Disclaimer: They don't belong to me D:
A/N: I have another one ready to come out, but I had to hold it until I wrote a few slightly (ahahaha I laugh at myself) lighter pieces. I didn't want to put to bits of total angstocity right next to each other, so now you get this wee fic.
068. Song
She felt uncomfortable, too exposed. She pressed her back against the wall, the thin fabric of her high-necked dress insufficient against the cold marble. She let the cold seep through and was almost grateful for it, as if it might be able to erase the marks on her back and the devastation they had caused. As if it might be able to remove her from the situation in which she currently found herself, wearing a red ball gown and attempting not to be noticed. She knew it wasn't true, but she indulged herself in the what-if for a moment as she folded her arms across her chest and tried to look as much like the marble as possible. She had no desire to dance. She felt like a big enough fool as it was, having let herself be talked into wearing this dress, she was not going to allow those gathered here the highly laughable sight of her dancing as well. She put on her customary stony expression and tried to recede into the shadows.
One or two of the younger officers from Central – the ones who didn't already know her reputation and her fondness for firearms – came up to her. They had asked her, very politely, to let them lead her onto the floor. She had refused them, looking away and never seeing the way their faces fell at the rejection and never truly understanding the effect she had on them. They weren't laughing at the dress. They weren't laughing at all.
She felt a firm, warm hand slip over hers, pulling it away from her chest. She looked up and saw obsidian eyes staring into hers, smiling warmly at her with a hint of something deeper, stronger in their dark depths. In them flickered a flame that frightened her a little but that also made her heart flutter faster as his fingers wrapped around hers and pulled her toward him. She could vaguely hear the quartet playing something pretty and sad, their bows pulling mournful notes out of their violins and cellos as her feet involuntarily stepped forward.
"Come on," he whispered as she felt the heat of his other hand as it found a resting place on her hip. Her arms slid up the lapels of his tuxedo of their own volition and came to rest just behind his neck. It would be so easy to pretend that this was true, was possible. His smell filled her senses, like musk and matches, and she leaned in. It was all right, just for tonight, just for one song. She could pretend this was not impossible. He smiled and pulled her closer until she could feel his eyelashes in her hair and his breath on her neck. She felt surrounded by a heat she could not let herself think about, could not let her skin beg for, except in this one moment. And she found herself praying that the song would never end, that the strings would continue to weep as she lied to herself and tried to believe that the urgency to touch him and be touched by him would disappear as soon as those notes died in the air.