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In the end, they kiss twice, total. Not counting the first time, because Aelwyn barely remembers that part of her life, has been trying for months now to block it out entirely.
(It doesn't always work. But that’s not, Aelwyn thinks, entirely terrible; after all, it was the first time she was introduced to the ridiculous people that now populate her life, for better or for worse.)
(Usually, for better, although she’ll rarely admit it.)
Anyways — they kiss twice, post-adventure, her and Fabian, and it’s — well.
It’s not horrible, which, in Aelwyn’s mind, almost counts for good.
When she talks about it later to her friends — somehow she got invited once to a party involving the Seven Maidens and they just kinda stuck (or rather, she stuck, because, well. It’s hard not to think of herself as a burden on people, these days, some sort of dead weight) — she tells them that Fabian was — good, in a way.
“Not as exciting as I was expecting, but not awful,” she tells Sam and Penny and Katya, because they’re her favorites. Which, since when has she had enough friends to be able to pick favorites, but somehow it’s happened, and it feels — it feels good, most of the time.
“He was, like, gentle, I guess, and I — I don’t know, I think I might have liked it.” She finds herself smiling, a little, because it wasn’t bad. He had been gentle, in kind of a sweet way, and all over the place in a sort of endearing manner, and a little unsure of himself, and it had been kind of draining to be so much more confident than him, and while she liked being more dominant, most of the time, having to be that much in control got to be a little — much, sometimes.
“It would be nice if someone else would take charge a little more, though, you know? And, like, the prospect of teaching some seventeen-year-old where my clit is sounds rather exhausting.” This earns her a sharp laugh from Sam, and Aelwyn grins at this.
“You do know,” Katya tells her, worrying the side of her cheek with her tongue, “that he’s got experience with one, right? He’s trans.”
The puzzle pieces click in Aelwyn’s mind — his Whole Deal with overcoming toxic masculinity, his small feet, his never taking off his shirt despite how ripped she knew he was underneath it. “Oh,” she says, and it’s — it’s not bad, obviously, or a turn-off; really, if anything, it would be nice to have someone who gets her anatomy a little bit, instead of the multitude of idiot men she’s been with who have no idea why, in fact, jackhammering her with their fingers doesn’t exactly do much for her. She’s not a bigot; she may be judgemental, a lot of the time, and a shitty person a little bit of the time, even, but she’s not, like, upset about it.
“Oh,” she says again. “Well, either way, teaching a seventeen-year-old boy to be confident kissing anyone, let alone me, who’s about ten levels of popularity above him, and always will be, sounds like a fucking task.”
The three of her friends laugh again, and she decides that she’ll give him another chance, maybe. If only to report back to her friends to make them smile.
***
A week after their first make out session, she sleeps over at Sam’s, just the two of them. And if Aelwyn’s heart is beating a little bit faster than normal at the sight of her new best friend — because apparently they are that, now, Sam called her her best friend over text three days before and Aelwyn can’t stop thinking about it — it’s just because she’s happy to have someone who finally gets her, and a little nervous that she’s gonna fuck it up.
Terrified, really, actually: that Sam’s going to realize how, deep down, Aelwyn has never been a good person and maybe never will be and that everything she says is a performance. That the fun side of Aelwyn is built precariously on top of several layers of trauma, and that her mind is still a bombed-out city trying desperately to rebuild itself, and that she’s working overtime constantly to ride that balance between being herself in a way that doesn’t hurt, too-raw still, and being a person that doesn’t hurt those she loves just because she can.
Honestly, being a person who loves other people is still hard; or, rather, being a person with a new understanding of love that doesn’t involve desperately doing whatever you can to earn it is hard, and realizing that people care about her even when she does nothing to earn it is even harder, and remembering to care about others just because she can is near impossible.
But she tries, anyways.
And this, with Sam — it helps.
