Flufftober '22 - Day 3 - Slow dancing (*substituted for 'thick as thieves')

[Set in Port Royal, in the gap between DMC and AWE]


Theo sat on the chair in front of her vanity, brushing her hair and humming to herself. It was a habit that had her blushing a little whenever she was caught - usually by James - because while her voice wasn't terrible, she was hardly a great singer. But it also wasn't a habit she'd worked to rid herself of. Music was one of the things she missed most dearly about home, and she dreaded the day when she could no longer remember how some of her favourite songs had gone. Singing or humming them to herself kept them in her mind.

"The music from your home really is very peculiar."

"And yet we have no powdered wigs, so we remain superior," she replied.

He rolled his eyes with a tired smirk, and continued to watch her brush her hair. It was late - Hattie had long gone to bed, and they should have been asleep themselves, but they always loathed to go to bed before they absolutely had to. Theo had seen a phrase for it once, scrolling aimlessly through the internet (something she missed but was also glad to be rid of in equal measures) - revenge bedtime procrastination. Something like that. And they needed it now more than ever. When the hour grew late and it was only them huddled together in their bedroom, they could pretend the outside world did not exist. They could be themselves. It was freeing. It was nice. It gave her hope that a day would come when all of their hours were like this, or at least most of them.

A little tiredness in the morning was worth it. They were both permanently exhausted these days, anyway, and it was a testament to their relationship that they found solace in it rather than constantly snapping at one another thanks to the sheer stress of, well, everything.

"How do you dance to it?" he asked, cutting through her thoughts of that very stressful everything before they could really start to build.

"What?" she blinked.

"The music you have. I've heard you sing many songs, but I cannot see how they may lend themselves to dancing."

It was a fair assessment, considering how many times he'd stumbled across her trying to sing Queen solos or absent mindedly stamping and clapping out the beat to We Will Rock You.

"Well there's hundreds of kinds of dancing. Very few of them are like the sort I've seen here. The way you dance at a…at a house party isn't really how you'd dance at a wedding, and so on."

"At a wedding?"

"Mm. It's a big thing - the bride and groom's first dance. In my time it'd be more weird for a married couple not to dance together than vice versa," she still hadn't recovered from the revelation that it would now be improper for she and James to be seen dancing together at a ball "Although I can't say it's a tradition I'm sad to have missed. Think I'd crawl out of my skin having to slow dance in front of everybody I know."

"Show me."

Theo breathed a laugh "You look back on our dances together that fondly, do you?"

"I enjoyed it more than I was free to admit at the time," he confessed with a smirk "Perhaps an allemande or two more and I would not have remained so blind for as long as I did."

"It worked out in the end, didn't it?" she mused "No illicit hand-holding needed."

"More's the pity," he said drily.

"We've no music," she pointed out.

"Sing something, then."

"Really?"

"Humour me."

She could have sworn he was taking great delight in her sudden bashfulness.

"All right," she set the hairbrush down and rose "Come on, then."

Slipping off of the bed, he obeyed and stood before her, watching expectantly. The half-hearted urge to be a shit and start twerking or something just to really horrify him flitted through her mind, but it wasn't particularly tempting. In part because she doubted another opportunity like this would arise, and she was curious herself as to how it might unfold.

"You put your hand here," she took his right hand in hers and set it down on her hip, then she slid it around to the small of her back "Or here, if you want to get really risky."

He snorted, but did not offer any disapproval as to what was considered appropriate in her time. Maybe he'd lived with her long enough to be used to it, or maybe he just didn't mind the proximity. Judging by that heart-stopping softness in his eyes as she set her left hand on his shoulder before using her right to clasp his free hand, it was the latter.

"This close? Truly?" He mused "And it's proper?"

His hold on her threatened to tighten when she moved to step back and she laughed a little before nodding.

"Very proper. Respectable, even."

"What are the steps?"

"There aren't any - not the kind you sit and learn, anyway. You just sort of…sway about and step in time to the music."

"And what will our music be?"

That was the tricky part, wasn't it? Sure, there were no shortage of ballads in the world - but ones that she could reasonably sing without sounding like an angry fox (which put Sweet Child o' Mine out of the running - although the idea of James' face while she tried to sing the intro to that had her giggling to herself), and ones that she could remember all the words to, shortened the list a fair bit. But one came to mind after a bit of thought - one that her nan always used to play on Sunday mornings on her old record player.

She hummed the first few bars, mainly to check that she remembered it as well as she hoped, and when she found it slipping clearly to the forefront of her memory, she graduated from humming to a few tentative 'la la-la, la la la-la, la la la-la la-la's. As she did, she guided him to sway slightly in time to the music, stepping this way and that.

"Does this song have words?" He teased.

"Don't be rude, that was the introduction," she clarified, leaning back just enough to give him a scolding glare that didn't seem to faze him in the slightest - in fact, it earned a quiet chuckle.

Ordinarily she'd have been mortified to sing in front of anybody - she would never be one of those ladies who could take up the spot by the piano at a dinner party like it was her territory alone and stay there all night. But at most she was bashful here, and only because she felt silly doing this. But a bit of silliness was needed here and now more than ever. It seemed he agreed, too, considering the earnest effort he put into following her lead - even if the fact that she was having to lead threw her off a bit. It was hardly a complicated dance, though, and he caught on quickly, and before long they found a sort of natural rhythm.

Only once she was sure that she wouldn't need to stop in order to give guidance, she began to softly sing the song.

"Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again, it's been a long long time," she sang softly, growing more sure when her voice didn't do anything bizarre or frightening after the first few lines "Haven't felt like this before since I can't remember when, it's been a long, long time. You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you…"

Pulling away slightly as she sang, she kept her hand in his, twirling out (a feat she'd never be able to accomplish in the shoes and skirts of this time, so her nightgown and bare feet were proving a blessing here), and then back in until his arm was wrapped around her and her back was pressed against his chest.

"Or just how empty they all seemed without you. So kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again," she spun out again and this time he was less baffled by the turn of events, watching her with a soft smile as she spun back in, this time facing him once again as she finished "It's been a long, long time."

There was more to the song, but she was afraid her vocal stylings weren't particularly up to it - nor to singing the dramatic orchestral filler-y bits - so she ended it there, tilting her head as she smiled up at him.

"There. Your first ever modern slow dance."

"And to think, I once worried that an allemande was too forward," he snorted, although he did not release his hold on her.

"If it's any consolation, it felt like a hell of a big deal to me at the time, too."

The satisfaction that seeped into his smile at that told her that it happened to be a damn good consolation indeed.