[ Ready, with pin digits attached, looks like waiting for him a strip of black-pebbled beach, warmed by a day's sunshine. The light penetrates only the surface — beneath the windless ripples of lake water (dappled all in blues: Prussian, midnight, patches of turquoise where shallow) there is a bracing cold, waiting to put curious hands on swimmers caught unawares. But Roza knows this land, this water, this tender late-afternoon sky. Soon dark will spread broad wings over the horizon and blot out their closest star, leaving room only for the ones that watch from a distance.
Soon it will be nighttime, which is when the land starts to really get interesting. She hopes he gets to see that, too.
But for now there is only this: the long shape of Roza, brown skin contrasting against white underwear (she did not bring a swimsuit), stood like an imitation of an Olympic diver at the peak of one long dock, protruding out over the deepest part of the lake. She is barefoot and grinning, teeth showing. Her body moves back and forth from left to right, ballerina feet prepared for motion. Her blue Jeep is poorly parked between two spaces, tailgate slung open, where a bed of towels sit waiting.
When she sees him, she's going to scream and then jump. Or jump and then scream, depending on how cold that lake really is. ]
[the car's engine rumbles through the silence, breaks peace before he cuts it early– another poor parking job in the lot. there are two different energies here, one of playful wildness and the other a blanketing threat. the people who know his car don't want to the thing he shines his headlights on.
but it's quiet when he steps out and scans for the shape of roza, the one who does want to be in his headlights. it takes him a few moments, seconds used to stutter out a laugh when she screeches, voice ringing in his ears even after she's submerged. his clothes are stripped - haphazard and uncaring down to his briefs – and he runs once he's thrown them aside, heavy footfalls in sand and then barreling onto the dock. he's much less graceful, a burst of unruly energy catapulting overboard, a stumble compared to her ballerina-nimble poise.
he goes deep, carried by the weight of impact, and when he breaches the surface and he can howl like he's never been in the unforgiving cold only water can bring before (he has, he's being dramatic) he looks for her, muscles in his face stuck on a grin from adrenaline.]
[ A time or two she has contemplated what it is about him that unlocks this wildness in her, even by her own standards; she's always performing, playing, cajoling, and it redoubles under the headlights, as though they were really spotlights on her stage. But maybe it's because Elias knows better than almost anybody (and he is the only witness to this time in her life that wasn't a cruelty during it) what it's like when all of that has been drained from her, when Roza was just a listless slip of a thing, waiting to die.
But that was years ago. Look at them now. Do they live well? Maybe not. But they live. With fingers digging into life, leaving bruises in sprays of yellow-purple proof that they existed outside their holding cells and medical documentation. To the contrary: here it's self-administered chemicals and loud music and laughter that rises up toward an empty heaven.
Under that water or above it, her body is a trained thing, muscles compact, fine-tuning a body that wants to give in to its own natural curves. Magic exacerbates her grace, allowing her deft little twists against the mild current, circling him in the water, like a smiling freshwater shark, buoyed by his yell. Her legs kick in circles, black hair slicked and dripping a rainfall against her shoulders and clavicle. Her attention zeroes in on Elias in preparation for a bolting away, back under the water. ]
I think so, too. 'Cause who else could do this — [ just one itsy-bitsy little splash, because she's a menace, but she's curious, too, where he's going with this, ] — and get away with it?
[being seen by roza is being narrowed in on with a giant magnifying glass. he couldn't avoid it then – when he'd wanted to – and he doesn't want to avoid it in the dark waters they share. she's a profound being, a creature with outside access. he doesn't have the words for how roza is, only the comfort his body feels. when she first came to him, he barely looked her in the eye, always her waist, or her shoulders, where the water trails down from her neck, and sometimes he defaults there in the curves of her body, before he reminds himself he's supposed to be looking and acknowledging her.
she forced him to look when the floor had always been the better option.
he can smile here, away from the gritty underworld he surrounds himself with. no mask, no distance he reserves for everyone else. when he shakes his head, droplets scatter from his hair into the lake.]