Baking brownies with Sam in the kitchen, laughing as she blows flour onto Aelwyn, laying her legs on Sam’s as casually as she can as they take a break to watch an episode of What Not to Wear, feeding each other bits of brownie batter off of each other’s fingers. Shivering as Sam licks a bit off of Aelwyn’s pointer finger and then looks up, makes eye contact for a heart-stopping three breaths with Aelwyn, and then smiles up at her with all the giddiness she has.
Intentionally caring about someone — well, someone other than Adaine, because in her own way she has always cared for Adaine — is — new, but — it helps.
They still bitch about people, obviously; she’s trying to be a better person, but that doesn’t mean forgoing this. Ostentatia’s terrible outfit from the other day, something stupid Gorgug said to Zelda (she’s protective, now, too, about people other than her little sister), some kid on the bloodrush team who hit on Sam.
“He was, like, so fucking gross,” she says, as they’re sitting on the counter eating half a pan of brownies, “and I was like, God, what a fucking freak, you know? I just — ever since Johnny, just — being around men like that is — it just makes me feel so small, and I — I don’t know. It’s weird.” She shakes her head and swings her legs against the counter. “Anyways, he was fucking stupid, and I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about it, you know?” she says, looking up at Aelwyn.
Aelwyn knows. “I'll kick his ass for you, if you want,” she says, fully serious.
Sam laughs. “Nah, it’s okay. It helps, to have someone on my side, though.” She brushes some leftover flour off of Aelwyn’s cheek and Aelwyn can feel her heart slip sideways at Sam’s casual affection, so quickly she almost misses it. “Thank you,” Sam says, her eyes searching for something in Aelwyn’s, and Aelwyn knows it’s genuine.
“Any time,” she says, and it takes effort to put the emotion she’s feeling into her words, but — it’s less effort than usual, and it’s nice, to genuinely say things to people, sometimes. To mean the nice things she makes herself say.
Later, they lay in the dark together, and Aelwyn is almost falling off the bed trying not to touch Sam. Trying not to want to touch Sam.
And then Sam turns around, wraps her arms around Aelwyn’s middle, and curls herself around her.
Oh, Aelwyn thinks. Oh, oh oh.
She holds her breath for a second, then lets it out as slowly as she can.
“Sam,” she tells the darkness, and feels Sam murder a sleepy yeah? back to her. “Thank you.”
“Mmm. For?”
“I didn’t — I haven’t —” She’s not entirely sure what she really wants to say, or how to say it without fucking up. “Thank you for letting me care about you.”
Sam lifts her head up, and Aelwyn can feel her smile in the dark.
“Any time,” she whispers back, and Aelwyn isn’t sure, but she thinks that this might be kind of what love could be, if she lets it.
***
In the end, Aelwyn kisses Fabian once more, to be sure. Absolutely positive, because it’s hard to be positive about these sorts of things.
She knows, though, pretty much immediately, that it’s wrong.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, pulling away from him about thirty seconds in.
They’re in a closet, in Mordred Manor (because Fabian’s always there, now, and it just doesn’t make sense to go all the way to his place, when they have perfectly good secret corridors right here and she doesn’t have to go out of her way to see him), and Fabian is attempting to push her against a wall.
It’s not working, for more reasons than the fact that they’re the same exact height.
“What? What’s wrong?” Fabian reaches up to muss his hair, eyebrows furrowed.
“Oh, like you don’t fucking know,” she says, flipping her hair back into place. “You’re thinking about someone else,” she says, and then, quieter, “I’ve had it happen to me enough times to know by now when someone isn’t fully in it.”
Which, he’s not. He's kissing her like she’s not in the same room as him, like he’s just going through the motions. He's clearly distracted, and she doesn’t fully blame him.
She’s expecting him to deny it, to tell her that she’s overreacting, to say that of course he’s into her, has been for a year now. She expects him to start pacing, or something.
Instead, he slides down the wall to the floor, and it’s so unexpected that Aelwyn sits down next to him.
“Fuck,” he says to the floor. “Fuck.”
