A few nights after they're back from Cumberland, long enough for the dust to settle and for everyone to stop feeling so fragile, Ellie knocks on Derrica's door. She looks flushed and a little excited, and she's got a roll of parchment under her arm.
There are things to accomplish, yes. Research to be done on behalf of Bastien and the others in Redcliffe. (Research Derrica will do herself, because she no longer trusts the man who has styled himself Archivist.) Letters to review. Letters to write, which is a trickier task.
But she opens her door wider for Ellie, inviting. All things can wait.
Ellie gives a smile; she'd have come back another time if needed, but right now it's all fresh in her mind. She's not always eager to share her work with others, but this is a little more special.
"I've been working on the sea monster piece," she says, lifting one corner to give Derrica a glimpse of the sketch. It's rough, charcoal, and quickly taking shape.
"Where can I unroll this? I don't wanna mess with your work."
An immediate smile, more for Ellie's excitement than for the picture itself. Derrica casts a quick look around the office before coming to a decision.
"Let me move this," is for the teapot and mug on the low, slightly-dented table Derrica has appropriated for the middle of the room. She sweeps the few pieces of paper along with her, a little crumpled in against the handle of the mug.
But it's a clear, flat space. Ellie is welcome to it.
The small smile that Ellie gives her is warmer than the rest of the excitement, but she quickly redirects to the drawing that she unrolls onto the surface, nudges a corner under the mug to anchor it.
The drawing is a rough outline of the sea creature Derrica told her about, a dark suggestion of shadows underneath the water. Ellie has lightly sketched edges, searching for a definitive and dynamic shape that makes sense, to give it movement under the surface.
On top, she's drawn a vessel. This is perhaps where there's the most artistic license. She went out to the docks and tracked down references, but the ship she's drawn top-down most closely resembles The Walrus. There are details lightly sketched, and the perspective is precise; she probably begged or snuck her way up to the crow's nest of a ship to get it to look right.
The crow's nest is the second place she's added the most detail. The woman looking down at the leviathan in the water isn't precisely meant to be Derrica. There aren't any recognizable features, but she suggests her in the way she holds her shoulders, in the manner of her attention, rapt and fascinated, more awed than scared. In the single braid that runs down through her thick hair.
"It's- not supposed to be perfect," Ellie says, self-conscious of her work, because it's definitely not professional. "But I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I can still change a whole lot of it."
The truth? Derrica is not an artist, knows very little about art. Her eye for it is simple and straightforward: does she find any given work beautiful?
So Derrica may not be able to parse out any technique, but she knows immediately how she feels about what Ellie has created. Even the bone of it shake out to an easy conclusion:
"It's beautiful."
Obviously.
Carefully, Derrica runs her fingertips along the edge of the parchment. She recognizes herself and feels her face heat slightly for it. It's strange, to see herself rendered in charcoal, even from some distance.
"Ellie, please don't change anything. I think it's lovely. It will be lovely, when it's finished."
Ellie doesn't expect the reaction she gets. Maybe a couple of tips to make sure that all the rigging is in the right places, refining the shape of the creature in the depths to more accurate reflect what Derrica's seen.
She starts to ask is she sure, but her breath catches in her throat at the way Derrica reaches out to touch. Carefully. And she can only see her in profile, but the look on her face says everything, and maybe she should say something back, thank her for the compliment, something-
Instead, she has the same reaction as Derrica did, for the sketch. Instead, she reaches out to touch.
It's light, soft, the edge of her hair by her face. The twist of a braid next to her ear, the cuff tucked into it.
And the second Ellie realizes it, she decides to commit to it, brushing the edge of her charcoal-smeared thumb against her cheekbone.
It's a possible point in favor of Ellie's art that the skimming little touch doesn't immediately draw Derrica's attention entirely from it.
The revelation of something from her own memory, her own words, being rendered into art—
But by the time Ellie's thumb finds her cheek, that does draw her gaze up and away from the parchment. Her fingers remain where they are, at the soft-ragged edge of the unfurled paper, though her eyes settle on Ellie's face. Watching her, weighing up the intention there.
