Disclaimer: I do not own Dracula

Mina is eighteen the first time she reads Lucy's journal. She doesn't seek it out. It lies open on the dresser before her as Lucy lies on the bed behind her, and her eye gets caught on her own name. She doesn't read more than a sentence but it is a lovely sentence, the sentimental kind that could augment a friendship if said aloud though at eighteen, too, Lucy tends to call such expressions maudlin. Still, it's the first time Mina realises the extent of Lucy's affection towards her; the first time she feels entirely certain of the fact that they will be friends for a very long time to come.

The second time she reads Lucy's journal she doesn't exactly seek it out. She is alone in Lucy's room waiting for her to return from a dinner out with her mother, and when she gracelessly slumps onto Lucy's bed she knocks it off the bedside table to the floor. It falls open, face down on the page bookmarked with ribbon, and she picks it up with absolutely no intention of reading it. But when she turns it over to close it she sees her name again, surrounded by words like intelligent and fearless; envious, though she can't for a second imagine what Lucy has to be envious of, and she can't help but sneak the warm affirmation of a few extra sentences. When Lucy eventually arrives home she tries to repay the compliments in kind, but the only thing that occurs to her in the moment is the way Lucy looks in her dress, and the words catch clumsily in her throat.

The third time, which happens just after Lucy's twenty-first birthday, occurs less by chance than by pure, overt intention. She hasn't seen a journal in Lucy's room for a year or more; whether Lucy has taken to slipping them into drawers or has stopped keeping them entirely she doesn't know, but the reappearance of one makes her curious. It certainly doesn't help that they have both stumbled back to her room inebriated. Lucy has disappeared with a drunken hankering for a late night bath, leaving her alone and giddy in the afterglow of wine and music and dancing, and really what would it hurt, she thinks.

They don't have secrets.

She picks it up from the dresser and opens the leather cover. Consciously, she is looking for nothing in particular but she scans and skips over the first few pages when she doesn't find her name. That alone speaks well enough of her intent and it makes her feel guilty, if not a little strange. Probably it is peculiar of her to search for Lucy's thoughts of her – indeed, they speak of their fondness far more candidly than they used to – and she couldn't explain with any sort of certainty why she is.

Instead of finding her name she stops at a mostly blank page. Alone on the first line are six words, punctuated with an angry, thick full stop that has poked a hole through the paper.

I can't stop thinking about it.

And on the page beside it, not Lucy's usual flowing handwriting but a scrawling mess of rushed letters.

To death, it frightens me. How can they not see it written across my face? How can she–

The door clicks open and Mina snaps the journal closed, dropping it to the dresser. Lucy doesn't notice, fumbling as she is with the ties of her nightgown, and though Mina wants to know – emphatically wants to know what it is Lucy is scared of, what is supposedly written across her face, she can't find reason to ask.

She pushes the words from her mind and walks over to Lucy.

"A fortunate thing it is that you're not a man. With hands like that you would never undress your bride on your wedding night."

Nudging Lucy's hands aside, she makes quick work of the knot and ties the laces properly.

"I, on the other hand, would make an impressive man, indeed," she continues, wiggling her fingers in front of Lucy's face.

Lucy scoffs indelicately and slaps her hands away. "And a humble one at that."

She laughs, and when Lucy smiles in return, the sort of smile that Mina knows is reserved for her alone, she forgets to look for the writings of anything else on her face.

The fourth and final time she reads Lucy's journal is entirely unavoidable, or so she prefers to think. Having spent the previous night studying at Lucy's, a habit she began with the truest of intentions since Lucy lives closer to both the university and the library but has since turned woefully unproductive, she finds amongst her notes the same journal of nearly a year ago. She figures she must have picked it up when she was gathering her papers and puts it to the side. Lucy should be calling around soon.

Returning to her work, she draws a torso on a blank sheet of paper and, by sheer amount of rote learning, pencils in the fibres of different muscles without thought.