What–
[a speck of innocence between them for a split second before he returns the splash with a larger one. he's clumsy in the water, hardly the person to be sneaky with. he'd been so withdrawn before, sometimes it's as if he's making up for the sounds he never let himself make.]
I'm gonna get you back–
[the rest is swallowed by water (and gulped down accidentally) as he disappears beneath the surface, and maybe he is like the orca she assigned him when he bumps into her, hands grasping her ankles and climbing up and up and up to her waist to pull her under.]
[ These uninhibited windows into one another also serve as mirrors: feeling reflects into the opposite half, magnifying, building. Sunrays collecting energy. They bounce between bodies. Her heart thuds a merry rhythm inside her chest. Roza would swear that Elias could hear it. Elias and all the fish, and all the trees, and all the seabirds skimming the wide open skies ahead, all listening to the drum of her, beating in time with the universe.
She does remember when he was shy, during the SLC. She remembers when she was shy, too, after the SLC. Both states of being seem so many miles away, now. As though they had always been young but not that young, and they would never get any older. ]
What are you gonna do — whoa!
[ That aborted question is summarily answered, playful indignation the last thing that the shoreline sees before she is subsequently dunked. Her arms fling up under the waterline, hands creating a secondary splash zone that afflicts no one in particular, as they are totally alone.
Roza from thereon has two options. One, engage him in quote unquote combat. This is mostly a lot of twisting and tugging and squirming around, tactile and tough to hold as a cat resisting a bath. She tries that one first, a river of bubbles streaming from her mouth as her laughter is suppressed by the surge of water; she has to remind herself to clamp down. The second technique, and the one she tries next, involves locking onto him like a spider-monkey; in a sequence of very dramatic events occurring under the surface, she twists in, to face him, those long strong legs hitching around Elias's body. If she's going down, he's going with her. ]
[she exhales laughter and he chokes out bubbles with her, and they dance in their scrambling, underwater-slow way. for every bit of resistance she gives, he finds purchase somewhere, anywhere– a flying wrist or poking hand for a chance of playful overpowering, and at last her waist once more.
elias thinks about drowning. the quick, panicked thought rising in his chest and holding tight in his lungs as she spindles her legs around him. her body heat is a welcome one, warming skin to skin in the icy waters, but his thoughts lead him to the liminal space of endlessness around them. has he been drowned before? he doesn't know. it doesn't matter.
caught you.
but she caught him, and now they float in this mutually assured destruction face-to-face. he has seconds before his lungs start to burn. entwined and sinking toward an abyss, he is found and hooked by roza, hooked by the only person he will ever let impale him. tender in silence, he takes her face in both of his hands, fingers splaying through sleepy tendrils of hair. elias gazes into her until the fire behind his ribs becomes unbearable and he looks as though he might kiss her. he does, but on her forehead, like a secret he wants to keep for them.
the extraction is slower than their playfight, and he gives her a gentle push toward the surface first, though some urgency does bleed through when he can breathe again, chest heaving and begging for oxygen.]
I wasn't made for water– [he spits, the lake is caught in his throat.] I really wasn't.
[ Intuitively, she feels the hum of something like panic, calling long-distance. Remember me? it says, and then more seriously, more threateningly: no, seriously. Remember me. Her legs tie him to her, and pull him away from memory, through time, space, and water.
Correspondingly, the kiss feels ceremonial. Like a coda. She hovers in place for its reception, as swirls of underwater flora and fauna take note of their small and intimate ritual. Bearing witness. Roza likes it: someone should know, even though it's just for them. But fish will not tell any stories except to each other. ]
I don't think I was, either. [ It's said like a rough-throated confession, the normal sweet soprano of her voice made husky by lack of air and all that water. ] But for some reason, I do it anyway.