Ellie can remember Derrica telling her about it. The hiss of the rain, the smoky torches, the hall full of caught breathing and Derrica's hand tracing the bones in her neck, soft fingertips counting one-two-three.
It was during a storm.
It had been between the two of them, whispered words painting something in Ellie's mind that she couldn't hope to capture in strokes of a brush. The look in Derrica's eyes as she explained something huge, and dark, and deadly, and sublimely beautiful.
It could have attacked us, but it didn't.
Ellie traces her fingertips along Derrica's cheekbone, and forgets that her fingers are rough.
If it had been further down I wouldn't have been able to see it at all.
In spite of everything, all the time they've talked around the prospect, the kiss takes Derrica by surprise.
Maybe not exactly surprise. Just off-guard. They've skirted around the possibility enough times that Derrica had almost thought that the possibility had passed.
Even so, she had turned her face into the slip of Ellie's fingers. Ellie leans in and Derrica doesn't tip her face away. She is easily kissed. Her hand leaves the edge of the parchment, lifts first to Ellie's forearm, then her wrist. They kiss and it is soft by intention; Derrica is gentle with her, and gentle when she breaks away.
"Ellie," she repeats, just a murmur, before reaching to take Ellie's face in her hands. "Are you sure?"
Derrica's hand settles on her arm, on her wrist, and the kiss is gentler than she can remember anyone being with her, so much that it has her feeling unsteady at the edges.
It's good, and it's terrifying, that tenderness. And mostly, she's terrified of what will happen if she puts the full weight of this onto the scale. Is it too much? Is she too much?
And it occurs to her as Derrica cups her face in her hands, holds her like spun glass, that maybe Derrica feels the same way. Like she might be too much for Ellie. Like what Ellie wants, Derrica might not be able to give.
She strokes her thumb along Derrica's cheek, back into her hair, runs the side of her thumb against the nape of her neck, and pulls her closer.
Maybe. Might.
"No," she whispers, the truth escaping through her lips, strained, but she doesn't pull away.
"But if I wait until I'm ready, and if I wait until I'm not scared, and if I wait until it's perfect, then I never will."
It's raw, and full of cut glass, but she owes her the truth.
"But you? Derrica-" Ellie takes a breath, pushing it out because if she doesn't, she won't. "I've been sure of you for a long time."
And Derrica isn't even certain that it's pride she feels flaring up as Ellie tells her this thing. This painful, hopeful thing that Derrica wants to wrap in soft cloth, hold very gently. It's a sentiment that feels so fragile it might be fractured by a breath.
Except Ellie is stronger than that. Derrica knows this. She's seen it, all the strength involved in healing the way Ellie has.
The second kiss is just as soft, a sweet, chaste little thing that precedes:
What comes next is a small break of catharsis, a reassurance that loosens Ellie's shoulders as she's kissed.
She comes up with steady, searching eyes and a pressure in her chest. She nods, following Derrica to where they've sat before, laughed before, treated wounds and spoken of pains and hopes and things gone.
It hits her again, just how long they've been doing this, despite what Ellie's tried to convince herself of. What she'd almost managed to convince herself of.
This is not the stone bench they'd spoken on all those months ago, where they might easily settle in beside each other. But Derrica has chosen chairs that invite openness, wide-armed or absent those arms altogether. The two nearest had been set a respectable distance apart, perhaps occupied by Laurentius or some other visitor to this office intending on speaking of much more professional matters.
Derrica keeps hold of Ellie by the hand, even as she drags one chair up alongside so they might remain satisfactorily close.
But once settled, Derrica still takes a few moments to think through what she means to say. The importance of it weights down every word she thinks to string together.
"I know what it means that you trust me enough to choose this. I know it's not easy," Derrica tells her. She would have known even without all the things Ellie has spoken aloud to her, just from the way she's seen Ellie carry pain in her body. "But because I know all of that, I want to make sure that this is..."
A pause. Trying to find a word that fits all the things Derrica wants to give to Ellie, knowing her own limitations. The things Derrica knows she shies away from, and how that might become painful to Ellie over time.
