Work Text:
“I raise the... raise the lips to my glass. No, raise the...” Sana’s narration faltered and her brow wrinkled as she struggled to get her alcohol-sodden brain cells to co-operate. Arkady snickered.
“I drink a glass,” Sana finally pronounced with satisfaction, and drained the rest of her moonshine. “Wow. Yep. That went down.”
Next to Arkady, Violet giggled. There was an adorable flush across her cheeks, and her balance definitely wasn’t up to its usual standard, as demonstrated by the way that she had almost faceplanted into Arkady’s lap earlier after coming back from using the bathroom. (Arkady would be lying if she said she hadn’t secretly been rooting for it to happen. Maybe not secretly enough, judging by the look that Sana had given her). But she’d also been taking it slower than the rest of them, and had finally cut herself off about an hour ago, confiding in Arkady that she wasn’t “enough of a badass to be able to make logical decisions if I keep drinking”, and that “I need to retain my faculties – just in case there’s an accident.”
“Liu,” Arkady had said, a laugh in her voice. “Did you just use the word ‘faculties’? I’d say there’s no need to worry.”
At least, Arkady thought that had been an hour ago. Time had been acting… strangely, sometimes rushing past, other times dragging endlessly (like during the third hour of Jeeter and Krejjh’s Dwarnian soap re-enactment, at which point she’d followed Violet's lead in taking a "tea break" and found her in the engine room).
“Hey… How long have we been doing this, anyway?” Arkady asked their general surroundings.
“’Bout nine… no, ten hours,” said Sana. “By my watch.”
“You mean the watch that you took off and threw at Jeeter’s head after he beat you in a tongue twister battle? The one now lying all the way over there?”
Sana nodded with conviction. “I can read it… with my mind.”
“It’s been about seven and a half hours,” Violet supplied quietly.
“Man, seven and a half hours,” Arkady repeated, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling above her. “How many times did we sing ‘Whiskey in the Jar’?”
“Twelve and counting.”
Sana and Arkady both laughed, Sana slipping halfway off her chair as she did so. Man, what a lightweight. Not like Arkady, who could just go on and on and on and on and on – just like the song they’d all sung together. Where was her soup bowl? She needed to refill it.
Arkady felt around with her foot, and knocked into something with a dull, quiet, ringing sound. Ah, there was the bottle. She spotted her soup bowl lying a little way away, and tried to reach out with one foot to pull it closer instead of bothering to get up out of her chair. Violet watched her with vague amusement.
“Aha. Victory,” Arkady mumbled, as she successfully slid the bowl in front of her chair leg, then bent down and picked it up. The curled-up heap in the middle of the room named Brian Jeeter gave a loud snore, and Krejjh, lying next to him, aimlessly petted his hair, still mumbling what they had claimed were advanced Vree-Chel-Noke grammar exercises, but which Arkady suspected was really just gibberish.
Arkady snagged the bottle and splashed more moonshine into her empty soup bowl. Oops, that was the rest of the bottle. Ah, well. She was the only one left who could really appreciate it anyway, since Sana was definitely too far gone, and Dwarnians processed alcohol in slightly weird ways, which ruled Krejjh out.
“Cheers,” she told Violet, and downed the moonshine.
Wow, okay, that one hit the spot really fast. The room started to get kind of fuzzy, and when Arkady looked over at Violet, Violet was looking kind of fuzzy as well. Heh. “Current status: very fuzzy,” Arkady mumbled, and grinned.
“Okay, I think you’ve finally had enough of that,” she heard Violet say, and in the next moment, there was a soft brush of fingers against her hand as Violet reached over and pulled the bottle away from her. It felt really nice. Arkady had just barely – barely – retained enough of her inhibitions to keep her from saying, “Do that again.”
Instead she pretended to flail and grab for the bottle as Violet easily held it out of reach, knowing it would make her smile. “How dare you… unarm me,” she said, pointing threateningly at Violet.
