Work Text:
Being with her is being in a movie.
Brandy’s been in lots of movies. Brandy’s taken on a lot of roles. She knows the drill. She’s an actress. She’s used to being called by other names, taking on other personalities, trying to find the truth and humanity in the words on a flat page—trying to make the lines sound like they each one just occurred to her naturally.
She lies back on the bed. White sheets, stark in the technicolor real world, blend perfectly here. It’s odd, seeing her surroundings all in literal shades of grey.
She is stuck here. She isn’t sure she doesn’t want to be stuck here. If she wants to stay, can she really call it being stuck at all?
Clara leans over her, leans into her. Her lips are soft on Brandy’s cheek, a brush from a butterfly’s wing, the tangible equivalent of a whisper.
Clara. The character—Clara. But she’s also the actress Dorothy Chambers, because she looks like the actress, because she’s been designed to replicate Dorothy Chambers’ performance as Clara exactly.
Brandy reaches out. She cups Clara’s face in her hand—Dorothy’s face. Dorothy’s replicated face, preserved, pliant, warm, supple. Brandy brushes her thumb along Clara’s lower lip and smiles as Clara smiles.
They kiss.
Brandy’s eyes squeeze shut, and there in the dark, there is no confusion in it. It is all yearning and adoration and affection, and their lips move together, pressing, urging, mirroring.
Clara sighs into Brandy’s mouth.
Brandy lets her hand wander down the side of Clara’s neck and trail down her arm. She feels victorious, lightheaded, as Clara shudders. She takes hold of Clara’s arm and tugs her on top of her.
“Open your eyes,” Clara says, with such certainty that Brandy instantly obeys.
Clara looks so beautiful in all her shades of gray, in the old movie’s soft focus. Clara smiles as she meets Brandy’s gaze, then raises her eyebrows significantly and playfully descends upon Brandy’s throat.
Brandy fights the impulse to close her eyes again, as the sweet torment of Clara’s slow, wet kisses makes her want to shut out everything but the headiness of the sensation.
Brandy reaches up to stroke Clara’s hair.
Her heart, beating fast, has never felt so full.
“I love you,” she murmurs beneath her breath, a confession, a stage whisper.
They are both actresses. They are both characters confined to a movie.
Yet in the black and white, and the soft focus of an ancient camera, they are off-script. And the connection they are improvising feels real.