“We could play a card game,” she offered. Canting his head, Shiro seemed to consider it, but Keith’s nose wrinkled in distaste. Despite being the one to offer it, Allura sympathized; her legs itched with restless energy, a need to move, and not just sit and occupy her mind. “I have an idea,” Shiro said, “but uh…it’s dumb.” Naturally, that seemed to pique Keith’s curiosity, and he inched closer. Allura stifled her laughter but inclined her head. “I’m okay with dumb,” she said. “It’s midnight and we’ve run out of snacks.” Their backpacks got stashed under the seats, and within five minutes, they were on the moving sidewalk. Shiro, as the one with the idea, got to lead, and Allura had to fight back giggles as he directed them into plies. It was the same combination he always fell into when he was warming up or teaching a class on the fly, and they were synchronized as they sunk into a grand plié in fifth. At the end of the track, Keith took over and they move onto fondus on the one rolling the opposite way.The airport was quiet by now, but the few people who passed by paused and squinted at them a moment before hurrying on their way. A couple of the younger ones stopped long enough to take a picture or video, grinning as they turned away to carry on to their gate.They skipped some steps, trading tendus and degages for pas de cheval and piqués. Anything that didn’t work well on moving rubber tracks while they were wearing tennis shoes was thrown off; this was just for fun, after all, not a real class. They stretched with ankles resting on the railing, and developped on an angle to keep from blocking the one or two other passengers trying to get one way or the other.Jumps were skipped for safety reasons, as well as turns, but that didn’t stop them from going into lifts like they’d had a whole class to warm up. Shiro pressed her up over his head like they were standing on steady ground, and she couldn’t help a grin breaking over her lips that was half nerves and half delight. There was always something exhilarating about big lifts, about soaring through the air with the floor eight feet below. She could hear the announcement as a plane deboarded, and a new rush of passengers started trickling through the terminal. Oh no, she thought, holding in some cross between a giggle and groan as she held up her arabesque. They’d started this as a silly distraction while the terminal was occupied only by sleeping passengers, but now they were getting something like a crowd. People stopped, first just a couple, then a whole cluster along the railing.As Shiro stepped carefully from the track and settled her on her feet, there was a round of muted applause — not too loud, as if mindful of those still sleeping on the floor and across the bench seats. “Maybe we should call that enough,” she said.Before Shiro could answer, though, there was a burst of startled laughter and applause, more raucous than before, and looking over, she covered her mouth with her hand. Keith had unfolded into a handstand, body perfectly perpendicular as he trundled down the moving walkway. Shiro bleated out a strangled laugh as Keith shifted to full splits, still inverted, completely ignoring the couple who now rode behind him and stared blearily at his antics.“Shall we?” Shiro asked, grinning, and offering out his hand.“Will you be my Romeo?” she replied.It had been their last performance this season, and the pas de deux was still fresh in her mind and body. Shiro broke into a grin at the challenge and accepted immediately. Onstage, the process of getting into the lift was simple, graceful; on the walkway, it was a little more utilitarian. Shiro knelt, reaching up his arm, and Allura laid out on his shoulders in the same motion. He took a step onto the walkway as he rose, in time for her to extend her leg to the ceiling and let her arm drape down across his chest.“Holy shit,” someone gasped in their little audience, and Allura grinned. Shiro turned in a tight circle rather than the usual steps and swung her legs down so that she hovered as if en pointe in thin air, chest arched to the sky. Lifting her back up, he braced himself for the second developpe, higher this time so she nearly unfurled into the splits still draped over his shoulders. He stepped onto firm ground, settling her lightly on her feet, and the crowd broke into a round of true applause. Laughing, Allura dipped in a curtsy, extending the hoodie around her waist like a skirt.“Now that’s just cheating,” Keith laughed, coming up behind them. “How’m I supposed to top it?”“Well, you could always lift me,” Shiro replied, jostling Keith’s elbow with his.Catching the light in Keith’s eyes, Allura laughed.“You two figure that out, I’ll buy some time with our audience,” she said.Trading classical for modern, she stepped onto the walkway to toss her leg up into a full tilt, fingers placed delicately under her chin. She’d been hired for a music video over the summer, her first big commercial contract, and as she pivoted into an illusion, leg fanning in a great circle behind her, she heard a murmur of recognition.