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“Darcy,” the conductor sighs, lowering her baton and looking over to the brass section. “This is a rehearsal, not naptime.”
Darcy jolts up - she hadn’t been asleep, not quite, but she has to rub at her eyes anyway. Her trumpet nearly rolls out of her limp fingers, and she grabs on to it, cheeks flaming. From the woodwind section, she can feel Tara’s sharp gaze. She turns away from it.
“Won’t happen again,” she mutters, and raises her trumpet to her lips as the rehearsal resumes.
Won’t happen again. It’s not exactly a promise she can make. From screaming matches between her parents to late night text conversations, Darcy hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in… well, so long she can’t quite remember.
Last night had been terrible. Her parents had started in on each other in the middle of dinner, and Darcy had fled to her room to avoid either of them turning on her instead. She had turned Netflix up to the highest volume, clamped on her headphones, and had somehow fallen asleep at three in the morning with She-Ra still blaring in her ears. She had only managed about half an hour of disrupted napping before the vibrations of her phone had woken her up, and she’d had to call Charlie, who had been in tears and panicking over something.
So she’s maybe not handling things well. Darcy doesn’t really pay attention, floating through rehearsal in a muted daze, and she speeds through packing up her trumpet and escapes to grab lunch before Tara can catch up to her.
It’s not fair of her to ignore Tara like that but Darcy’s well aware that Tara’s had her own problems. It wouldn’t be right for Darcy to dump her issues on her girlfriend.
“Hey, Darcy,” Elle says, raising an eyebrow as Darcy winds up behind her in the queue to grab lunch. “Where’s Tara?”
Darcy starts to reply, but the words just don’t come. She shuts her mouth and shrugs, desperately wanting to get her food and disappear.
Elle’s face softens. “Want my cheese? I never eat it anyway.”
Somehow, that’s what sets Darcy off. She takes the offered cheese without a word and speedwalks away, wishing she had a hand free to tug her hoodie down over her hands. Ignoring the spot she normally occupies with Tara and Elle, she heads outside. The field that sits smack-dab in the middle of Truham and Higgs is dotted with equal measures of yellow and blue shirts, and Darcy casts about for a tree or a bush she can hide behind.
Instead, Nick, the loveable golden retriever he is, spots her and waves a hand. He looks so pleased to have caught her, and Charlie looks so worn out next to him, that Darcy can’t find it in herself to pretend she didn’t see him.
“Hiya,” she says quietly, forcing herself to speak up. “How long do we have until next bell?”
It’s a concerted effort, and she feels terrible afterwards, but luckily for her, Nick is clearly too focused on Charlie to notice her face.
“At least an hour,” Nick says, running his fingers through Charlie’s hair. “Where are Tara and Elle? Were you not with them?”
Darcy shakes her head, and reaches out tentatively to fistbump Charlie. He accepts it, giving her a tiny smile in return. “Want any of my crackers?”
“No, no, eat your own crackers,” Nick scolds him, closing his fingers over Charlie’s hand. “Darcy has enough food.”
Charlie pouts, and somehow manages to make eating a cracker look sarcastic. Darcy snickers despite herself, and yawns, rubbing at her eyes again.
Nick frowns. “You look tired.”
“A bit,” Darcy says softly. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
She notices the way Charlie looks down, and curses herself for making him feel worse. It wasn’t just calling him, she had been unlikely to get any sleep regardless, but there’s no way she can tell him that without getting into the entire house of cards she’s living in, and she just can’t explain that. Not to Tara, not to Charlie, not to anyone.
“Lie down, have a nap now,” Nick says, spreading out his abandoned blazer on the grass. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go back in.”
Charlie snorts. “He will as well. No morals, this one. He’d kick a sleeping kitten if it were time to leave.”
Nick presses a hand to his heart, and half-heartedly shoves Charlie. “My own boyfriend. I can’t believe you’d betray me this way.”
“It’s only Darcy,” Charlie says, with sudden clarity to his expression. “You two are basically siblings. I’m allowed to mock you in front of Darcy.”
“You mock me in front of everyone,” Nick grumbles. “No exceptions.”
Darcy does lie down, nibbling on a cracker of her own. Against all expectations, the gentle bickering between Charlie and Nick fades into the background, and she closes her eyes, turning her face so her cheek presses against the smooth lining of Nick’s blazer.
