Chapter Text
Jean finds Eula in the storage closet, skirt hiked up so that her shorts make contact with the floor instead. Her head rests on the wall, cheeks ruddy and eyes glassy. “Are you drinking?” Jean asks as she finds the flask open in Eula’s hands.
“No,” Eula huffs.
Quickly, Jean shuts the door and kneels next to her to take the flask away. Her heartbeat is so quick in her chest that it might burst her ribcage open. When Eula doesn’t try to fight her to get it back, she lets out a deep sigh and sinks to the floor beside her. “You weren’t in science,” Jean says.
“Yeah, I had better things to do.”
“Like making your own experiments here?” Jean gestures at the shelf full of old cleaners. The little closet is a toxic mess and she wonders for how long Eula had been sitting there, letting the fumes consume her.
“Please leave me alone,” Eula tells her in a clipped tone. She faces Jean with red-rimmed eyes, her mouth a deep pink with pinprick spots of blood. Then she draws her knees to her chest and idly plays with the ring on her finger.
Jean obliges and stays quiet. She puts the flask in the inner pocket of her blazer and places her hands on her lap. She waits.
***
Jean curls her hand into the softness of Eula’s jacket. She keeps her eyes on her fingers for fear of what Eula’s eyes would have in the dark. Her breath is heavy in her chest, her face burning. She rolls over to her back to cool down and faces the stars.
“Thank you,” she says eventually, “for indulging me.”
“I did enjoy it,” Eula tells her. “How do you feel?”
“Confused.”
Eula laughs, the sound of it like tinkling bells. “I’m not surprised,” she sighs. The ease in which she says those words stills Jean’s mind, her thoughts seeping out until she looks at the sky with something akin to meditativeness.
***
“My father was sentenced to prison today,” Eula begins. Her words slur together. “Twenty-five years. No parole.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jean tells her honestly but tentatively. She cannot presume the relationship between them. Among other things, it is terribly rude.
“I’ll probably get withdrawn, seeing as we can’t afford the tuition.”
“We have scholarships here.”
Eula smiles at her wryly, stray tears clinging to her wet lashes. “Why are you helping me?”
“It’s my job.”
Jean is shocked when Eula throws her head back and laughs. “The wealth of the Gunnhildrs must be so vast and infinite that investing in the Lawrences is only a sunk cost,” Eula declares. “I envy your privilege.”
“Please don’t,” Jean says. “I don’t mean to insult you.”
“Of course you don’t,” Eula bites back.
Jean shakes her head, willing away the hurt, the tears making her eyes hot and heavy. “You’re drunk,” she tells Eula. “I’m helping you whether you like it or not.”
Eula huffs and crosses her arms, turning away from Jean. “Fine, but I don’t owe you anything.”
“Fine by me.”
***
“Jean,” Eula calls as she gets up from the blanket, “come here.”
In a daze from her own thoughts, Jean slowly gets up from the floor then ties her hair back again as she wanders over to the parapet where Eula has taken a seat. Jean’s stomach drops to her feet as Eula’s legs sway into the chasm.
“I’ll fall,” Jean lets out.
“I’ll hold you,” Eula says simply. She thrusts out her hand towards Jean.
Her hand is warm where it meets with Jean’s. Belatedly, Jean feels her palms bead with sweat but at that point it was too late to let go—she is clinging to Eula for dear life as she sits on the edge of the world.
“Breathe,” Eula reminds her, her voice too close to Jean’s ear.
Jean’s entire body is frozen but she inhales through her nose and exhales from her mouth. She doesn’t look down so the nothingness doesn’t bother her. Her grip on Eula is tight enough for her knuckles to show.
Eula tilts Jean’s chin upwards. Everything slips away.
***
The silence stretches infinitely in the tiny universe of their storage closet. Eula doesn’t bother asking Jean for the flask back and wipes away at her nose with the back of her hand. After some time, she decides to finally stand up, holding on a shelf to balance herself. Jean hurries to get up, too, following Eula until they find themselves in the communal bathroom of the dorm.
Eula splashes water on her face then rolls her sleeves up to sluice cold water over her skin. “Are you still here?” she asks with cold disinterest.