"I want to make sure that I'm not giving you something that will hurt you, when I know how much it's taken for you to find your way here."
In which here has nothing to do with the four walls surrounding them, and everything to do with Ellie's courage, all the strength she's mustered to reach out this way.
Ellie allows the shift, reaching out to help slide the chairs in closer, enough for knees to touch and hands to stay wrapped up in each other's fingers. She looks down at them briefly as Derrica finds her words.
She knew this was coming, and it's comforting, somehow. That Derrica doesn't throw away the seriousness in favor of more kissing, as easy as that could be for both of them. Instead, Ellie finds the center of Derrica's palm and presses her thumb lightly into the dip there, looking up at her eyes.
Fuck, she's careful. So careful.
"I'm not asking you to settle down with me," she reassures her with a half-smile. "And I'm not gonna ask you to give up -- y'know. The other people you're close with. And I'm not saying that, hoping you'll change, or come around or something like that."
Ellie pauses, looking down at the both of their joined hands, presses slowly with her thumb, releases.
"It feels- good, to me." Ellie says haltingly, because this feels like such a strange thing to feel. "That I'm not all you have. Because I'm probably not going to be all you need. And I'm- I can be a lot."
Ellie hardens her chin when she says it. It's painful, but it's the truth. She is so much, and she can easily be too much.
But she gets the feeling that that's not all of what Derrica wants to tell her.
And Derrica needs to hear them, even if she worries that there is some future where what Derrica is able to give to her won't be enough for Ellie. That there will be a parting and it will hurt her, because of the ways Derrica is limited. The ways that her love isn't always enough.
She lets the words sit while she follows Ellie's gaze down to their linked hands. Watches Ellie's thumb, where it's set over the lines and callouses of her palm.
"I can't be anything else," Derrica says quietly. "I know I told you—that we talked about what this might be. But not about what you thought it would be. What you wanted."
"Is it all about what I want?" Ellie asks, with a hint of a smile, a weak attempt at humor over a serious question. She knows Derrica's serious, takes Ellie's happiness seriously. She squeezes her hand, eases into this. Awkward but assured, sincere.
It's new, this chance to shape something together, to decide what they want it to be. It doesn't have be anything but what they build.
This is the awkward question, though. Ellie takes a deep breath, holds it. She remembers Astarion, pushing at her, pressing her. How long she's dodged saying things out loud, giving this a definitive shape.
I've got it bad.
"You said-" Ellie hesitates. "That you don't think of it as so very different from friendship," she says, because she doesn't remember the exact words, just how quickly she'd assumed what they meant.
"But if I... if we-" she presses her lips together, looks up at Derrica's face. Sees her, a reaching hand, a straight back, a firm but quiet word, a voice hushed with wonder and joy, or raised with intent. Her kindness that drew her close, her bravery that made her stay.
"I am falling for you. And I need to know if that's okay."
Another person might have heard this confession and taken some pleasure in it. Derrica understands why that might be, but for her—
A little frisson of tension pulls through her body. Discomfort. It ebbs away, settled by their clasped hands and Derrica's determinedly steady breathing.
Ellie has been truthful. Derrica owes her nothing less than further clarity regarding what had they had skirted around before. And it's why there is quiet for a stretch, while Derrica runs her thumb over the calloused stretch of Ellie's palm.
"I don't know," she answers, soft but even. "I don't...I would have said no. Part of me wants to say no right now."
And that no is in her body, that flicker of tension. Something that wants to draw back.
"No one has ever said things like that to me without turning them into a kind of trap. Or using them to try and push me into giving them something they want. Or guilt me for not feeling the right way in return."
Between her hands, she turns Ellie's over. Idle contact, holding there while she settles on, "Or they want more, even if they didn't at first. And it hurts them, when I can't give it."
Ellie can feel when it hits. Derrica's trying so hard not to show it, but the fact that she's so still gives away that she's trying to control her reaction. The smile fades off of Ellie's face, replaced by-
Fuck, what is it? Worry? Hurt? A tiny bit of relief? (How fucked up is that part?)
It's the relief that she digs into, as Derrica responds and clarifies, and works into the harder answer.
