Like the Stars Above
Notes: The lyrics from the beginning are from "Romeo and Juliet" by the Dire Straits, although I listened to the Indigo Girls' cover, which I find a bit better.
Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.
A lovestruck Romeo sings the streets of serenade
Laying everybody low with a love song that he made
Finds a convenient streetlight steps out of the shade
Says something like you and me babe how about it?
She's never been sure why Desdemona ends up in her bed. It always happens in the dead of night, when the Switchboard is silent and the other agents are sleeping, their breaths coming in soft exhalations, quiet snores that fill the room and Glory's ears roar in the near-silence. Nights like that, she might as well be back in the Institute, locked in the barracks where the off-duty synths were sent until their next shifts resumed. As a courser she hadn't spent much time there, but when the memories come back, she lies stiff as a board in her bed, staring at the wall and wishing for morning.
The first time Des came to her, it was with a soft hand on her back, stroking her through the ill-fitting clothes one of the agents had scrounged up for her. A gentle touch, and how she melted into it, like butter left in the sun.
No one had ever touched her before.
The first night was like that, the comfort of someone caressing her until she fell asleep, her fears retreating on silent paws like cats. It was another week before Des came to her again, this time lying down in the bed with her, the big spoon to G7-81's oversized small spoon, one arm wrapped around her waist, Desdemona's nose in her shoulder. They'd lain like that until Drummer Boy stirred, and then Desdemona had gotten up, fled back to the main room to smoke a cigarette and sip a cup of bad coffee. G7-81 had pretended sleep and watched her go through her lashes, wondering what the flutter in her chest was.
After that there were glances, accidental touches that were anything but. Glory - because a week after the second time Des came to her, Glory chose a name for herself - convinced the boss to let her stay and earn her freedom. She tried to figure out who she was without the Institute, under all the layers of biological machinery and software. Who she was without the recall codes, without the black coat and sunglasses and laser pistol.
What she's found is that she loved bravado, posturing, daring herself and the people around her. When Des continued to crawl into bed with her, pale freckled hands skimming over Glory's belly and shoulders, Glory began to wonder what it would be like to brush her lips against those fingers, or whether Desdemona has freckles on her chest, and what constellation they make.
Glory can never predict when Des will come to her, and she knows somehow without asking that if she went to Desdemona's bed, it wouldn't end well. There's a wall around that woman, and Glory's never figured out how to scale it; she just knows that - like a cat - Desdemona will come to her on her own terms and not before. So Glory spends the nights that she's in the Switchboard staring at the wall, waiting - hoping - for Desdemona's slim fingers on her shoulder, her lips on Glory's neck.
She lies waiting, wondering, as she has so many nights before - indeed, she's lost count of them now - and when Des clambers into the bed behind her, it feels like something inside Glory releases on the breath she has been holding unconsciously as she waited for the footsteps she didn't hear.
There's a soft whiff of tobacco and coffee on Desdemona's fingers as her arm settles across Glory's chest, and a soft sigh of contentment as Des settles against her back. And yet - for the first time - the feeling of being held doesn't seem to be enough. So she shifts, inch by inch, onto her back and then onto her other side so her forehead touches Desdemona's and they lie facing each other. The light from the door behind Des is dim but still Glory can make out her silhouette, the arc of her shoulder, the hollow at her waist. She can make out the tightness around Des's eyes, the way panic seems to be rising inside her even as Glory finds herself growing calmer by the second.
Before she can talk herself out of it or let Desdemona give in to hysteria, Glory leans forward and presses her mouth against the boss's, a tender brush of the lips that's been nagging at her for months now, an impulse she can't explain, that she's sure the eggheads at the Institute didn't plan.
Desdemona's body goes still; she doesn't jerk her head back, but doesn't lean into the kiss. She goes stiff as a board, and Glory doesn't know if this is permission to continue, but she does anyway, opening her own lips and teasing open Des's mouth to taste her, the flavor of whiskey and coffee and nicotine on her tongue. It shouldn't taste so good - Glory hates coffee, always has - but something about the way Des finally leans into her sends a bolt of electricity through her. Her limbs go weak, her joints loose, and one of her hands works its way up to toy with the auburn curl at Desdemona's cheek.
It's like a floodgate has opened; Desdemona lens into her, one hand at Glory's waist, hooked into the belt loop of her pants, locking them together. Glory's seen kissing, and she knows the basics of sex - she's spent enough time in the Commonwealth to know the bare minimum - but she's never imagined kissing another person before, feeling the softness of Des's tongue against her own, her pliable lip caught in Glory's teeth, the vibration of a moan going from Desdemona's mouth into her own.
She lets out a gasp, a lamentation, and Des moves her lips to the soft skin under her ear, gently licking and sucking there until Glory wonders what greater pleasure there could be in this world. She tosses her head back, off the pillow so it dangles over the floor, and the line of kisses Desdemona traces down her neck and into the hollow of her throat make her skin burn with each touch.
Glory thinks for one amazing moment that she's never felt more alive, more like the person she was built to resemble, and then Desdemona's hand lands tentatively over her breast, loose without a bra since she was trying to sleep, and the sensation of fingers on her nipple send her careening towards some dark edge that waits, glorious and vast. She lets out a groan, and a whimper, and the fingers pinch her lightly there. Glory's nipple grows hard under the attention and she gasps out Desdemona's name.
Just like that, everything stops. For a moment Desdemona lies atop her in the dark without moving, her lips still, her fingers motionless. Then, with a sigh that sounds wistful, the heat around her retreats. Desdemona pulls away, rolling quietly off the bed and there's the sound of the door shutting behind her, plunging the room into absolute darkness.