“I need to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. You can just tell everyone I’m sick.”
“Are you sober?”
“Sadly.”
Jean, in her annoyance, can’t stop herself from saying, “You are horrible.”
“Not surprised,” Eula replies.
“How did you even get alcohol?”
“Kaeya.”
“Ah.”
Eula shuts off the water then turns to face Jean, her palms resting on the countertop. “Will you rat me out?” she asks.
Jean shakes her head.
“Why not?”
“Is that what you think of me?”
“I remember our first meeting,” Eula tells her. “You brought a handbook to my room after dinner. I never opened it, by the way.”
“I’d be more surprised if you did,” Jean confesses with a slight laugh. “Normally I would say something, but you don’t need any more eyes on you.”
“Well… Thank you, Jean. I can’t pay you back, though.”
Jean waves it off with her hand. “That’s what friends are for, right?”
***
“What’s she like?” Lisa asks. “Eula Lawrence. Kaeya said she’s gorgeous.”
“I haven’t noticed,” Jean answers.
“Boring.”
“She just got here,” Jean tells her off. Lisa continues to thumb at her book halfheartedly. “I thought you didn’t care about gossip.”
“I’m curious, that’s all. You haven’t mentioned her at all.”
“I was just doing my job, you know.”
Lisa leans in closer to Jean, keeping her book open with splayed out fingers. No one else is sharing the table with them in the library, the warm lamps giving Lisa an evil glint to her eye. “Why do you look so bothered, then, hmm?” she asks. “Did she say something to you?”
Jean clears her throat, trying to divert her attention to the notes she’s been reorganizing. “Nothing important. She just called me strict.”
At that, Lisa can’t help laughing but covers her mouth to avoid making a loud noise. “She’s not wrong,” she says eventually. Jean only heaves a sigh.
***
“How are you feeling?” Eula asks. Jean has her neck craned back, the stars blurring together in front of her eyes.
“Weightless,” Jean answers breathlessly. Eula’s hand on hers is the only thing grounding them both. “Don’t let go of me,” she then says just to make sure.
Eula responds by holding on to her more tightly. One of her feet is planted on the parapet, her folded knee used as a prop for her to place her chin on. “Of course,” she tells her, with a squeeze of Jean’s fingers for good measure. “You’re one of my few friends.”
Jean’s laughter comes out choked, hitching in her throat. She remembers where she is and the fear tightens its grip on her.
“You know,” Eula continues as if she can read Jean’s mind and is talking her through it, “I used to climb up the roof of my house and sleep there.”
“Weren’t you cold?”
“I brought a blanket, duh. It was nice and quiet. No one could find me until dawn.”
“You seem to like being alone so much.”
“It’s freeing.” Eula turns her head towards her and says, “I’m not sure if you ever felt that need. It might be suffocating otherwise.”
“I see the appeal,” Jean says as she looks at Eula too, the way she’s all silver and cold, like the face of the moon. “I should try that.” Does she long to be free? Or alone?
Eula sighs, “I don’t get you, Jean Gunnhildr.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that.”
Their faces have closed a distance again such that Jean feels Eula’s breath on hers. With her sight adjusted to the light, she can see a bit of Eula’s freckles dotting across her nose, her pupils blown out. She searches Eula’s face for an explanation and finds nothing but a small smile. “Please explain,” Jean requests again.
“Every time I think you’ll do or say something, you say something different,” Eula tells her. “I can’t tell if you’re just trying to comfort me or what.”
“I just say what’s on my mind,” Jean blurts out.
“Yeah, and I thought you’d be a lot more careful.”
The admission slips out of Jean’s mouth before she can stop herself: “It’s only with you that I’m not.”
Eula gives her a wry smile and a tease. “Really?” Instead of replying, Jean just kisses her again.
***
“Like this?” Eula asks as she nips on the skin behind Jean’s ear, her breath on the delicate skin making Jean shiver on the sink countertop.
“Yeah,” Jean sighs. Her head falls back against the mirror, Eula pressing into the space between her legs. Their skirts gathered up, bare legs touching, entangled in each other.