Nick does wake her up when it’s time to go back to school. She lifts her head to find Tara and Elle sat cross legged on the ground next to her, Elle and Charlie discussing something, their hands flying. Nick smiles at her and offers her a hand up, because he’s a gentleman. Tara, face bearing the faintest hint of a frown, grabs one of Darcy’s hands before she can dart away again.
“See you!” Nick calls, and Charlie breaks away from arguing with Elle to wave.
Tara pulls Darcy along when it’s clear she’s still floating, the world nothing more than a dreamlike haze. Darcy trails one hand against the wall, trying to ground herself with the rough scraping against her fingers, and follows in Tara’s wake.
When they sit down for registration, Tara tugs at Darcy’s hand and raises an eyebrow. “Want to tell me what that was all about?”
Darcy shrugs. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.” Repeating her words from earlier takes less effort than trying to actually explain, although judging by Tara’s face, it’s not going to satisfy her.
“Yeah, so you fell asleep in the middle of the Star Wars theme tune,” Tara says, rolling her eyes. “Doesn’t really explain why you ran off and left me there looking like a lemon.”
“A cute lemon,” Darcy says immediately, summoning a small smile. “An adorable citrusy sunshine lemon.”
Tara purses her lips together like she’s fighting a smile. “I just want to know what’s going on, Darcy. If everything’s alright.”
I just want to live my life flashes through Darcy’s mind, and she forces her smile to grow. Tara wants things to be normal. Tara wants people to stop commenting on the pair of them. Darcy falling asleep in classes or having a grand meltdown would lead to people talking, to harsh comments, so there’s nothing Darcy wants to do less.
“Everything’s fine,” she says, taking Tara’s hand and marvelling, not for the first time, at how soft it is. “Just stayed up too late watching the lesbian princess TV show last night.”
Tara grins and laughs. “Haven’t you watched that, like, seven times?”
“I’ll watch it seven more,” Darcy says, eyes blown wide with earnestness. “It’s a masterpiece.”
Elle leans over. “Are we talking about She-Ra? ‘Cause I can agree, it’s definitely a masterpiece.”
When Darcy gets home that night, she resolves to go to bed early for once. She doesn’t care if she has to stuff a towel under the door, crawl underneath the duvet and shove her pillow over her head to block out another row. She’s going to get a good night’s sleep.
Her plans are immediately scuppered. As soon as she’s through the door and tugging off her hoodie, her mother appears like some kind of malicious teleporter, hands firmly on her hips.
“Darcy,” she starts, greying hair scraped back into an austere bun. “Why aren’t you wearing your blazer? You look like a hooligan. Come here now, your father and I need to talk with you.”
Because that’s a phrase that’s preceded so many good things. Darcy toes off her shoes, drops her bag by the foot of the stairs, and follows her mother into the living room.
Her father is standing in front of the television, frowning at the pair of them. Rather than join him, her mother crosses the room to sit down on the sofa under the window, and cracks open her laptop.
“What’s up?” Darcy says, aiming for some of her usual cheer and falling flat. “Are we going to discuss how disgusting you find Sharon D Clarke again? No, let me guess, we’re exonerating Craig Revel Horwood because you think Strictly wouldn’t be the same without him.”
Slowly, her father’s face turns purple. Darcy’s rooted to the spot, regretting.
“No,” her mother says, voice icy. “We’re going to discuss this email your mathematics teacher sent to me.”
There’s nothing Darcy wants to do less than read whatever discipline report the school has sent her parents. She thought she’d been doing better - the last game of American football was outside on the field! She’d only gone through half of the mustard stocks available last lunch time! - but evidently there’s something her teacher has seen fit to inform her parents of.
And then she reads the email, and her heart drops out of her chest.
Dear Mr and Mrs Olsson,
I’m writing to inform you that Darcy’s behaviour has been markedly improved recently. I’m sure you’re aware that she had been having some difficulties in keeping focused, and it had become necessary to keep her aside for personal tutoring. However, ever since her relationship with Tara Jones, I’ve seen a great improvement in her attention. There are still some issues - maths lessons are not the appropriate time to be making out with her girlfriend, no matter how fascinating the pair of them find vectors - but I’d like to write to you to assure you that I don’t think Darcy’s behaviour will be an obstacle to her maths study any further.
“Mum,” Darcy says, fingers trembling at her sides. “Mum, I don’t- I don’t know what he’s talking about, I never- I’ve not- Mum, please.”
Her mother stares at her, face inscrutable. “It looks to me like you have decided that despite our best efforts at providing you with an appropriate upbringing, you wanted to behave like… like a scarlet woman in your mathematics class.”