“Hey, wait,” someone started as popped a hip and flicked her long white braid over her shoulder, “she was in Leon!”She shot a wink in the general direction of the speaker and, as the walkway rolled to an end, dropped into an inverted cabriole before springing up and into a messy pirouette. Carpet and sneakers didn’t make for a good turning combination, but she got a whistle as she stepped out of it, laughing.On the other end of the walkway, Keith and Shiro were already starting, and she stole glances as she hurried down the length back to their starting point. It wasn’t that different from peeking from the wings during a crossover, only she was usually in a skirt and stage makeup for that rather than her worn-in leggings and airport-bathroom face wash.The prep into this one was deceptively simple: Keith crouched as Shiro tossed his weight onto his shoulder, flopping like a particularly bulky sack. There was a smattering of confused laughter, as if the audience thought they’d traded dance for a farce, and Allura grinned. She knew this step, remembered this piece. It was an older one — a pas de deux about the homoeroticism of trench warfare created by a guest artist on Keith and Shiro back when they were still students. The lift was, admittedly, a little more effective with the achingly intimate cello solo that normally accompanied it, but she could already feel anticipation tingling under her skin at what came next.From his limp drape over Keith’s shoulder, Shiro straightened up into a handstand, arms tight around Keith’s waist and feet pointed to the ceiling. The laughter shifted into quiet gasps. Keith’s hands hooked around the back of Shiro’s thighs, guiding them in a motion almost like an upside-down cartwheel. As his legs came around, though, Shiro didn’t neatly step off but froze, body perpendicular to the ground. Keith’s wiry arms shifted, lean muscle straining under his t-shirt. A few steps from the end of the walkway, Allura froze. That lift was supposed to swing around, Shiro rotating across Keith’s waist — but there were glass walls cutting their path off. Swinging him forward was bound to leave Shiro with a concussion and knock both of them on their asses on the walkway. Her hands tightened, involuntary, with worry.As she watched, Keith bent, shifting so that Shiro was nearly diagonal to the ground as his legs came around, slicing a breath above the rail. She gasped, startled despite herself by the fluidity as the two of them shifted, reoriented the choreography and brought Shiro neatly into an inversion before stepping off to a chorus of whooping and claps from their transient audience. Looking out over the little crowd, she could spot half a dozen cellphones lifted up, filming, and she held back a laugh. Coran was going to have a fit.A boarding call came over the PA as Keith and Shiro reached her, both breathing a little hard, and the crowd started to disband. Drawing her bottom lip in under her teeth, Allura rested her hands on her hips.“I think it’s time for our finale,” she declared.“That didn’t count?” Shiro breathed out, laughing.“Nah,” she said. “Hey, remember that character class we took with Nikola Kaminski?”Shiro’s eyebrows rose, but Keith’s lips turned up in a grin, and he started nodding before he even replied.“Oh hell yes.”She wouldn’t have been able to do it with Shiro, not with their height difference, but Keith was the same height as her if she didn’t wax down her hair. They took the walkway grinning, two steps apart and bouncing slightly in rhythm with each other. The dispersing crowd paused, lingering to see what was going on, and Shiro stalled with the first steps of Nutcracker’s Russian. Allura laughed, shoulders shaking, but gave Keith a firm nod as they approached the center of the walkway. He took one chasse, throwing himself up into her arms. She heaved, pushing off with her thighs, and flipped him up so one leg extended to the sky. Suspended there for a moment, he flicked one hand up to salute the audience before she swung him back down and they pranced off their impromptu stage. Despite the hour, their tiny crowd burst into cheers and applause. They’d accumulated more than she’d realized during the mini performance, and Allura laughed as they took bows from either end of the walkway. Drawn away at last either by boarding calls or by the sense of the performance ending, the crowd trickled away and Keith and Allura wandered down to where Shiro waited for them. Her heart raced under her t-shirt, cheeks flushed with adrenaline and endorphins. Keith’s cheeks were as pink as hers felt, and Shiro’s bangs stuck to his forehead. Reaching up, she combed them back, and he laughed.“Well, that is a new stage for me,” he remarked.“Your dumb idea was pretty great,” Keith said, looping an arm around Shiro’s waist. Shiro grinned, and Allura pressed a kiss to his cheek before tangling her fingers with Keith’s. “I honestly thought you two were going to get concussions doing that Huntsman lift,” she admitted as they turned back to their waiting bags. Keith shrugged his near shoulder, as if unbothered. “Keith had me,” Shiro said. “I wasn’t worried. Did you hear them during your Leon solo?” Laughing, Allura dropped into her seat, twisting around to drape her legs over Keith’s lap. Now that the adrenaline was starting to fade, she was finally almost sleepy. “I wondered if anyone would recognize it,” she admitted, leaning her head against her hand. “Too bad you didn’t have the costume,” Keith remarked, dropping his arm over her shins. Shiro snorted and Allura reached over to pinch his arm. The costume in question had been little more than a white bralette and shorts — and an entire bucket of red and black paint. Keith only grinned, unrepentant. “Next time I do a bikini dance, you guys are doing it shirtless,” she declared.
