lost_boy | (no subject)

This was it, my very first birthday party.

I was nervous and excited and I was probably driving Eddie and Magnus both absolutely mad with all my checking and rechecking of things. I wanted to make sure everything was exactly right, because I had never thrown a party before and although Magnus had helped me quite a bit, I still felt like I needed to make sure I didn't make a mess of it. I knew the rules -- no going upstairs, no alcohol -- and I would make sure everyone else knew it, too, because I didn't want to disappoint Magnus with any terrible behaviour. He was doing me a very big favour, letting me use his place and his pool to have a proper party and I wasn't going to take that for granted.

There was food and drink of all kinds, and plenty of snacks. The pool was lit up with different colours that would get brighter as the sun set and all sorts of inflatable toys could be found so people could just float if they wanted to. At the shallow end of the pool was a little floating basketball net and a bunch of inflatable balls to use with it. There were toys for diving, even a little obstacle course under water with rings people could swim through. The towels were big and fluffy, the chairs were comfortable, and there was even a big birthday cake with my name on it and seventeen candles, although that was for later.

All I had really wanted, I told Magnus, was for it to remind me of his party with all the colours. The one where Eddie and I had first kissed, and he had come through for me. The decorations were fun and bright and everywhere I looked there was a different coloured light.

I had invited all my friends, regardless of their age, so that meant there were little kids on the guest list and adults, too. A part of me worried some of the other kids around my age might think that was weird, but in the end I decided I didn't care that much. I wanted my friends to be here with me, all my friends, and not all my friends were the same age. I liked that about them all very much.

As the first people started to arrive, I clutched Eddie's hand nervously, beaming at him, then kissed him quickly on the cheek before going to greet people. I was supposed to be the host, after all. It was my first party.

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Her stomach flutters for that long moment and then Ellie's pulling them both back down, and Eponine's laughing and trying not to swallow water. On an impulse, underwater, she leans in and kisses Ellie just on the side of the mouth, and then flits immediately away from her, teasing and heart racing delightedly.

Whatever this is, something brand new or very possibly, something that's been sitting in the back of her mind since that party at Ellie's with the two of them on the porch together: patiently waiting for Eponine to even recognize her own awareness of other girls -- it's so much lighter and freer and more fun than the way she feels about Rosie all the time. She's not thinking, she just does.

It's because she feels part of it, she realizes. Not feeling desperate to be enough to keep interest, isolating every action. She is keeping interest, being chased.

Literally. Her dress tangles up around her and she stifles a laugh, surfacing to breathe and kicking her legs free.

One reason -- not the only reason, and not even the main one, but the one she would probably have pointed to if called on -- for holding back had been simply in case she wasn't reading things right, if she'd have been making a move on someone not interested.

That seemed sort of moot. She floated under the water, just watching Eponine darting off, before she remembered that she did in fact need to breathe and hadn't been holding her breath.

She surfaced where she was, calling over, "I kind of feel like I'm winning!" before diving back under to swim towards where Eponine was.

Eponine grins, bright and mischievous and flushed with the exertion and perhaps a little more than that. "I think it's a draw," she calls back, laughing, before trying to guess where Ellie's going to come from, left or right, and pushing off the ground to kick backwards. Not so quickly that it's a guarantee, though, and her dress, already clinging to her, provides a bit of an obstacle. She catches herself up in the corner to tug at it, armed only with splashing for the moment.

It's not clear what exactly they're threatening or promising each other if caught, anyway. Either way sounds like a good time.

That sort of just increased the feeling that she was winning, if they were both perfectly happy with wherever this was going. She didn't know. She didn't want to overthink it. Sometimes you just wanted to be an idiot in a pool. You didn't always get to be an idiot in a pool.

After another moment tracking Eponine swimming, she surfaced, coming in on the diagonal. With Eponine in the corner, this meant she could try and cut off whichever way she did go. "Oh, big mistake," she said, dipped low in the water, putting a hand above her head like a shark. "Gotcha."

"...What are you doing," she laughs. Nearly giggles. Eponine has never even quite heard herself giggle, but at the moment between flailing about in her sodden dress and being chased by a very pretty, extremely badass seeming girl, she's helpless with laughter. "Oh, you're a shark now?"

She splashes at Ellie's -- handmade dorsal fin -- and feints left, but Ellie's right there and she's not trying too hard to get away, anyway. "Yeah, I think you got me."

"Ra..a?" Ellie ventured, before having to admit, "I don't know what noise a shark makes," as she closed in, splashing a little with the hand not making a fin. "I think they just bite, I guess."

She mimed biting, an over exaggerated, expansive opening and closing of her jaw, head jutted forward.

"Oh nooo, she's going to eat me," Eponine feigned horror, laughing. It takes her brain a too-long moment to realize that that's slang, here, and her eyes widen and she blushes.

(Dieu, couldn't she just have pretended as though she didn't think of it at all? That would have been better than blushing.)

She moves on. "Aren't you supposed to poke sharks in the nose?" She taps Ellie's nose, not hard, but a little faux-scolding.

She did not, immediately, twig why Eponine had blushed. She didn't get it until she was being poked on the nose, which was sort of fortunate, because she would have had to- well, she was already in cold -- cool, at least -- water, she didn't have much of a go-to about that.

The nose-tap meant she didn't have to think about that until later. "Wait, what?" she said, biting after the hand retreating from her nose. "Bop them on the nose? Really?"

Thank Christ and all the saints that Ellie didn't say anything about it; she's barely ever even thought about -- anyone doing that, really, much less -- well, now she doesn't have to think about it, and that's all.

Instead, she's granted the chance to be the one who knows something, which is absolutely one of Eponine's favorite things. "Yes, I think so," she says, grinning. " She pushes herself up on the ledge just long enough to rid herself of her sodden dress, tugging it over her head to reveal the red bathing suit underneath (as though it hadn't been mostly revealed, anyway) and setting it down on the side of the pool. "It's not as though we had sharks just swimming down the Seine, but I saw a -- what do you call it, a documentary on TV here and supposedly if a shark comes after you you should hit them right in the nose." She makes a little, well-formed jab in the air with one fist as if to illustrate before sliding back in, between the corner and Ellie.

It was dumb, really. The sodden dress had clung to Eponine enough that it wasn't as if its removal changed how much she was covered. But the action of it, the swift sudden shucking of it, it was if it might. It evoked the times she might do that and not be wearing a swimsuit; it made her conscious again of how a swimsuit fit, of what it did and did not cover.

She tried to think about sharks instead, resting with her arms on the side of the pool, simultaneously relieved and disappointed when Eponine slid back into the water. She dipped herself back in as well, up to her nose, then resurfaced so she could speak. "If a shark ever comes after me I'll remember that," she said. She mimed her own punch, under the water. "I could totally punch a shark."

There's a playful, hiding sort of effect to the way Ellie lets herself submerge that's endearing, and Eponine grins, leaning one arm against the ledge.

She does look like she could probably take something down, though, and 'Ponine grins. There's a toughness to Ellie, an unprettiness that has nothing to do with being beautiful, that she's been well aware of for some time. Eponine doesn't know all the details of where that had to come from, but it's something she finds herself drawn to. "Well, if we ever end up with sharks, you'll be the first I call."