“Wait, your issue is that Tara and I were doing PDA, rather than that she’s a girl?” Darcy blurts out, and immediately wishes she hadn’t. “Cause I can stop kissing her in lessons.”
There’s no response from either parent for a moment, and then her father grabs at her wrist. “You are going to your room, and you are not to leave it for any reason until we decide what action to take regarding school on Monday,” he threatens, hot anger burning beneath his glare. “Give me your phone.”
“No,” Darcy says, thrusting her hand into her pocket to hold on to it. “No, that’s not fair.”
His venomous look floors her. “Darcy, you will hand over your phone right this moment if you have any desire to continue learning at Higgs Girls Grammar School.”
The bolt of steel fear through her heart is worse than anything Darcy’s ever felt before. She draws out her phone, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, and he takes it from her.
“Unlock it.”
Darcy presses her thumb to the home button, blinking back tears. She’s been so careful - she knows they check her phone, so she always makes sure to leave her conversations to Instagram DMs rather than text, and she logs out of the app every time she leaves school. There’s nothing on there he can find, nothing to incriminate her or Tara further.
He doesn’t seem to care. All he does is click her contacts app, and then he deletes all the information. Then he opens up her text history, and deletes all her conversations there.
“This isn’t fair,” she tries to say, but her words get stuck again, and the most she can do is swipe at her eyes.
Her father deletes Instagram and then Snapchat, and then he takes out his own phone.
“What are you doing?” Darcy manages to ask, glancing between her mother and her father. Neither of them answer her. “Please, what are you doing?”
“Parental controls,” her father finally deigns to reply, and hands back her phone. “To your room, now, Darcy. We’ll be discussing your behaviour and this… silly phase later, once you’ve had a chance to reflect. I do not have a dyke for a daughter.”
It’s not a phase, she could say. She could try and convince them of the reality of her feelings for Tara, or plead for her only methods of communication to be given back to her. But it would do her absolutely no good, and the threat of moving schools hangs above her like the Sword of Damocles.
“Yes, father,” she says instead.
She’s got to admit, her father is clearly more technologically savvy than she had expected. Deleting her contacts means she can’t text or call anyone who’s number she doesn’t know, and installing parental controls means she can’t redownload Instagram without his permission.
One thing he clearly hasn’t considered, though, is that she might actually know someone’s number by heart. And admittedly it isn’t the first person she would think to call, but she dials up Sarah Nelson, her number still ingrained in Darcy’s mind after a trip to the beach when she’d forced all the kids to memorise her number in case they got lost.
Tao had made some comment about them not being six, but when he and Isaac actually had got lost and had been able to call Sarah on a stranger’s phone, he’d had to eat his words. Darcy finds herself even more grateful now, and as she struggles to catch her breath, she hears the dial tone stop and Sarah’s familiar greeting.
“Hi Nick’s mum,” Darcy says, voice breathy and wet from crying. “Can you put Nick on?”
There’s a pause. “Darcy, darling, is there anything I can do for you? You sound upset.”
“Can you put Nick on?” Darcy repeats, stifling a sob at the genuine care in Sarah’s voice. “I just really need to talk to him.”
“No problem,” Sarah says, and there’s a shuffling for a bit. “Hi, it’s Nick. Darcy? What’s up?”
Darcy has to hold the phone away for a moment to cry a bit more, thinking about leaving Higgs and never getting to see any of her friends again. Nick’s muffled with distance, but she thinks she can hear his flustered panic mode coming out of the tinny speakers. “Hey, sorry to bother you, girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.”
“You’re not a bother,” Nick insists fiercely, “and we kissed one time at 13.”
“Still competition,” Darcy breathes, smiling weakly. “Uh, my parents found out I’m dating Tara. And I guess that I’m a lesbian.”
Nick pauses. “And they weren’t cool about it?” He asks tentatively.
Darcy laughs, wiping at her eyes. “Kind of the opposite. Um. I’m grounded and they’re considering pulling me out of Higgs.”
“Shit,” Nick says simply, packing a breadth of emotion into a single word. “I can stay on the phone as long as possible. Why, um… why didn’t you call Tara?”
“Dad deleted my contacts and my Instagram,” Darcy admits. “Nick, I can’t stay here.”
She has to wait a while for his response. “Does your room have a window?”