Her eyes flicker to the journal.

She isn't going to read it. Drunk though she might have been, last time had left such an acrid taste in her mouth that she had promised herself she would never do that to Lucy again. At least the first two times were inadvertent, she has absolutely no excuse for the third.

That isn't to say she doesn't regret Lucy returning as soon as she did. Though the passing months have soothed her curiosity and mostly quelled her concern, they have also given her ample time to conjure a dozen possible 'its' that Lucy couldn't stop thinking about, a dozen things more that could have frightened her. Most of them were gravely bizarre, the worst of which actually led her to prod Lucy about her health, as if there were some secret deathly illness she was keeping from her.

Even when her thoughts weren't straying to the morbid she had dwelled on the 'she' and the words that might have followed it. Ostensibly she knows it had referred to either Minerva or herself, and for reasons she can't shake loose she believes that Lucy had been writing of her. From that conclusion bled an avalanche of questions, none of which she has since been able to answer, and there's a certain guilt that comes with that that has nothing to do with her small betrayal of trust. In the few words she had managed to read there had seemed no shortage of suffering, and it makes her question the sort of friend she has been to Lucy if she never sought her help to ease it.

She doesn't realise how distracted she has become until she looks down at her paper and sees one of the muscles labelled 'Lucy'.

Quickly, she licks the pad of her thumb and smudges the name out. God, she isn't even studying at Lucy's house and still she manages to distract her, and with exams in two weeks she really should be doing a better job of focusing.

Still, she can't help but glance at the journal again. All of her answers are more than likely in there. A touch away, the flip of a few pages. But she can't, of course. She won't. In any case, whatever Lucy was struggling with has probably passed, making her excessive over-analysis of nought value.

A faint knock on the front door pulls her from her thoughts.

Lucy.

She lays down her pencil and goes to let her in.

Without so much as a hello, Lucy brushes past her through the door. "You best be finished with your studies. I have a hundred things to tell you about my day."

"Of course," Mina says, shutting the door behind her and following Lucy back into her bedroom. "Don't you know by now that the only social life I have this time of year is the one I lead vicariously through you?"

"That goes without saying, darling." Lucy looks distastefully at the mess of papers on her desk. "Your absence from our social outings is only made marginally better by the subsequent lack of our dear Mr Harker. Honestly, how you can stand to be courted by someone so insufferable concerns me, Mina."

"Lucy," she chides, though the remark is hardly unexpected. For the last two months since Jonathan began pursuing her, Lucy has made no efforts to hide her dislike of him; in fact, she seems to get some perverse satisfaction out of the bluntness of her comments.

Lucy ignores the rebuke and picks up the sheet of paper Mina had been working on. "Mina Murray with less than impeccable notes?" she says with a hint of scandal, gesturing to the grey smudge. "I don't believe it."

Mina clears her throat. She will not be explaining that.

Lucy drops the paper back to the desk. Picking at the fingers of her gloves, she pulls off the white material, drops those too to the desk, then freezes with a veritable jolt. "Is that my..."

"It is," Mina says. "I must have picked it up when I was gathering my notes last–"

A flash of panic crosses Lucy's face and Mina falters. It's fleeting, barely noticeable and quickly schooled, but all the same it is unmistakable. Perhaps her over-analysis wasn't entirely undue.

Walking towards the desk, she goes to hand the journal to Lucy but it's swept up before she can reach it.

"A juvenile past time," Lucy says, waving the book carelessly in the air. "I don't know why I still keep it."

Mina stops short of replying. Lucy should know better than to feign nonchalance with her. Whatever is written in that journal, Lucy clearly does not want her to know about it.

