Work Text:
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I didn’t care to state the plain,
Kept my mouth closed
We’re both so familiar
-
It was beautiful in every tangible sense and more, an act of faith so monolithic in its profanity. Good intentions are destructive at their best, and it was only ever an idea. But it was still beautiful.
Open Metal, as idealistic as herself, something Tender Sky loved as much as she couldn’t stand when they clashed. Sometimes it was petty; the colour of the bedsheets, what to have for dinner. But this:
A tangling of machinic brains, the two of them entwined into something new and sacred, within and outside of each other as a single entity. Divine. Together.
After, when she awoke, she felt when she shouldn’t have, a secret anointing and a new promise. At her opposite, Open Metal, something ripped away with the cursed knowledge of what it was like to weave nothing from her fingertips.
In turn, Tender wove a new bed of unworthiness and slept alone.
-
I care for you still and I will forever,
That was my part of the deal, honest
-
“Why?”
Tender didn’t need to ask which why Open spoke of. The only why left answered, pain clinging to it like sinew on bone. Unanswered wasn’t quite accurate; Tender had given her reasons. They had their exchanges. It was that Open hoped the why would be different from the last, a hole in the argument she could dig her fingers into like a wound. That another way of explaining it would make it easier to be angry.
“We’re not doing this.” Tender squeezed a dash of lime into each of their glasses.
Open sat silent as she watched Tender pick a fresh sprig of mint, slice a piece of ginger and place it into a glass filled with ice. A process. The joy of taking time. The gin was measured and the tonic poured, glasses placed on the bar between them. Tender did not move.
Open closed her fingers around her drink.
“What do you want?”
Tender sipped on her drink. How could anyone know the answer to that? Everything was so different now, and the type of different changed by the hour. Unpredictability was always so fun for tender, all the excitement it brought. Things never had to be stagnant, as ever evolving as her whims. What the Mirage was now was something else entirely and it wasn’t fun. This was supposed to be a miracle.
But. She was the one who named the bar the Steady, after all.
“Just, something,” Tender said at last. “Something tangible. Something that looks like something .”
A hollow chuckle from Open, a glint of something in her eye when she peered behind the glass. “Saving Wind's Poem isn’t gonna do anything. Actually, no, it didn’t do anything.”
“Tell that to her.”
“Tell that to everyone else.”
In the heat of the moment, Tender almost forgot about the calamity outside. It should’ve been her queue to end this, to jump to action like she was supposed to. Yet, here, in the Steady, even if it was selfish of her, whatever existed outside of it existed outside of it. A problem for tomorrow. She rolled her eyes, tail flicking to the side.
“You were always so...like this.”
A shrug. “At least I know what I want.”
“I want things!” Tender huffed.
“Like?”
“To not do this,” Tender sighed. “Please. Not here.”
Eyes shifting, Open took in the view of here, eyes drifting to every significant detail remembered and conjured from what seemed an eternity ago. When the orbit was still resonant, when Quire was a single planet. When the Steady was just a bar instead of nostalgic feeling. That she built the Steady in a moment of emotion was so obvious, so on the nose that Tender could’ve laughed. For all of its changes it stayed the same.
“So, what? We’re just gonna have some drinks and forget about it?” Open’s nostrils flared. “Fuck it out like we always did?”
Tender couldn’t even be angry at that. “I mean...does that sound so bad right now?”
That was not the reaction Open was expecting. A rarity for them. Any remaining energy drained from Open as she thought about it, an admission that perhaps, for once, this didn’t have to be a thing. It could just be this. Like it was before.
Shoulders sinking, Open sighed and shook her head, biting her lip to stop what she should have said. What she wanted was stronger than words. An upturned palm that Tender slowly took. An old touch bitter in its familiarity. As long as a year ago.
Tender traced her thumb over the lifelines of Open’s palm, Open lost in the slow-small movements of the touch. Her face softened, the purple and pink of Steady light soaking into her skin. The glow was more saturated than the real thing, Tender noticed, but she liked it better that way. How it painted Open’s face in sunset hues.
“You can just make this,” Open said hoarsely. “You can just...feel something. And this happens.”
“Open…”
Tender gently pressed her thumb into Open’s palm. Since the day it happened, Tender held the inexplicable preservation of her abilities as some sort of message, a gift, as divinely ordained she was willing to believe. The thought of losing something so precious and freeing was horrifying. There was no coming back. Not after that. It felt like she stole Open’s luck, ruined something that could never be again.