She, reluctantly (because this whole emotional support thing is new to her, even for people she really does care about, let alone her little sister’s slightly dumb friend) pats his shoulder a few times.
“It’s Riz, isn’t it,” she says, realizing everything as the words come out of her mouth.
He looks up at her, confused.
“Your — your ball, or whatever,” she says to the ceiling. “You’re thinking about him.”
“How'd you know?” he says, all of his bravado gone entirely. She’s never seen him look so — defeated, and she’s seen him half-dead in battle.
She rolls her eyes. “Are you serious? You two are joined at the fucking hip, and you’re obsessed with looking cool for him, or being smart, or whatever, for him, and — oh, God, is this just to make him jealous?”
“No! No,” he says, quickly, rubbing at his forehead wrinkles. “I think you’re hot.”
“Obviously I’m hot,” Aelwyn says, because she is. “Everyone thinks I’m hot. You can know that I’m attractive and not be attracted to me, you know. I just thought this would be interesting. I didn’t mean to come between — between whatever you two have, because it is, now that I actually think about it — clearly something.”
“Riz doesn’t —”
“Bullshit. I haven’t even thought about this for more than thirty seconds now and already I know you two have something more than we could ever have.”
She shoos him out of the closet with instructions to talk to, like, her sister, or one of the other weirdos they’re friends with, and he looks embarrassed but — hopeful, she thinks — and then she shoves her head into her hands.
Because, fuck.
She must have been distracted, too, to have gone so long without realizing that Fabian was distracted in the first place.
And it doesn’t take much to realize why.
***
In the end, she talks to Fig, of all people, about it.
Fig, who tries too hard to be cool without realizing that she’s at her coolest when she’s herself, earnest and funny and biting in a way that comes out almost sweet. It’s a bit exhausting, to watch all these teenagers navigate themselves, and to see all the answers right there and know that they’ll never listen to her in a million years, even though she knows exactly what’s going on because she’s been there.
Fig, who, despite everything, feels familiar to her — she’s learning, too, how to be earnest and real with people. To stop putting up walls and personas at every turn. To care about them in a way that makes her joints feel out of place and her heart too slippery, but also makes her stomach warm and breath come a little bit easier.
Fig, who knows what it’s like to not know what it means when you shiver a little bit when your best friend hugs you goodbye.
Or — to know, deep down, but not want to know. To close your eyes to it, swallow it down. To know that you wouldn’t even be worth it, in the first place, that you don’t deserve it, but maybe that you’d like to try. To have someone that makes you want to fucking try like that.
To know all this after only a few weeks of being friends, and to genuinely panic, a little, at the implications of it.
To hold your breath to stop from saying everything all at once. To have so much to say, in the first place, after so long of not wanting to say much at all.
God, she really does have such a love-hate relationship with realizing she actually likes Adaine’s friends. That she has more in common with them than it seems.
Fig laughs, a little, when Aelwyn tells her about her and Fabian, and Aelwyn bristles, but then laughs at herself eventually. That’s coming easier, too; recognizing when she’s okay, and acting accordingly. Recognizing that not everything is an insult. Recognizing that not everything needs an eye-roll in response.
Maybe she can learn something from Fig, too.
Fig asks more questions, and somehow gets Aelwyn to talk about herself, really talk, for almost two hours; it’s astounding, really, and Aelwyn comes out of it ready to do — something.
Something.
“Just a little something is better than nothing,” Adaine tells her, when Aelwyn finally gets up the nerve to talk to her, some nights later in the dark of their room. “Just — admitting it to yourself, at least, is a step.”
“Admitting wh—,” Aelwyn says, crossly, and then softens her voice. “Admitting what?”
“Anything. Admitting you don’t like Fabian like that, admitting that you might like someone else, admitting who that person is. Anything.”
