Work Text:
The aftermath of Mia’s 18th birthday party looked like a vanilla confetti cake exploded in her bedroom.
There were streamers hanging off her ceiling fan, purple and black balloons floating astray across her floor like a ghost prowling the haunted corridors of a hallway, presents littered on and off her dresser, dark red lipstick stains smudged onto her vanity mirror (left there by her and Vada of course), and colorful tissue paper blazed a path in the trail of Mia’s vicious hands that were eager to tear apart half of her gifts.
Which were mostly from Vada.
After her Gatsby styled party of grandeur, she stumbled upstairs with her girlfriend in a fit of school girl giggles and toppled over onto her bed as Vada followed shortly after.
They had their own little party prior to Mia’s bigger one, and it took place between the four walls of Mia’s room.
And because Mia was turning 18 today, Vada absolutely spoiled her, and went above and beyond their usual agreements.
Vada surprised her with breakfast in bed, and she made her favorite assortment of pancakes with whipped cream and blueberries on top. In correlation to their usual bantering, Vada dipped the tip of her finger into the swirled cream on top of her pancakes and smeared it across Mia’s left cheek, to which insinuated a small food war that created a daunting mess Vada was obligated to clean up since it wasn’t ‘her birthday’.
After they collectively cleaned up in the bathroom and rid their faces of sticky sweetness, Vada took Mia to her next surprise, which consisted of a gift box full of presents all bought and made with love and carefully calculated thinking.
Inside the very Vada styled box laid framed pictures of the two of them together, sketches and doodles she drew Mia while waiting for her outside of her dance class, posters of Mia’s favorite artists and films, inside jokes they shared that were scrawled onto pieces of paper, and another hoodie of Vada’s that she warranted for Mia to steal this time.
The last present, though, was stuck inside Vada’s pocket, and it wasn’t until she took it out with an awkward clearing of her throat that Mia realized there was something else to claim.
And when she looked into her hands and then up into her sickle honey brown eyes, her breath grew fluffy and all consuming inside of her lungs.
It was a promise ring.
It was a ring of simple silver and soft diamond, but it spoke every word that mattered to their relationship.
It symbolized glistening beauty, the importance of trust, the warmth of their love, the tightness of their friendship, the glamor of their mistakes, the significance of their flaws and fights, and so much more.
It represented everything in such a little piece of jewelry.
And it made Mia cry.
Vada was the first person she had ever cried in front of. She hadn’t even cried in front of her dads yet, and she was okay with that. Vada was the only one who held that piece of vulnerability in her palms. She was more than okay with that.
And as the clock strikes 2 am while she lays lopsided, stretched across her bed with her girlfriend’s head laying on her stomach, she feels the most content she’s ever been since she started dating Vada.
Her intestines are digesting the countless amounts of hard candy and cake she’s devoured in the past 24 hours, alongside the few shots she downed as a challenging dare from her dance peers who attended the party, and as someone who strived for competition, she couldn’t turn the offer down.
Her head spins a little with fuzzy warmth and droopy eyes, and she feels the surface of her skin tingling with prickles as the alcohol pushes out of her system inch by inch.
She glances towards her nightstand, which now has a small picture frame standing upright with a photographed selfie of her and Vada a couple months ago at their Universal Studios trip, and she remembers the memory with such vividly intense colors she could swear the moment happened only seconds ago.
They stood in the center of Hogsmead at the Harry Potter side of the park, and the day was burning hot with flaming embers of scorching sun that fused with the matching colors of black they both wore, per Vada’s request.
Mia remembers how annoyed she was that Vada hadn’t done her research and checked the weather app that would forecast what they would be combatting that day, but instead they went in blind and wore the worst color possible.
In fact, Mia was so annoyed while Vada had such high energy, that she almost didn’t want to take the selfie.
But Vada was so insistent and kept pleading with her, that eventually Mia’s refusals annoyed even Vada, and the snapshot they got together perfectly summarized their day in one captured picture.
Vada was annoyed Mia refused to smile for the picture, and to annoy Mia, Vada did the only thing in the world that could annoy her on any day of any given month; which happened to be dramatically licking the side of her face with a slobbery tongue that made extremely wet noises.
In the middle of Vada taking the photo, Mia’s reaction kicks in, and her eyes are wide while her jaw is dropped in utter disgust, and she pushes her hands forward against Vada’s phone to turn her in the other direction, which explains the tilted angle the photograph sits at.
In hindsight, it was a really cute photo.
On her dresser sits another framed picture of the two at a more mellow setting in a calmer scenario.
They were at a dinner date for their one year anniversary, and Mia decided to take a candid photo as she leaned into Vada’s cheek to give her a longing kiss.
Mia’s personal favorite happened to be the second one, only because she could see Vada’s dimple popping out from behind her lips as she smiled.
She looks back down to the girl situated on her lap and the white noise silence encapsulating them in their own world, and she feels Vada’s fingertips play with the drawstrings of her sweatpants lazily.
“You’re… Amazing.” The liquor lingers in her system languidly and causes a slow impediment in her speech, but the sentence she says comes from the heart and the head fully.