[ Her breathing begins to moderate itself, albeit only slightly. Roza hauls herself backward onto the dryish dock, slats of sunwarmed wood a welcome balm against all the bare skin scattered with light-catching droplets, body encased in a blanket of glimmering wet. Her underwear has correspondingly taken on a transparency, and rolls further beads down her ribcage and thighs. It feels good, Roza thinks, still smiling, open-mouthed. Tongue touching the back of her teeth (and there's glitter there, too, in the form of her piercing). She stretches out on her back, black-painted toes scrunching against the chill. Her dark head is tipping sidelong toward Elias, so that she can watch him. ]
[is he reacting to her, or is she reacting to him? in the expanse of water reflecting sky and sun and their shadows rippling, reaching away from their bodies, he can't know. likely never will. he treads in place, watching roza climb onto the dock and sprawl, catlike in lazy pleasure. he doesn't know what animal she'd be, but she picked his so easily, connections second nature (maybe first) in her universal mind.]
Why are you asking me? I won.
[obviously. he's decided he's more salt water than fresh; rough edges and ready to bite. elias stays in the lake a little while longer despite his initial rejection of it, eventually following suit in dragging himself out. wet fabric clings to his skin, heavy droplets trailing down his body and soaking the wood as he surveys the beach, one full turnaround from their cars to the black sands and the water lapping its edges, to the sky and finally roza. he's blocking out the light, his shadow becoming hers. he will always do this– a check, too many nights alone spent waiting for danger. laying down beside her with one arm bent behind his head, he tips his chin in her direction, brows raised.]
As long as it wants us, maybe. But if you want to go somewhere else, [ one leg extending so she can bump him with her knee, which thusly transitions into rolling over onto her stomach, half-propped up on her elbows, the eager sun slipping warm hands against the small of her back, her shoulders, ass and thighs, ] we have that freedom.
[ Side by side, inches apart, she can feel the heat from his body, surging upward, as hers is, in an attempt to combat the chilly lingering effects from the lake water. When allowed to exist naturally, this is what a living thing does, balancing its internal workings against the weight of its environment. As with the word freedom, naturally carries with it a lacework of scarring also better thought of as internal. She watches the color of his eyes. The person he is now is many years divorced from the boy who would not look her directly in her own, but the eyes are the same, in shade, in clarity. He's tough, now. Tougher than the little girl from the bad side of Nome Borough. Built a shell strong as the bruiser trucks that come through the auto shops. People are afraid of him now.
What did the girl in that movie say? When you grow up, your heart dies. Roza suspects that she is in some way never going to grow up; too much of her is eternally unhealed, still inside that white walled facility, still lying down on concrete with her head in another dimension, spirit seeking sweet oblivion. Looking at Elias, really looking with her little-girl heart, she thinks, you either. You're not allowed to grow up any more, either. Please don't get any tougher.
She doesn't say those things. She leans in quick and startling and kisses his cheek, the surprising cousin to his chastely ceremonial forehead kiss witnessed by waves and fishes. ]
You pick. Since you won. [ This is paired with a playful eyeroll, as though she were indulging him. ] We can see the sunset anyplace.
[a leg bumps him, so naturally he has to bump back in his own way, the back of his hand grazing her shoulder in a languid motion while his mouth forms a crooked smile. open spaces make him nervous, but that's the trauma talking. years in small rooms make someone want to be the biggest predator, the thing in the corner everyone worries about, only there aren't any corners on the beach.]
This is cool, [maybe his inner child hears her pleading and she makes him go back in time, where his words seemed softer and existed without certainty. so many of his nervous tics bled out, replaced with angry glances and cheeks ground between teeth. he catches himself tapping again, fingers playing piano on his skull. the kiss surprises him out of it, makes him look at her with feigned indignance.] are you trying the reverse psychology on me?
[the reverse psychology, like how people say the marijuanas or facebooks because he could talk a mile in kilos and he'd never need a map for the rest of his life and he can look at a building and know its skeleton, but sometimes he just doesn't know how to say things. that's probably why he did so bad in school – too many kids requiring too much patience – and the bullying didn't help.]
We can stay. [plus it means he can roll to his side, mirroring, propping himself up. he can catch their cars in his peripheral, over roza's head, but mostly he wants a better view of her body. mostly.] You want me to see the sunset here, right?
