"Even your favorite rabbit?" Ellie mused, linking her arm in his. They could keep each other afloat in so much noise and movement.
It was funny how easily this could have been another party, another time. Just like before. Sing Sing was a place for forgetting. The longer she spent between trips outside, the more it began to feel that it'd always been this way -- as if her life had always been here, surrounded by walls of stone, pits of spikes. She had a library, a laboratory. No more New York, but...
Miah was here, quirking his eyebrow in that familiar way. Then they were at the table. He was saying things, still -- responding to the nonsense from between her lips -- and Ellie nodded along, doing her best to follow.
"Oh?" She questioned casually, pouring out shots of golden rum. So lovely. Miah's slip hadn't gone unnoticed -- rather it was accepted for what it was, because it wasn't as though they hadn't used the word before. Love. "Love, love, love," she sang, in Beatles fashion. "Love, love, love..."
And then she grinned, offering Miah's cup back to him. It seemed to have come from nowhere. Did I pour these? Yes. A moment ago.
"Oh my," she mock-chided, laughing. "Miah."
The history of their relationship had always been a funny thing -- a canon they laughed at, referred to in passing. Ellie wasn't ashamed of it, and she wasn't sure she'd ever thought much of it at all. Like so many of the things she'd done when younger and brasher and more unstable, it was a fact, unchangeable and beyond judgement. Now, though, she looked at Miah carefully before raising her glass to him. "Allez! Shot for shot."