“I’m sorry.”
Open exhaled a small laugh. “It’s not your fault--it’s not a fault. But...it’s hard, you know?”
Tenders ears fell flat. “To have something so beautiful. And then…”
“I don’t care anymore,” Open said, pursing her lips and closing her hand around Tender’s. “I think it’s still beautiful. It’s beautiful you have it still.” She brought their entwined hands to her lips. “I just miss it.”
There was more to it and to It. The leaden-loaded force of vulnerable inference. Tender couldn’t answer.
“Sometimes I wish you said yes.”
A twinge of betrayal in Tender’s chest. The slightest sliver of longing for a reality where they were something unprecedented.
“Yeah,” Tender said. “Yeah.”
-
Mind over matter is magic
I do magic
If you think about it, it'll be over in no time
And that's life
-
“I guess it worked out in the end.”
Apropos of nothing. It never mattered what conversational track they were on; they could intuit implicitly, brains connected intimately.
Ironically.
“Not everything.” Our voices combined, filled with great ⸢tenderness⸣, as we sang for their good fortune grumbled, not realizing she said the words aloud. Behind her eyes in the crevices of her brain, she could feel Anticipation as a question mark, whirring and frantic in her speed, loud in her vastness and rumination.
Sifting through the information was a fruitless task even for ⸢Tenderness⸣. It was sand slipping through her fingers, vaguely aware of each grain in so far as it was part of the whole. If she tried hard enough, cut her focus diamond sharp, ⸢Tenderness⸣could make out the slightest form of infinite thought, questions so abstract that understanding was pointless. If she had said yes so many years ago, would she--would they--have been capable of such vastness? What did it mean to be as unending as an unanswerable question?
“Tender.”
She felt her eyes snapping back into focus, thoughts batted away like flies. “Hey. Sorry. I-”
“Was distracted?” Open said, a hint of disappointment.
“It’s--she--is a lot,” ⸢Tenderness⸣ said, trying to keep her focus centered on open. Catching her straying thoughts before they flew away. Blue yarn weaving into new consideration.
Out of respect for everything that was them, Open brought her hand to ⸢Tenderness⸣’ chest, trying to ground her to the present. Laying on their sides in the bed they made, sheets light and warm in the now unaccustomed cold of space.
“I should be mad. After all of that...she’s just with you. In your head.” Open lowered her hand, over ⸢Tenderness⸣’ stomach and resting on her hip. “And you’re barely here.”
⸢Tenderness⸣ could feel the hitch in Open’s ribs, a jealousy dulled by time and circumstance. They both knew what it looked like. It was so frustratingly amusing that they couldn’t bring themselves to confront the irony. There wasn’t a point anymore.
Like Open said; it worked out in the end. And to unearth skeletons was to admit it was anything more than that.
“I’m here,” ⸢Tenderness⸣ said more for herself than Open, feeling herself pull back from drifting she didn’t notice. Here was what mattered for the small moment it was. ⸢Tenderness⸣ mirrored Open Metal, hand on her hip, fingertips tracing a portrait across her thigh.
“I know it’s good you didn’t say yes.”
“But?”
“I see how you’re different now. And how she takes so much of you.”
“But…?”
“But I keep thinking about it. We-” Open caught herself. “I see how beautiful it is. And it could’ve been beautiful too.”
“We would’ve been beautiful.” ⸢Tenderness⸣ picked up Open’s discarded treacherous thought. “We were something beautiful together.”
Open smiled like shedding skin. “There. That. That’s it.”
“What?”
Open’s smile widened. “I just wanted to hear you say that.”
“Open…” ⸢Tenderness⸣ wove her fingers through Open’s hair, lined the edges of her jaw. “You know that-- you know.”
“You still can’t say it.”
“I’ll always care about you,” ⸢Tenderness⸣ said too late. But as the saying went. “About what we were.”
Another hitch in Open’s lungs. She brought her head into ⸢Tenderness⸣’ neck, kissing cord and veins and bone. “And now?”
⸢Tenderness⸣ shuddered. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
Open Metal’s laugh shook away a thought ⸢Tenderness⸣ quickly forgot. “Yeah.”
They sank into one another.
“Yeah.”