runtowardsomething | (no subject)

It isn't a birthday party.

Beverly has been adamant about that. She's never actually had one before, more inclined to let the occasion pass as little fanfare as possible, and she doesn't intend to change that now. Still, she can't turn eighteen and not do something. It's a big milestone. A huge one, really, and fucking terrifying at that. There's so much she's still clueless about, so much it feels like she's running out of time to make up her mind about.

Tonight, though, she doesn't want to think about that. She just wants to enjoy not being a kid — a little girl — anymore.

Having settled on a good destination for the night — a bar near her house, the sort of relaxed place that lets anyone in and only requires ID from anyone ordering drinks, so those under eighteen can still freely get in and those of age, herself now included, can reap the benefits that come with that — she texts some friends, inviting them to come meet her if they want. For her part, she finds a reasonably sized table to claim, then heads over to the bar. There's something painfully refreshing about not having to aim for a bartender who looks like he won't bother to card her if she looks at him just right. It's even better when she presents her ID as asked, and the bartender, seeing that it's her eighteenth birthday, tells her the drink is on the house.

It's not much of a sign, exactly, and wouldn't be even if she were to believe in such things, ultimately pretty meaningless. Still, there's a tiny little sprout of something that might be optimism inside her. Maybe, just maybe, it will be an okay year.

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It's not a birthday party, all right, fine: Eponine can understand not wanting to make much of one's birth. But she can't let the girl she'd come to think of as a little sister -- and been close with since a good few years before she was legal to drink here herself -- become a real adult without some sort of gift, and without fretting about it a bit too. In her jacket pocket, then, she's got a little box stowed away, a small piece of paper folded neatly just inside the lid.

But it's hidden on the inside pocket, so that if Beverly does just want to drink and spend time without making a fuss she can recover it when necessary. Likewise, she's dressed up just a bit, but not as though it's a formal affair: rebraided her hair and loosened the plait fashionably, and put on lipstick so the oversized buttondown and faux-leather leggings she's wearing with boots looks like it was intended for going out.

She tries not to think about Azelma on the way over: about if her real little sister even made it to eighteen, and if she did what became of her. She'll never know that, not even if she's returned to Paris, but she has a family she's forged here and she loves them in a way she's not sure she could have imagined loving anyone, back then.

By the time she's stepping into the bar, looking around for her friends, she's smiling again.

Edited 2022-04-05 03:33 (UTC)

Strange as part of her still finds it for anyone to be here at all, there are a few people whose presence Beverly felt pretty sure she could count on. Eponine is one of them. Even so, glancing over toward the door when she hears it open, she grins at the sight of her friend, getting to her feet and making her way over. Everything is nice and relaxed — or it seems so to her, and she hopes it is for everyone else — with people casually milling about, various conversations taking place. She doesn't want or need to be the center of attention. That's the whole point of it not being a party, really. She just wants to spend her birthday around the people she loves.

Back home, after all, she never had that. Not until that last summer, anyway, and even that wasn't likely to be the sort of thing that would have extended to this sort of thing. Granted, her memories of it are fuzzy at best, but they definitely spent more time trying to figure out how to stop a killer clown than they did just hanging out, doing normal kid things.

"Hey, you made it!" she says brightly, leaning in for a quick hug when she's made it over to Eponine. "I sort of stole us a couple tables over there, but everyone's just kind of wandering around."

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Eponine declares, grinning and leaning in to give Beverly a quick squeeze of a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Isn't that the way of parties?" She follows Bev over to the aforementioned table, sliding in. If the music switches to something she really likes, she'll get them both up to dance or grab some of their other friends, but right now it's exactly the right volume to lean in just a little and chat across the booth, even with other people talking.

"I know you said this isn't really a birthday party, but I feel like it's too big a number to not get you something special," she hazards. "I can hang onto it until we split up, if you don't have a good place for presents, but I...well. I hope you like it?"

They're momentarily interrupted by a server, and Eponine gets herself a Manhattan, which is really only a few hops and a skip away from liqueurs she could have found mixed together at home, but it sounds fancier. She takes the little box out of her jacket pocket and sets it down on the table between them. Inside, the little folded paper contains a short carefully composed note about how she thought Beverly deserved to have something nice, and adult, that was all hers and would only have good memories. Underneath there's a little cube-shaped vial of perfume oil that Eponine had put together with scents that feel like Bev to her: green moss and woods, tobacco and amber, rain, a touch of light floral -- honeysuckle, white violet -- not at all the sort of heavy rose or peony that had suffused the perfume Darrow had dumped on her.

Even as carefully as she'd considered the sort of things she thinks of when she thinks of Bev, and what doesn't smell like that cloying floral scent, she finds herself holding her breath, a little, as she passes the box over.

Edited 2022-07-11 03:47 (UTC)