There is absolutely no way his mum has agreed to this. Darcy cannot believe that any parent would ever support the grand escape plan the two of them hash out, but somehow, when she goes to hang up, Sarah asks her to stay on a moment longer.
“Darcy, darling, you make Tara happy,” Sarah starts. “You’ve been so strong and supportive for Nick and Charlie, and you’re a delight to have in my house.”
The realisation that her own parents have never said anything this nice to Darcy makes her ugly-cry a little bit more. Sarah, the angel, doesn’t mention it.
“You’re allowed to feel rough too. But please, darling, you should have told someone if things were getting bad. Nicky says you haven’t been sleeping.”
“Tattle-tale,” Darcy mutters.
“And I know Charlie’s been having some troubles,” Sarah blazes forwards as if she hasn’t heard Darcy, though she definitely did. “But you’re allowed to have some troubles too. I think Tara would have liked to hear if you were feeling upset about your parents.”
Darcy fiddles with the tips of her hair, forcefully thinking about how she needs to re-do her dye job, rather than about burdening Tara with how the hell she’s been facing at home.
“I’ll see you in a little bit, darling.”
“Bye, Sarah,” Darcy says, rubbing her nose. “Thank you. Thank Nick for me.”
Sarah laughs a little bit. “Oh, trust me, darling, we’re happy to do it.”
Darcy’s window is not built for dramatic escape attempts, but it does open wide enough for her to shimmy out of, and the trellis supporting the ivy on the side of the building is just strong enough to support her as well. From behind the shade of a tree, Nick, clad in a black hoodie he clearly thinks is sneaky, gives her a thumbs up.
She drops down to the ground, rolling on her ankle, and she has to freeze for a moment, wincing with pain and petrified of being seen. Clearly suffering no such worries, Nick darts out and takes her hand, tugging her along with him.
“Mum’s parked just down the street a bit,” he says. “Your garden was really easy to get into.”
Darcy tosses a piece of cheese from her pocket onto the flowerbeds, viciously hoping that foxes will get in and destroy her mother’s tulips.
“Wait, why did you have cheese in your pocket?” Nick asks, looking back to her. Darcy shrugs.
“Don’t you know it always pays to be prepared with anti-homophobia cheese?”
Nick nods slowly, brow furrowed. “It’s a good idea. I like it.”
She snickers. “Elle’s my supplier.”
True to his word, Sarah is parked only a few houses down, and she gets out of the car to give Darcy a tight hug.
“Oi, mum, I was going to do that!” Nick complains. “I was just waiting until we were out of her garden.”
“Shh, Nicky, it’s a mother’s prerogative to get the first hug,” Sarah says. Darcy cries wetly into her shirt, feeling awful and loved at the same time.
Eventually, she has to let go of Sarah, at which point Nick flies in for a massive bear hug. Darcy’s not short - she just tops out at above average height for her age - but Nick’s an absolute specimen, and he dwarfs her. He’s an amazing hugger, chiefly because about twice a day he decides he hasn’t had enough physical contact and envelops someone like he’s trying to squish them to death.
Darcy adores it. Even when the pair of them get in the car, she stays clinging to his arm, desperate for the grounding physical contact.
Nick’s house has the same ivy as Darcy’s, and she’s struck by the similarity for just a moment, before she follows the Nelsons in the front door. Sarah sits her down gently on one of the matching wooden chairs and starts to help Nick with making tea.
“Now, this mug is technically my brother’s,” Nick says, affecting an air of grandeur, “but he’s not here so who cares.”
Sarah sits down with a mug of black tea, a shiny S emblazoned on the side. Nick sets down first his own N mug in front of his place, and then a matching mug with a letter D in front of Darcy. He sits down in his spot, and pushes it gently towards her.
“You’ll feel better with some tea.”
The simple domestic ritual of tea-making - one that Darcy hasn’t managed to ruin, despite being a puffy, crying mess - feels like the remnant of a family she had once, but when she tries to remember if her parents were kinder to her in her childhood, she finds that she can’t quite recall a time when any success wasn’t met with either cool disdain or a wish that Darcy had managed to succeed earlier.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Sarah says, once it becomes clear that both of them have drained their mugs and that Darcy is just sitting on her seat, not fully in connection with reality. “Nicky, do you want to show Darcy your room?”
Darcy notices that Nick hasn’t taken his shoes off yet. He had been standing in her garden in those shoes, and yet Sarah hadn't snapped at him about tracking mud on the carpets or floors. Darcy’s still in her socks, because all her shoes had been by the door in her house.