Yeah, it fucking stings. That Derrica's afraid of Ellie doing this. Afraid of this from her, and moreso because Ellie can't say in total honesty that it wouldn't- that it doesn't fucking hurt. That it won't chafe over time. It might not, but she just doesn't know that. How can anyone know that?
The relief comes from the honesty. Derrica trusts her enough to tell her this instead of sucking it up. The one thing she worries about with Derrica is how much of herself she gives to others, to making sure they are all right.
Now she knows where Derrica stands. That this was the hesitation and not that she didn't actually want Ellie at all.
"Okay," Ellie answers, the word a little thick, flicks her eyes upward from Derrica's face. Palms up, open, the heel of her foot sliding back and forth across the floor, that small fidget coming out somewhere else, before it settles.
"I want you," she says frankly, drawing her attention back to Derrica's eyes. "I want to kiss you. And sleep with you. And I want you to want me, too."
Deep breath.
"If you come to me that way, I want it to be because you want me, and I don't want either of us to be fucked up about what might happen. Because if I'm the dumbass who hurts my own feelings-"
She says, in the tone of someone who already kind of has, who makes a habit of it and keeps on being that dumbass:
It does Ellie a disservice to try and make this choice for her. Derrica has seen her strength. Ellie has come through so much strife and agony and remained whole. Whatever they make between them, and whether or not it ends and if it ends well or badly, surely that won't break Ellie where so much else has not.
But still, Derrica can't help but hesitate.
"I do want you," is easy to say, because of course that isn't the problem. "And I care for you. I don't want to hurt you."
It's hard to accept that it would only be Ellie's doing if she were hurt. Derrica's thumbs soothes across Ellie's palm.
"And I can't make you promise me anything about what might happen. Because it would be impossible, and selfish besides."
Ellie keeps her hands open, palms up, and lets her eyeline dip back down. Derrica strokes the center of her palms where the skin is still soft, and it tickles.
She gets it, though- gets that Derrica is always, always watching out for her. That it'll hurt her to be the source of any pain, or pressure.
It hurts. It's gonna fuck with her, a little. She can't deny that. And if Derrica put her on the spot right now and asked whether she'd really, eventually be okay with this, she wouldn't be able to answer with total confidence.
She can't know until she lives it.
"You either," Ellie murmurs, and hitches up one side of her jaw. You either. All of it. There are a lot of half-formed thoughts spitballing around inside of her head, but the most important things have quieted.
She wants to say something too, something about being sorry for making it weird, about how she wants Derrica to keep being honest with her. How it's probably going to keep being a little bit weird for a while while they figure out what this is going to look like.
But it's all a little jumbled up in her head, and she both wants space and wants the closeness, wants Derrica to see her and wants to be invisible, for a while.
And what does come out is stupid and honest.
"You remember when I first got here, and I flinched when you touched me, 'cause I wasn't expecting it?"
Of course she does. It's not something she could forget. It's a memory that becomes more stark when set against the present. Ellie has changed, all for the better. Looking at her here, with their hands linked this way, throws into such sharp relief those very early days of their friendship. Acquaintance. Whatever word might fit the beginnings of knowing each other.
Her head tips, posing the question without saying the words. Yes, she remembers. Why?
Shit. How does she put this? The corner of Ellie's mouth twists as she tries to give shape to the feeling, to pull things into place.
"I needed that. To kinda call the shots. Figure you out."
And now Derrica can reach for her when she's not looking. She can touch her face and draw her close. She can take her hands and guide her to a chair and hold them, and look in her eyes, and Ellie won't flinch, because she knows her, and knows what she won't take.
"You- flinched, just now. When we were talking about feelings? So-" Ellie licks her lip, shifts in her seat as she tries to figure out how to say it right.
"Maybe you need to be calling the shots. For that stuff."
It feels like a stupid way to put it, but it's a type of hurt and a type of healing she knows, so she uses that language to shape it.
Derrica has never thought of it as a type of injury, though maybe it is that. To have an understanding and see it come apart—
Very rarely had her own feelings factored in when she considered it before now. They hardly do now, even when Ellie draws this comparison.
