THIRTY-SEVEN | EXILE, PT. II

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They needed to return to the party—if you could even call it a party. They needed to return to the party, yet Cora might have preferred to keep hiding away in the bathroom and letting Rasmus soothe her. They needed to return to the party because Gideon was probably going to show up any minute now.

So she settled for turning around in his arms and giving him a long, slow kiss on the lips before she took him by the hand and pulled him back outside. Siena and Anais were chatting amicably, pretending that Cora and Rasmus hadn't been gone for a concerning amount of time.

As the two of them sat back down at the table, Sie was attempting to read the mood of the room. "Does anyone want something stronger to drink?" she offered.

"Yes," they all immediately answered.

So Sie poured the wine, and conveniently, it was just as the liquid was sloshing into the third glass that the doorbell rang. She grabbed a fourth while Cora answered the door.

"Sorry I'm late," Gideon told her, sounding genuinely apologetic.

"No worries," she smiled. You didn't miss much, just my spontaneous breakdown. "I, ah, I hope you like red wine, 'cause I think my roommate is already pouring you a glass."

He laughed. The table was a sad disaster zone of burger wrappers, empty styrofoam cups, and salty crumbs. There was still some food leftover if Gideon was hungry, but perhaps they ought to relocate somewhere that looked less like a frat house.

"Does anyone want to watch a movie?" Cora suggested.

If anyone was opposed, they didn't speak up. She, for one, felt sluggish enough after eating all that grease that turning into a couch potato sounded highly appealing right now.

So they all settled onto the sofa, Rasmus and Cora sitting on one end and Sie on the other so that Gideon and Anais were forced to sit next to each other in the center. Using that tactic made Cora feel like she had all the maturity of a middle schooler, but that wasn't to say that she regretted it.

And as she propped her feet up next to her boyfriend's and held his hand, as the warmth of the wine slowly began to fill her stomach and replace the uncomfortable knot that had formed there, her nerves began to ease.

The others were already making small talk as Siena scrolled through movies on Netflix. She had only met Anais once prior and had never met Gideon at all, so there was no shortage of things to learn about one another, and the film they settled on, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, faded into background noise (despite being a very good movie) as they all discussed Illicit Affairs. It was, after all, the one thing they all had in common. Sie had apparently been thinking a lot about the writing and told them that her Feminism in Literature professor had given her permission to use it as the topic for one of her papers (a fact Cora hadn't even heard before now). She and Rasmus were the ones who knew all the challenges that came with actually performing said script, and Anais and Gideon's roles behind the scenes were just as important in making it come to life. Cora teased that she liked to think that she was easier to put up with than Rasmus, though the reality was that her costumes were by nature a lot more complicated to handle and maintain than his were. Gideon confessed that he was so nervous during previews that he'd accidentally turned one of Rasmus' undershirts pink in the wash; Anais laughed, nearly spitting out her wine.

It didn't take Cora long to drain her first glass of wine, and once she did, she poured herself another. Once that one was empty, she briefly considered having a third, but instead leaned over to rest her head on Rasmus' shoulder. Her eyelids were already so heavy, the fatigue of doing the show earlier that day finally catching up with her...

She wouldn't get to find out if Gideon had any more embarrassing stories, or if Anais got flirty if she was drunk, or if Siena had something deeply profound to say about Illicit Affairs that she hadn't considered yet. From the moment she put her head on Rasmus and allowed herself to close her eyes, Cora was already drifting off to sleep.

Siena was used to long days with little sleep in between—the unfortunate consequence of working full-time while also being a student—but she was rubbing at her drowsy eyes by the time the movie was finished and Anais and Gideon had left. She was tired enough that she truly could have crawled straight into bed in the clothes she was currently wearing, but she was going to hate herself tomorrow if she didn't go ahead and toss out the remaining trash and put all the used dishes in the sink.

Poor Cora had fallen asleep so early. Sie wasn't sure what had upset her earlier—or if it was anything at all; it wasn't like anxiety couldn't come unprovoked—but it must have worn her out a good bit. Rasmus had been still as possible for the rest of the movie trying not to disturb her, but now he was attempting to extract himself from where she was lying on his shoulder.