[ She's not oblivious to the ways he indulges her, where maybe somebody else would elicit less generosity. The lake beach has no corners, and thickets of trees shroud potential onlookers less mild-mannered than freshwater fish. But to Roza, the world is a tapestry of sounds and strange tastes, a sensory experience writ large; she feels each presence, each blade of grass. Every word he says to her, too, has its little soul. It makes up the whole of a sentence, and the sentence feels warm all over in ways the sun can't imitate. ]
Yeah! Yeah, please. Sometimes you can see the Auroras, too. [ Everybody knows about Roza's thing with the Northern Lights she calls to sit with her. Not like a crown; she is no princess, nobody's queen, eschews the confines of those words even in play. Wild things don't have titles. The lights come like a living thing, like a lover, like a spirit. She's excited by even the thought, a ghostly green catching in the sloe of her eyes. ]
As for reverse psychology, though... [ His occasional malapropisms always flow through her without commentary, and rarely correction; she understands what he means. In private, language is theirs to do what they will with, and Roza's verbal choices often take on a cast all their own, too. Instead she uses her peculiar witch grace to maneuver closer to Elias, hands and knees guiding the sinuous snake of her spine. Flat-palmed, she pushes him onto his back, fairly firm about it, and from there she leans over him, still not quite touching, hair not quite long enough to tickle his face. Not quite, or maybe not yet. It would be easy to make contact, but unfortunately the dead gods of their world did not have the foresight to keep Roza Zaripova from becoming a goddamn tease. ]
I'm more direct, you know that. I'm just gonna bribe you with beer and music. Except I don't have beer. [ The reason for her clambering becomes evident: she intends to roll onto her side on the opposite of him, where her phone is sitting in a pile of clothing. Boots, skirt, sweater, torn-up tights, and a Google Pixel with a battered Hello Kitty case on it, harboring all the tunes they could possibly want.
Will she make it? It depends on both her distractibility and Elias's good will. ]
[the auroras. he huffs, rolling his eyes and tilting his head back like staying is the biggest ask she could suggest and he's exaggerating his discontent.
roza's magic is foreign sometimes, in the unexpected sense. things happen to him when things don't just happen to her. she was born into her abilities, where elias ignorantly decided the center pushed powers into his system to make him some kind of super soldier like in the comics.
he catches something there briefly when she touches him, back against the dock once again and mouth parting when memories and not-memories combine into something else he hasn't quite defined. he sees her reaching for her phone before it happens – blurry and quick – and the actions that follow. a fucked up deja vu.]
–Not beer, but you can bribe me with something else.
[she teases and he takes advantage of opportunities given to him. one strong arm wraps around her waist and squeezes her close, a mimicking of constrictor strength, a leg wrapping around her own. his other hand finds her face, bringing her further in. the kiss is heated– not a holy ceremony, but from someone who's loved and lost, savoring a lover's taste like a final goodbye.
every kiss is a goodbye for elias. he has water on his tongue, masking cigarettes and hints of sugar from the candies he keeps in his dashboard. his thumb grazes below her chin, pressing into her throat.]
Get your phone. [he murmurs, then smacks the curve of her ass. giddy up.]
[ For his trouble, Elias earns himself a series of interesting sounds: a startled high-toned huff when he tugs her in close, and something slower and deeper when his mouth makes contact with hers, a kittenish half-moan that moves into more of an exhale when they break contact. But all throughout she is melting into him, all the infinite sweetness of her waiting to caramelize into something hard and tough, one day. Maybe. But not yet. Now she's another kind of candy, curling close, hip-to-hip, hooked by his leg and only too willing to keep that way. But she still yelp-laughs, when he slaps her ass, pelvis jolting against his. No precognition will help her not do that. Roza could see it coming a hundred times and still the sensitive nature of her skin would react like it was the first time anybody'd ever touched her, waking up something roving and wild in the process.
Incidentally, when she starts to disentangle, she drags her thigh right between his legs, slow and deliberate and just as incorrigible. ]
Don't you get me started. [ It's a complaint without real heat, because hers is an engine he knows intimately, easy for him to drive into a steady purr, libido like a Mercedes in a body she'd characterize as more of a Dodge Neon, tongue in cheek. Roza peels away lazily, kneeling amid her belongings, bare knees on scraped old wood. She watches Elias out of the corner of her eye even as her thumbs navigate the phone interface.
Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower comes winding and twirling its way out of the tiny phone speaker, and it has the same hypnotic effect all good music does on Roza: eyes lidding a fraction lower, narrow frame swaying minutely in place, a girl possessed. She sinks back down next to Elias, on her back once more, and one hand lifts to wave gently through the air, a secondary mimicry of how her body moved; it makes it way down her arm, through her chest, her stomach. Her hips. Dancing without dancing, the girl someplace else that's also very much here, as though the lake, and Elias, and Roza with it all occupy its own sliver of time. ]
C'mere, [ she says, ] c'mere.
[ To what end? None in particular. Only that she wants him to hold onto her, like the song might float her right up to those Auroras of which she speaks. ]
I kind of want to dance, 'cause I have all this energy. But I don't want to get up, either. What do you think?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Do you want to be under it or above it?
A fish or a bird?
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[he is talking about strippers]
under. I wanna be a fish
you can decide what I'll be
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[ She does not know he is talking about strippers, but her point would stand. ]
OK I will reveal your true form to you shortly
I will put you at the top of the food chain. Except for orcas.
no subject
[guy who knows nothing about orcas or wildlife except for what roza tells him:]
do I not scream orca to you?
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If I grow wings I will use them to encircle you. And you may touch my antennae.
But they're not fish!!
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Jesus there's an 'ae' after that? okay
Ugh mammals fine any sea creature but you're good at picking those too
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After you catch me in the water, speaking of touching
There you can decide.
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what will you be? Is there a butterfly of the water too?
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But I'm an orca too :-)
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okay
then I'll definitely catch you
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But as for catching me, I'll believe it when I see it
Or feel it. As the case is.
no subject
you're challenging the wrong person
→ text/action.
OK OK we'll see. I'm ready.
[ Ready, with pin digits attached, looks like waiting for him a strip of black-pebbled beach, warmed by a day's sunshine. The light penetrates only the surface — beneath the windless ripples of lake water (dappled all in blues: Prussian, midnight, patches of turquoise where shallow) there is a bracing cold, waiting to put curious hands on swimmers caught unawares. But Roza knows this land, this water, this tender late-afternoon sky. Soon dark will spread broad wings over the horizon and blot out their closest star, leaving room only for the ones that watch from a distance.
Soon it will be nighttime, which is when the land starts to really get interesting. She hopes he gets to see that, too.
But for now there is only this: the long shape of Roza, brown skin contrasting against white underwear (she did not bring a swimsuit), stood like an imitation of an Olympic diver at the peak of one long dock, protruding out over the deepest part of the lake. She is barefoot and grinning, teeth showing. Her body moves back and forth from left to right, ballerina feet prepared for motion. Her blue Jeep is poorly parked between two spaces, tailgate slung open, where a bed of towels sit waiting.
When she sees him, she's going to scream and then jump. Or jump and then scream, depending on how cold that lake really is. ]
no subject
but it's quiet when he steps out and scans for the shape of roza, the one who does want to be in his headlights. it takes him a few moments, seconds used to stutter out a laugh when she screeches, voice ringing in his ears even after she's submerged. his clothes are stripped - haphazard and uncaring down to his briefs – and he runs once he's thrown them aside, heavy footfalls in sand and then barreling onto the dock. he's much less graceful, a burst of unruly energy catapulting overboard, a stumble compared to her ballerina-nimble poise.
he goes deep, carried by the weight of impact, and when he breaches the surface and he can howl like he's never been in the unforgiving cold only water can bring before (he has, he's being dramatic) he looks for her, muscles in his face stuck on a grin from adrenaline.]
You're lucky, you know that?
no subject
[ A time or two she has contemplated what it is about him that unlocks this wildness in her, even by her own standards; she's always performing, playing, cajoling, and it redoubles under the headlights, as though they were really spotlights on her stage. But maybe it's because Elias knows better than almost anybody (and he is the only witness to this time in her life that wasn't a cruelty during it) what it's like when all of that has been drained from her, when Roza was just a listless slip of a thing, waiting to die.