She drifts up the stairs, Nick’s pale, washed-out shadow, and watches him leave his shoes by his bedroom door. “Hey, Darce, do you want to borrow a hoodie?”
“Yes please,” she says softly, and accepts the big blue hoodie he gives her, tugging the sleeves over her hands. “Do we have to talk about it?”
“Nope,” Nick says, smiling at her. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. C’mon, sit up here with me.”
Darcy nestles down, cross legged, on Nick’s bed. He wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Then we don’t have to,” Nick says simply. “Want to play Mariokart? Charlie always beats me, but that just means I’ve been learning from the best.”
Neither Darcy nor Tara has a Nintendo. They’ve both played Mariokart with Elle, who prefers Animal Crossing really, but only a few times, so Darcy is inevitably going to fail.
“I’d like that, actually.”
She does fail. She comes twelfth, and she cries a lot, but it’s not really about coming twelfth. It’s about disappointing her friends, or always being a failure, or not being good enough for Tara. Nick holds her like he sort of expected that to happen, and it feels good, and it feels cathartic.
“I’m really running two for two with you and Tara,” he says conversationally, while she cries and stains his Adidas jumper with snot. “I turned her off boys forever and now I’ve made you cry.”
Darcy sniffs and does her best to get herself together. “Homophobia.”
Nick exclaims. “Rude! That’s biphobia.”
The two of them snicker. Darcy picks up her controller again, running her thumb over the smooth blue plastic. “I want to play again.”
They make it through a few more races before Sarah calls them both down for dinner. Darcy comes twelfth every time, and every time it feels less and less like a failure. She even manages to nail Nick with a red shell at one point when he laps her, and they’re still laughing over it as they troop down the stairs.
“I made spaghetti,” Sarah says, pride in her voice. “Darcy, how are we feeling?”
Darcy raises two thumbs up. “I’m repressing!”
“She’s not repressing, she’s healthily expressing her emotions, through the conduit of video games,” Nick says in response to his mother’s panicked look. “See, I’ve read therapy handbooks.”
“Why have you read therapy handbooks?” Darcy deadpans. “Considering a future career as editor of the DSM 6?”
Sarah dishes out the spaghetti. “That’s a joke that’s funny to only a specific set of people,” Nick insists. “Namely people who’ve read the DSM 5.”
“No one’s read the DSM 5, it’s a brick,” Darcy says, rolling her eyes. “Nick’s mum, this looks really lovely, I’m so sorry for intruding.”
“Nonsense, you’re always welcome here,” Sarah says briskly, and Darcy cries a little bit again.
It tastes lovely as well, and Nick drags her onto the sofa as soon as she’s finished eating, so they can eat garlic bread while watching a movie. “You’re, like, the most knowledgeable person about LGBTQ stuff I know, so you’re picking a good movie.”
Darcy laughs. “Please just say queer. Please. Saying the whole acronym is like saying Charlie’s a homosexual.”
Nick wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, you’re right, that doesn’t sound right.”
“And I don’t know anything about anything,” Darcy says, thinking of Tara and smiling to herself. “But if you want a good homoerotic movie we can watch Princess Bride.”
Sarah rubs her temples. “Oh, goodness me. Nicky, do you remember when-”
Nick lunges over to press a hand over his mother’s mouth, nearly upsetting the garlic bread plate. Darcy clings on to it, giggling. “No, tell me the Princess Bride wasn’t your bisexual awakening.”
“That was Pirates of the Caribbean, actually,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, I just desperately wanted to be Westley.”
“He used to go around in a mask,” Sarah says fondly. “Nicky would pick up sticks and pretend they were swords.”
“Mum,” Nick complains, and steals the remote from her grasp. “Well, now we have to watch it.”
Partway through the Fire Swamp, the doorbell goes. Darcy, tucked beneath both a blanket and most of Nick’s bulk, doesn’t really want to go and get it. Nick, enraptured by the movie and mouthing along with the words, doesn’t even seem to have heard it. Sarah sighs, and pauses the movie.
“What?” Nick shouts, twisting around. “But he’s about to get mauled by a rodent of unusual size!”
Sarah gets up. “Good for him, but the doorbell just went.”
Nick’s eyes widen. “Right, I’ll go and get it.”
“What an odd child,” Sarah sighs, sitting back down and stealing a corner of the blanket. “Are you doing alright, Darcy?”