Eula finds Jean’s mouth again and kisses away the lip balm, catching the tenderness between her teeth. Jean lets out a heady gasp and succumbs.
***
Confessions are not confidential in the contained world of the St. Favonius School. Secrets spill out of the booth and creep over the campus like a fog. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Jean whispers anyway.
“Tell me, my child,” the priest says.
“Father, I… I may have hurt someone I love deeply. I feel like I betrayed him.”
“How so?”
“I don’t like him back.”
The priest gives a short chuckle. “My child, that is not a sin.”
“I’ve been lying to him, Father,” Jean insists.
“Very well. For penance, I suggest you pray one Our Father and five Hail Marys,” the priest instructs. “And, Miss Gunnhildr, you have to tell the truth and ask for his forgiveness.”
***
“Since you’re my friend now, I’ll tell you something,” Eula begins. She still smells so strongly of alcohol, invading Jean’s space like this. “My father is deplorable. I don’t condone anything he does.
“Unfortunately, that’s not something I can control, can I? He knows, of course. They’ve been meaning to send me here for the longest time to sort me out and Father’s case was a convenient excuse.”
“Sort you out?” Jean echoes.
“I’m benign,” Eula sniffs. “A diamond in the rough, they said. I needed to be polished and refined.”
“I’m not following.” Jean’s breath hitches in her throat at their close proximity. Her fingers curl over the sink countertop.
Eula frowns. “They don’t trust me. If they don’t keep an eye on me, I’ll do something stupid like… squander the family business on drugs. Or decide against having children.”
“Did the news today upset you?”
“I wasn’t surprised. And everyone is happy.” Eula gives a short laugh before adding, “I should be relieved. It’s what he deserves after all,” with a twist of her mouth.
“He’s still your father,” Jean points out.
“Yeah. No one will let me forget it.”
Jean notes the glassy expression on Eula’s face, wanting to reach up to brush back the locks of hair covering her face. “Let’s get out of here,” she says instead while keeping her tone gentle. She wraps her fingers around Eula’s wrist then leads them to Eula’s room.
The desk inside is bare save for the handbook Jean sent over on Eula’s first day, plastic wrapping signalling that it is untouched. Eula locks the door and settles on the bed while Jean takes the chair by the desk. Jean brings out the flask and places it on the surface, toying with its cover.
“I have fencing training in a while,” Jean brings up all of a sudden, but Eula had already fallen asleep.
***
They pull apart but only to gasp for air, Eula looking at her with parted lips, wide eyes as if to imprint the image in her mind. Jean wonders if she looks as disheveled as she feels and smooths down her hair while clearing her throat and looking back out at the sky. She undos her legs and lets them hang down the parapet then leans back on her palms to keep steady.
“I’m fucked,” Jean groans.
Eula bursts out laughing and when she stops, all she does is look at Jean again to burst into laughter once more. Jean shares her laugh, too, their voices mingling into something unholy.
“You can count me in,” Eula says when she’s stopped laughing long enough to catch her breath.
“I don’t know, Eula,” Jean begins to tell her with nervous laughter, “I just feel like I can be myself around you. Not that I’m acting or putting on a façade… That’s really me, the Jean everyone sees.”
“The real Jean is a lesbian?” Eula teases.
Jean scoffs and gives Eula a playful shove on her shoulder. “Who knows,” she says. “But, yeah, I’m just saying that this is a different real—God, it feels weird saying it out loud. I can’t explain it. It’s like everything I have ever thought is laid bare in front of me, and you can see it, too. It wasn’t even a conscious decision but it feels like you can see right through me, which is weird, because we’re practically strangers, you know? And you just said that you don’t get me.” And it’s nighttime, under a nebulous sky. She wants to touch Eula again but keeps her hands on her lap now.
“Maybe I’m a safety net,” Eula wonders aloud. “I’m as good as gone to everyone else but you.” She leans further back and draws her knees to her chest, hugging them. “Well, thank you, I guess. It’s nice to know I have that meaning for you.”
***
Eula slides into her assigned seat next to Jean for literature class, her face solemn and drawn. As the teacher drones on about poetry forms, Jean’s gaze intermittently turns towards Eula, who decided to read a book instead of listening, her eyes lidded as it skims over the words.