For a long moment, Glory lies in the dark and wonders what she did wrong. For the first time in she doesn't know how long - forever, however long this life of hers has been - she felt something, a flicker of the raw emotion her programming always denied her. And now she's alone again in the barracks, the muffled sounds of breathing around her, and she's irrationally angry.
Pulling on her boots is short work; she doesn't even bother tying the laces, and the plastic tips rattle on the floor when she stomps to the door and swings it open. She has to force herself to think considerately to keep from slamming it shut behind her.
Desdemona isn't in the main room, nor is she in the control room above. Glory charges methodically through the whole bunker, searching out the boss, who turns out to be completely gone. So she walks through the tunnels, past the gate and the guard and finds herself in the sewer pipe that leads to the outside. It's here that she finally finds the woman, standing with her back against the sewer pipe, looking out at the moon, full and half-hidden behind a scrim of dark clouds. Desdemona is smoking and, when Glory gets close enough to stand beside her, she can see she's shaking. Her face is streaked white through the grime and it dawns on Glory that Des has been crying.
That revelation alone is enough to shock her into silence. Glory stands for a moment at a loose end, unable to figure out what to do with her hands or her body, then settles for taking a cigarette from Desdemona's outheld pack, lighting it, and inhaling the smoke.
She looks at the moon, away from Des's face, and then speaks.
"Do you want to talk about what just happened?"
Desdemona laughs, a bitter, shaky sound that makes Glory feel as if her heart is breaking. "Not really," she admits, blowing a plume of smoke out and turning to give Glory a small, brittle smile.
Glory takes a deep breath. "Let me go first then."
Des is watching her now, closely, but she keeps tracking the moon as it makes its quiet journey across the sky.
"You make me feel human, Des. When I'm with you, I don't feel like a broken synth anymore, a courser who wouldn't do her job. I feel like...me. Whoever that is." She takes a drag off the cigarette and lets the smoke out slowly. She wants to look at Desdemona, but the terror of what she might see in her eyes stops her.
Finally, from her right: "I had no idea."
Glory smiles a little. "Neither did I, not really. But that kiss…"
Desdemona lets out a low hum. "That was something."
Now Glory's smile is real; it has a mind of its own as it etches itself deeper into her face, and she can't remember ever smiling so big, so truly. There's a swelling inside her chest, like stuffing filling her ribs, and she almost can't breathe.
"I think I want -" But she doesn't have the words to say it, barely knows what she wants. The smile begins to fade as the ideas tumble around in her head, contradictory and confusing, and then she finally starts again. "I want you in my bed." It's lame, but it's a start. It's only part of the ocean of desires she feels inside herself, things she doesn't know how to explain, but it's clear from the way Des's hand stops, cigarette half to her open lips, that she knows what Glory's saying.
"Do you...I mean -" Desdemona looks adorably flustered in the moonlight, and Glory can't stop herself; she turns and takes a small step forward, closing the small distance between them, and kisses the delicate skin at Desdemona's temple, brushing her lips over the cheekbone.
Des closes her eyes and leans into her a bit, her skin pale as paper in the moonlight. Glory runs a hand through her hair, the tangled auburn curls glowing against her dark fingers. She leans her head against De's shoulder, marveling at the warmth of her despite the February chill.
"I don't want you to do anything you don't want," Des finally says, her voice not the usual strident tone she takes with the agents down below. It's almost unrecognizable, the soft tone she strikes, the way her head turns and her lips brush a soft kiss on Glory's forehead. There's a shiver that works through Glory at that tender touch, at the thought she's gone so many years without anyone to look at her the way Des looks at her now.
"Is that why you've held back?" It all makes so much sense now. Of course.
"I've wanted you so - so much," Desdemona's voice isn't the only thing shaking; she flutters like a small bird, her shoulders shuddering with adrenaline or wanting. Glory wants more than anything to put an arm around her, but she remembers the way Des stiffened in the dark at the sound of her own name, at the way she fled. She stands still, letting Des card a finger through her hair, savoring the delicious tickle it sends through her.
"So why didn't you just...you know," Glory says finally, softening her tone.
Des lets out a deep, shaky-sounding sigh, and there's the tell-tale hiss of her inhaling her cigarette. "You're a synth."
Glory goes cold, as if each of her veins have frozen. She wants to pull away but finds her body can't seem to remember how to move, and she wonders what she was thinking. Before she can react, though, Desdemona continues.
"You're a synth, and you're just discovering the rest of the world and I - I didn't want you to feel like you had to do anything that you don't want to." This strikes Glory as both sweet and immeasurably condescending.
"I have my own ideas about things, you know," she looks up at Desdemona, arching her eyebrows in annoyance, and Des blushes, cheeks as pink as the spring buds of hubflowers. "It's not like I've never been on the surface before," Glory continues. "I'm not...I know you saved me, but I'm not some damsel in distress who needs other people to tell her what to feel."
Desdemona looks mortified, and Glory wonders if she's gone too far. She takes one of Des's frozen hands in her own, white and dark fingers mingled together.
"I never considered you might want me," Desdemona finally says. "I didn't dare."
Glory reaches up to Des's cheek again, to the pale tear marks etched like lace on Des's cheek. She rubs her thumb against the soft, damp skin, and there's that flutter in her chest again.
"Well, I do."
Desdemona smiles, a broad grin so different from the usual half-smile she gives everyone else. Under Glory's hand, her skin still seems to shiver, and Glory wonders if she's nervous or cold.
"Do you want to go back in?" But Desdemona shakes her head no, and wraps an arm around Glory's shoulder, pulling her close to her chest. Glory goes willingly, unable to contain the wordless joy that makes her feel as if she's floating. She leans against Des, listens to her heart beat, and watches the moon.
Tomorrow she might need to start wondering what this means, or what this changes, but for tonight there's just the feeling of completion that comes with knowing what she wants, with knowing she's no longer alone.