Siena ran the kitchen faucet as quietly as possible as she washed red stains off of clear cups, watching Rasmus out of the corner of her eye. Cora stirred and mumbled something unintelligible as he shifted away from her and gingerly rested her head against one of the couch cushions instead, but he miraculously seemed to do it without fully waking her up. And when she shivered slightly, he took the nearest throw blanket and slowly draped it over her, letting it come to a rest on her shoulders.

Sie turned the water off, delicately setting the last glass on their dish drying rack. The boy in her living room was still a mystery to her, but with each day that passed, she grew more comfortable with not knowing everything. She knew enough. And although he literally lived downstairs and it therefore would not require him very much effort at all to walk home, she couldn't bring herself to force him to leave, either.

The flooring was cool beneath her feet as returned to the living room to close the window. It had grown quite frigid over the course of the film without any of them realizing it—no wonder Cora had trembled. As her fingers slid the small metal clasp into place; as Rasmus was still knelt in front of Cora, his hand close to her like he wanted to touch her but didn't want to wake her, Sie whispered, "You can stay here with her, if you'd rather."

He looked over at her and lightly nodded. Thanks, he mouthed.

"Do you need an extra pillow?"

"I'm okay."

Siena wasn't convinced that their couch was really comfortable enough to be sleeping on for an entire night, but she supposed he could always grab extra pillows and blankets off of Cora's bed if he changed his mind.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Goodnight, then."

"'Night."

She watched him for a second longer, considering if she should point out that Cora surely wasn't going to be bothered if he woke her up so they could go curl up in her bed instead. But as she looked at him, this dark-haired boy with his strange aura of sadness beneath the charisma he tried to wear like a second skin, she sensed that she was looking at someone who was always worrying about the people he cared about, and that his way of taking care of himself was to take care of them even if it came at the cost of his own inconvenience. He wasn't going to wake her up just to make himself comfortable.

So Siena silently turned and walked to her room, carefully closing the door behind her.

Cora stirred. Even in this half-asleep state, everything felt wrong. Her neck was stiff and aching. The fabric beneath her was much too coarse to be her bedsheets. And there was an abundance of morning light shining directly in her face.

As she blinked her eyes open, squinting, she watched a wet snowflake splat on the window across from her. Oh, she was still on the couch. She hadn't even meant to fall asleep here, but by the looks of it, she'd been here all night.

Groggily, she sat up, and as she did, the blanket that had been covering her slipped off of her shoulders and pooled in her lap. She had just assumed that she was alone, so it almost startled her to see that Rasmus was laying on the other end of the couch, tucked under a blanket just like she'd been a second before. His cheek was leaning against a pillow at what looked to be an uncomfortable angle, and yet the soft motion of his breaths made her think he was asleep.

That was until he heard the rustling of the blankets, slowly opened his eyes, and mumbled, "Hey, sleepyhead."

"Hey," Cora echoed. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them, looking at him. "Did...Did you stay here all night?"

"Is that okay?"

"Of course it's okay," she murmured, and then, realizing that she was cold and her boyfriend was right there, scooted over to his end of the couch so that she might rest against his chest.

Rasmus let her cocoon herself between his body and the blankets. His skin was warmer than hers, which she assumed was the result of him having slept further from the window, and it was after she had put a sleepy kiss on his lips that she asked, "But why would you do that to yourself? This couch is ancient."

"It feels wrong to let you fall asleep next to me and then not be there when you wake up."

"That's precisely what you did the first time you fell asleep in my bed," she pointed out.

A quiet laugh, a soft vibration in his chest she could feel beneath her hands. "Yeah, and I felt like shit about it even then."

Cora exhaled a sigh, but it was one of contentment rather than exasperation or grief. Maybe it was selfish to be happy that he stayed instead of sleeping in the comfort of his own bed, but it made her feel safe. Cared for. And that was what she'd needed last night. She reached for his hand, threading her fingers between his.

"I feel pretty dumb for falling asleep in front of my guests," she admitted.

"You're not dumb, Cora." He said it gently, allowing his free hand to twirl into the strands of her hair as he did. "It's not a bad thing to let yourself rest when you need it, you know."

