#interaction.asher

Somehow, in some magical force of irony, she ended up in the same space of the two people who she's spent the entire night trying to avoid thinking about. First, there was Yasemin, bumping into the woman as she walked around the fire in the direction of her tent, her steps freezing as soon as she laid eyes on the woman, brain suddenly void of anything she could say. Their run-in at the pumpkin farm left her with little hope that anything she said was going to fix what they'd been through and they certainly weren't going to change the other's mind. "Sorry, I..." Sage trailed off, hand waving in the direction of her tent not far off from where they were standing, yet her feet made no effort to move and her gaze stilled on Yasemin, watching the flames from the fire flicker dangerously against her dark gaze. "I was just heading back to my tent. I didn't mean to..." Then, a twig snapped somewhere nearby and her attention flitted to the source, and there was Asher. Her heart dropped into her stomach and her fist clenched tighter around the neck of her warm beer bottle. A simple name fell between the three of them. "Ash."

“How do you feel about the whole...” Cora trailed off, cocktail in one hand, the other waving in the general direction of the giant tree they had a view of from their seats at the window bar. If it were any other year, she would have been out there, mingling with the crowd, enjoying the festivities - the holiday season was always a big on in her house, her dad always doing the most when it came to being festive. But, there was a lot going on in her life at the moment, a certain blonde who’s dating her cousin... brother that would surely be somewhere in the crowd and wasn’t particularly someone she was all that fond of running into again. At least, not yet. Not without something rehearsed. What did she even plan on saying to her? Or Atlas, if she by chance ran into him instead? A curious glint and raised eyebrow in the man’s direction, waiting for his answer. “It’s crazy just how many people there are in a city. One day you think you know everyone and the next, you’re just lost among the crowd.”

Sage sighed and set her phone on the counter after having called off for the night. It wasn’t like her to miss a shift at the bar, but between the nap she didn’t get to take earlier and the fact the the morning sickness seemed to strike the most during her time at the bar, she needed to take the night to herself. That morning spent being tricking into talking with Atlas didn’t seem to help either and while she felt like they both may have a better understanding on how to tackle the next few weeks of the pregnancy, with her having invited the man to the next appointment and telling him that he’s welcome to come back and finish the table when they somehow track down that missing piece, the one thing that a talk couldn’t fix still weighed on her mind. It hadn’t been easy, to have Prudence around the house now filled again with things that once belonged to Ruby when the girl was a baby, despite the fact that the infant had already grown on her. Sage ran her hand through her hair and padded her way upstairs, stopping in her bedroom for an envelope hidden beneath papers in her bedside table before making her way to Asher’s room. She stopped in the doorway and leaned against it, a soft smile on her lips as she watched the woman with Prue wrapped in her arms. “You’re somehow so much more of a natural than I was, and I already had experience raising you.”

She had to admit that she lingered much longer than she intended to during the handoff between her and Atlas at the faire, dawdling as opposed to dragging herself back home and mentally preparing herself for the moment that the front door opened and her sister walked through it for the first time in weeks. Sage had no clue what she was going to say, or how she was going to say it, but she did know that she had to clear the air between them one way or another, even if that meant spilling details that she'd kept hidden deep inside until that very day — even if that meant admitting to things that she'd never admitted to anyone else, even herself. Anything to get her sister back. The front door opened while she was tossing the last of Maggie's toys into the basket in the living room and she straightened up at the sound, pausing until caught sight of Asher in the entryway. "Hey, uh, thanks for coming by." There was an odd politeness to it, as though they were two acquaintances rather than sisters. "I know I don't deserve it, but I wanted a chance to explain... what happened, how it happened, why it happened. I know it's not going to magically fix everything, but..." Maybe it would give the other a chance to sit on it, with all of the information, and decide if it was worth staying in her life. "Do you want anything to drink?"