She turns Ellie's hands in her own, as she tries to envision what this proposal might look like in practice.
"I don't know if it's that easy. It's not just about me."
And it is so hard to think only of herself. All she can think is that this is about finding a balance, threading carefully between what they both might need.
"Will you be able to tell me if you need us to stop and go back to the way we were before?"
It's not so much that Derrica is the one hurt, Ellie thinks- there's nothing wrong with how she is. But what she saw in her eyes, how badly she was fighting not to pull away?
People have obviously pushed Derrica to be something she wasn't. And for this to work, Ellie needs to not be one of them. But she's not sure how. How to balance a fledgling newness between them while patching up her own bruised heart. It could be smart to back off. It could be cowardly, just another symptom of her own fear.
Ellie doesn't know what the right answer is, and maybe that's her answer.
"... I don't know," she admits. She takes a deep breath, lets it out.
"I kinda thought this would go differently," she adds, pursing her lips. She leans her head forward, just a little. Thunks their foreheads together lightly.
"I thought I understood what you needed." She tries for a smile, a twitch at the edge of her lips. "Maybe we should go back, and I get my head on straight. And then... maybe, we'll find ourselves here again. And it won't be so complicated."
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"Hey. Are you busy?"
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There are things to accomplish, yes. Research to be done on behalf of Bastien and the others in Redcliffe. (Research Derrica will do herself, because she no longer trusts the man who has styled himself Archivist.) Letters to review. Letters to write, which is a trickier task.
But she opens her door wider for Ellie, inviting. All things can wait.
"What is it?"
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"I've been working on the sea monster piece," she says, lifting one corner to give Derrica a glimpse of the sketch. It's rough, charcoal, and quickly taking shape.
"Where can I unroll this? I don't wanna mess with your work."
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"Let me move this," is for the teapot and mug on the low, slightly-dented table Derrica has appropriated for the middle of the room. She sweeps the few pieces of paper along with her, a little crumpled in against the handle of the mug.
But it's a clear, flat space. Ellie is welcome to it.
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The small smile that Ellie gives her is warmer than the rest of the excitement, but she quickly redirects to the drawing that she unrolls onto the surface, nudges a corner under the mug to anchor it.
The drawing is a rough outline of the sea creature Derrica told her about, a dark suggestion of shadows underneath the water. Ellie has lightly sketched edges, searching for a definitive and dynamic shape that makes sense, to give it movement under the surface.
On top, she's drawn a vessel. This is perhaps where there's the most artistic license. She went out to the docks and tracked down references, but the ship she's drawn top-down most closely resembles The Walrus. There are details lightly sketched, and the perspective is precise; she probably begged or snuck her way up to the crow's nest of a ship to get it to look right.
The crow's nest is the second place she's added the most detail. The woman looking down at the leviathan in the water isn't precisely meant to be Derrica. There aren't any recognizable features, but she suggests her in the way she holds her shoulders, in the manner of her attention, rapt and fascinated, more awed than scared. In the single braid that runs down through her thick hair.
"It's- not supposed to be perfect," Ellie says, self-conscious of her work, because it's definitely not professional. "But I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I can still change a whole lot of it."
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So Derrica may not be able to parse out any technique, but she knows immediately how she feels about what Ellie has created. Even the bone of it shake out to an easy conclusion:
"It's beautiful."
Obviously.
Carefully, Derrica runs her fingertips along the edge of the parchment. She recognizes herself and feels her face heat slightly for it. It's strange, to see herself rendered in charcoal, even from some distance.
"Ellie, please don't change anything. I think it's lovely. It will be lovely, when it's finished."
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She starts to ask is she sure, but her breath catches in her throat at the way Derrica reaches out to touch. Carefully. And she can only see her in profile, but the look on her face says everything, and maybe she should say something back, thank her for the compliment, something-
Instead, she has the same reaction as Derrica did, for the sketch. Instead, she reaches out to touch.
It's light, soft, the edge of her hair by her face. The twist of a braid next to her ear, the cuff tucked into it.
And the second Ellie realizes it, she decides to commit to it, brushing the edge of her charcoal-smeared thumb against her cheekbone.