She nodded. He was right, of course, even if she wasn't at the point yet where she fully believed it. She had to trust that she'd get there someday.

"Can we go for a walk?" she asked. Her body felt so very stiff, and she had a feeling she needed to stretch it instead of letting herself be curled into a ball in bed all day. "I need some fresh air."

"It's snowing," he pointed out, his eyes drifting over to the window.

"Even better."

Central Park was well on its way to becoming a winter wonderland. A thin blanket of fresh, powdery snow already coated the ground and continued to drift down from the sky in big, fluffy flakes.

Cora had bundled up as well as she could and was letting the cup of coffee in her hand do the rest of the work at warming her up—well, the two cups of coffee. She was carrying Rasmus', too, walking slightly ahead of him as he trailed behind her with his sketchbook in hand.

"Am I supposed to be doing anything in particular?" she called back to him, looking over her shoulder.

He smiled, looking up from his sketches. "You can stay right there for thirty seconds if you don't mind."

So she did, and even though craning her neck was the slightest bit uncomfortable, Cora barely noticed the pain. She was too intrigued watching him sketch, his pencil flying across the page in quick, fluid strokes as he tried to capture a semblance of her likeness as quickly as possible. He also had to attempt to somewhat shield the paper from the moisture as he was doing it, though he didn't seem to pay much mind to the snowflakes that were coming to rest on his hair, his skin. When one landed on his nose, he absentmindedly flicked it away with the graphite edge of the pencil, leaving a faint gray smudge behind on his skin. Cora giggled.

"You broke the rules," he grinned at her. And it was an earnest grin, one so big that it almost seemed to make him look younger than he was.

"You did, too," she replied, walking back over to him. The snow quietly crunched beneath her feet.

He raised his eyebrows. His hair looked raven black, stark against the snowglobe of a world around them, his skin fairer than usual yet his cheeks and lips pinker. "How so?"

"I think the rules involved drawing on the paper, silly." She reached a gloved hand up to wipe the smudge away. "Not your face."

"Rookie mistake."

"Excuses, excuses," she murmured as she leaned upwards to give him a peck on the lips, which were pleasantly warm and tasted of coffee. "Can I see what you have so far?"

When he held the spread of pages out to her, she instinctively leaned forward to shelter it from the snow while she peered at it. They were, indeed, hazy sketches of a girl in motion, and yet the girl was clearly her. The shape of her eyes was there, her nose, her lips. But there was also something about that woman on the page that did not feel like Cora at all. Even in her existence of vague lines confined within the borders of a page, she seemed to carry herself with much more grace, more effortless elegance, than Cora imagined she actually did.

She looked up at Rasmus, touched. "Not every girl is lucky enough to literally see herself through her boyfriend's eyes."

A satisfied smile pulled at the edges of his lips. "When you put it like that, it sounds rather romantic."

"It is, you doofus."

"So you like them?"

"I love them," she murmured, carefully closing the book to protect his pages. "And I can assure you I'll probably want to look at them ten more times before the day is over."

Rasmus tucked his sketchbook away in the bag he'd brought it in, freeing his hands to take a long sip of his coffee. They continued down the sidewalk hand-in-hand, admiring the way the snow could make a place they thought they knew so well look so different.

Some time later, Cora pulled her phone out of her pocket to take a quick, innocuous snow day picture for her Instagram story. But when her feed popped up, she came to a sudden halt. The soles of her boots nearly slid on the snow; Rasmus reached out and grabbed her arm to catch her, but she barely processed it.

"Rasmus..." she whispered.

The image at the top of her feed was from the same theatre magazine they'd done that interview with way back in the spring. The picture itself was one of their production shots, one she'd seen so many times that it felt like it'd somehow always existed.

But she wasn't really looking at the image. She was looking at the text they'd overlaid on top of it, which in bold, yellow letters, read,


TONY AWARD-WINNING PLAY  ILLICIT AFFAIRS TO CLOSE ON BROADWAY ON DECEMBER 5TH.

____________________

A/N:

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(just 3 more chapters and the epilogue to go!)


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