But that was years ago. Look at them now. Do they live well? Maybe not. But they live. With fingers digging into life, leaving bruises in sprays of yellow-purple proof that they existed outside their holding cells and medical documentation. To the contrary: here it's self-administered chemicals and loud music and laughter that rises up toward an empty heaven.
Under that water or above it, her body is a trained thing, muscles compact, fine-tuning a body that wants to give in to its own natural curves. Magic exacerbates her grace, allowing her deft little twists against the mild current, circling him in the water, like a smiling freshwater shark, buoyed by his yell. Her legs kick in circles, black hair slicked and dripping a rainfall against her shoulders and clavicle. Her attention zeroes in on Elias in preparation for a bolting away, back under the water. ]
I think so, too. 'Cause who else could do this — [ just one itsy-bitsy little splash, because she's a menace, but she's curious, too, where he's going with this, ] — and get away with it?
no subject
she forced him to look when the floor had always been the better option.
he can smile here, away from the gritty underworld he surrounds himself with. no mask, no distance he reserves for everyone else. when he shakes his head, droplets scatter from his hair into the lake.]
What–
[a speck of innocence between them for a split second before he returns the splash with a larger one. he's clumsy in the water, hardly the person to be sneaky with. he'd been so withdrawn before, sometimes it's as if he's making up for the sounds he never let himself make.]
I'm gonna get you back–
[the rest is swallowed by water (and gulped down accidentally) as he disappears beneath the surface, and maybe he is like the orca she assigned him when he bumps into her, hands grasping her ankles and climbing up and up and up to her waist to pull her under.]
no subject
She does remember when he was shy, during the SLC. She remembers when she was shy, too, after the SLC. Both states of being seem so many miles away, now. As though they had always been young but not that young, and they would never get any older. ]
What are you gonna do — whoa!
[ That aborted question is summarily answered, playful indignation the last thing that the shoreline sees before she is subsequently dunked. Her arms fling up under the waterline, hands creating a secondary splash zone that afflicts no one in particular, as they are totally alone.
Roza from thereon has two options. One, engage him in quote unquote combat. This is mostly a lot of twisting and tugging and squirming around, tactile and tough to hold as a cat resisting a bath. She tries that one first, a river of bubbles streaming from her mouth as her laughter is suppressed by the surge of water; she has to remind herself to clamp down. The second technique, and the one she tries next, involves locking onto him like a spider-monkey; in a sequence of very dramatic events occurring under the surface, she twists in, to face him, those long strong legs hitching around Elias's body. If she's going down, he's going with her. ]
no subject
elias thinks about drowning. the quick, panicked thought rising in his chest and holding tight in his lungs as she spindles her legs around him. her body heat is a welcome one, warming skin to skin in the icy waters, but his thoughts lead him to the liminal space of endlessness around them. has he been drowned before? he doesn't know. it doesn't matter.
caught you.
but she caught him, and now they float in this mutually assured destruction face-to-face. he has seconds before his lungs start to burn. entwined and sinking toward an abyss, he is found and hooked by roza, hooked by the only person he will ever let impale him. tender in silence, he takes her face in both of his hands, fingers splaying through sleepy tendrils of hair. elias gazes into her until the fire behind his ribs becomes unbearable and he looks as though he might kiss her. he does, but on her forehead, like a secret he wants to keep for them.
the extraction is slower than their playfight, and he gives her a gentle push toward the surface first, though some urgency does bleed through when he can breathe again, chest heaving and begging for oxygen.]
I wasn't made for water– [he spits, the lake is caught in his throat.] I really wasn't.
no subject
Correspondingly, the kiss feels ceremonial. Like a coda. She hovers in place for its reception, as swirls of underwater flora and fauna take note of their small and intimate ritual. Bearing witness. Roza likes it: someone should know, even though it's just for them. But fish will not tell any stories except to each other. ]
I don't think I was, either. [ It's said like a rough-throated confession, the normal sweet soprano of her voice made husky by lack of air and all that water. ] But for some reason, I do it anyway.
