Work Text:
The way they move around each other is a delicate push and pull. Jay is a ribbon, unwound and spilt across the floor, tumbling and soft. Lizzie is the fingers pulling her apart.
Gods, that’s so pathetic. Gods, there’s something wrong with her. The heat beneath her cheeks refuses to subside and her skittering heartbeat will not still.
She can’t remember the last time she felt anything like this.
Maybe when she was five and her friend braided her hair on the playground and time froze the air around them. Or when she was nine and went melty whenever the boy who lived in the house beside hers met her eyes through his window. Or when she was sixteen and a girl in her grade at the naval academy absently grabbed her hand to drag her down the hall and Jay felt like her whole body was on fire.
But no, none of that was like this, it wasn’t as helpless or as heavy. Before she could still breathe, now Jay feels like she could drown in it, whatever it is.
“You alright, Sunshine?” Lizzie asks, eyes sliding up to hers with a quirked brow. And Jay doesn’t know, really, how she ended up like this, but she’s draped in expensive fabric, and smeared with blush and shimmer, dazedly socializing at some ball or some something to scout out a heist or a job or a whatever. Not that Jay was listening, clearly, not that Jay is ever listening when Lizzie’s around, reduced to butterflies and trembling fingers.
She swallows, keeping her gaze pointedly straight. “Fine.” The word comes out tight.
Love is something Jay doesn’t really understand. If that’s even what this is. It’s always been too loose for her to grasp, too conceptual, sliding away between the gaps of her fingers. She had more important things to worry about before, she wasn’t going to dedicate her time to something so shapeless and bleeding.
But now her life is better, she doesn’t have to worry so much. And that’s mostly good, because she’s alive and living and not hunkering down in anyone’s shadow, or squirming beneath anyone’s thumb. What isn’t so good, though, is that she has enough time to think about things she used to be able to conveniently ignore. Love, for example, in all its incomprehensible formlessness, wavering in front of her, and possibly not even being there at all.
She hates this, actually, the swirling in her gut. Maybe she needs to apologize to Chip for all the times she teased him for his lack of game because all her existence currently consists of is ruddy cheeks and embarrassing herself.
“Whatever you say,” says Lizzie, snapping Jay back down to earth, hands fidgeting at her sides.
(The candlelight peeking through the crystals of the chandeliers drowns the two of them in fractured gold, and Jay thinks the color makes the brown of Lizzie’s eyes look awfully pretty, with her gown and her hair pinned up. She also thinks that she is irrevocably fucked).
Jay can’t muster up a response, so she helplessly does a gesture halfway between a shrug and a nod. Lizzie smiles at that, crooked and alluring. Jay thinks she’s gonna die in this stupid ballroom.
The room is flush with lively chatter, patrons in far fancier dresses than hers, all drinking champagne from glasses that cost more than their ship and laughing to hard at jokes that aren’t quite funny. It feels familiar, in a way that makes the edges of her fuzzy. Makes her think of every event like this she’s been to. And then she hears the telltale hum of a violin, and the past pulls her further in, an orchestra strumming up something soft and slow as the guest shuffle into pairs. She feels sweaty, and her hands itch for the skin of an arrow.
Lizzie glances up as the music starts. shoots Jay a sloping grin.
“May I have this dance?” She says, extending her hand exaggeratedly, like she’s making fun of it all. (There’s a gentle edge to it though, that Jay is certain she’s inventing).
Her breath catches in her chest. Her eyes sweep the sprawling ballroom only to find Chip and Gil unceremoniously swinging each other around in the distance. She chews at her lip. Fuck it.
“Yeah,” she says, steeling herself and taking Lizzie’s hand in her own, quick enough to make sure she won’t second guess it. “Sure. You may.”
Lizzie laughs lightly, and Jay bets she could get drunk off the sound, then she slides a hand carefully around her waist.
“Do you know how to do this?” Jay asks as they start to step in time, trying to focus her energy on talking and dancing, rather than the feeling of Lizzie pressed so close, or their palms against each other.
“No,” Lizzie says, scanning the room over Jay’s shoulder. The candlelight behind them halos her like an angel. Jay’s mouth feels like it’s full of sand. The violin sings. They step. “Do you?” She cocks her head to the side, and a piece of hair falls out of place onto her forehead.
“I had to take ballroom dancing at the naval academy,” Jay shrugs dismissively, feeling her face get warm. She scowls in a clumsy attempt to play it off, Lizzie’s waist warm beneath her fingers, hand on her shoulder. “I’ve danced with a lot of entitled navy assholes.”
“Oh,” Lizzie huffs, gaze catching Jay’s. “Well, I suppose it’s my turn on that part.”
Jay chokes on a scoff, “very funny,” she rolls her eyes. “You should be a comedian.”
Behind them, the song swells, a cacophony of strings and keys in harmonic unison. Skirts fan out around them, like they’re stepping through a garden of fireworks, of quickly blooming flowers.
“Maybe I am,” Lizzie argues, tugging gently on Jay’s hand and sending her twirling out. Jay is quick to keep up her footing, not to stumble and ruin this. When Lizzie pulls her back in, they’re nearly chest to chest, and Jay isn’t leading anymore.
“You’re getting good at this,” she murmurs, heart hot, Lizzie’s hand against her waist.
“Quick learner,” Lizzie smirks. Jay feels the helplessness gnawing at her, but just as she’s about to do something (anything really, to quell the ache. She feels as if she’s going mad) Lizzie is nodding, not to her, but to someone across the hall.
“Looks like duty calls,” she says, and Jay could swear there’s a bit of disappointment lurking in her voice. Her gaze is pointed somewhere off in the distance, as their hands and arms are tangled.
“Don’t let me stop you, captain,” Jay says breathlessly, far more confident than she feels.
“That little faith, Ferin?” Lizzie looks back to Jay, eyes tracing her face. “C’mon, believe in me a bit.”
Jay stutters. “Do your job.”
“I will,” Lizzie says, and before Jay can think to bite back, there’s a hand cupping her jaw, and Lizzie kisses her cheek. “See you in a minute,” she mutters, breath feathery against Jay’s skin.
Then she’s melting into the crowd and Jay is swallowed by cold, eyes blown wide, face painted ruddy, and thinking far too hard about love.
Chip sidles up to her, silent in his approach. He taps her on the shoulder, and she isn’t even aware enough to jump, just grazing her cheek with the tips of her fingers and trying to figure out if any of that was real.
“That was pathetic.” Chip whispers, grinning like a victor, draped in imaginary laurels.
Jay feels her cheeks get impossibly redder.
“Fuck you,” she spits, hushed, trying to catch her breath, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”
She smacks Chip as he laughs to himself, because he’s a bastard and he deserves it. But then she finds herself staring over the crowd, thinking of Lizzie, dancing and clutching at hands, pretty as the art on the walls.
She twists a ring on her finger, patting at the gun strapped to her thigh like reassurance. She sighs roughly, burying her face in her palms.
Love. Goddammit.