It was in the barely lit dressing room backstage that Nezumi had seen her. It was just a brief glimpse of her as he was crossing to the other side of the cluttered and cramped room to collect his costume for the evening's performance. But that quick glimpse was just enough to make him lose his focus. Focus that he had so carefully crafted over his years in the West Block to make him more aware and cautious of every ounce of his surroundings and being.
He nearly let out a sigh in defeat, but let the exhale catch in his throat. He choked out the air, and took an unsteady breath in of the stale air from the decaying room. Like everything in the garbage dump of the Holy City, the playhouse was sub par, degrading, and corrupted. Quality was nonexistent. Perhaps that's why she was something Nezumi was fixated on.
This wasn't the first time he'd seen her, but every time he had gotten to it gave him renewed pleasure. She had been acting at the playhouse alongside Nezumi, and he had been lucky enough to directly see her grow out of her awkward years of overly dramatic blocking and confused lines into more of a mature performer. He gave the slightest smile to this notion as he pulled his costume off a lop-sided coat hanger that gave a nasty creak as its weight was redistributed on the two and one-half legs that remained.
Her voice was now music to so many ears, her movements so soothing to the souls watching her perform onstage, and her passion for what she did was envied by all, but mostly her colleagues.
He loved her. Her eyes, her nose, her lightly mascaraed eyelashes, her red stained lips. All of it was so dear to Nezumi. He ran his fingers lightly across the polyester chiffon fabric of his costume and frowned slightly when he noticed a run in the fabric. It too was becoming worn-out.
After pulling on his costume and straightening out some of the extra fabric that had bunched at his hips, he turned around to see her standing across the room, even with him, and framed nicely by the lamplight off to her left. This time he made sure to inspect her completely, head to toe. He felt himself smile lightly at how pretty she was. The role she was playing tonight fit her perfectly, and she was obviously aware of it as she had a small, knowing smile played on her face. He swallowed and gingerly bit his bottom lip, moving his eyes to sweep the room to find they were perfectly alone; or so he assumed with boxes piled ceiling high and miscellaneous props and sets in every nook.
Nezumi looked back in her direction and found he was staring into her eyes. She was staring back into his. Both walked forward, as one unit, until they were merely centimeters away from each other. Nezumi watched as she parted her cherry red lips, as if to say something. Without realizing, and captivated as he was, he leaned in to place a kiss on her full lips, arms awkwardly clamped to his sides.
His nose bumped roughly into a cold, flat surface and his lips were crushed against the same plane. His eyes opened at the same time as the door clambered open noisily to the makeshift dressing room he was occupying. Nezumi first focused on the red lipstick that streaked down the grimy mirror in front of his face, then readjusted to focus on his portly stage manager giving him a dumbfounded look in the doorframe at the upper left-handed corner of the mirror.
"It's always a nice notion to knock," Nezumi stated matter-of-factly, as he pushed away from the mirror to survey the amount of damage he had just done to his stage make-up. "If you've come to tell me it's five minutes until curtain call, I'm well aware." Looking annoyingly back into the mirror, he wiped roughly at the lipstick that had smudged out of the line of his lips; everything else seemed to have stayed in place.
Without a word his manager backed out of the door and shut it with a snap, leaving Nezumi very much alone in the dingy and musty room, with his muse, Eve.