Work Text:
I’m never going back to dot em-pee-three.
There was something about vinyl that was simply more appealing. Glancing over at the borrowed turntable and speakers, I did my best to get my heart out of my throat. Looking up at the speakers had been my one and only plan for distraction. Think of something else then, Peri. In the grip of the ‘big band jazz’, though, it was a graphene(1) task to focus on anything else. Big band jazz was Steven’s name for the supple flow of notes swirling around me. When I had tried to explain why his analog media sounded better than any digital file ever could, his eyes had rolled into his head until I had given up and accepted his proffered audio equipment. My eyes drifted down to the paint cans attached to my feet and I found my heart right back in my throat. He–Steven, he was too generous to me sometimes. Gratitude rolled through my gut, still a little foreign feeling.
That’s not the only new feeling, my girl.
“Hey. Eyes up.”
It was a gentle reminder. Lapis had my hands in hers. We were dancing. Or we had been, until I had drawn us to a halt at the end of the last song. Her hands were a hot spring, seeming to engulf my own in their warmth.
“We talked about it, remember. When you dance,-”
“You keep your head up and your body loose.” I finished for her. I straightened and gripped her hands a little more firmly. She squeezed them in return, a shadow leaving her face just as I brought my eyes up fully to meet hers. Heat licked at my cheeks. I had remembered why my eyes had drifted over the barn and the urge to swallow, to look anywhere else, came again. We were dancing by the starlight that filtered into the barn and a few strings of blue LEDs strung in a web across the ceiling of the barn. In that light, her normally dark eyes had become hooded, inscrutable. Something shifted in her face at that moment, the light falling across it more evenly, and I was held by a glimpse of azure that was gone all too soon. My heart felt like it was trying to break out of my chest. I was having a hard time telling whether I thought that was an improvement over being unable to breathe. I knew I wanted to catch another glimpse of her eyes, though.
My feet twitched, ready to move.
“Come on, you.” I took the lead, starting us into an upbeat jive as a new song came on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu_KQpSb0js (Starts here, highly recommend listening to the song before continuing)
Scatted out lines of noises flowed around us, more humming than actually singing. Dimples spread across her cheeks. Naturally, silky-smooth in its motion, my hand drifted down to her waist. As if in concert, her fingers trailed up my arm. As she rested one of those dangerously warm hands on my shoulder, a shiver shot through my body. Every step, every beat, came with its own personal addition. Stomp-stomp of my cans, lighter slap-slap of her bare feet. Lapis hummed along to the music. I watched her, my eyes drifting from her throat (I want to bite you) to her hair (I want to run my fingers through you). Her shoulders, her arms, her legs, her entire being seemed to flow with me, flow with us, with the music in one choreographed motion after another.
And I could keep up.
She sang. That was enough to snap my eyes up, to square my shoulders. I had caught my glimpse. Those azure eyes were watching me now. A simple smile came from a gem who was anything but. As the first few lines drifted by in a cloud, my thoughts were drawn back to those first few weeks in the barn.
She certainly had done things to me back to then. A return of favors owed, in all fairness. I smirked, and watched her smile grow more impish around the words to the song. It was a new world though. And we had learned its motions together.
“Bei mir bistu shein (2).” Lapis’ voice only seemed to enhance the words, lilting along with the recorded voice. Though the song kept going, kept up the same beat, I took us down a notch, slowed the pace. Lapis seemed amenable, moving in closer. Her hip against mine, we turned slowly in a circle.
Rock-step, 123 forward, 123 back, rock-step (3).
“Please let me explain ‘Bei mir bistu shein’ means that you’re grand.”
Something happened then. A bit of distance grew between us, as we each backed up. It was just a hair, though, just enough to be able to see the other without losing touch. Bangs covered her eyes as she broke her own rule, breaking eye contact to look down for a moment. Something was growing between us. I could feel it inside of me, squirming around in my gut and leaving me tingling all over. I could hardly breathe.
“Bei mir bistu shein.” Lapis’ head came up. “Again I’ll explain. It means you’re the fairest in the land.”
With the blue light of the moon falling across her, she looked like something out of a dream. Something that I had not remembered until it clicked into place. Someone who I could see as the most appealing thing in my life. She stepped in closer and felt like home in my arms.
Lapis leaned her head into the crook of my neck. I could feel her breathe, burning against my skin. Each breath rocketed fire through me, leaving a cold harsher than space in its wake. I wanted more. In and out, in time with her breaths, we turned. It was less of a dance now, more of a slow rocking in a circle, her arms around my shoulders and mine hugging her waist, pulling her against me.
“Bei mir bistu shein” It took me a moment to realize that the words were hers. They were so low, so quiet. So like her sometimes.
Then I was up, out of my cans. I could feel her cordy muscles, the perfectly controlled and harnessed strength as she settled me back on the floor on my own two feet.
One step back.
“Again I’ll explain.”
Two steps back. We were together, locked onto each other. Something like fire roared in her eyes as she took the lead. One, two and a deep dip, somehow in time with the music again, brought her bending over me. Dead serious, she finished the line.
“It means you’re the fairest in the land.” When she spoke the words, something in me broke. That tingling rushed over me again, the warmth of it burning away every memory of cold, of every lonely night. The knowledge of where, of who home was with, poured through me to replace them.
Stoic, her eyes searched my face.
I broke first, smiling.
And she smiled back.
Then we were laughing, dancing an arc back across the barn floor, dipping and twirling and swinging the love of my life around me. Around us. I could feel the conversation coming, could feel the sheer depth of our love and I sunk into it. Light shone out around us.
I blinked, snorting into the air. I laughed, sending out a rolling chuckle. There was so little space around us, around me. I just needed to move, to dance, to fly. I can fly.
I can fly.
That thought came as I was crossing the threshold of the barn, and I paused, for just a moment. I can fly, even if one of me cannot. I had had to duck to get out of the barn door. Glancing down, four arms greeted me, with skin the smooth turquoise of a green sea.
“Come on, let’s see what I can do.”
We hummed out a little scat, a little bit of something new, of something and someone that I wanted to get to know. And then we were off.
Bei mir bistu shein