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The revelation of something from her own memory, her own words, being rendered into art—
But by the time Ellie's thumb finds her cheek, that does draw her gaze up and away from the parchment. Her fingers remain where they are, at the soft-ragged edge of the unfurled paper, though her eyes settle on Ellie's face. Watching her, weighing up the intention there.
"Ellie," is soft. Prompting and questioning both.
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It was during a storm.
It had been between the two of them, whispered words painting something in Ellie's mind that she couldn't hope to capture in strokes of a brush. The look in Derrica's eyes as she explained something huge, and dark, and deadly, and sublimely beautiful.
It could have attacked us, but it didn't.
Ellie traces her fingertips along Derrica's cheekbone, and forgets that her fingers are rough.
If it had been further down I wouldn't have been able to see it at all.
She leans in, to kiss her.
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Maybe not exactly surprise. Just off-guard. They've skirted around the possibility enough times that Derrica had almost thought that the possibility had passed.
Even so, she had turned her face into the slip of Ellie's fingers. Ellie leans in and Derrica doesn't tip her face away. She is easily kissed. Her hand leaves the edge of the parchment, lifts first to Ellie's forearm, then her wrist. They kiss and it is soft by intention; Derrica is gentle with her, and gentle when she breaks away.
"Ellie," she repeats, just a murmur, before reaching to take Ellie's face in her hands. "Are you sure?"
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It's good, and it's terrifying, that tenderness. And mostly, she's terrified of what will happen if she puts the full weight of this onto the scale. Is it too much? Is she too much?
And it occurs to her as Derrica cups her face in her hands, holds her like spun glass, that maybe Derrica feels the same way. Like she might be too much for Ellie. Like what Ellie wants, Derrica might not be able to give.
She strokes her thumb along Derrica's cheek, back into her hair, runs the side of her thumb against the nape of her neck, and pulls her closer.
Maybe. Might.
"No," she whispers, the truth escaping through her lips, strained, but she doesn't pull away.
"But if I wait until I'm ready, and if I wait until I'm not scared, and if I wait until it's perfect, then I never will."
It's raw, and full of cut glass, but she owes her the truth.
"But you? Derrica-" Ellie takes a breath, pushing it out because if she doesn't, she won't. "I've been sure of you for a long time."
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And Derrica isn't even certain that it's pride she feels flaring up as Ellie tells her this thing. This painful, hopeful thing that Derrica wants to wrap in soft cloth, hold very gently. It's a sentiment that feels so fragile it might be fractured by a breath.
Except Ellie is stronger than that. Derrica knows this. She's seen it, all the strength involved in healing the way Ellie has.
The second kiss is just as soft, a sweet, chaste little thing that precedes:
"Sit with me?"
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She comes up with steady, searching eyes and a pressure in her chest. She nods, following Derrica to where they've sat before, laughed before, treated wounds and spoken of pains and hopes and things gone.
It hits her again, just how long they've been doing this, despite what Ellie's tried to convince herself of. What she'd almost managed to convince herself of.
The honesty is terrifying, but it feels clean.
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Derrica keeps hold of Ellie by the hand, even as she drags one chair up alongside so they might remain satisfactorily close.
But once settled, Derrica still takes a few moments to think through what she means to say. The importance of it weights down every word she thinks to string together.
"I know what it means that you trust me enough to choose this. I know it's not easy," Derrica tells her. She would have known even without all the things Ellie has spoken aloud to her, just from the way she's seen Ellie carry pain in her body. "But because I know all of that, I want to make sure that this is..."
A pause. Trying to find a word that fits all the things Derrica wants to give to Ellie, knowing her own limitations. The things Derrica knows she shies away from, and how that might become painful to Ellie over time.
"I want to make sure that I'm not giving you something that will hurt you, when I know how much it's taken for you to find your way here."
In which here has nothing to do with the four walls surrounding them, and everything to do with Ellie's courage, all the strength she's mustered to reach out this way.