She doesn't push it though, turning instead to the bed and settling down on her back. Placing the journal back down on the desk, Lucy lies down beside her and propped up on her elbow, Mina listens to Lucy recount her evening at the Savoy. First, the public rejection of Charles Dyball, a former flame of Lucy's whose brutal refusal at the hands of Eleanor Scott Lucy took no small glee in telling. Then, the wandering eyes of one Alastair Harvey – another day another suitor in the life of Lucy Westenra – yet this one Lucy spoke of not with her usual air of bored disinterest but playfully, as if Alastair might be one worth toying with. Mina only knows of him in passing, has only seen him a time or two before at the Savoy, but it's enough to know with all certainty that he will be found wanting. As far as she's concerned, when it comes to Lucy, everyone is found wanting.

Throughout her regaling, Lucy's eyes near constantly flicker to her journal on the desk, and in the way she notices most everything about Lucy, Mina notices this at once, too.

"It won't disappear, you know," she says, midway through a description of Alastair's impeccable dress.

Lucy turns to her confused. "What?"

"Your journal," she explains. "You keep glancing at it."

"Do I?"

Mina rolls her eyes. "Please, Lucy. That tone might fool your mother but you forget we learnt to lie together."

"Please, yourself," Lucy says, affronted. "You forget who the far better liar was."

"Exactly. After watching you lie through your teeth for years, you think I don't know every one of your tells?"

Lucy shrugs, turning back to the ceiling. "Perhaps you're not as perceptive as you think you are."

"Perhaps I am."

A small trace of frustration flickers in Lucy's eyes but it doesn't bother her; Lucy has been annoyed at her more times in the past than she cares to count and by now it hardly worries her.

"Must you overthink things so much?" Lucy asks. "With exams so soon you should be filling your brain with anatomy, not such fruitless worries as this."

"So there is reason to worry," she says.

Lucy glares at her and doesn't respond; no subtle hint for her to leave well enough alone but concern weaves through her like a cross stitch of thread and pulls at her for answers.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell me something?"

Lucy groans. "There is nothing to tell."

She picks up Lucy's hand and cradles it between her own. "I know there is something," she says, voice low and grave, challenging Lucy to refute her.

Lucy pauses and a precarious moment passes as she searches her eyes. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, Lucy jerks her hand away. "You read it, didn't you?'

"No, of course not," Mina rushes, a little too vehemently because although it's true it feels decidedly untrue.

Lucy lets out a hurt, incredulous laugh and springs from the bed. "My god, you're a horrific liar! You read it and you've been letting me sit here and talk of my day like an idiot!"

Mina jumps up and circles the bed. "No, I–"

"Why didn't you say anything?!" Lucy cries. "Was I not made fool enough of simply by your reading it?"

"Lucy–"

"And Alastair! You let me speak of Alastair as if you had no clue how I feel–"

"Lucy!" Mina shouts, grabbing Lucy forcefully by her shoulders. "I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about."

Brow furrowed, Lucy hesitates. "What?"

"I did read it," Mina explains. "A year ago and barely more than a sentence. To death it frightens me, you wrote. I swear to you that's all I was worried about."

Lucy balks. "Oh my god," she stutters, hastily brushing the wetness from her cheeks as she turns away.

In the dazed and disbelieving whisper Mina can hear a tenor of fear. What could Lucy possibly have written that the thought of her reading it would cause such a reaction? And how she felt? How she felt about what?

She lays a hand on Lucy's shoulder. At first it feels like Lucy flinches at her touch but no, she's shaking, and trying vehemently to hide it.

"You cannot pretend anymore that this is nothing."

"But I can ask you not to make me speak of it," Lucy says, arms curled around herself like she's holding herself together.

The fragile sight of her makes Mina ache. She steps closer, wraps her arms around Lucy from behind, and like a hook and line are connecting her stomach to Lucy, every tremble of the form in her arms tugs at some visceral need inside of her to just make it better.

"Please don't," she says into the back of Lucy's shoulder. "I feel sick with worry. There's not a single thing in this world you should fear telling me."

"Yes," Lucy says, settling her hands on Mina's arms, "there is."

