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Yawning, Elide stumbles in through the front door, fumbling with the keys in the lock, her fingers both clumsy with cold and muffled by her mittens (which Manon had gruffly forced on last Winter, insisting that her fingers were important; she didn't want them falling off), and steps into the house.
Warmth envelopes her and it's with difficulty that she suppresses a sigh of relief. Shrugging off her coat she hangs it on the hook, kicks off her shoes and shoves her feet into slippers then limps into the kitchen, letting instinct and her exhausted automatic pilot guide her as she blindly grabs a stack of food from the fridge and cupboards, not paying much attention to what she has beyond the fact it’s edible, before automatically directing her steps towards the living room.
Opening the door with difficulty due to the many little boxes and packets in her arms she doesn’t immediately notice the wall of fabric in front of her and consequently walks right into it.
Startled, blinking in confusion she staggers backwards, preventing herself from toppling over by managing to catch the door handle to steady herself, sacrificing a bag of crisps and a yoghurt in favour of freeing her hands, at the last minute as she stares at this inexplicable addition to her house she’s certain wasn’t there when she left for work this morning.
“Watch it!” and irate voice she’d know anywhere barks at her from somewhere behind the soft barrier.
“Manon?” Elide asks uncertainly, raising an eyebrow.
In answer, a flaw she hadn’t noticed in the material is thrust apart and widened and her girlfriend’s face appears between what looks like two of her grandmother’s old curtains, her expression significantly softer than her voice now she sees Elide, “Hi,” she murmurs without a flicker of explanation, as though this was all to be expected, reaching up to gently kiss her in welcome.
Elide leans down to meet the kiss and then, still without enlightening her, Manon holds out a hand and coaxes her inside, giving her a strong support to brace herself against, aware of how her leg now aches and makes the odd, crouching angle required to get inside especially difficult.
Elide gapes at the cosy, insulated space Manon has crafted out of what looks like every old blanket and loose piece of fabric that wasn’t nailed down or otherwise too attached to another part of the house to make it not worth the effort of removing. As she settles her down, still gazing around them, Manon wordlessly produces an extra cushion for her and eases it in behind her back to make her more comfortable.
“You’ve been busy,” Elide comments lightly, dumping her pile of food between them and opening the yoghurt she’d snatched from the floor, mercifully intact, before crawling inside, something she knows no-one else would ever dare do with her girlfriend’s fierce, dark gold eyes watching them.
“Asterin and Lorcan were being loud,” Manon growls tersely, gazing darkly towards the ceiling in the direction of her roommate’s bedroom with a glare that promises murder for Lorcan as soon as he emerges but adds nothing more than that; as though that statement in itself is an answer to, well, anything.
Elide takes a slow spoonful of yoghurt then silently feeds Manon some too, who accepts it without a word. “So…” she prompts gently, waving her spoon around at the fort enveloping them, hoping to invite some sort of further reason.
“So now we live down here,” Manon announces stoutly, eyes flashing grimly in a way that dares a challenge she never expects to come from anyone.
Elide hides her smile in another mouthful, “Well,” she muses after swallowing, leaning back against Manon, her head resting on her shoulder, closing her eyes in pleasure at the feeling of Manon winding her fingers through her hair, undoing her braid to enable her to do so properly, “I suppose we have the kitchen; an ample food supply...”
Manon growls in agreement, “And the books,” she adds with a decisive nod.
Elide cracks an eye open in time to see her gesture at the small, neatly stacked mountain at the other end of the room, “You carried them all down here?” she demands, looking up at her girlfriend with a mixture of admiration for her dedication and exasperation at her sheer stubbornness.
“No,” Manon sniffs with dignity, her hand curling possessively around Elide’s shoulder as she speaks, drawing her in closer, “I left Asterin the poetry,” she bites out the last word in the same tone she uses whenever she’s forced to mention Lorcan by name as opposed to simply ‘him’ or ‘you’ or, in exceptional circumstances, ‘prick’– one that suggests it’s done her some great, personal, irreparable wrong.
Elide huffs out a laugh against Manon’s neck and wraps her arms around her, gently kissing her, and rubbing noses with her, her eyes closed contentedly again,“Then I suppose we have everything we need, don’t we?”
The hint of a smile lifts Manon’s lips at that, “We do now you’re home,” she murmurs against Elide’s mouth before she kisses her once more, a little harder and deeper this time. And with that they curl up together, talking quietly until Elide falls asleep, exhausted after her long day, entwined around Manon, isolated from the rest of the world by the capacious fort Manon took the time to build for them, only ever really needing one another.
They’re woken in the early hours of the morning by Asterin’s shriek of mingled pain, confusion and fury when she collides with the wall of Manon’s fort and topples headfirst into the room, crushing it beneath her.
Lorcan and Elide wisely take refuge in the kitchen and wordlessly listen to the sounds of their girlfriend’s yelling at each other from the other room, wincing and smirking at some of the more colourful curses in turn.
Elide diffuses the situation when she loses patience, limps into the room, steps between the two warring cousins and announces in a voice that means no arguing that they can deal with this in the morning; in the meantime they’re all going to bed to sleep.
Elide takes Manon by the hand and leads her upstairs. With a grim, silent, barely perceptible nod in her direction, Lorcan does the same with Asterin. After almost an hour of ranting about her cousin Manon finally growls herself into sleep again, Elide’s fingers patiently and soothingly stroking her hair all the while until she too manages to sink into sleep, her head on Manon’s shoulder.