and Rose has no idea what's happening but it feels terribly, enormously important.
"You've been a really good friend to me," Daphne says quietly, and then she's hugging Rose, just a brief squeeze, and moving past her to the door to welcome Claude in.
For Rose, the night passes in a blur. She's grateful that her work is done, that the only thing she needs to do is walk around with Daphne and act relatively normal, because there is no way she could summon the focus for anything more complicated than that.
First, there's the rage and grief that well up in her whenever she looks at Claude—for the things that he did to her friends, for the pain he's caused them. Rose is not, typically, an angry person, but she thinks of the way Lou and Debbie orbit around each other, the way they gravitate towards each other when they're in the same room. As if to make sure the other person is really there. It's love, sure, but love strengthened by desperation, by years of suffering. And he did that to them.
Second, there's the way Claude and Daphne act around each other. Daphne is an actor, of course, so there's always a chance that she's faking it, but she seems completely enthralled by him, twirling her hair between her fingers and leaning into him. They flirt relentlessly, and Rose is pretty sure that they snuck off to make out somewhere at one point, and she realizes that it's unfair to be jealous when she hasn't even made her feelings known, but Daphne is hers and that appalling man has no business being in a fifty-mile radius of her. Rose drinks champagne, and sulks.
Third, of course, is the anxiety. There's a lot riding on tonight, a lot of people's futures. She can only hope they pull it off.
They do.
There's more champagne, more food—from Lou's truck, mostly—and a lot of cheering and laughing and hugging and kissing.
Rose gets drunk, and at some point she finds herself saying to Amita and Constance, "You know, I'm really going to miss you all."
They look at her like she's grown a third eye.
"What, are you going somewhere?" Amita says.
"No, well, I mean—"
Constance laughs. "Good luck getting rid of us," she says, throwing an arm around them both and pulling them in tight. "We're never gonna let you go."
Rose smiles against Constance's shoulder, a little watery-eyed, and thanks her lucky stars for the terrible airport show. None of her work has ever made her this happy.
And then.
Daphne walks into the warehouse, and into the crew, and into all of their lives, and Rose can practically hear Lou saying, "Fate is a funny thing."
She stays for dinner. Rose can barely look at her.
After helping with cleanup, Rose makes a beeline for her room and stays there. She doesn't have a good excuse anymore, though she supposes she could say that the Met Gala provided a lot of inspiration—which it would've, if she hadn't been so distracted.
There's a knock at the door.
"Yes?" Rose calls.
"It's your favorite muse," Daphne says. "Can I come in?"
When Rose opens the door, Daphne is standing there with two mugs of hot cocoa. "Lou sent me up with these," she says. "She said you had something to talk to me about?"
Rose internally curses Lou and her meddling ways. "Oh, I—well, come in," she says, aware that she's blushing brightly for no apparent reason.
Daphne makes herself at home on Rose's bed, and for a moment Rose can hardly think. She's been fantasizing about this for weeks, and it seems like they're hurtling down that path, but first—
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Daphne's voice is so quietly, profoundly sad that she almost doesn't recognize it as hers.
"I—what?" Rose says, stupidly.
Daphne reaches for Rose's hand, and rubs her thumb over the mark on her fingertip. She doesn't look at Rose.
They're quiet for a few moments, hot chocolate forgotten. Then Daphne takes a deep breath and says, "Look. I know—I know that I can be a lot. I'm self-absorbed and stubborn and, and, I'm not good at sharing things, like either emotionally or like food, and my life is one big red carpet walk which can be very overwhelming for anyone who isn't used to being photographed at all times of the day and night, and I just wanted to say—I understand. Okay? If you didn't want to put up with that. I would understand."
"If I—" Daphne might understand, but she sure as hell doesn't. "What?"
Daphne sighs. She still won't look at Rose.
"If you don't want to be with me," Daphne says, "I get it. I wouldn't want to be with me, either."
The realization hits her all at once. That time Daphne had a panic attack when she was worrying about the necklace. How Daphne is completely different from how Rose had imagined her, based on interviews and the stories written about her. And now, finally, Daphne sitting across from her, face downcast, giving her permission to walk away.
Rose is used to anxiety beating her up, but she will not allow it to attack her loved ones in this way.
"Daphne," Rose breathes, setting her mug beside Daphne's on the night stand, and scooting closer to her on the bed. "I would be honored to be with you. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that would make me happier."
Daphne takes a moment to look up. When she does, her eyes are shiny and wet. "Then why didn't you tell me, as soon as it happened? Why did you hide it from me?"
"I thought you might be—well, disappointed," Rose says, brushing tears from Daphne's cheeks with her thumbs. "Don't cry, dear heart."
"Disappointed? Why would I—how could you think that?"
"Well—"
"That's ridiculous," Daphne says petulantly, and Rose laughs as she leans in.
"Yes, isn't it?" she murmurs, and kisses her.
Later, when they're naked and curled up together in Rose's bed, they drink their spiked hot cocoa. It's long since gone cold, but still delicious.
"This is what I was hoping for," Daphne whispers into Rose's hair. "When I came here today."
"What, Bailey's?" Rose whispers back. "There's plenty more where that came from."
Daphne giggles. "No, silly. You. Me. Bed."
"Oh." Rose turns, and kisses Daphne on the mouth, because she's allowed to do that now and intends to do it as much as possible. "There's plenty more where that came from, too."