A piece of paper makes its way to Jean’s side of the table. In Eula’s messy scrawl: Stop staring at me.
Sorry, Jean writes.
Weirdo.
Jean suppresses her smile as she replies, Are you feeling better?
Yeah, Eula writes back. After a brief pause, she adds, Thanks.
The note remains between them, touched by neither until the end of class, when Eula picks it up and folds it to use as a bookmark. Jean takes her time to gather her things before stepping out.
Diluc catches her from the adjacent classroom and approaches her, his fingers nervously drumming on the strap of his backpack. He asks, “Jean, may I talk to you for a second?”
***
“It’s not that,” Jean says while trying to not show that she’s hurt by Eula’s insinuation. “It’s just who you are.” She feels that Eula invites openness, but she doesn’t say that out loud.
Eula’s eyes glimmer. “No one’s ever told me that before,” she tells Jean. “Do you think people walk on eggshells around you?”
“Sometimes. Especially guys. I think it’s because of my family, not because of me personally, but it still sucks.”
“I get that. Not that my family will ever be on the same level as yours.”
“Aren’t we, like, not our familes though?”
“Well, yeah, but we’re also part of it. Like… a Venn diagram.”
Jean chews on her lip, mulling the thought over.
“It’s not like you want to be separate from it, right?” Eula presses.
“No, I… I don’t.”
“Yeah, so don’t be too hard on yourself, Jean. At the end of the day, you’re not pretending for anybody. I mean, I can sense as much. I could be wrong, but it’s still everyone else’s problem, not yours.”
“You’re so sure about this,” Jean points out.
“I guess it’s just something I learned,” Eula tells her with a shrug.
“It’s a pity no one will give you a chance.”
“I have some friends here, don’t worry. Locking me in a dungeon won’t work a second time.”
“You still don’t remember who they are?” Jean asks, her curiosity now piqued
“I figured it out. They’re in math with me,” Eula divulges. “Sisters. They’re major investors and the entire portfolio suffered. They might not enroll next year. It’s ironic but all I feel is bad for them. I was just an easy outlet for their anger.”
“You’re a good person, Eula.”
Eula huffs, telling Jean, “I wasn’t asking.” But she looks at Jean with a shy smile and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Though coming from you, I’ll take it.”
***
“I’m going to bed,” Lisa announces with a yawn. She sets the book she was reading down on the bedside table and turns off her lamp before settling deeper into the bed with her blanket wrapped over her. “Good night, Jean.”
“Good night,” Jean says. Out of courtesy, she turns off the rest of the lights, keeping nothing on but her laptop. She finishes her homework and spends some time scrolling absentmindedly, clicking random links but reading none of them. Then fixes her files. Then gets a headstart on a final paper due at the end of the semester.
Lisa stirs in her bed on the other side of the room. Jean grows restless to the point of suffocating.
She stands up, puts her slippers on. Takes the blanket with her, wrapping it around her head and her shoulders like a cloak. Her hand steadies the door so it closes with an imperceptible click.
There’s a stairway in the building that leads straight up. Jean has never seen it herself but the door containing it yawns in the darkness. Tonight, it will swallow her.
***
Orange starts to peek out over the horizon, the barest hint of it melding with the night sky into blue. Jean realizes, almost frantically, that they need to be back in their rooms before anyone checks up on them.
Eula has the same thought, already swinging her legs over the parapet and back on solid footing. “Well,” she says, “that was fun.”
Jean scrambles to get down and manages to catch Eula just by the sleeve of her jacket. “You should go first,” she says, “while everyone’s still asleep. I’ll go after.” In the diffused light, she can finally see Eula, the bags under her eyes, the large jacket whose sleeves run past her knuckles.
“Okay,” is all Eula manages to say, and Jean lets go, feeling like a spell has been broken.
Again, Jean calls out to her, just before Eula opens the door that leads them back inside the dormitory building. “Eula?”
“Yeah?”
“Will I see you later?”
“Of course.” Eula opens the door and disappears, leaving Jean to gather up her things. It’s dawn. It’s a new day.