She knew as soon as she saw Asher's car still in the driveway that there would be some type of questioning glance as she walked in the front door the morning after being out all night — after being at Olivia's all night, a fact that the younger blonde didn't know and Sage wasn't sure if she even wanted her to know, though what she was keeping from the other just kept piling up, leaving a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The front door creaked open and she pulled her key out of the lock, already smelling the fresh coffee brewing, a scent that pulled her toward the kitchen area as soon as she slipped off her shoes and dropped her keys on the table beside the entrance. She wasn't surprised to see Asher in the room and, although she could feel the other's gaze on her, she made a beeline for the cupboard with their mugs in, grabbing one and pouring a good amount of the hot coffee into it before she even considered looking in the younger Franklin's direction. Despite being unsure if she was going to keep her rendezvous from the night, the first sip of coffee warmly seeping into her veins had her spilling, "I slept with Liv last night." She paused and groaned tiredly, leaning against the kitchen counter before continuing, "And not in the we ran into each other and had some drinks so I crashed on her couch kind of way, but more so we ran into each other at Le Cirque and got drunk on glasses of whiskey and drinks that had more sugar than we had any business consuming and then had sex in the bathroom of the club and again at her place kind of way."

There was not a single day she'd be able to get by without the help of her sister, their roles somehow swapped from their earlier years, when Sage was doing most of the caring for the other. Now that Asher was grown, it was difficult to get by most days without her being so willing to pick up the slack with Maggie and lend a hand when the older blonde got in over her head. Today happened to be one of those days, when she found herself overwhelmed by the amount of kids weaving in and out of people standing in the backyard, and she was grateful when her sister pitched in to get them through to the home stretch, the barbeque winding down as their guests started dwindling and kids had worn themselves out, the sun setting in the distance as a small fire burned in the backyard, a table of s'mores necessities set out and soft music playing somewhere in the distance. "How's that for a summer kick off?" Sage breathed a sigh of relief as her hands fell to her hips and she watched as Yas helped Maggie smash a toasted marshmallow between two graham crackers near the fire. "Thanks for helping, Ash. I don't think I could have done it without you. Have you had any s'mores yet?"

Sage wasn’t sure which part she was less ready for; leaving Maggie with Atlas just next door, or seeing her sister for the first time since they had met ironically at the coffee shop, the meeting which was only one of two they had managed to have since she had asked Asher to leave her house months ago. Both events left her with an anxious tornado swimming through her chest as she closed the door to her own house, leaving Maggie and her father behind, and made her way just a few steps to the right to knock on Liesl’s door. Her neighbor let her in and she quietly thanked her for it, even though she suspected the other had very little interest in getting involved in whatever was going on between the sisters. Although Sage had made the hard decision to kick Asher out of her own house, she was thankful that the woman had given her sister a safe place to stay. She turned into the hallway from the stairs, taking a deep breath as she tried to think about what she even planned on saying to the other blonde, and before she realized that she should have written notes down on an index card or at least come with any sort of plan in mind, she was already standing in the doorway of Asher’s open door. A soft knock to the doorframe announced her presence and she offer the woman a timid smile in greeting. “Hey. Uh, Liesl let me in. I was maybe hoping we could talk...”

It was rare for Sage to get away from Claret Park in the recent weeks that seem to have flown by more quickly than the last few years did. With everything seemingly perfect in the little bubble she had built with Vivienne, the thought of venturing too far away and popping it seemed to terrify her more than what would happen if they continued on the way they currently were. She wasn’t the best at dealing with underlying issues, so why bother to disturb them when they weren’t a problem? It seemed to be the same for her emotions about kicking Asher out. Don’t think about it? Don’t have to deal with it. Easy Peasy. Except, not dealing with it came with a whole slew of problems including the possibility of running into the other woman, a feat she had been able to avoid until she saw a flash of familiar blonde hair as she turned down a small aisle in the grocery store and by the time she tried to backtrack her way out of the situation it was already too late. She swallowed as her sister’s gaze fell on her and the silence that fell between them was deafening before she finally opened her mouth to speak. “I- um, hey,” Her quiet greeting seemed to echo over the walls surrounding them. “How have you been? It’s been... awhile since I’ve heard from you.”