Mina purses her lips at the resolute answer. She feels Lucy squeeze her forearm, a placating request for her to let the matter go but she ignores it. The smaller, less protective part of her knows she probably shouldn't – even a friendship as close as theirs doesn't negate all rights to privacy – but seven years of drifting in their own untouchable bubble has taught her that no matter the issue, no matter how impossible a problem might seem, they are always better off with each other's help. Why should this time be any different?

She presses on. "What did you mean before? When you said I let you speak of Alastair as if I hadn't a clue–"

"Please, Mina," Lucy interjects, stepping out of her arms. "I cannot speak of this with you."

Mina's arms fall limp to her sides and that, more than anything, worries her. Lucy never pulls away from her.

"If not me then whom?" she asks.

"Then no one." Lucy picks up her journal and hugs it to her chest. "It doesn't warrant conversation."

"If it warrants your tears then it warrants conversation."

Lucy shuts her eyes and takes a steadying breath. "Mina, I am asking you, please don't make me talk about this."

Abruptly, Mina stops. It isn't so much the words that give her pause but the dread on Lucy's face, the desperate look in her eyes when eventually she opens them. It's clear then that Lucy isn't asking her to stop. She's begging her.

With a heavy sigh, she leads Lucy to the bed and together they sit down.

"Thank you," Lucy says.

"Do not thank me," Mina replies. "I am scarcely containing myself. Truly, it confounds me that you would harbour something from me that upsets you like this. Do you not trust me to protect you? To protect whatever secret you might have?"

Lucy glances down to the journal in her lap. "No. With this secret I trust you least of all."

Mina flinches; the words a harsh splash of cold water to her face, but as often comes with a jarring jolt of surprise there also comes an instantaneous clarity. If there is one thing she knows beyond any measure of doubt it is that there isn't a soul on earth they trust more than each other. It stands to reason then, that if Lucy would trust anyone else with this secret before her, there is only one thing that secret can reasonably be about.

"Me."

"Excuse me?" Lucy says.

"It's about me, isn't it?"

Lucy huffs and turns away. "Why are we still speaking of this?"

The deflection is confirmation enough.

"Because it is about me," Mina replies, then rushes on. "Lucy, whatever your doubts or fears are I'll assuage them in a second if only you would tell me."

Lucy lets out a morose laugh. "You'll have to forgive my reservations. I would trust you with my life before I would trust you with this."

"What in the world could be so terrible that–"

"Terrible is a matter of opinion," Lucy snaps. "But unfortunately there are things deemed terrible in nature by those without the smallest understanding of which they speak."

So bitterly are the words spoken that Mina wavers. Lucy is rigid, knuckles white around her journal, her breath expelled in the forcibly calm exhalations of someone stifling rage or despair or both. She has never seen Lucy quite like this before and it frustrates her, reminds her of the helpless feeling she once had four summers ago, when for sixteen hellish days Lucy was ill and bed-ridden, and there wasn't a single thing she could do to help her.

Mina shakes the memory away. Blessed will be the day she is fortunate enough to forget what Lucy looked like in that bed.

She takes a gentle hold of Lucy's wrist. "Why do you assume I won't understand?"

"I don't necessarily," Lucy says, eyes wet as she feebly lifts her shoulders. "I just can't afford to assume otherwise."

Mina sighs. In the grim line of Lucy's lips there is a finality she cannot argue with. Maybe Lucy is right and it really would be best if she doesn't know what is written in that journal.

With little else for her to do, she shifts closer to Lucy on the bed, coaxes the book from her grip and pulls her into her arms. She feels a shaky breath exhaled against her neck, and though it takes a second for Lucy to return the embrace, her hands fist the back of her dress as if it were a splintered piece of driftwood keeping her afloat.

No, Mina decides. This cannot be for the best.

"How is it that after all this time you still don't realise that you can do no wrong in my eyes?" she asks, rubbing her hand across Lucy's back. "Heaven knows you could kill a man and I would only ever make sure it looked like an accident."

