The music springs about them in mocking melody, harmonizing in a sweet major as they come to stand before one another. A fist forms at her lumbar, nails digging into palm as open hands meet before cold expressions. Vi is momentarily grateful for the respite of her own hand as it blocks the prodding inquisition of Caitlyn’s gaze, but she cannot deny the suffocating heat about and within her: a thousand flickering candles malform swaying silhouettes into ephemerality and line the ceiling in curling breaths of smoke; sweet wine licking through her veins forces her heart to rage against the osseous imprisoning it and flays her skin into a vicious red; the wool of her tailcoat retains the ferocious heat Caitlyn naturally begets of her, drawing it upwards to collect her the round of her cheeks. The multitudes of all this fall upon her in terrible layers, pressing upon the precipice of her throat with malicious intent.
A signifying note wafts about the air, and her outfacing hand is drawn gently downwards by Caitlyn’s own. The movement exposes that which Vi has stalwartly avoided this night and those preluding it – Caitlyn’s inquiring eyes, drenched in a pitch dreadfully azure, flit between her own with something minutely more than cordial interest. She has always succeeded Vi in this respect. That is, she has always maintained propriety and decorum when Vi became too overcome with passion to entertain it. Even now, Caitlyn retains something of it, and her decorum is maintained until Vi can no longer suffer it.
Her fingers curl against Caitlyn’s own, the other woman’s digits complying as Vi brings their hands to her chest. This impropriety, however subtle, is just enough to completely fracture the fragile veil of composure between them, and when Caitlyn’s gaze next meets hers, it is with a great and arduous pain. So terribly is the wound equally inflicted that Vi must avert her eyes from those of the woman she cannot stand and still cannot stand to be parted from.
Caitlyn is particular in her movements – always precise, always aware – even in those which bring their faces close. Vi’s eyes clench tightly shut of instinct alone and her heart stutters between laden beats as her partner’s breath licks over her lips. She cannot help the sharp inhale which draws Caitlyn’s breath into her, nor can she help the unnamable need which floods her body and presses them minutely closer. Her jaw cinches tightly closed to prevent untoward action: that which would draw Caitlyn flush against her in this disgusting mass of people begging for each of their eye, and that which collapse each of their standings as proper individuals in society, and that, also, which would declare them things they had not agreed upon, but that Vi desperately wishes to be.
Their eyes meet once more, Vi’s heart bounding against her own hand as she watches Caitlyn’s urges fall to a waning restraint, and as she knows herself capable of finishing a singular dance, so does she know them both to be hopeless against a second longer.