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She knew this was coming, and it's comforting, somehow. That Derrica doesn't throw away the seriousness in favor of more kissing, as easy as that could be for both of them. Instead, Ellie finds the center of Derrica's palm and presses her thumb lightly into the dip there, looking up at her eyes.
Fuck, she's careful. So careful.
"I'm not asking you to settle down with me," she reassures her with a half-smile. "And I'm not gonna ask you to give up -- y'know. The other people you're close with. And I'm not saying that, hoping you'll change, or come around or something like that."
Ellie pauses, looking down at the both of their joined hands, presses slowly with her thumb, releases.
"It feels- good, to me." Ellie says haltingly, because this feels like such a strange thing to feel. "That I'm not all you have. Because I'm probably not going to be all you need. And I'm- I can be a lot."
Ellie hardens her chin when she says it. It's painful, but it's the truth. She is so much, and she can easily be too much.
But she gets the feeling that that's not all of what Derrica wants to tell her.
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And Derrica needs to hear them, even if she worries that there is some future where what Derrica is able to give to her won't be enough for Ellie. That there will be a parting and it will hurt her, because of the ways Derrica is limited. The ways that her love isn't always enough.
She lets the words sit while she follows Ellie's gaze down to their linked hands. Watches Ellie's thumb, where it's set over the lines and callouses of her palm.
"I can't be anything else," Derrica says quietly. "I know I told you—that we talked about what this might be. But not about what you thought it would be. What you wanted."
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It's new, this chance to shape something together, to decide what they want it to be. It doesn't have be anything but what they build.
This is the awkward question, though. Ellie takes a deep breath, holds it. She remembers Astarion, pushing at her, pressing her. How long she's dodged saying things out loud, giving this a definitive shape.
I've got it bad.
"You said-" Ellie hesitates. "That you don't think of it as so very different from friendship," she says, because she doesn't remember the exact words, just how quickly she'd assumed what they meant.
"But if I... if we-" she presses her lips together, looks up at Derrica's face. Sees her, a reaching hand, a straight back, a firm but quiet word, a voice hushed with wonder and joy, or raised with intent. Her kindness that drew her close, her bravery that made her stay.
"I am falling for you. And I need to know if that's okay."
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A little frisson of tension pulls through her body. Discomfort. It ebbs away, settled by their clasped hands and Derrica's determinedly steady breathing.
Ellie has been truthful. Derrica owes her nothing less than further clarity regarding what had they had skirted around before. And it's why there is quiet for a stretch, while Derrica runs her thumb over the calloused stretch of Ellie's palm.
"I don't know," she answers, soft but even. "I don't...I would have said no. Part of me wants to say no right now."
And that no is in her body, that flicker of tension. Something that wants to draw back.
"No one has ever said things like that to me without turning them into a kind of trap. Or using them to try and push me into giving them something they want. Or guilt me for not feeling the right way in return."
Between her hands, she turns Ellie's over. Idle contact, holding there while she settles on, "Or they want more, even if they didn't at first. And it hurts them, when I can't give it."
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Fuck, what is it? Worry? Hurt? A tiny bit of relief? (How fucked up is that part?)
It's the relief that she digs into, as Derrica responds and clarifies, and works into the harder answer.
Yeah, it fucking stings. That Derrica's afraid of Ellie doing this. Afraid of this from her, and moreso because Ellie can't say in total honesty that it wouldn't- that it doesn't fucking hurt. That it won't chafe over time. It might not, but she just doesn't know that. How can anyone know that?
The relief comes from the honesty. Derrica trusts her enough to tell her this instead of sucking it up. The one thing she worries about with Derrica is how much of herself she gives to others, to making sure they are all right.
Now she knows where Derrica stands. That this was the hesitation and not that she didn't actually want Ellie at all.
"Okay," Ellie answers, the word a little thick, flicks her eyes upward from Derrica's face. Palms up, open, the heel of her foot sliding back and forth across the floor, that small fidget coming out somewhere else, before it settles.
"I want you," she says frankly, drawing her attention back to Derrica's eyes. "I want to kiss you. And sleep with you. And I want you to want me, too."
Deep breath.