She pauses and pulls back, dipping her head to catch Lucy's eye. "You didn't kill someone, did you?"

Lucy chuckles wetly. "Don't be absurd."

"Thank God." Mina smiles. "I'm not actually so advanced in my studies that I can fool an autopsy procedure."

Cupping Lucy's cheeks, she wipes away the residual wetness and immediately sobers. She did this. In some inadvertent way she did this, and she'll be damned if she doesn't fix it.

"It breaks my heart, you know, that you feel this way over a secret about me. Have I done something?"

"It's nothing you have done," Lucy replies, then drops her head with a hollow laugh. "Or everything you have ever done."

"What do you mean?"

Lucy just shakes her head with a sad smile. "We really must stop talking about this. Till now I've been fortunate that this is one area in which you aren't so terribly clever, but with every question you ask I let you press my luck."

She feels Lucy thread their fingers together and looks down to their hands. It feels good that Lucy is reaching back to her, but if she knows her at all the touch is probably self-serving. It's no secret to either of them that she has a tendency to lose arguments she should have won because of some appeasing touch to her hand or face.

"Don't think I'm not aware of what you're doing," Mina says. "I won't let you mollify me."

"No?" Lucy says, with the first hint of playfulness Mina has heard from her all night. With her free hand, Lucy reaches for her cheek. "Are you certain?"

Mina laughs and swats it away. "Very."

"Then you just have to trust me. It will serve the both of us if we never speak of this again."

Lucy's smile fades, a glowing ember that flared and died, and Mina can't for a second imagine how this serves either of them.

"I want to do as you ask, Lucy, I do, and if your secret were about anything other than me I would. But how can I let this go, knowing I'm responsible for it?"

"You aren't responsible."

"I must be," Mina insists. "Am I just being awfully obtuse right now? Is there some glaring detail that I'm missing?"

Lucy stands up and paces across the room to the open window. No answer is forthcoming and it irks Mina; not because of the silence or Lucy's steadfast refusal of help, but the growing likelihood that she is just being completely obtuse about this. She won't forgive herself if this all comes down to some gross oversight on her part.

Standing up, she joins Lucy at the window and looks out to the street below. The evening is quiet, washed in the orange glow of a fading sun, and the crisp air settles soothingly on her cheeks. She breathes it in and a stillness seeps into her.

"Do you remember the night after my first day of university?"

"Of course," Lucy says. "To this day I'm still disappointed you never let me sneak into that revolting professor's office and pay him back in kind."

Mina laughs. It had only taken five minutes of her recounting the events of that day – from how her professor had openly sniggered at her presence in the class, to the snide comments directed at her from so many of her male peers – for Lucy to work herself into such a state of rancour that she was ready to vandalise public property. She didn't, of course, and instead spent the rest of the evening erasing every inch of self-doubt that day had instilled in her.

"Ever since you fell ill that summer I knew what I wanted to be," Mina continues. "But that day – that awful, demeaning first day – it was the only time I ever stumbled, the only time I wasn't entirely sure that I was where I was meant to be. Somehow in the span of a night you made me certain that I was, and every day at university since then I have had your voice in my head to combat every snickering look and remark that told me I didn't belong there."

She puts her hand over Lucy's on the window sill.

"Always you are there for me, Lucy, even at times when physically you are not. How can you question that I would ever be anything less than what you needed me to be?"

Lucy stares down at their joined hands. "Because what I need you to be is..."

"Is what?" she asks, taking a step closer.

Silence – nothing but silence and the hard clench of fingers around her hand. She presses gently on Lucy's shoulder, turning her around to face her, and with two fingers lifts her chin so their eyes connect.

"Please, Lucy. Just tell me what you need me to be."

She moves her hand to Lucy's cheek, and for a lingering second Lucy glances down to her lips. It feels more tangible than a look, like something is physically brushing against her mouth, a phantom touch that can't possibly be real but is, she can feel it, as clear as a stroke of fingers. Warmth rises up her neck and she swallows hard.