“Personal conversations of a highly emotional nature? I don’t think they exist,” Darcy quips. Someone who knows the movie too well laughs from behind her, and Darcy is crushed under the flying leap of a body that’s far too slight to be Nick.
Once she’s managed to extricate herself, she pops her head up, and her mouth falls open in surprise. “Tara?”
“Hi,” Tara says, breathless. “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to squish you, I just wanted to finish the joke.”
Darcy is very obliquely aware of Nick and Sarah backing off, but she’s too busy staring at Tara’s face to care. “Hi.”
Tara rolls her eyes. “Hi.” They share a very short kiss before Tara pulls away, reorganising herself so she’s sitting next to Darcy. “Nick told me something had happened and… you weren’t yourself today.”
“Sorry,” Darcy blurts out, and curses her poor impulse control. “My, um. My parents are really homophobic.”
“I knew that,” Tara says.
Darcy nods. “Right. Also they kind of hate each other. So it’s not been great at home recently.”
She stops there, taking one of Tara’s hands and running her fingers over the smooth skin. “And I always knew it would be bad if they found out, but today my mum got an email, and… well, they found out. And my dad said he didn’t have a dyke daughter and deleted all my contacts and grounded me until Monday and threatened to pull me out of Higgs.”
“But that’s not fair,” Tara says, clapping a hand to her mouth. “He can’t do that!”
“He can,” Darcy says miserably. “And I just couldn’t deal with it so I called Sarah and sort of… jumped out of the window.”
Tara cups Darcy’s face in her hands, looking at her with a blend of pity and love. Darcy leans forwards to kiss Tara’s forehead, embarrassed at how quickly she’s started crying again.
“You’re so brave,” Tara says, wiping away a tear. “But Darcy, why, why didn’t you tell me any of that before they found out? I would have been more careful, I would have made you stay over more.”
Darcy pulls away a little, and immediately regrets it when she sees Tara’s hurt expression. “I just… you wanted things to be normal, Jonesy.”
“I meant I didn’t want people to talk about me behind my back, not that I wanted you to have to pretend everything was alright for my sake!” Tara says, horrified. “I never wanted you to feel like you couldn’t talk to me. I talked to you!”
“And I didn’t want to be more careful,” Darcy says, aware she’s talking over Tara a bit. “I would have been happy to stay over more but I didn’t want to strain your relationship with your parents, ‘cause they’re so good about it. It was fine, I was handling it.”
Tara pins her down on the sofa, bushy hair catching the light and haloing her above Darcy. “I really like you,” she says firmly. “I want you to talk to me. I want to be able to help you.”
“Aw, you really like me,” Darcy says, smiling gently. “I want to talk to you. To be helped by you.”
She lets Tara kiss her fiercely, and then flips her over, barely managing to stay on the sofa. Charlie and Nick have probably kissed on every surface in the house, they’re hardly doing anything more sacrilegious.
“Okay so if you’re letting me help you are you going to be pleased that I brought you pyjamas?” Tara asks, staring up into Darcy’s open face. “Because I figure being still in your school uniform wasn’t really the plan.”
“Oh thank God,” Darcy says emphatically. “These skirts are not as comfortable as they look.”
She disappears into the bathroom to get changed, and catches sight of herself in the mirror when she’s done: wearing a spare pair of Tara’s pyjamas, Nick’s blue hoodie, and an ageing dye job, she feels more herself than she has in a while.
“You do have a dyke for a daughter,” she whispers. “And you’re going to have to get over it, because my friends will bust me out of my house as many times as you can lock me up.”
“Have you drowned in there?” Nick yells. “I kind of want to finish the movie.”
“Coming!” Darcy calls, and walks into the living room to see that there’s a spot in between Nick and Tara, hollowed out by a fluffy blanket and an abandoned empty plate. She settles down, squished between Nick’s rugby-strong side and Tara’s bony elbow, and finds that she doesn’t really care about what her parents think of her. The people that matter to her are here, and are Tao and Charlie and Isaac and Elle, and she’s got over homophobia from girls at school, so it’s not going to be a challenge to get over it from her parents.
“I’d save you from the Fire Swamp,” she tells Tara, almost absentmindedly. Next to her, she can feel the rumble of Nick’s laughter in his chest.
“I’m clearly Westley here.”
Tara nods. “Yeah, I can kind of see Charlie as Buttercup.”
Darcy laughs, and grins, and kisses her girlfriend’s cheek. “You can be the Catra to my Adora, then, even if you don’t think it’s acceptable to have watched the show seven times.”