Work Text:
She slips her fingers in between Elster’s titanium digits, her gaze flicking down to their feet. Something trembling and high-pitched croons on the record player. “Yeah,” she says, her mind trying to focus on the song’s rhythm. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” Her partner’s head tilts in that investigative way.
“Yeah,” she responds, with a bit more oomph this time.
“Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah,” Elster calls out, a little smile smattered across her face, and an unbidden sense of amusement wells up inside her.
“Yeah yourself,” she mumbles, grinning from ear to ear. Elster’s voice is light, her frame shifting slightly as she laughs. Her metal fingers squeeze her own; tight and tender.
The tune shifts. She exclaims in excitement. “Okay! Okay, it’s coming up.” She raises their hands from between the two of them, where they had stood listening to the song, just rocking and minding the melody of the alto - and now here comes the moment. “So I’ll lead this time round. Just to give you a sense for it.”
“Alright, Ari. I’ll follow.” Elster smiles in that delighted way she’s seen crop up here and there; a steadily growing thing that pushes through her reserved expression, the shutters coming up to show off Elster’s realest self, the woman that is her foundation, a pillar of complete support. “Go ahead.”
“Yes! Yes, um,” and she sticks her tongue out, racking her brain. “Alright. So, if I’m leading, I’ll want to move forward. And you’ll need to move back in time with the opposite foot. So we go - left foot up,” and she steps forward from neutral. Elster’s own leg takes one step back.
“Just like that. Perfect. Okay. Now-” and her left leg sticks out to the side, the music swelling behind her. Elster lags slightly behind, her arms trailing out after her partner as Ariane completes the move, bringing her feet together in a neat pose. Elster’s face is neutral, schooled; focused to a sharp point.
A flash of audacity flares through her. “Slowpoke,” she teases, tongue pressing behind her teeth, and she steps back. Elster rises to the challenge; she pushes forward, the tempo of their steps in sync to arrive just precisely where needed, just right in front of her. Elster is so close that her arms are dangling loosely, her hands held high in Elster’s tender grip. She has to jut her chin up to avoid knocking it against the metal of her partner’s chest, and she looks straight into her partner’s eyes.
Elster smiles. She goes bright red. “Erm,” she says, very romantically.
“Erm?”There’s a twinkle in Elster’s eyes. Something she recognises as amusement; as love, love, love. “Don’t think I know that dance move. Speaking of-”
“Yep! One, two, and-” she pivots. Elster spins a little too hard, dragging the pair of them slightly off balance. She recorrects by going with the flow, putting them out of step but still in time with the music. The violin’s swell is sudden, sharp. It inspires decisive, swift action. She seizes Elster’s hand tight, directs her arm forward, and promptly stumbles over Elster’s thigh.
Elster catches her in the crook of an arm. Tilted back, she freezes for a few seconds, the music rising in the background, the dance forgotten as she takes in the way her arm trails upward in Elster’s grip, how she leans into her, the tenderness of that expression. The tenor’s croon breaks something in the air. She moves to stand up, to reset the record and go again, properly this time, without any clumsiness on her part.
“You alright?”
“I…no. I’m sorry, Elster, I fucked it up.” She looks down at her chest.
Elster runs a thumb over her jaw, and the sensation of that short-circuits all thoughts straight out of her skull. “It’s alright, Ari,” she says. When she looks back up, Elster is smiling in that sort of ‘you’re cute when you’re embarrassed and awkward’ kind of way. “We can go again. Whenever you like.” She tilts her head. “I’ll follow your lead.”
And Ariane leads. She untangles her hands from Elster’s own, grasps her cheeks, and brings her lips up towards hers. Elster dips down halfway. They stand like that, the music warbling distantly. There is the touch of her; the press and pull, the give. She throws frustration into the wind.
Elster stays bent double when she eventually breaks away. “Feeling up for another go?”
She nods, enthusiastically, and rises up again.