Aelwyn smiles, because she knows Adaine. “Baby sister”, she says, voice teasing but light, “is there anything you need to admit? Because—”
“No,” Adaine says, too quickly, and Aelwyn can hear her blush, practically, from across the room. “Nothing. Nobody. No.”
“Because if there’s something you need to admit you can always tell me, your big sister.”
(Calling herself Adaine’s big sister still feels odd, a little, but the more she does it the more she believes it.)
“Ugh,” Adaine groans from her bed. “Maybe I might like — people. But I can’t, and it’s not going to go anywhere, so.”
“Oh, Adaine,” she says, sighing. “When are you going to learn that the more you tell yourself that something can’t happen, the more it isn’t going to happen?”
“Shut up,” Adaine says. “You’re too wise now. I can’t deal with it anymore.”
Aelwyn ignores her and plays the conversation back in her head. “Sorry,” she says, “but did you say people? As opposed to a person? As in — multiple?”
“Shut up,” Adaine says again, and covers her face with her pillow.
Aelwyn hums triumphantly into the darkness.
“I maybe might like,” Adaine mumbles, “two people who happen to be in a relationship. So it’s not going to go anywhere because I’m not going to be a — a homewrecker, and because they’ll never like me.”
Aelwyn lads across the room. “Scooch,” she demands, and crawls into bed with her sister.
(They used to do this a lot, right when they’d gotten back from the Nightmare Forest; Aelwyn’s back sometimes felt too exposed, like someone was about to catch her off guard, and her mind wouldn’t shut up, and it physically hurt to be away from her sister, even ten feet away, because what if, and so they’d taken to sleeping in the same bed, when it got particularly bad. It felt nice to be getting into bed with her little sister for other reasons, now, mundane and simple ones, and Aelwyn’s throat scratches at the memory of it all).
“If it’s who i think it is —” because, obviously — she’s never seen her sister shamelessly flirt with anyone before Fig, and her whole best friends thing with Ayda is a little — much, sometimes, to be just a friendship thing — “then you’ll be okay. I think you can tell them, and worst case scenario they reject you nicely and stay friends with you. And,” she adds, stoking Adaine’s hair almost without noticing — force of habit — “if they don’t, they’re dicks, and you didn’t want them around anyways.”
Adaine laughs, and presses her head against Aelwyn’s hand. “So when are you going to take your own advice, then?”
“Oh, fuck you,” laughs Aelwyn, and somehow eventually they fall asleep like that, and her hand cramps up from being in such an odd position, and Adaine is hot and clammy against her in the summer evening, but it feels nice to care on purpose, like this.
To be normal. To be sisters. To be okay.
***
In the end, she doesn’t need to tell Sam.
Sam tells her.
They’re at another sleepover, and facing each other, laughing as they try to remember a hand-clapping game from when they were younger, and Aelwyn feels simple and innocent and loved and beautiful and joyful, and Sam smiles at her like she does, and Aelwyn’s heart catches on its strings, and Sam says, voice a little rough, I think I want to kiss you, and Aelwyn doesn’t know what to say, so she says, rather unelegantly, come here, bitch, and it comes out sort of wrong and sort of a half-laugh but then it doesn’t matter because Sam is kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, and they are okay, and she is okay, and this is good and right and worth it.
And she is worth it.
I think I really like you, she tells Sam, like in a way where I want to maybe kiss you for a long time and figure out how to make you blush and hold your hand and buy you dinner, and all that.
Like dating? Sam says, laughing against her mouth, and Aelwyn smiles back and says, yes, like that, please, and she is okay, and okay, and okay.
She gets to do this.
“Thank you,” she tells Sam, quietly, later, after they’ve done all the kissing she can handle for one night, and for some reason her cheeks are wet when Sam goes to kiss them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Any time,” Sam whispers back, and Aelwyn wraps her body around Sam’s, and Sam presses a hand to her stomach.
And Aelwyn is full to bursting with the amount that she gets to care about someone who cares so much about her, and the idea that maybe, she can be someone who deserves all of it.