Lucy steps back and the ghostly touch is gone. "I can't, I – I have to go."

Stuck for words, Mina watches her collect her things in a rush.

What just happened? She has seen that look before, from Jonathan and a handful of men before him, but from Lucy? The thought kindles something inside of her, something deep and stirring and not entirely unexpected, and the few fleeting images she has had of the two of them together – the ones shoved with a guilty iron will to the back, back, back of her mind – reappear once more. Images of skin and hands and lips, of the ruffled sheets of a bed and–

She shakes her head, forcing the images away. Lucy couldn't possibly.

Could she?

At the creak of her bedroom door opening, Mina jerks from her thoughts. She can't let Lucy go. Not now.

Racing over, she grabs Lucy by the crook of her elbow. "Please don't leave."

"Let me go, Mina."

She lets Lucy shrug off her touch. "Can I at least see you tomorrow?"

"I don't know," Lucy says. "My schedule tomorrow is very–"

"Will you make time, please?"

Lucy doesn't answer, just looks at her with some indefinable expression, and with no invitation to walk her out Lucy leaves the room and shuts the door behind her.

Mina buries her face in her hands and groans. She's confused now more than ever. The glance could have been nothing; a figment of her imagination that her mind saw fit to morph into something of note. That she could have sworn she felt it palpably likely says more of her than it does of Lucy. Is she just seeing what she wants to see? Projecting her own–

Her thoughts freeze as her eyes fall to the bed. Lucy has left her journal.

She walks over and picks it up. This is so very, very not good. Every inch of her knows she shouldn't, that this would be so unforgivably wrong and Lucy would hate her; she would be breaking every trust they have ever built, repaying every kindness and encouragement Lucy has given her with a slap to the face, all because she pinned everything on the far cry hope that Lucy's secret was one particular secret, the one that makes all the sense in the world and none at all, something she never lets herself think about but is always, unavoidably right there.

Dammit.

She opens the journal, flicking quickly through it until she finds the same page as a year ago.

I can't stop thinking about it.

And the next page:

To death, it frightens me. How can they not see it written across my face? How can she be so utterly blind to the way I feel about her? To the times I stare at her and cannot breathe for wanting her?

Mina slams the journal closed. It is enough. It is so much more than enough.

Throwing it back to the bed, she races from the room and down the stairs to the front door.

She wrenches it open. "Wait!"

The carriage driver drops the reins to his lap and she breathes an audible sigh of relief. She opens the door to the carriage and Lucy glances up from her gloves, crinkled and haphazardly put on, looking entirely exasperated that she's there.

"You left your journal."

Lucy purses her lips like there's no worse a thought than going back inside the house, so Mina turns around and walks inside, giving Lucy no choice but to follow her.

Walking back up the stairs and into her room, Mina grabs the journal off the bed. She turns around and Lucy is standing before her, palm outstretched in a no-nonsense gesture for the book.

"Just give it to me, please."

"I can't," Mina replies, folding her hands behind her back so the book is out of sight. "We need to talk about it."

Lucy goes to reach around her for the journal but hesitates, eyebrows knitting together. "It?

Mina stays quiet, and whether that alone is the telling factor or some betraying tick of her face she has no idea, but a quiet, broken whisper severs the space between them.

"You know."

She doesn't reply or even nod. It isn't a question.

The span of the next second seems to stretch out into more as Lucy reels back from her; shock, embarrassment and hurt projecting across her features like slides from a lantern, until finally they settle on anger, fiery and resolute and exactly what she should have expected.

"Lucy, before you–"

"Before I what, Mina? Scream at you for not leaving this alone? For being so damn curious and selfish that you've gone and ruined everything?"

Lucy's eyes swell with tears and Mina reaches out to her.

"Will you just let me–"

"No!" Lucy cries. "You've no right to ask anything of me! I begged you to let it go and you didn't listen because of course – of course you knew best. How could the brilliant, intelligent Mina possibly be wrong about something?"