[ Her breathing begins to moderate itself, albeit only slightly. Roza hauls herself backward onto the dryish dock, slats of sunwarmed wood a welcome balm against all the bare skin scattered with light-catching droplets, body encased in a blanket of glimmering wet. Her underwear has correspondingly taken on a transparency, and rolls further beads down her ribcage and thighs. It feels good, Roza thinks, still smiling, open-mouthed. Tongue touching the back of her teeth (and there's glitter there, too, in the form of her piercing). She stretches out on her back, black-painted toes scrunching against the chill. Her dark head is tipping sidelong toward Elias, so that she can watch him. ]
Did I win, or did you win?
no subject
[is he reacting to her, or is she reacting to him? in the expanse of water reflecting sky and sun and their shadows rippling, reaching away from their bodies, he can't know. likely never will. he treads in place, watching roza climb onto the dock and sprawl, catlike in lazy pleasure. he doesn't know what animal she'd be, but she picked his so easily, connections second nature (maybe first) in her universal mind.]
Why are you asking me? I won.
[obviously. he's decided he's more salt water than fresh; rough edges and ready to bite. elias stays in the lake a little while longer despite his initial rejection of it, eventually following suit in dragging himself out. wet fabric clings to his skin, heavy droplets trailing down his body and soaking the wood as he surveys the beach, one full turnaround from their cars to the black sands and the water lapping its edges, to the sky and finally roza. he's blocking out the light, his shadow becoming hers. he will always do this– a check, too many nights alone spent waiting for danger. laying down beside her with one arm bent behind his head, he tips his chin in her direction, brows raised.]
How long are we staying out here?
no subject
[ Side by side, inches apart, she can feel the heat from his body, surging upward, as hers is, in an attempt to combat the chilly lingering effects from the lake water. When allowed to exist naturally, this is what a living thing does, balancing its internal workings against the weight of its environment. As with the word freedom, naturally carries with it a lacework of scarring also better thought of as internal. She watches the color of his eyes. The person he is now is many years divorced from the boy who would not look her directly in her own, but the eyes are the same, in shade, in clarity. He's tough, now. Tougher than the little girl from the bad side of Nome Borough. Built a shell strong as the bruiser trucks that come through the auto shops. People are afraid of him now.
What did the girl in that movie say? When you grow up, your heart dies. Roza suspects that she is in some way never going to grow up; too much of her is eternally unhealed, still inside that white walled facility, still lying down on concrete with her head in another dimension, spirit seeking sweet oblivion. Looking at Elias, really looking with her little-girl heart, she thinks, you either. You're not allowed to grow up any more, either. Please don't get any tougher.
She doesn't say those things. She leans in quick and startling and kisses his cheek, the surprising cousin to his chastely ceremonial forehead kiss witnessed by waves and fishes. ]
You pick. Since you won. [ This is paired with a playful eyeroll, as though she were indulging him. ] We can see the sunset anyplace.
no subject
[a leg bumps him, so naturally he has to bump back in his own way, the back of his hand grazing her shoulder in a languid motion while his mouth forms a crooked smile. open spaces make him nervous, but that's the trauma talking. years in small rooms make someone want to be the biggest predator, the thing in the corner everyone worries about, only there aren't any corners on the beach.]
This is cool, [maybe his inner child hears her pleading and she makes him go back in time, where his words seemed softer and existed without certainty. so many of his nervous tics bled out, replaced with angry glances and cheeks ground between teeth. he catches himself tapping again, fingers playing piano on his skull. the kiss surprises him out of it, makes him look at her with feigned indignance.] are you trying the reverse psychology on me?
[the reverse psychology, like how people say the marijuanas or facebooks because he could talk a mile in kilos and he'd never need a map for the rest of his life and he can look at a building and know its skeleton, but sometimes he just doesn't know how to say things. that's probably why he did so bad in school – too many kids requiring too much patience – and the bullying didn't help.]