Vada hums, the vibration translating through her throat and passing into Mia’s stomach, and her bones feel too tired to lift herself up to give her a coherent response.
“I know that sounds, like, so cheesy, but I mean it. You’re amazing. I don’t even know what I ever did to deserve everything you do for me.” Her voice is heavy with emotion and airy with appreciative love, a balanced combination.
Vada’s hand idly moves down from the bottom center of her stomach and to the beginning of her thigh, and she rubs her hands in soft motions up and down as wordless affection.
“It’s your 18th birthday, duh, of course I’m gonna go crazy with shit.” Her tone is sleepy and drained, but she’s present all the same.
Mia shakes her head.
“I don’t mean just today. I mean everyday.”
At the romantic connotation of her words, Vada lifts her head up out of Mia’s lap, and she turns to her gently, curious for what she has to say next.
“Like…” She starts, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling as a thin heat coats her cheeks in a flush, “You… Make everyday worth it. Like, god, sometimes I just sit here and wonder ‘am I ever gonna stop feeling like this? Am I ever gonna stop being weirdly happy?’ And then you just… Exist, and you prove me wrong.” She shakes her head again with a relieved release, like admitting those words out loud was a breath of fresh air.
“I don’t know. I guess, what I’m trying to say is, thank you. Not just for today, or yesterday, or the day before, but everyday. And every month, and every year. So- yeah. Thank you.” She feels awkward and shyly flustered when she finishes her sentence, and she’s scared to look back down at her girlfriend when she does.
But then Vada taps her stomach three times gingerly, and Mia automatically looks down into her mesmerizing eyes like she’s a dog on a leash.
“Do you remember that time we got high on the beach during Spring Break last year?” She asks with a deeply adoring smile, and Mia squints her eyes faintly before agreeing in a nod.
“I think so..? Was it Venice?”
Vada nods, “And the entire time I was like, tripping balls because the sun was so bright and you kept standing up from our spot and walking down to the shore,” Mia feels the recollection hit her now, and she grins fondly at the carefree teenagers they were, and still manage to be.
“And I kept screaming at you because you looked fuckin’ yellow. Do you remember that?”
Mia nods herself this time, her smile following her before she adds on, “Yeah. And we didn’t use enough rocks in the umbrella hole we made so it ended up flying away and we got sunburns.”
They laugh in sync together.
“Right,” Vada turns her body more pointedly now as she gets further into the story, “Well, fun fact, actually- most of that hangout, I totally greened out. So I didn’t really… Remember it later on, until I got reminded of it, like, a week ago or something. And it’s funny ‘cause I was actually preparing your birthday box when I remembered it, and, suddenly it just hit me so randomly,” She lays her hand down onto the flat valley of Mia’s sweater covered stomach, “I used to hate the color yellow.”
“Like before that time we got stoned, I fucking despised yellow. Like, that shit was demonic to me. And you know why?” Mia shakes her head as she finds herself enthralled in such a simple story of Vada’s.
“Because it was like, such a happy color. Also ‘cause I’ve found it ugly since I was a kid, but whatever. Anyway, Millie reminded me about it like last week. She said ‘do you remember when you used to throw out all of the yellow skittles in the packet?’ And I was like ‘yeah, obviously, why?’ And she goes ‘well why do you eat them now?’ And I was so confused.” She pinches pieces of Mia’s sweater together in between her thumb and index finger as she speaks.
“And then I realized that I did actually eat the yellow skittles now. But then I also realized that it wasn’t just the yellow skittles. It was like everything yellow. Like, I started… to like yellow. And so I’m sitting here on a random Wednesday afternoon wondering when the fuck I started liking the taste of ass lemon,” Vada puts her hands on top of her head to dramaticize and emphasize her point, and Mia notes how cute she looks.
“And then something even weirder happened. Something I wasn’t even conscious of had been happening every time I looked at the color yellow, and it was that I thought of you. And then it, like, clicked. I hated yellow because I hated people who were happier than me. But then I started liking yellow, because, well… You made me happy. For the first time in a long time, you made me really happy.”
She focuses her eyes on the rings she wears on her index and middle finger, and she shys away from the loving stare Mia’s currently giving her so she doesn’t implode with combusted butterflies.
“Okay, now that I said it all, it sounds like a really stupid story. All I was trying to say is- You make me… so happy. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put it into words, so… When birthdays or holidays come around, just… Let me get you things. Let me be stupid and draw hearts around your name because I feel like it’s the only way I’ll ever be able to show you how much your presence matters to me.”
Now Mia’s grinning ear to ear like a lovestruck idiot, and it makes Vada mirror her expression with more forced reluctance.
“You’re really cute.” Is all she manages to say to Vada’s artistic love speech, and the brunette rolls her eyes while her dimples pop out of her cheeks again.
“Shut up,” Vada mutters, and she pulls herself up Mia’s body, tucking her face into her neck to hide her reddening face in her instead.
Mia places a kiss on her temple with a delicate touch, and she smiles into her hair as she threads her fingers through her strands.
As their warmths mesh together with the connection of their two bodies, their energies melt through their skin and vibrate into the soles of their bones, giving Mia a sense of eternal peace in this forever moment.
And there’s only one word that’s going through her mind.
Home.