Mina flinches, as if the hurtled words had some physical weight behind them, but she tries to brush them off. This is what Lucy does when she feels cornered – she lashes out. That's all it is.

That's all it is.

She takes the journal from behind her back and smooths her hand over the cover. "I wasn't wrong."

"I suppose it doesn't much matter anymore, does it?" Lucy says, the fire in her voice now doused with defeat. "Right or wrong, you know now, and I'm not going to stand here and watch our friendship crumble because of it."

A final quivering look and Lucy turns on her heel, fleeing to the open door. Mina rushes after her and slams it shut with an echoing bang, the wood vibrating beneath her palm.

"No."

Lucy grabs the door handle and tries to force it open against her. "Just let me go."

"I can't let you leave, not when–"

"I can't be here!" Lucy shouts over her, still struggling against the handle, against her tears. "I don't want your pity, I don't want your coddling rejection. I don't want you to tell me that things can be the same–"

"We wouldn't be the same!"

"Exactly! There is no going back from this."

Lucy grabs her wrist, tries to pry it from the door and Mina doesn't think, not beyond the encompassing need for Lucy to just stop for a second, and instead she seizes Lucy by her shoulder, shoves her around to face her, and pushes their lips together.

Oh God.

Lucy goes rigid against her, not pulling away but not responding, her lips frozen in what she hopes is shock – the good sort of shock – and she moves her mouth in a tentative question for Lucy to do the same, to not leave her alone in this, to please in God's name please kiss her back.

Then, with slow uncertainty, as if she had said the words aloud Lucy does, and the trepidation that had settled on her chest disappears. Trembling fingers touch her neck, unsure and feather-light, not pulling her into the kiss but grazing her skin like Lucy is making sure that this is real – making sure that she is real.

The wet tracks of Lucy's tears touch her cheeks and she lifts her hand, erases them with the smooth glide of her thumb from skin so perfectly smooth and soft and not at all what she is used to, and like a physical blow it strikes her that this is what she wants.

She starts to pull away – to explain herself, to ask a hundred questions so that she might make sense of this – but Lucy grips the nape of her neck and holds her in place.

"Please. Not yet."

A half-minded nod and Lucy tugs her closer, and they fall against the door with a thud. She presses Lucy to the wood, hard, as if with enough force the edges of their bodies might melt together and she might become a part of Lucy. Then fingers, wanting fingers that don't ask so much as claim, tangle through her hair and she whimpers.

Why did she never let herself think about this? A single minute, one handful of seconds after seven years and she is losing herself. In rose – a scent or taste she has no idea, she's too enveloped by it to tell the difference – and heat, so unbearably delicious between their skin that surely she'll burn, the same way her insides are burning, a raging fire fuelled by the breath of Lucy's moan.

How has she lived without that sound? It seems suddenly absurd that she has lived till now without any of this; without Lucy's hands on her, without her lips or the length of her body pressed against her and all of it fills her, fills some hollow emptiness she wasn't even aware existed. An absence replaced by a presence.

By Lucy.

Together they slow and with a final press of her lips, Mina pulls back. They share a shuddering breath, searching each other's eyes for a way to explain how they ended up here.

"I am so confused," Lucy whispers, gripping her hip as if to ground herself.

Mina rests their foreheads together. In Lucy's voice she can still hear an echo of fear, and it's telling of how truly scared Lucy must have been if even now she isn't wholly placated.

"If I have been blind to the way you feel then you have also been blind to me."

Lucy shakes her head. "No, you can't...how could I miss–"

Mina silences her with a finger to her lips. "I meant what I said before. I would be anything you need me to be."

She leans in again, presses herself to Lucy, and it is comfort and trust and so much safer than she had imagined.

It is in that safety that she pulls back, rests their foreheads together, and in the shaking voice of someone offering far more than words alone, is able to speak once more.

"I would be anything you want me to be."