"If you come to me that way, I want it to be because you want me, and I don't want either of us to be fucked up about what might happen. Because if I'm the dumbass who hurts my own feelings-"
She says, in the tone of someone who already kind of has, who makes a habit of it and keeps on being that dumbass:
"-then that's on me."
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It does Ellie a disservice to try and make this choice for her. Derrica has seen her strength. Ellie has come through so much strife and agony and remained whole. Whatever they make between them, and whether or not it ends and if it ends well or badly, surely that won't break Ellie where so much else has not.
But still, Derrica can't help but hesitate.
"I do want you," is easy to say, because of course that isn't the problem. "And I care for you. I don't want to hurt you."
It's hard to accept that it would only be Ellie's doing if she were hurt. Derrica's thumbs soothes across Ellie's palm.
"And I can't make you promise me anything about what might happen. Because it would be impossible, and selfish besides."
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She gets it, though- gets that Derrica is always, always watching out for her. That it'll hurt her to be the source of any pain, or pressure.
It hurts. It's gonna fuck with her, a little. She can't deny that. And if Derrica put her on the spot right now and asked whether she'd really, eventually be okay with this, she wouldn't be able to answer with total confidence.
She can't know until she lives it.
"You either," Ellie murmurs, and hitches up one side of her jaw. You either. All of it. There are a lot of half-formed thoughts spitballing around inside of her head, but the most important things have quieted.
She wants to say something too, something about being sorry for making it weird, about how she wants Derrica to keep being honest with her. How it's probably going to keep being a little bit weird for a while while they figure out what this is going to look like.
But it's all a little jumbled up in her head, and she both wants space and wants the closeness, wants Derrica to see her and wants to be invisible, for a while.
And what does come out is stupid and honest.
"You remember when I first got here, and I flinched when you touched me, 'cause I wasn't expecting it?"
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"Yes."
Of course she does. It's not something she could forget. It's a memory that becomes more stark when set against the present. Ellie has changed, all for the better. Looking at her here, with their hands linked this way, throws into such sharp relief those very early days of their friendship. Acquaintance. Whatever word might fit the beginnings of knowing each other.
Her head tips, posing the question without saying the words. Yes, she remembers. Why?
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Shit. How does she put this? The corner of Ellie's mouth twists as she tries to give shape to the feeling, to pull things into place.
"I needed that. To kinda call the shots. Figure you out."
And now Derrica can reach for her when she's not looking. She can touch her face and draw her close. She can take her hands and guide her to a chair and hold them, and look in her eyes, and Ellie won't flinch, because she knows her, and knows what she won't take.
"You- flinched, just now. When we were talking about feelings? So-" Ellie licks her lip, shifts in her seat as she tries to figure out how to say it right.
"Maybe you need to be calling the shots. For that stuff."
It feels like a stupid way to put it, but it's a type of hurt and a type of healing she knows, so she uses that language to shape it.
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Derrica has never thought of it as a type of injury, though maybe it is that. To have an understanding and see it come apart—
Very rarely had her own feelings factored in when she considered it before now. They hardly do now, even when Ellie draws this comparison.
She turns Ellie's hands in her own, as she tries to envision what this proposal might look like in practice.
"I don't know if it's that easy. It's not just about me."
And it is so hard to think only of herself. All she can think is that this is about finding a balance, threading carefully between what they both might need.
"Will you be able to tell me if you need us to stop and go back to the way we were before?"
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People have obviously pushed Derrica to be something she wasn't. And for this to work, Ellie needs to not be one of them. But she's not sure how. How to balance a fledgling newness between them while patching up her own bruised heart. It could be smart to back off. It could be cowardly, just another symptom of her own fear.
Ellie doesn't know what the right answer is, and maybe that's her answer.
"... I don't know," she admits. She takes a deep breath, lets it out.
"I kinda thought this would go differently," she adds, pursing her lips. She leans her head forward, just a little. Thunks their foreheads together lightly.
"I thought I understood what you needed." She tries for a smile, a twitch at the edge of her lips. "Maybe we should go back, and I get my head on straight. And then... maybe, we'll find ourselves here again. And it won't be so complicated."
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are we approaching bow territory
yes ;;