“I think you mean ‘disarm’,” Violet corrected her, giving her that little smile that Arkady was so weak for.
“I said what I said,” Arkady told her. Then she frowned. No, that came out wrong. “I meant what I meant. I mean…”
“You said what you meant. Okay, I believe you. I’m still taking this away,” Violet replied, setting the bottle down on the other side of her chair.
“S’empty anyway,” said Arkady.
She looked at Violet, sitting there in the blouse and knee-length skirt that she’d changed into not long after the temperature started to climb, the sleeves rolled up to her triceps. Arkady couldn’t stop staring at Violet’s bare arms, which she decided were the loveliest things she had ever seen. Well, besides the rest of her.
Violet noticed Arkady staring and smiled uncertainly, wrinkling her nose a little in that way that Arkady was also really weak for. “What?”
“I need to tell you something,” Arkady heard herself say. Wait, no! Damn it, where’d my brain-to-mouth filter go? Oh yeah, probably the exact same place as the rest of that bottle of moonshine. Arkady would have slapped a hand over her mouth if her arms weren’t so damn heavy.
“You do?” asked Violet, giving her that little quizzical smile again.
“I do,” Arkady confirmed. There was a pause as she groped around for the least incriminating thing she could think of. Bits and pieces of the conversation they’d had with the other Violet (Violet Beta, as Arkady liked to think of her) and Thasia kept flickering through her mind. And that memory that Violet Beta had recounted – coming across Violet Alpha in the study lounge, crying. The image it conjured had stuck with Arkady.
“What… is it?” Violet prompted her, after the silence had dragged on several seconds too long to be comfortable.
“You shouldn’t have to swim with sharks,” Arkady blurted out. Violet frowned in confusion, her nose crinkling again.
“What?”
“Sharks… you…” Arkady did her best to wrestle her mouth under control. “What Violet B- the other Violet said. I wish that you didn’t have to deal with… sharks like them. You’re more than… a bucket of chum.”
A slow smile spread across Violet’s face as she realised what Arkady was referring to. “That was a long time ago,” she pointed out. “I’m not the weepy freshman I once was.”
“Nope,” Arkady agreed. “You’re a badass.”
Violet laughed a little at that. “I still wouldn’t quite go that far.”
They were both quiet for a while, during which time Arkady just… looked at Violet some more. She was less fuzzy now, and Arkady realised it was because she’d leaned closer in order to hear her better. It gave her a very nice view of Violet’s brown eyes, the fall of dark hair over one eyebrow. The ever-so-slight dusting of freckles across her cheeks, standing out more than usual against the pink flush of her skin.
“You shouldn’t ever have to be afraid,” she murmured, the moonshine making her too honest again.
One side of Violet’s mouth quirked up. “I have an anxiety disorder,” she reminded Arkady. “Fear is… kind of a constant.”
I’d always protect you, she wanted to say, but for once her brain-to-mouth filter held. As if she’d heard her anyway, Violet shook her head.
“No, it’s okay, really. I don’t let it rule my life anymore. Yes, as a biologist and an Asian, bisexual woman, I’m hyper-aware of the thin line between life and death. Like I said, I know what one wrong move could cost me. But I made up my mind a long time ago not to let it hold me back.”
Arkady smiled at her. “Don’t fear for me, fear for the storm,” she said quietly.
“Exactly,” Violet said, and her answering smile was almost blinding.
They were closer together than they’d ever been before, closer even than they’d been in the kitchen while brewing the mint tea. Normally, this was the point where Arkady would have been overwhelmed with the urge to kiss Violet, or touch her, or something, but – something about this moment felt absolutely perfect. Nothing more was needed from it, and nothing less.
Then Violet reached out, and gently tangled her fingers with Arkady’s, and it was even more perfect.
They could all be dead in a few weeks; they could all be dead tomorrow. It didn’t matter anymore, Arkady decided, because at least she’d gotten to have this.
She wasn’t afraid.