We can stay. [plus it means he can roll to his side, mirroring, propping himself up. he can catch their cars in his peripheral, over roza's head, but mostly he wants a better view of her body. mostly.] You want me to see the sunset here, right?
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Yeah! Yeah, please. Sometimes you can see the Auroras, too. [ Everybody knows about Roza's thing with the Northern Lights she calls to sit with her. Not like a crown; she is no princess, nobody's queen, eschews the confines of those words even in play. Wild things don't have titles. The lights come like a living thing, like a lover, like a spirit. She's excited by even the thought, a ghostly green catching in the sloe of her eyes. ]
As for reverse psychology, though... [ His occasional malapropisms always flow through her without commentary, and rarely correction; she understands what he means. In private, language is theirs to do what they will with, and Roza's verbal choices often take on a cast all their own, too. Instead she uses her peculiar witch grace to maneuver closer to Elias, hands and knees guiding the sinuous snake of her spine. Flat-palmed, she pushes him onto his back, fairly firm about it, and from there she leans over him, still not quite touching, hair not quite long enough to tickle his face. Not quite, or maybe not yet. It would be easy to make contact, but unfortunately the dead gods of their world did not have the foresight to keep Roza Zaripova from becoming a goddamn tease. ]
I'm more direct, you know that. I'm just gonna bribe you with beer and music. Except I don't have beer. [ The reason for her clambering becomes evident: she intends to roll onto her side on the opposite of him, where her phone is sitting in a pile of clothing. Boots, skirt, sweater, torn-up tights, and a Google Pixel with a battered Hello Kitty case on it, harboring all the tunes they could possibly want.
Will she make it? It depends on both her distractibility and Elias's good will. ]
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roza's magic is foreign sometimes, in the unexpected sense. things happen to him when things don't just happen to her. she was born into her abilities, where elias ignorantly decided the center pushed powers into his system to make him some kind of super soldier like in the comics.
he catches something there briefly when she touches him, back against the dock once again and mouth parting when memories and not-memories combine into something else he hasn't quite defined. he sees her reaching for her phone before it happens – blurry and quick – and the actions that follow. a fucked up deja vu.]
–Not beer, but you can bribe me with something else.
[she teases and he takes advantage of opportunities given to him. one strong arm wraps around her waist and squeezes her close, a mimicking of constrictor strength, a leg wrapping around her own. his other hand finds her face, bringing her further in. the kiss is heated– not a holy ceremony, but from someone who's loved and lost, savoring a lover's taste like a final goodbye.
every kiss is a goodbye for elias. he has water on his tongue, masking cigarettes and hints of sugar from the candies he keeps in his dashboard. his thumb grazes below her chin, pressing into her throat.]
Get your phone. [he murmurs, then smacks the curve of her ass. giddy up.]
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Incidentally, when she starts to disentangle, she drags her thigh right between his legs, slow and deliberate and just as incorrigible. ]
Don't you get me started. [ It's a complaint without real heat, because hers is an engine he knows intimately, easy for him to drive into a steady purr, libido like a Mercedes in a body she'd characterize as more of a Dodge Neon, tongue in cheek. Roza peels away lazily, kneeling amid her belongings, bare knees on scraped old wood. She watches Elias out of the corner of her eye even as her thumbs navigate the phone interface.
Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower comes winding and twirling its way out of the tiny phone speaker, and it has the same hypnotic effect all good music does on Roza: eyes lidding a fraction lower, narrow frame swaying minutely in place, a girl possessed. She sinks back down next to Elias, on her back once more, and one hand lifts to wave gently through the air, a secondary mimicry of how her body moved; it makes it way down her arm, through her chest, her stomach. Her hips. Dancing without dancing, the girl someplace else that's also very much here, as though the lake, and Elias, and Roza with it all occupy its own sliver of time. ]
C'mere, [ she says, ] c'mere.
[ To what end? None in particular. Only that she wants him to hold onto her, like the song might float her right up to those Auroras of which she speaks. ]
I kind of want to dance, 'cause I have all this energy. But I don't want to get up, either. What do you think?
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